Audi Q9 Review & Prices

The Audi Q9 is a massive luxury SUV with space for up to seven people, a seriously plush interior and more gadgets than you can shake a stick at. It makes a strong first impression when you climb aboard, though its gigantic dimensions and six-figure price tag mean it’s not exactly a sensible upgrade from your average family SUV.

It’s like an American-style fridge-freezer. There’s plenty of shiny tech on the outside, acres of space inside and lots to get excited about - but you do need to pretty carefully check it fits in the gap before you take the plunge.

At more than 5.3 metres long, the Q9 is the biggest car Audi’s ever made, and so it takes on the BMW X7, Mercedes GLS and the Range Rover. Its £100,000+ price tag certainly puts plenty of luxurious alternatives on the list.

It looks the part, at least. The grille is enormous, the rear end upright and the vast 22- or 23-inch wheels look substantial under all that bodywork. There are some nice details, too - Vorsprung models get curved OLED taillights, and the exhaust outlets are genuine. Audi often puts naff-looking fake outlets on its cars, so this is progress.

The interior makes a strong case for spending all that money. The materials all feel lovely, and Audi’s stepped back from using so much shiny black plastic in the places you touch. Instead, optional wood trim and light-coloured upholstery make it feel airy and luxurious.

There’s loads of tech too, though not all of it has been implemented for the better. The touchscreen responds quickly, but having to use it to adjust the air vents is a particularly irritating example. The passenger-side display is responsive and bright, but feels pretty redundant when most people already have a phone with them.

Space is much harder to criticise. You can have a conventional seven-seat layout, or swap the middle bench for two captain’s chairs. They’re fantastically comfortable, with room to stretch out and twin armrests. Even the third row offers usable space for adults to sit in, and there’s even a useful 280-litre boot with all the seats in place.

At launch the Q9 comes with just one engine option - a 3.0-litre V6 diesel producing 299hp, and matched to an eight-speed automatic gearbox and quattro four-wheel drive. It’s a bit of an old-school option, but should feel muscular enough for this massive car - still, a plug-in hybrid is on the way.

Air suspension and rear-wheel steering should help the enormous Q9 feel more manageable, but we’ve not yet been behind the wheel, so we’ll have to wait and find out if it delivers the comfort and refinement you’d expect for the money. Based on the slightly smaller Q7, we’re pretty hopeful.

Check out our best deals on the Audi Q9 here, or find the best Audi Q9 lease deal here. You can see our used Audis for sale, and remember Carwow can even help you sell your old car when the time comes.

The Audi Q9 starts at around £104,000, rising to roughly £113,000 for the range-topping Vorsprung. That puts it firmly in BMW X7, Mercedes GLS and Range Rover territory. An Audi Q7 is considerably cheaper if you don’t need quite so much room.

‘Entry-level’ Edition 1 is hardly basic, getting 22-inch alloy wheels, air suspension, rear-wheel steering and an opening panoramic roof as standard. All seven seats are heated, and those in the front are also ventilated and massaging. The passenger-side display comes standard too.

Vorsprung adds 23-inch wheels, upgraded Matrix LED headlights, OLED rear lights, automatically opening and closing doors and a Bang & Olufsen sound system. The Captain’s chairs come as part of a ‘Lounge Pack’, reducing seating capacity to six.

Generous passenger space across all three rows, but opt for the captain’s chairs and they don’t go fully flat

There’s nothing remotely cramped about the front of the Audi Q9. The seats feel substantial, the cabin is wide and there’s plenty of room around you. It feels every inch the flagship Audi SUV.

Storage is very generous too. There’s space beneath the centre console, wireless charging pads for your phone and huge cupholders perfect for American-style beverages. The door bins are big too, as is the felt-lined glovebox.

Vorsprung models even get powered doors which open and close at the press of a button. Potentially not the most convenient in super-tight UK parking spaces, but it’s a very luxurious touch.

Space in the back seats

The car we’ve tried so far had the two separate captain’s chairs in the second row, and they’re arguably the best seats in the house. They slide and recline electrically, have individual armrests and feel like the boss’s seat.

There’s loads of room, while the huge opening panoramic roof and generous side windows stop the cabin feeling gloomy. There are also sunblinds if you’d rather shut the outside world out.

The third row is a bit less indulgent than the middle, though headroom is good and knee room reasonable even for an adult passenger. You can slide the middle seats forward to distribute the space a bit more fairly.

ISOFIX points will be fitted on all three second-row seats in standard models with the rear bench.

Boot space

There’s a useful amount of boot space even with all three rows occupied - at 280 litres, it’s about as much room as you get in a Volkswagen Polo hatchback.

Fold the third row down and you get a massive 850 litres, and with all the rear seats folded there’s a positively cavernous space. Electric controls make it easy to rearrange the seats, though the captain’s chairs don’t go totally flat.

There are thoughtful touches, too. The luggage cover fits beneath the boot floor, the rear air suspension can lower to make loading easier, and there’s an adjustable rail system which provides various ways to secure your goods.

Lovely materials and less reliance on shiny plastic than some Audi SUVs, but the touchscreen is unnecessarily complex in places

The Q9’s interior feels like Audi made a real effort to justify its price tag. The upholstery and materials all feel very plush indeed, the light colour scheme looks expensive and there’s a reassuring solidity to most of the cabin.

A few panels sound a little hollow if you tap them, but you’ll hardly spend your time doing that. More importantly, there’s not too much piano-black plastic - like you get in the Audi Q5 and Q3 - so it should be easier to keep looking presentable. The wood finish on our test car was particularly appealing, and the alternative is a carbon-effect trim that doesn’t seem to suit the Q9’s luxurious vibe.

There’s a trio of displays across the dashboard - an 11.9-inch driver display, 14.5-inch central touchscreen and 12.3-inch passenger display with a privacy screen so it doesn’t distract the driver in operation. The central screen is responsive, but the surrounding bezel is quite chunky - and we prefer the layout of Audi’s older instrument displays to the current driver information presentation.

You get the same stubby indicator stalk as the latest Q3, which is a bit too complex to use but does tidy up the dash by moving the drive selector to the steering column. Annoyingly, Audi’s removed physical controls from the air vents - you now adjust them through the infotainment screen, which feels like technology solving a problem nobody had in the first place.

The sole engine available at launch is a 3.0-litre V6 diesel, producing 299hp. It has mild hybrid assistance, but it’s not a plug-in you can charge overnight for an electric commute - it’s effectively a beefier stop/start system.

Audi’s official mpg figures top out at 36.4mpg. The same engine in smaller Audis is capable of returning well over 40mpg on a long run, but the Q9 is truly gigantic. We’d expect 40mpg to be possible on a long motorway journey, but the car’s sheer bulk means stop-and-go traffic around town will butcher your fuel economy.

CO2 emissions are similarly hefty, so your first-year road tax bill is several thousand - plus, all Q9s pay the expensive-car supplement in years two to six. Company car drivers also face the highest 37% benefit-in-kind tax rate.

Euro NCAP hasn’t crash-tested the Audi Q9 just yet. However, every Audi model tested in the last decade has scored five stars, so while there’s no guarantee, we’d be surprised if the Q9 doesn’t match this.

All models get a large list of standard safety kit including adaptive cruise control, surround-view cameras, blind-spot monitoring and automatic parking. Some of the most interesting safety features involve the lighting - the rear lamps can display warnings to approaching road users, and the headlights can project your vehicle’s dimensions on the road ahead so you know where you’re going.

Audi finished a disappointing 23rd out of 30 manufacturers in the 2026 Driver Power owner satisfaction survey, with servicing and insurance costs among owners’ biggest complaints.

There’s plenty of complex equipment in the Q9, including air suspension, rear-wheel steering and, on suitably equipped cars, powered doors. That doesn’t mean it will go wrong, but it does mean there’s more to consider when buying an older example outside its warranty.

Audi’s standard cover is less generous for high-mileage owners than the unlimited-mileage policies offered by BMW, Land Rover and Mercedes - the 60,000 miles is just about the bare minimum, and slightly disappointing.