Hyundai Palisade Vs. Toyota Grand Highlander: Which Hybrid 3-Row SUV Gets the Best MPG?

What SUV Shoppers Need to Know

• The 2026 Toyota Grand Highlander Hybrid got 33.2 mpg in our real-world fuel economy test, besting the 30.3 mpg of the 2026 Hyundai Palisade Hybrid.
• The Toyota was roughly 10% more efficient on our nearly 200-mile route, and it used about 0.4 gallon less in gas.
• You’ll spend a little less money on gas each year with the Grand Highlander Hybrid, but the savings may not be big enough to be an influential purchasing factor.

If you’ve been looking for a large three-row family SUV with a gas-electric hybrid powertrain, you haven’t had a lot of choices beyond the Toyota Grand Highlander Hybrid. That’s beginning to change, however, as models like the Hyundai Palisade Hybrid and others are hitting dealerships to challenge Toyota’s lock on this corner of the car market.

Related: 2026 Hyundai Palisade Vs. 2026 Toyota Grand Highlander: What’s the Best $60,000 Hybrid 3-Row SUV?

But if you’re most interested in saving money at the pump, is the new Hyundai as good as what Toyota has offered for going on three model years now? To find out, we took top trim levels of the 2026 Hyundai Palisade Hybrid and 2026 Toyota Grand Highlander Hybrid on a roughly 200-mile road-trip route to get their real-world gas mileage. Here’s how they fared.

The Grand Highlander Hybrid was the more efficient of the two SUVs on our route, with an average of the trip computer and pump-calculated fuel-economy readings coming out to 33.2 mpg versus the Palisade Hybrid’s 30.3 mpg. That’s roughly 10% better efficiency, though for this trip, the Grand Highlander Hybrid consumed just 0.398 gallon less of gas.

Even though the Palisade Hybrid’s fuel economy trailed the Grand Highlander Hybrid’s in this test, the Palisade Hybrid outperformed its EPA combined rating of 29 mpg while the Grand Highlander Hybrid underperformed its 34 mpg combined rating (see these SUVs’ EPA gas mileage side by side).

The Grand Highlander Hybrid’s modestly better efficiency also means modestly lower annual fuel costs; the EPA estimates it’ll cost $1,750 to drive a Grand Highlander Hybrid 15,000 miles a year when gas is $4 a gallon versus $2,050 for the Palisade Hybrid, a savings of $300. That’ll add up over the course of a few years, but it’s also a difference of less than $6 a week, or less than a specialty coffee at Starbucks.

So, while the Grand Highlander Hybrid still reigns as an efficiency leader, its advantage over the Palisade Hybrid might not be big enough to be an influential purchasing factor.

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How We Tested

For this fuel-economy test, we started and ended at the same gas station (and more specifically, the same gas pump) in the suburbs north of Chicago. We reset each SUV’s trip computer and topped up their tanks before starting our route, which first went north just across the Illinois border into Wisconsin before heading west and then circling back to our starting point. We stopped three times along the way for driver changes, so our two editors drove each SUV twice.

We conducted this test at the end of February, and temperatures were in the high 20s to the high 30s Fahrenheit. For our driving procedures, we drove close to the speed limit with the SUVs in their default drive mode. Climate-control systems were in Auto mode and set to the driver’s preferred temperature, and we avoided both cruise control and drafting other vehicles. Elevation change on our route is minimal, and the Toyota showed an average trip speed of 41 mph at the end of our drive.

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