Top 10 best seven-seat cars: driven and ranked

Best for: value

It's perhaps no surprise that the biggest breath of fresh air the seven-seater has seen for a while comes from Dacia.

The Dacia Jogger is a fully equipped people mover, but more importantly, it will cost you less than the price of a mainstream supermini - and is the cheapest car on this list. 

Straddling the lines between estate, MPV and SUV, the Jogger contains enough space for seven adults, although the third row is best left to children on longer journeys.

With the rear seats lowered or removed completely, there's up to 2094 litres of carrying capacity available, plus several nearly packaged storage compartments tucked away around the cabin. 

Driving the Jogger is a mixed bag, but it's not bad. There's a supple, languid gait to its ride, while its turbocharged 1.0-litre petrol triple is a smooth and willing accomplice.

Light and accurate steering combines with a subtly raised seating position to make the Jogger easy to place on the road, and while it can roll like a drunk when cornering hard, the grip is strong and the handling always remains faithful.

It's far from a scalpel-sharp street fighter, but there's enough character in the way the Jogger goes about its business that it really should be considered if you're in the market for seven seats. 

Best for: interior ambience

The Hyundai Santa Fe has always been one of our favourites in the seven-seat car market, and its 2024 renewal cemented its position as a go-to option. 

Along with a complete retro-inspired redesign, the Santa Fe is bigger and more spacious than ever, filled with technology and a comfortable way to travel with up to six passengers. 

The Santa Fe comes with either a full hybrid or a plug-in hybrid powertrain, with maximum power standing at 249bhp. In PHEV guise, it offers up to 33 miles of electric-only range, which is slightly disappointing, but the rest of the car makes up for it. 

Boot size varies depending on specification and powertrain, but the seven-seat PHEV features 985 litres with its rearmost seats folded down (compared with 992 litres for the regular hybrid) or 621 litres with them in place. 

Partner its extensive practicality with its excellent material quality and the Santa Fe justifies its high position in our top 10. 

Best for: versatility 

The Volkswagen Multivan is a traditional MPV: a thoroughly sensible and spacious box on wheels that offers unrivalled space and versatility.

A brilliantly rational form of family transport, it mixes one of the most flexible interiors in the business with grown-up driving dynamics and a dash of premium appeal.

Thanks to sitting on the MQB platform that underpins everything from the Volkswagen Golf to the Skoda Kodiaq, the Multivan also handles like a car, with surprising precision and brilliant ride refinement.

It also gets access to petrol, diesel and PHEV options. The latter uses a 1.4-litre petrol engine and an electric motor for 215bhp and a claimed 31 miles of EV running. 

The Multivan's trump card, though, is its modular interior, which can be organised just how you want it with more than enough space for seven passengers. Plus, it has a sliding door on each side. 

Best for: desirability

This biggest Land Rover Defender ought to have been a candidate for the top of this chart, because while it's expensive, its cleverly configurable interior presents the option of as many as eight seats.

Buy a long-wheelbase, five-door Defender 110 and JLR will offer you a choice of five, six or seven passenger seats, while the elongated Defender 130 can seat eight in a 2/3/3 formation.

Sadly, for legislative reasons, you can't order the latter with the jump seat in between the driver and front seat passenger, which would have made it a nine-seater (and, in the UK at least, in need of registration as a minibus).

Even without this as an official option, though, this car has impressive versatility. The seven-seat Defender has third-row seats that are a little smaller than those of the related Land Rover Discovery's but still perfectly usable by children, teenagers and smaller adults.

In the 130, you can take all eight on board and still have a very usable 400-litre boot, although the trade-off is the car's vast 5358mm length that makes it something of a squash and a squeeze in most parking spaces.

This is also an expensive car, with even the very cheapest models starting from more than £70,000. But unlike the old Defender, it drives nearly as well as almost any luxury SUV of its size and type, has a broad range of modern electrified powertrains and has off-road capability to spare.

Best for: electric motoring

Electric cars are beginning to muscle in on the seven-seat act, and the Kia EV9 is one of the first of the bunch.

You certainly won’t struggle to find it in a packed car park. It's roughly the same size as the Range Rover Sport and has a really bold design, so it possesses genuine presence. 

The sheer size of it and its clever packaging means it can offer six- and seven-seat cabin layouts. The former swaps the second row’s three-seat sliding bench for a pair of swivelling ‘captain’s chairs', a bit like you would find in the Mercedes-Benz V-Class.

Those third-row seats are big enough for small adults and kids with booster seats, which is useful as four of the five rear seats get Isofix points. The rearmost seats stow and deploy electrically.

With all seats up, the boot is big enough for a reasonable amount of shopping cargo, while five-seat mode makes it very generous.

The EV9 comes with a 99.8kWh battery. In the 200hp single-motor, rear-wheel-drive model, official range is 349 miles. Kia quotes efficiency of 3.0mpkWh and our testing achieved 2.8mpkW - impressive for a car with such a large, block-like frontal area. The official range of the dual-motor, four-wheel-drive model is 313 miles.

In cooler conditions, the top-of-the-line EV9 achieved 259 miles on our 70mph touring efficiency test and gave us reason to expect it would cover a little over 300 miles in exclusively urban and gentler out-of-town motoring.

Best for: style

The Peugeot 5008 was always a dignified option for those after seven seats, but the recently-arrived third-generation model provides even more versatility than ever. 

It's the first seven-seat Peugeot to be available hybrid, plug-in hybrid and electric powertrains, and its new design is eye-catching, to say the least. 

Space-wise, the 5008 offers 916 litres of boot space with the third row of seats folded flat - more than the Hyundai Santa Fe, Dacia Jogger and Skoda Kodiaq - dropping to 348 litres with all seats in place.

Despite its size, the 5008 is also reasonably good to drive. Of course, it's no hatchback, but it's easy to manoeuvre at low speeds, and Peugeot's experience with hybrids means its powertrain line-up is fairly refined. 

Overall, the 5008 is a good option for those after a seven-seater car with a pleasant interior, frugal hybrid powertrains and a stylish exterior design. 

Best for: third-row space

The third-generation Land Rover Discovery remains a fine, full-sized seven-seater option, thanks to likeable charm and genuinely luxurious characteristics. 

Launched in 2017 and updated in 2021, it comes with seven seats as standard. It's seriously spacious, with excellent head and leg room for all passengers, and vitally it tops the list for third-row space.

Boot space stands at a cavernous 1137 litres when you're using only five seats, but it drops down to 258 litres when using all seven.

Currently, the Discovery is only available with a mild-hybrid diesel engine, offering 348bhp and a 0-62mph sprint of 5.9sec. Apart from the Defender, then, the Discovery is probably your best bet on this list for performance. 

It's pleasant inside too - not far from Range Rover quality. And it's even better off-road – not that the vast majority of owners will ever find out.

Best for: refinement

Skoda branched out into the seven-seat SUV market in 2016, launching a car that split the difference between full-sized and mid-sized options quite cleverly.

The Kodiaq, now in its second generation, has a big cabin and a generous boot for a car of its price and size, and all versions of it bar the bottom-rung variant get seven seats as standard.

The one dimension in which the car is lacking a bit of space is cabin width, and because the middle second-row seat can't be slid into an offset position relative to both outer ones, it's tricky to get three child seats installed side by side.

The Kodiaq's engine range consists of a 1.5-litre turbocharged petrol with mild-hybrid assistance and a 2.0-litre diesel.

Both are admirable units, but it's a shame the PHEV powertrain is available only in the five-seater, especially with its impressive 70-mile EV-only range. 

All Kodiaqs are pleasant and easy to drive, if a little bit firm-riding in some editions.