Used test: Audi Q7 vs BMW X7: costs

Buying and owning

Costs, equipment, reliability, safety and security

New, this Audi Q7 would have cost you around £6000 more than the BMW X7, but bought here at three years old, the roles are reversed. It’s the X7 that will cost you around £6000 more, at around £55,000 compared to the Q7's £49,000. That might sound like a good result for the Q7, but this also means it has suffered the heavier depreciation of the two in that first year, and this could add to your overall running costs if the trend continues.

In our tests, the Q7 averaged 30.5mpg to the X7’s 31.3mpg. Audi offers fixed price servicing at £599 for one service of our Q7 test car. BMW also has fixed price servicing, and we were quoted a fairly hefty £1080 price for the X7 – that includes one major service, plus an oil and microfilter service. 

To insure, both of these SUVs prove expensive. With the Q7 in insurance group 46, it will cost you around £1117. The X7 comes in at £1195, due to being in the maximum group of 50. 

In our most recent What Car? Reliability Survey, the Q7 finished in fifth place out of 11 cars in the luxury SUV class, while the X7 didn’t feature. Audi as a brand finished in a somewhat disappointing 21st place (out of 32 manufacturers) in the same survey, while BMW finished in a decent 16th place. 

It’s also worth noting that in this highly specced Vorsprung guise, the Q7 came from new with tonnes of standard kit and a plethora of luxuries, including a Bose 3D sound system, matrix LED headlights and a full leather interior. To get the X7 up to a similar level when both these cars were new would have cost you nearly £5000. 

As for safety, the Q7 features lane-keeping assistance, blindspot monitoring and rear cross-traffic alert as standard. To get all that in the X7, you would have had to hope that the first owner added the optional Driving Assistant Professional pack, which would have cost them an extra £2295.

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