Kia maintenance: cost, plans and service schedule

Are Kias expensive to maintain?

Compared with other vehicles, Kias are fairly cheap to keep running. According to RepairPal data adjusted for inflation, the annual cost to repair and maintain a Kia is around $648 per year.

And while costs for parts and service have skyrocketed in recent years, it’s worth noting that Kia’s reliability has remained relatively consistent.

How Kia compares with other automakers

The average upkeep cost of a vehicle across brands is around $891 per year, according to inflation-adjusted RepairPal data. Here’s a more specific look at cost comparisons.

Kia maintenance and repair costs by model

However, keep in mind that these average costs really depend on what model you drive. We pulled model-specific estimates for three different models and put them in the table below to help show the variation in costs within Kia’s lineup.

It’s also worth pointing out that these statistics combine maintenance and repair costs into one figure. In a way, that makes sense — both leave you with a bill from your mechanic — but it also erases some key differences regarding how people actually pay for these services. Here’s what you need to know:

• Maintenance: Generally, maintenance refers to any preventive, regularly scheduled service recommended by your automaker.
• Repairs: On the other hand, repairs are unexpected services needed to correct something that has gone wrong with your car.

Let’s take a better look at some maintenance and repair costs for Kias to help you budget appropriately for both.

Kia maintenance cost and schedule

You can find the recommended maintenance schedule for your Kia by looking on the company’s website, referring to your owner’s manual or calling a local dealership.

The schedules for gas-powered cars will look pretty consistent between models, but electric vehicle (EV) maintenance will look a little different. We’ve included examples of both below to give you an idea of what to expect.

Example: 2024 Kia Telluride maintenance schedule

The recommended maintenance schedule for the popular Kia Telluride is pretty standard for gas-powered Kias — and for most vehicles in general. Every 7,500 miles, you can expect an oil and filter change, tire rotations and multipoint inspection. Every 15,000 miles, you’ll want an air conditioner filter replacement, fuel system service, drive shaft and boot inspection. And every 30,000 miles, you can expect a cooling system inspection.

Example: 2024 Kia EV6 maintenance schedule

Kia’s EVs require less maintenance since they have fewer moving parts. Generally, you can expect a tire rotation and multipoint inspection every 8,000 miles; a drive shaft and boot inspection every 16,000 miles; a reduction gear fluid inspection every 32,000 miles; brake fluid replacement every 48,000 miles; and coolant replacement every 120,000 miles.

Now that you’re familiar with Kia’s maintenance schedule, costs are relatively easy to calculate. Maintenance services will vary depending on your vehicle and what exactly you need done. However, once you figure out what your mechanic charges for these tasks, you can plan out your estimated maintenance costs for as long as you plan to own your Kia.

Example: 2018 Kia Sorento maintenance costs

Here are a few common maintenance tasks and what you might spend to have each performed. We based these estimates on a 2018 Kia Sorento in Austin, Texas, and adjusted them for inflation.

Overall, these are below-average costs for routine maintenance. Kias are not overly complex vehicles, and most ASE-certified technicians can work on them just fine, so be sure to shop around for the best possible quotes.

Schedule maintenance for severe driving conditions

If you're hard on your Kia or you drive in severe conditions, you may need to perform some maintenance services more often than what your regular schedule recommends. According to Kia, severe conditions include repeatedly driving short distances of less than 5 miles; extensive engine idling; low-speed driving for long distances; driving on rough, dusty, muddy, unpaved, graveled or salt-spread roads; driving on uphill, downhill or mountain roads repeatedly; and frequently driving in stop-and-go conditions.

For example, it’s recommended that the 2024 Telluride has its oil and filter changed every 5,000 miles instead of every 7,500 miles if you routinely drive in severe conditions.

Kia repair costs

Kia repairs are generally cheap and infrequent. The brand ranks high for reliability to begin with, and according to RepairPal, Kia vehicles make unplanned trips to the mechanic half as frequently as the average car (0.2 times per year versus 0.4). But what are the most common repairs on Kia vehicles — and what will they cost you?

According to CarComplaints.com, Kias from before 2016 seemed to be far less reliable overall, suffering from more frequent engine trouble. (The company settled a class action lawsuit alleging that the engines in certain 2010 to 2020 Kias were defective and that owners were improperly denied repairs.) An engine replacement can be extremely expensive, but the data we’ve seen suggests that the company has ironed out the kinks since 2020.

» RELATED: 10 most expensive car repairs

You might also consider the rise in theft of 2011- to 2022-model-year Kias to be a widespread problem, but Kia has addressed it via a free security update and other measures.

Overall, Kias score high for reliability, but many consumers are still wary of the brand.

“We rarely see major problems from Kias anymore,” reported Brian Jones, an experienced mechanic and contributor to this article. “The company has done a good job of adding more reliable parts, even if there’s still more room to grow.”

When looking at which Kia models were more reliable than others, we started noticing a trend: the longer Kia has been making a given model, the more reliable that model becomes.

Consumer Reports gave the 2021 Kia Seltos a predicted reliability score of 2 out of 5, while the 2024 version scored a 3 out of 5. The relatively new K5 sedan scored a 3 out of 5 in 2022 and a 4 out of 5 in 2024. Likewise, the Telluride scored a 2 out of 5 in its debut model year (2020) but has since risen to a 3 out of 5.

The trend indicates that Kia seems to learn from its early mistakes, meaning you might have better luck purchasing a vehicle that the brand has been making for years — and not one that’s totally new or newly refreshed for the current year.

To illustrate your possible savings, let’s look at the possible repair costs you might incur owning one of Kia’s least reliable vehicles in recent years: the 2020 Telluride.

Example: 2020 Kia Telluride repair costs

According to Consumer Reports, the first-year Telluride had severe issues with its suspension, powertrain and climate control system. And according to RepairPal, here’s what those repairs might cost, on average, for a Kia Telluride:

The good news is that these repairs would very likely be covered under Kia’s manufacturer’s warranty, which happens to be one of the longest factory warranties in the business. Kia offers:

• Five years/60,000 miles of bumper-to-bumper coverage
• Ten years/100,000 miles of powertrain coverage (first owner only)

(Kia’s bumper-to-bumper warranty should cover suspension and climate control issues, and the longer powertrain warranty should cover head gasket replacements.)

The bad news is that your Kia will eventually run out of warranty coverage, meaning you’ll be paying for repairs out of pocket unless you have an extended warranty. Plus, warranty repairs can still be a headache since you’ll lose access to your car until repairs are finished, and many of our readers have complained about poor service and wait times getting repairs at Kia dealers.

“My car is a 2021 Sportage, and my AC has randomly stopped working (no cooling whatsoever),” wrote a reviewer in California. “Every dealership in my county has zero diagnostics appointments available and the one I found told me I need to leave my car there for 3-5 days with zero loaner cars and if my car isn’t covered under warranty there’s a $400.00 diagnostics fee.”

“We had a drive train issue on our Kia Telluride that is a year and a half old. The Kia warranty is 10 year 10 thousand miles supposedly. We were out of town when this happened and were told it would take 2-3 weeks to fix with no rental or car replacement,” wrote a reviewer in Nevada.

If you’re buying a used Kia — especially a model/year combo with below-average reliability — you might want to consider an extended warranty to help you avoid paying for costly repairs — and potentially skip the dealership entirely.

How can an extended warranty help?

Extended warranties and prepaid maintenance plans are optional vehicle protection products that can help you save money on maintenance and repairs for your Kia, and Kia even offers its own versions of these plans:

• Prepaid maintenance plans can help you get better rates on maintenance services and maybe even protect you from inflation by locking in your rate when you buy. If you buy a brand-new Kia, you may be eligible for a Kia Maintenance Plan, which covers routine maintenance for up to six years. We recommend getting an estimate for a plan from your dealership and then asking your mechanic whether they’d charge more or less for the same services.
• Extended warranties, also known as vehicle service contracts, can effectively mimic your factory warranty coverage and protect you from paying to fix covered components once your factory warranty runs out. These plans have their pros and cons, but they’re worth investigating if you’re worried about affording a large repair bill.

As a final note — we had trouble finding a Kia dealer that would sell us a Kia Distinction Vehicle Service Contract, but you may have better luck. Even if your dealer does sell Kia extended warranties, though, it’s still a good idea to get quotes from other car warranty companies so you can compare the results and make an educated decision about which is right for you and your Kia.

Third-party extended warranties allow you to get repairs at any ASE-certified mechanic, which is a blessing if you’re buying from a brand with a poor reputation for customer service, and third-party warranties for Kias cost around $2,200 for an additional five years of coverage, which is pretty cheap considering the average extended warranty costs $1,000 per year of coverage.

» MORE: Car warranty vs. car insurance