2025 Toyota Prius vs Honda Civic Hybrid Comparison Test

Once upon a time, a car like the Honda Civic was seen as something you bought when you couldn’t really afford much else.

But times have changed, and so has the market — not to mention the economics of car ownership. Case in point: the 2025 Honda Civic Hybrid seen here is nearly $40,000 before tax, while the 2025 Toyota Prius it’s up against costs even more.

To be fair, both cars have come a long way over the years. They’re cushier, quicker, better looking, and loaded with more tech than ever before while remaining perfectly practical and fiercely efficient.

The Civic Hybrid is new for this year and challenges the recently redesigned Toyota Prius’s position as the de facto electrified compact with alarming competence. And after living with both for a week, it seems like it’s succeeded.

Power

Both the Civic Hybrid and Prius are powered by 2.0L four-cylinder gas engines and two hybrid electric motors apiece, but the way in which they spin up the wheels is very different. With the Civic, the gas engine acts mostly as a generator for the battery, only stepping in to power the wheels at highway speeds. Most of the time, especially around town, the Civic feels a lot like an EV because it effectively is one.

In the Prius, however, gas and electricity share wheel-turning duties more equitably. The Toyota can use electrons, gas, or both to move around, constantly optimizing for what’s most efficient at any given moment.

In practice, this makes the Prius a noticeably clunkier car to drive. Its gas engine seems to kick in more often, and when it does it comes with a surprisingly loud, almost hoarse noise. And even with the gas engine off, its electric manners feel less eager and capable than the Honda’s.

Behind the wheel, the Civic Hybrid feels a magnitude more composed and torquey. It accelerates from a light like an electric vehicle (EV) — quiet, stable, deceptively quick, and really quite satisfying. Drive the Prius in the same manner, and it sort of bucks and whines in mild protest.

Driving Feel

This theme carries over when these cars encounter corners. Granted, the Toyota Prius has come a long way, and in isolation, it’s really not a bad car to throw around. But driving it back-to-back with the Civic Hybrid makes the latter feel like a luxury sports car. Whether it’s the more composed ride, the more direct and entertaining steering, or the tippy-toe precise brake feel, the fleeter-footed Civic is simply a tighter, nicer, and more refined car when the road gets bendy. 

A particularly stark contrast is how light the Prius’s steering wheel remains at highway speeds, making the whole car feel like a loose missile you continually have to hold onto to keep it pointed straight. The Civic, meanwhile, tracks steadily, being less mentally and physically taxing to drive over long distances. 

The Civic’s vastly superior outward visibility admittedly makes a big difference, too. Some of the thinnest A-pillars around make the Honda feel refreshingly simple and old in the best ways, whereas the Toyota’s decidedly chunky, steeply raked, almost Cybertruck-esque front end is annoyingly hard to see around — pedestrians can and do get lost behind its A-pillars. This also makes the Prius feel bigger than it is, and not in a good way. 

For what it’s worth, the Prius comes standard with all-wheel drive in Canada, while the Civic is front-wheel drive. However, I’m of the mind that as long as you have good winter tires (which you definitely should in this country, regardless of model or driven wheels), all-wheel drive is less of a necessity than you probably think.

Fuel Economy

The big reason to cross-shop cars like these is their efficiency, and both are among the most miserly on the market today. Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) rates the Toyota Prius for 4.8 L/100 km in the city, 4.7 on the highway, and 4.8 combined, while the Honda Civic Hybrid gets 4.7 L/100 km in the city, 5.1 on the highway, and 4.9 combined. 

Hypermiled over the same 22-km test loop incorporating both city and highway driving, it’s not hard to beat those official numbers. I saw 4.1 L/100 km in the Prius and an astounding 3.7 L/100 km in the Civic, although this test was far from scientific — results will vary based on traffic, weather, tires, and driving style. For what it’s worth, after a week of driving both, both cars averaged exactly 6.0 L/100 km.  

Comfort

The Civic may trounce the Prius when it comes to driving dynamics and powertrain refinement, but one weakness (its biggest, arguably) would be its seats. They quickly get uncomfortable during long drives, particularly at the bottom, and if you plan on doing those routinely, the Prius and its perfectly comfortable chairs may be reason enough to choose it alone. 

However, the Honda’s suspension is more composed and isolating than the Toyota’s. Neither car’s ride can be called uncomfortable, and the Prius deals with bumps reasonably well in its own right. But driven over the same pockmarked street, there’s definitely more movement inside the Toyota than there is in the Civic, which soaks up even big undulations with little shudder or complaint. 

Styling

No surprises here: the Prius is the clear aesthetic winner. This version has garnered near-universal critical acclaim and turns heads for its sleek, striking, and downright pretty exterior design. Egg tart yellow paint may not be for everyone, but you can’t deny it keeps the road interesting for other motorists. 

The Honda Civic, on the other hand, isn’t a bad-looking car but is significantly more low-key. It’s long and planted looking , and a 2025 facelift has added new wheels and some nice details up front. But it’s a much more traditional, subdued design, and perhaps this means it’ll end up aging better as the years go on. As they sit today, though, Toyota making the Prius look the way it does easily goes down as a hall-of-fame use of free will.

User-Friendliness

When it comes to usability, the ergonomically simpler Honda Civic wins. It has a traditional gear lever, a clean and very organized gauge cluster, three simple knobs for climate control, and all of the buttons on the dash and steering wheel are dead-easy to make sense of. 

In the context of modern cars, the Toyota Prius is still very good in this regard, but it’s comparatively more cluttered and chaotic in execution. Steering wheel buttons feel randomly placed, and while I appreciate the stoic, utilitarian row of climate buttons, Honda’s knobs are simply easier and nicer to use. And while the far-set instrument screen looks cool in a that’s-different kind of way, the little text and its physical distance from your face may conjure memories of checkups at the optometrist. 

The Civic comes with a seven-inch touchscreen standard, but this top Sport Touring trim gets a nine-inch unit with Google apps built in, while the Prius uses an eight-inch screen in XLE form, but a huge, luxury car-worthy 12.3-inch display is onboard in this top Limited version. Both systems use native software that’s not terrible, but Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are still the move (and they’re included in both cars). The Prius can connect to both wirelessly as standard, but the Civic can only do so in its top trim. 

Special kudos goes to the Prius’s wireless phone charger. It’s a sideways vertical slot that keeps your phone out of sight and very secure.

Practicality

Both cabins feel more spacious than these cars’ compact statuses let on, but they do so in distinctly different ways. The Prius feels vast because it’s seemingly been drawn like a spaceship with miles of stylish real estate between you and the windshield, whereas the Civic feels big because it’s been designed to minimize itself from the equation. 

The back seats of both are similar in that there’s more than decent legroom, but headroom is somewhat limited. My hair is about an inch away from the headliner in both cars, and that’s when sitting upright as a 5-foot-8 adult. Both of these testers featured heated rear seats, but no dedicated air vents. As with up front, the Civic’s lower windows make its rear quarters feel less cavernous than the Prius's. 

Undoubtedly thanks to a more airy liftback setup, the Prius has more cargo room on paper (575 L versus the Civic’s 419 L), but eyeballing it in person, it’s actually kind of close. The Prius has more space up top, but its floor is also notably higher, and the Civic’s trunk is remarkably deep in comparison. Install the Prius’s removable, crossover-style cargo cover that keeps your stuff hidden, and I suspect the delta becomes even smaller. Also of note is the Prius’s slightly higher liftover height — getting heavy, clunky cargo into the back of the Civic should be just a tad easier on the back. 

One big plus with the Prius being a liftback, however, is the ability to turn it into a makeshift box suite when you spontaneously come across a Coldplay concert at Downsview Park and decide to catch the show for free from the parking lot. 

Safety

According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), if you were to crash these two cars into each other, the Toyota would be the one to be in. The Prius earns its place as a Top Safety Pick+, while the Civic sedan is apparently only worthy of a non-plus Top Safety Pick rating. (The Civic Hatchback, however, is a plus-worthy pick, for some reason.) Compared to the Civic, the Prius boasts superior front crash prevention and performed better in the updated moderate front overlap crash test. The Civic’s headlights, however, received a higher grade than those of the Prius.

Both cars come standard with their respective brands’ semi-autonomous highway driving technology. Adaptive cruise control and lane keep work well at lowering your workload on long highway stints, but neither car’s system should be treated as hands-off at all. With that caveat in mind, both systems work as advertised. 

Features

As tested, the Prius Limited comes with a handful of doodads that can’t be had with the Civic Sport Touring, but that’s because it costs quite a bit more. That extra cash pays for the big 12.3-inch touchscreen, the power tailgate, impressive cameras, cooled front seats, heated rear seats, and two sunroofs (neither of which actually open).

As standard, both cars come with lots of features that would’ve been exclusive to luxury models 15 years ago. They both get heated seats (just fronts for Civic), wireless phone charging, the previously mentioned touchscreens, and heated steering wheels. A weirdly basic Prius quirk, however, is that climate control is strictly single zone, whereas the Civic has dual zones standard.

Value

In Canada, the Honda Civic Hybrid starts around $36,000 before tax for the Sport trim, but this fancier Sport Touring as tested costs $38,930 including destination. The Prius, meanwhile, is priced higher. The base XLE starts at roughly $40,000, but the Limited version tested here is $46,240. 

The Verdict

In isolation, both the 2025 Toyota Prius and 2025 Honda Civic Hybrid are fantastic everyday commuters. They’re chart-toppingly efficient, unobtrusively practical, pleasant to drive, and actually pretty quick by regular car standards. But pit them against each other and the Civic easily proves itself as a materially superior machine.

It feels more capable and buttoned down on the road while being a simpler item to get along with. It steers nicer, accelerates, handles, and cruises with a level of confidence and delight that would satisfy many luxury buyers. The human-machine interface has had more thought put into it, too, and it does all this while being just as good on fuel as the Prius with a smaller price tag. 

However, there are certain considerations that may sell you the other way. Honda’s seats aren’t great, which could be an issue if you plan on getting one of these as an all-day rideshare workhorse. And for rideshare folks looking at one of these on a pure money-in-money-out calculus, Toyota resale value cannot and should not be ignored.