2025 Subaru Forester Hybrid vs. 2025 Honda CR-V Hybrid Review

2025 Subaru Forester Hybrid Limited ・ Photo by Brady Holt

Subaru has always appealed to the sort of customer who’d appreciate great gas mileage. Most of its cars and crossovers are historically rugged, comfortable, simple machines – built to be practical and sensible rather than flashy or exciting. But until now, Subaru lacked a serious gas-electric hybrid. 

This year, that has finally changed with the 2025 Subaru Forester Hybrid. This compact crossover SUV pairs electric motors with a gasoline engine to cut fuel usage, particularly in low-speed, stop-and-go driving. 

For this review, we’ve tested both the Forester Hybrid and one of its leading competitors – the 2025 Honda CR-V Hybrid. Keep reading as we explore how the two crossovers compare in each of nine categories, then name our overall winner. 

Pricing and Features

The new Forester Hybrid isn’t a cheap SUV. Fitting the Forester with hybrid technology costs a steep premium over the gas-only model – $1,700 on the top Touring trim level, but $3,200 to $3,900 on the rest of the lineup. Plus, you can’t get a base Forester Hybrid – you have to start with the next-up Premium trim level. The result is a starting price of $36,595, with upper trim levels like our test vehicle costing well above $40,000. 

The CR-V Hybrid isn’t quite cheap either, but it costs less. It starts at $34,650, just $2,000 to $3,000 more than a gas-only CR-V. Now, Honda does charge $1,400 extra for all-wheel drive, which is standard on the Forester Hybrid. But the CR-V Hybrid gives you the option to save more money and – as we’ll explain – use less gasoline. Plus, Honda also makes it less expensive to add amenities like leather upholstery and a heated steering wheel. 

The Forester Hybrid has some exclusive amenities. It comes standard with a panoramic moonroof (versus the CR-V Hybrid’s standard-size unit). And the Touring, $43,295, has features you can’t get on any CR-V Hybrid: ventilated front seats, a surround-view parking camera, and heated rear seats. But overall, the Honda is the value winner between these two SUVs. 

Winner: Honda CR-V Hybrid

2025 Honda CR-V Hybrid Sport Touring ・ Photo by Brady Holt

Fuel Economy

The CR-V Hybrid also uses less gas. In EPA testing, front-wheel-drive models get 43 mpg in the city, 36 mpg on the highway, and 40 mpg combined. And even AWD versions manage 40 mpg city, 34 mpg highway, and 37 mpg combined. Our CR-V Hybrid test vehicle averaged just below that EPA mark, returning 36 mpg during a week of mixed driving conditions. 

Subaru created the Forester Hybrid using some Toyota hybrid technology but keeping the gas-powered Forester’s engine and drivetrain. The idea is to make it more capable off-road (we’ll come to that later), but it makes the Forester Hybrid a little less economical than the competition. It gets an EPA-estimated 35 mpg city, 34 mpg highway, and 35 mpg combined. We did beat that estimate during our test, hitting 37 mpg in a week of mixed driving. But based on the EPA’s more scientific measures, plus its available front-drive model, the CR-V Hybrid is the winner. 

Note that neither of these SUVs is ultra-efficient on the open highway. They trounce their gas-only counterparts when you’re stuck in traffic or puttering around town, but you can expect mileage in the low 30s from either a gas or a hybrid model when you’re taking a long road trip on the Interstate. 

Winner: Honda CR-V Hybrid

2025 Honda CR-V Hybrid Sport Touring ・ Photo by Brady Holt

Exterior Design

The Forester Hybrid shares its body with the newly redesigned gas Forester. Though it’s all-new this year, the 2025 Forester isn’t designed to grab attention. Bigger, rounder headlights and a rear lightbar are new to the model, but they won’t turn heads in a parking lot full of crossovers. As a functional box with rounded-off edges, the new Forester is quietly classier though less distinctive than its more aggressive-looking predecessor. 

The current CR-V debuted as a 2023 model, and the hybrid engine is exclusive to its upper sport-themed trim levels. It has straighter lines than the Forester plus a few sportier details, like trendy black alloy wheels. It’s another take on quietly classy, but with a delicate, genteel approach rather than the chunkier, more rugged Subaru. For 2026, a new CR-V Hybrid trim level called the TrailSport adds a few subtle off-road cues like all-terrain tires and a boxier front bumper. Overall, we’ll let you choose your stylistic preference between the Honda and Subaru. 

Winner: Tie 

2025 Subaru Forester Hybrid Limited ・ Photo by Brady Holt

Interior Design

Inside, the Forester Hybrid has a ruggedly simple dashboard without much design flair. The materials are sturdy rather than posh, and they fit together well. The CR-V Hybrid also isn’t wild, but it’s dressed up a bit with a honeycomb strip that conceals the climate vents. And its buttons and knobs feel extra-precise. Overall, the CR-V feels more like a luxury car, while the Forester feels unpretentious and simple. Once again, this part comes down to a matter of taste. 

But we’ll give the CR-V Hybrid the win for two other reasons: Its controls are easier to use, and it has better hybrid-focused displays. 

The Forester Hybrid comes standard with a big 11.6-inch vertical touchscreen at the center of its dashboard. But as on other Subarus, its graphics are dated and cluttered, and it often fails to respond quickly. Worse, Subaru makes you use the screen for many common climate settings. Honda’s screen is smaller – a mere 7 inches on the base model and 9 inches on the rest of the lineup – but the CR-V Hybrid has blessedly simple buttons and knobs for its climate settings. (For 2026, all CR-V Hybrids get the bigger 9-inch screen like our test Sport Touring test vehicle.) 

Also, like most hybrids, the CR-V gives you several prominent options to track your fuel economy and see how the hybrid system is responding to your driving. Subaru only gives you a tiny, pixellated display in a corner of the gauge cluster – and only if you switch away from a view showing your gas mileage. 

Winner: Honda CR-V Hybrid

2025 Honda CR-V Sport Hybrid Touring ・ Photo by Brady Holt

Passenger Space and Comfort

Both the Forester Hybrid and the CR-V Hybrid are among the roomiest, most comfortable compact crossovers. With well-shaped seats, plenty of legroom and headroom, and adult-friendly rear seating, they’re welcoming and versatile family vehicles. 

Sit in them back to back, and you might feel that the Subaru feels cozier and the Honda feels more open and airy. But that’s more of a preference – whether you like a small-car or big-car experience – than an actual difference in the cars’ spaciousness. However, we do like the Forester’s bigger windows and slimmer roof pillars for superior outward visibility. That helps us break this tie between two well-matched crossovers. 

Winner: Subaru Forester Hybrid

2025 Subaru Forester Hybrid Limited ・ Photo by Brady Holt

Cargo Accommodations

The Forester Hybrid is a boxy little crossover that gives it a usefully shaped cargo hold. Total volume measures 27.5 cubic feet behind the rear seat and 69.1 cubic feet with the rear seat folded down. The cargo hold feels bigger in the real world, but by the numbers, it trails the CR-V Hybrid’s 36.3 cubic feet of space behind the backseat and 76.5 cubic feet behind the front seats. Neither hybrid comes with a spare tire, since their batteries live under the cargo floor where one would have gone. 

Subaru does have a couple of other advantages that may matter to you more than a few cubic feet of cargo space. First, the Forester Hybrid can tow up to 1,500 pounds – that’s not a big trailer, but it’s more than the CR-V Hybrid’s 1,000-pound limit. And secondly, the Subaru comes standard with big sturdy roof racks to hold your overflow items up above. But we’ll still give this category to the roomier Honda. 

Winner: Honda CR-V Hybrid

2025 Honda CR-V Hybrid Sport Touring ・ Photo by Brady Holt

On-Road Driving

The Forester Hybrid pairs a 2.5-liter four-cylinder gas engine with an electric motor for a total of 194 horsepower and 199 lb-ft of torque. This powertrain delivers OK speed but no thrills. The engine gets loud when it’s working even moderately hard, and moans when it’s really pressed into action. 

The Forester Hybrid rides smoothly, soaking up bumps with ease, and it’s easy to drive. But its extra-light steering and softly tuned suspension don’t inspire confidence if you try to drive it fast. This is a car meant for taking things easy. 

The CR-V Hybrid is also comfortable, but it’s quicker, quieter, and more upscale and fun to drive. Its 2.0-liter four-cylinder gas engine pairs with two electric motors to generate 204 hp and 247 lb-ft of torque. This still isn’t wild performance, but we preferred the CR-V’s smooth growl to the Forester’s unhappy moan when you floor the throttle. We also appreciated the CR-V Hybrid’s firm, responsive steering and relative handling poise for an SUV. You feel bumps a little more than in the Forester Hybrid, but they don’t slam through painfully. 

Winner: Honda CR-V Hybrid

2025 Honda CR-V Hybrid Sport Touring ・ Photo by Brady Holt

Off-Road Driving

We mentioned that Subaru traded a bit of gas mileage for better all-wheel-drive performance than most hybrids. Here’s what we mean. 

The CR-V Hybrid, like most hybrids, uses a rear electric motor to give it all-wheel drive. In other words, the gas engine (plus one electric motor) sends power only to the front wheels. And when the car needs extra traction or some extra power, the rear motor joins in. 

By linking the whole drivetrain to both the front and rear wheels, the Forester Hybrid is capable of sending full power anywhere it’s needed. That uses more gasoline, but when you need to power through mud or snow, you’ll appreciate the engine sending steady power to all four wheels. The Forester Hybrid also has an extra half-inch of ground clearance versus the CR-V Hybrid – 8.7 inches versus 8.2 inches. 

Winner: Subaru Forester Hybrid 

2025 Subaru Forester Hybrid Limited ・ Photo by Brady Holt

Safety

Both the CR-V Hybrid and Forester Hybrid are safe SUVs with tons of advanced collision-avoidance features and excellent crash-test scores. But the Subaru does even better in a couple of tests. 

First, the Forester beats the CR-V in an Insurance Institute for Highway Safety evaluation of rear-seat safety in frontal impacts. Secondly, the Honda gets just four out of five stars for frontal-impact protection from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration; both crossovers get five stars overall, but the Subaru gets top marks on each individual test as well. 

Winner: Subaru Forester Hybrid

2025 Subaru Forester Hybrid Limited ・ Photo by Brady Holt

Final Thoughts

The 2025 Subaru Forester Hybrid is a welcome addition to the Subaru lineup. By retaining a link between the engine and the rear wheels, it provides much better low-speed gas mileage with few other compromises. It’s also comfortable, safe, and capable, and it has a longer list of optional luxury features. 

But we’re more drawn to the 2025 Honda CR-V Hybrid. It has more space and feels more expensive, yet it costs less. It’s quicker and quieter, yet it’s also more economical. Its interior is more stylish than the Subaru’s, yet its controls are also much easier to use. 

The Subaru is the winning hybrid crossover for challenging terrain, and its real-world mileage during our test was a pleasant surprise. But we think more people will be happy in the Honda. 

Winner: Honda CR-V Hybrid 

2025 Honda CR-V Hybrid Sport Touring ・ Photo by Brady Holt