VariantWise Observatory · finding 3
What a sunroof really costs
Every list of sunroof cars in this market prints a car’s opening price beside that promise, and on most of those cars the opening trim has no sunroof in it. So here is the number that list is missing. Across the 56 cars where that step exists, you typically pay ₹1.00L more for the cheapest variant carrying the sunroof than for the variant below it on the same engine and the same gearbox, 7% of the car. The smallest step anyone asks is ₹12,000, the largest is ₹9.99L, a spread of 83 to one on what every brochure calls the same thing.
But read that as the price of the sunroof and you would be wrong, which is the more useful half of this finding. Nobody sells you the sunroof separately; they sell you the whole trim. Only 7 of those 56 steps buy the sunroof and nothing else. The other 49 hand over other features at the same time, typically 4 further features per step, so the figure above is the price of a whole VARIANT, and what makes you climb to it is the sunroof.
What the cheapest step costs, by brand. The bar runs from that brand’s smallest step to its largest, the orange mark is the typical step, and the figure beside it is what it costs. Free to republish with credit to VariantWise.
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<iframe src="https://variantwise.com/embed/findings/sunroof-step" title="What a sunroof really costs" width="100%" height="496" style="border:0;max-width:720px" loading="lazy"></iframe> <p style="font-size:13px">Source: <a href="https://variantwise.com/data/findings/sunroof-step">VariantWise, What a sunroof really costs</a></p>
It is not on the car you think it is on
Of the 208 cars on sale, 156 offer the sunroof somewhere in the range and 52 never offer the sunroof at all. Of the ones that do, 97 fit the sunroof to every variant, so there is no step to pay: those cars include it at every price. That leaves the 56 where the choice costs you something, and those are the cars this page is about. The cheapest way in anywhere in the market is the Hyundai i20 Magna Petrol MT at ₹7.00L.
And what you arrive at is not one thing. Of the 56 steps, 30 arrive on a panoramic unit and 26 on a single-pane unit, which is worth checking on the brochure before you assume the dearer step buys the full glass roof rather than the small pane.
Some badges make you climb further
The typical step runs from ₹32,500 at one end to ₹1.55L at the other. Part of that is the cars, since a range of large SUVs prices every variant higher. The bars say something a typical figure cannot: a short one means that brand asks about the same step whichever of its cars you are standing in front of, and a long one means it does not.
| Brand | Typical step | Share of the car | Cheapest to dearest | Cars |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MG | ₹1.55L | 13% | ₹76,000 to ₹2.81L | 5 |
| Maruti Suzuki | ₹1.27L | 10% | ₹12,000 to ₹3.44L | 6 |
| Mahindra | ₹1.10L | 6% | ₹49,000 to ₹3.00L | 6 |
| Kia | ₹1.00L | 8% | ₹43,000 to ₹4.50L | 7 |
| Hyundai | ₹82,000 | 6% | ₹26,000 to ₹1.32L | 7 |
| Tata | ₹32,500 | 4% | ₹20,000 to ₹1.20L | 10 |
Money says one thing, share of the car says another
In money, the longest climb is in the MPV class at ₹1.96L, against ₹98,500 in the SUV class. As a share of the car the order changes: there the Sedan class asks the most, at 10% of the price against 7% in the SUV class. Which of those matters is your call. If you are choosing between two cars the money is the number; if you are deciding how far to stretch on one, the share is.
| Body style | Typical step | Share of the car | Cheapest to dearest | Cars |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MPV | ₹1.96L | 8% | ₹51,000 to ₹9.99L | 5 |
| Sedan | ₹1.00L | 10% | ₹29,000 to ₹1.96L | 5 |
| SUV | ₹98,500 | 7% | ₹12,000 to ₹5.64L | 44 |
The two ends, and the one that should worry you
The cheapest step in the catalogue is the Maruti Suzuki Victoris Petrol Mild Hybrid, where ₹12,000 moves you from ₹13.57L to ₹13.69L and buys a panoramic roof and nothing else at all. The largest is the Toyota Vellfire Hybrid at ₹9.99L, though on a car of that price it is 8% of the bill.
The one to watch is neither. It is the Jeep Compass Diesel, where the cheapest route to a panoramic roof costs ₹5.64L, or 31% of the car you were standing in front of. That step does hand over 13 other features, SOS call, LED fog lamps, rear fog lamp, touchscreen among them, which is the point: at that size it is not a decision about the sunroof any more, it is a trim decision with the sunroof on the poster.
Method, in full
For every car on sale, both halves of a step share an engine AND a gearbox, so nothing in the figure is you changing engine or losing a clutch pedal on the way up. The step is the cheapest variant on that powertrain carrying the sunroof, minus the dearest one below it that does not. Where a car offers several routes in, the SMALLEST is published, so every figure here is the least that car can charge you rather than a flattering pick.
What this cannot do is isolate the sunroof alone, and it does not pretend to. In this catalogue the equipment list belongs to the TRIM, so the trim brings the sunroof along with whatever else it carries: 7 of the 56 steps bring nothing else, and the rest typically hand over 4 further features each. Every step is counted both ways, so the bundling is a number on this page rather than a disclaimer. Prices are ex-showroom, from the same catalogue that prices this site’s own pages.
Nothing is dropped quietly. Of 208 cars, 52 have none on any variant, 97 have one on every variant and 3 have one but never above a variant without it on the same powertrain; the remaining 56 are the steps above, and those counts add back to the whole. Underneath them sit 479 engine-and-gearbox combinations, of which 131 could be paired. We use the middle figure rather than the average, because a handful of very expensive cars would drag an average away from what most buyers are quoted. A brand or body style needs 5 cars before its typical figure is published, and 9 were held back for falling short; every row carries its count so you can see how thin the thin ones are. This page recomputed 2026-10-24, and it recomputes with every data update, so it does not rot the way a published table does.
The variant-by-variant prices and equipment behind it are free to download and reuse with attribution on the open data page. Earlier findings price the second pedal and the same car across every state, and the scoring behind the site is on how we rank.