Best SUVs for Towing in 2026: Ranked by Real-World Capability

Revised 26 August 2026. Every tow rating and dimension on this page was re-checked against the manufacturers' own published figures. Several were wrong or a generation out of date, and the per-trim payload ranges this page used to print have been removed entirely — payload is set per individual vehicle, so those numbers could not be sourced to anyone. Each correction is named in place below rather than quietly swapped, because the old figures are still circulating widely. Best SUVs for Towing in 2026: Type "best SUV for towing" into any search engine and you will find listicle after listicle ranked purely by maximum advertised towing capacity. A full-size SUV rated to tow 8,500 lbs lands at #1. A mid-size crossover rated to 5,000 lbs lands near the bottom. These rankings are dangerously misleading. Advertised maximum towing capacity is measured under SAE J2807 test conditions: one 150-lb driver, no passengers, no cargo, flat sea-level road, factory-fresh vehicle. Real-world family towing looks nothing like this. The moment you add five passengers, luggage, a roof rack cargo box, and a weight-distribution hitch, you have consumed enormous quantities of payload capacity — and with it, your practical maximum trailer weight. A truly useful SUV towing ranking must evaluate at least five separate dimensions: 1. Door-sticker payload capacity — the total weight budget for people, gear, hitch, and tongue weight combined. 2. Wheelbase length — longer wheelbase means more lateral stability and a higher safe maximum trailer length. 3. Transmission cooling — does it have an integrated or auxiliary transmission cooler in the towing package? 4. Suspension architecture — body-on-frame with leaf springs or independent coil-spring unibody? 5. Brake controller integration — is an integrated trailer brake controller included, or must it be added aftermarket? With these five dimensions in mind, we have ranked the most popular towing SUVs in 2026. Before purchasing any SUV for towing duty, verify your specific trim's payload capacity on our interactive Payload Calculator and check your truck specs in the Truck & SUV Specs Database.

Full-size body-on-frame SUVs share a ladder frame with their pickup siblings, which is what lets them resist the vertical twisting a loaded hitch applies. Every tow rating and dimension below is the manufacturer's own published figure for the model year named — check the year, because several of these changed generation recently and older figures are still widely quoted. Three of those figures are commonly published wrong elsewhere, including in earlier versions of this page, and the errors all run the same direction — they flatter the vehicle: * The Suburban is 8,200 lb, not 8,300. No 8,300 lb figure appears in Chevrolet's 2026 trailering guide. The Expedition MAX is 9,000 lb, not 9,300. The 9,300-class number belongs to the short-wheelbase* Expedition, not the MAX. Ford redesigned the Expedition for MY2025, and the older 131.6 in wheelbase figure belongs to the 2018–2024 car. * The Tahoe's wheelbase is 120.9 in, not 116. The 116 in figure is the 2015–2020 Tahoe — a full generation out of date, and it matters here because wheelbase is one of the stability inputs this guide asks you to weigh. On payload, whether a figure can be quoted depends entirely on the manufacturer. GM, Ford, Kia and Hyundai publish no trim payload at all — Ford's own spec sheet simply points you to the doorjamb label "for carrying capacity of a specific vehicle". For those brands, an article quoting "typical payload 1,490–1,620 lb" for a Suburban is presenting an estimate as though it were a specification, and this page will not repeat it. The figure that governs your setup is on the yellow placard in your own driver's door. Stellantis and Toyota do publish payload tables, so where a sourced figure exists we use it. The 2026 Sequoia is listed at 1,375–1,730 lb by trim — well above the 1,215 lb widely quoted for it.

Unibody SUVs have no separate ladder frame, so hitch loads feed into the body structure and the independent rear suspension. They can carry impressive tow ratings; what they generally do not carry is the payload to use them with a family aboard. Two corrections worth naming, because the older figures are still everywhere: * The Durango's 8,700 lb is real but the trim attribution usually is not. It needs the GT HEMI with Tow N Go — and the Citadel trim, to which this rating is often attributed, no longer exists in the 2026 lineup. * The Telluride and Palisade wheelbase is 116.9 in, not 114.2. The 114.2 in figure belongs to the 2020–2025 cars. Both were redesigned. One more wrinkle: on the 2025 Telluride the X-PRO trims were rated 5,500 lb, so even "max 5,000 lb" understated that model year. Where a payload figure genuinely exists, here it is. Stellantis publishes one: the Durango is listed at 1,220–1,590 lb by configuration. That is materially higher than the 1,080–1,200 lb this page used to print — and the old figure also propped up a claim that the Durango had the lowest payload of any large SUV here, which is false. The Grand Cherokee in the next tier is published lower, at 1,160 lb. Why this tier is the trap. A tow rating of 8,700 lb on a Durango does not mean a Durango tows 8,700 lb with your family in it. At a 13% planning share, an 8,700 lb trailer puts roughly 1,130 lb on the hitch — before a single passenger, bag or hitch head is counted. Whether that fits is decided entirely by the placard in your door, and on a mid-size unibody it very often does not. That is the arithmetic this whole guide exists to make you run.

Mid-size SUVs are marketed hard for towing and carry the tightest real limits of any category: short wheelbases, modest payload, and unibody structures that settle quickly under tongue weight. Three claims in wide circulation that no longer hold: * The Grand Cherokee does not tow 7,200 lb. That figure belonged to the previous generation with the 5.7L HEMI, an engine not offered in the 2026 Grand Cherokee. The current maximum is 6,200 lb — a thousand pounds lower, which is more than enough to turn a safe plan into an overloaded one. * The Explorer does not tow 5,600 lb. That was the 2024 car with the 3.0L EcoBoost V6. Every 2026 Explorer trim is rated 5,000 lb. * There is no V6 Highlander. Toyota replaced it with a 2.4L turbo four for MY2023. The 5,000 lb rating is correct; the engine attributed to it in most articles is not. The Highlander's 112.2 in wheelbase is the shortest here, and short wheelbase plus tongue weight is the classic recipe for sway — the physics is in can my SUV tow a camper and what causes trailer sway.

Body-on-Frame: An automotive construction method where the vehicle body is mounted on a separate, rigid steel ladder frame. This architecture is stiffer under twisting loads, tolerates heavier tongue weights, and is the preferred platform for serious towing duty. Full-size SUVs (Tahoe, Yukon, Suburban, Expedition, Sequoia) are body-on-frame. Unibody Construction: An architecture where the body and structural frame are a single welded unit. Lighter and quieter than body-on-frame, but flexes more under heavy trailer tongue loads. Almost all mid-size and crossover SUVs are unibody. Max Trailering Package / Heavy Duty Trailer Tow Package: An option package that adds components specifically required for maximum towing: transmission fluid cooler, engine oil cooler, upgraded radiator, 7-pin wiring harness, higher-capacity receiver hitch, and integrated trailer brake controller. Without this package, a vehicle's towing capacity is frequently 2,000–4,000 lbs lower than its rated maximum. Independent Rear Suspension (IRS): A suspension design where each rear wheel moves independently on its own set of control arms and springs. IRS delivers superior ride quality but compresses easily under tongue weight loads, causing visible rear-end sag and front-axle traction loss. Solid Rear Axle (SRA): A traditional suspension design where both rear wheels are connected by a solid steel axle housing. SRA systems use multi-leaf springs that are far stiffer and more resistant to vertical loading than IRS coil spring systems, making them superior for heavy towing. Integrated Trailer Brake Controller: An electronic module built into the vehicle's dashboard that reads the vehicle's deceleration rate and sends a proportional braking signal to the trailer's electric drum brakes. If your trailer has electric brakes and the tow vehicle lacks an integrated controller, you generally need an aftermarket controller. Check brake requirements in our State Towing Laws Directory.

Before finalizing any SUV purchase for towing duty, answer all five of these questions with the actual door sticker data in hand — not the brochure: Question 1: What is the door-sticker payload capacity? This is the total weight budget for your family, gear, hitch, and trailer tongue weight. It is almost always lower than you expect. A figure below 1,200 lbs severely limits your options for anything larger than a small pop-up camper once a family is loaded. Question 2: What is the wheelbase? Calculate a conservative planning trailer length: take your wheelbase in inches, subtract 110, divide by 4, and add 20. This is not a manufacturer rating; it is a screening rule that flags combinations needing closer review. See the complete formula in our SUV Towing Physics Guide. Question 3: Does the trim level include the Max Trailering or Heavy Duty Tow Package? Without this package, the vehicle's actual safe towing capacity is often 2,000–3,000 lbs below the maximum figure. The package adds transmission cooling, upgraded wiring, and the integrated brake controller that are essential for safe towing. Question 4: Is there an integrated trailer brake controller? If not, you must add an aftermarket unit before towing any trailer over 3,000 lbs. Proportional brake controllers (which mirror the vehicle's deceleration rate) are far superior to timed controllers. Budget 150–300 for this addition. Question 5: Have you verified the real-world payload after loading your family? Load your family, gear, and hitch into the SUV as you would for a typical trip, then drive to a certified CAT scale and weigh it. Subtract the empty truck weight from your loaded weight, then subtract the result from the door sticker payload. The remaining number is your true available tongue weight budget.

The point of this guide is a method, so here it is run twice on the same trailer. Because payload is per-vehicle, both payload figures below are assumptions you would replace with your own door label — that is the whole exercise. The setup. A family of four at 640 lb, 200 lb of luggage and gear, and a 22-foot bumper-pull at a loaded weight of 5,800 lb. At a 12% tongue share that is a 696 lb tongue weight, plus a 90 lb weight distribution hitch. So 930 lb of the tow vehicle's payload is spoken for before the tongue, and 1,626 lb once the tongue is included. Scenario A — a full-size body-on-frame SUV whose door label reads 1,580 lb. * Passengers and gear: 840 lb * Weight distribution hitch: 90 lb * Left for tongue weight: 1,580 - 930 = 650 lb * Tongue weight required: 696 lb * Over by 46 lb — close enough to fix by moving about 40 lb of cargo from the truck into the trailer, ahead of its axles. * At a 134 in wheelbase, a 22-foot trailer is comfortably inside the range this class handles. Scenario B — a mid-size unibody SUV whose door label reads 1,150 lb. * Passengers and gear: 840 lb * Weight distribution hitch: 90 lb * Left for tongue weight: 1,150 - 930 = 220 lb * Tongue weight required: 696 lb * Over by 476 lb, more than three times what remains. No cargo shuffle fixes this. * At a ~114 in wheelbase, a 22-foot trailer is also long for the platform. Same trailer, same family, opposite verdicts — and note that neither vehicle ran out of tow rating. Both of these SUVs are rated to pull 5,800 lb comfortably. The limit that bound was payload in both cases, which is exactly why ranking SUVs by maximum tow capacity produces such misleading advice. Run it with your own numbers in the payload calculator, and read the placard rather than a brochure — the door sticker guide shows where it is and what each line means.