This Maruti Car Gives the Best Mileage in India: It’s Not Swift or Dzire

Think about your petrol bill for a moment. At roughly ₹94 per litre in most Indian cities, covering 1,200 km a month costs you around ₹4,500 if your car does 25 kmpl. But what if your car was rated at 26.68 kmpl officially? And some owners were quietly pulling 28 to 31 kmpl on open highways? That car exists. It's a Maruti. And it's probably not the one you're picturing right now.

Not the Swift. Not the Dzire. So Which Maruti Has the Best Mileage?

Most buyers automatically land on the Swift or the Dzire when mileage and Maruti come up in the same sentence. Both are genuinely efficient. The Swift returns 25.75 kmpl (ARAI) and the Dzire sits at 25.71 kmpl. Solid numbers by any standard. But neither of them holds the top spot.

The car carrying India's highest mileage title among petrol hatchbacks is the Maruti Suzuki Celerio. Its AMT variant is ARAI-certified at 26.68 kmpl, making it the most fuel-efficient petrol car you can buy in the country right now. And it starts at just ₹4.70 lakh ex-showroom, following the GST revision in September 2025.

The Celerio's Mileage Secret: Engine and Platform Working Together

The reason the Celerio hits those numbers comes down to two things working in sync.

First, the engine. The Celerio runs on Maruti's K10C DualJet petrol unit: a 1.0-litre, three-cylinder motor with dual injectors per cylinder, dual variable valve timing, and an idle start-stop system. That start-stop function cuts the engine the moment you brake to a halt in traffic, then restarts it the instant you lift your foot. In Indian city conditions, where you're often idling at signals longer than you're actually moving, this makes a genuine difference to fuel consumption.

Second, the platform. The Celerio sits on Maruti's Heartect architecture, designed specifically to be lightweight without compromising structural strength. Less weight to carry means fewer litres burned per kilometre. Not a dramatic story but certainly the right one.

What Celerio Owners Are Actually Getting on the Road

Here's where it gets genuinely interesting. ARAI figures are tested under lab conditions: no AC, no passengers, no potholes. Real-world numbers always come in lower. In city traffic, most Celerio owners report 18 to 22 kmpl, still impressive for a petrol car in stop-and-go conditions.

On the highway, the story improves sharply. Most owners report 22 to 25 kmpl at a steady 80 to 100 kmph. And then there's the outlier: Owners documented 31 kmpl on highways after switching to Shell V-Power premium fuel, specifically crediting the Celerio's 11.5:1 compression ratio as the key to unlocking better efficiency with high-octane petrol. That's a figure many diesel cars would be happy to match.

Should the Maruti Celerio Be on Your Shortlist in 2026?

The Celerio is not without trade-offs. Its 3-star Global NCAP crash rating, tested in December 2025, is a legitimate concern for safety-first buyers. The cabin is functional rather than plush, and the AMT gearbox can feel hesitant at crawling speeds. This is not a car built to impress anyone. It is built quietly and without fuss. To save you money over a long ownership period.

The 32-litre fuel tank helps here too. On a good highway run, that translates to over 800 km on a single fill. A number that makes long drives genuinely stress-free on the wallet. Monthly fuel costs for a typical Celerio owner work out to roughly ₹2,000, which has no business being that low for a petrol car in 2025.

If fuel savings are your top priority and you want the best mileage car in Maruti Suzuki's current lineup, the answer is already here. The title isn't marketing. It's an ARAI number. And right now, it belongs to this small, underrated hatchback.