Newswire · Corrections
Every US Model 3 and Model Y Price, Re-Verified — and What the Cheap Trims Leave Out
Six trim prices, one range figure that used to be mid-tier, and three deletions the price tables never mention. Corrected and dated.
Tesla restructured the US Model 3 and Model Y configurators — new trim names, new prices, and real specification changes underneath. Plenty of pages have since copied one number out of that restructure and left the rest stale. Here is the whole ladder in one place, with the omissions that price tables never show.
The ladder
| Trim | Model 3 | Model Y |
|---|---|---|
| Rear-wheel drive | $36,990 | $39,990 |
| Long Range AWD | $48,880 | $50,380 |
| Performance AWD | $54,990 | $58,880 |
Every figure above excludes destination and order fees. That is the single most common way these numbers get misquoted — an all-in figure from one source set beside a pre-fee figure from another, with no label on either.
The range number that moved down the range
Both entry rear-wheel-drive cars now carry a 321-mile EPA range. That figure would have been mid-tier territory two years ago; it is now the cheapest way into either model. If you are comparing against a page written in 2024, the entry trim is the row that has changed most, and not in price.
What the RWD trims do not have
This is the part the ladder hides. On the rear-wheel-drive trims of both cars you do not get:
- ventilated front seats
- heated rear seats
- the rear 8-inch touchscreen
Meanwhile the Model Y Long Range AWD gained a standard 16-inch display and a black headliner, both previously premium items, and the seven-seat option returned as a $2,500 add-on. So the gap between entry and Long Range is now partly a features gap rather than purely a range-and-drivetrain gap.
Why a year-over-year price comparison is usually the wrong comparison
The deletions above are the reason this page exists, and they point at a failure mode worth naming. When a restructure changes prices and content at the same time, comparing this year's price to last year's compares two different products. A number that fell while the car lost ventilated seats and a rear screen did not fall by the amount on the page — and a number that held steady while the car gained a 16-inch display and a black headliner did not, in any meaningful sense, hold steady.
Trim names make it worse, because they are the thing people key a comparison on and the thing a restructure most freely reassigns. "Long Range AWD" in one year and the same words in another are labels attached to whatever Tesla decided they mean at the time. The only comparison that survives is price against a specification list from the same date, which is exactly the pairing that price tables — including the one above, on its own — do not give you.
Sort the differences by what you can add later
For a buyer deciding between the rows, the useful axis is not what each trim costs but which of the differences are permanent. They divide cleanly:
- Absent hardware is permanent. Ventilated front seats, heated rear seats and the rear touchscreen are not later purchases. A car built without them stays without them, for you and for whoever buys it from you — so these belong in the decision even if they feel like details next to a drivetrain.
- Software and subscriptions are not decisions at all right now. Anything sold as an ongoing service can be added the week you want it and dropped the week you don't. Weighing it against a trim price treats a reversible choice as an irreversible one.
- Range and drivetrain sit in between: fixed at build like hardware, but unlike a missing seat heater, they are the difference you will notice on the days you actually chose the car for.
Which is also where the referral fits honestly. A three-month trial of a subscription feature is firmly in the second category: useful, worth taking, and no reason whatsoever to pick one trim over another. If a comparison has the trial in it as a tiebreaker between two rows of this table, the comparison has a category error in it.
What none of this changes
The referral benefit is a fixed three-month Full Self-Driving (Supervised) trial on an eligible new Model 3 or Model Y. It is not a percentage, so it does not scale with the trim you pick, and the restructure did not alter it. A cheaper trim does not shrink it and a Performance does not grow it. Our current status page carries the dated benefit table if you would rather read the figures than take this page's word for them.
Dated, and therefore perishable. This ladder reflects sources current to 16 July 2026, re-checked on 28 August 2026. Tesla changes US prices without notice and publishes no changelog, so treat the configurator on your own order day as the only binding figure.