Replacing 2013 Toyota Prius C air filters

Because my Prius C is not covered under the free 2-year Toyota maintenance anymore, I wanted to minimize the amount of work I needed the dealership to do at my service appointments. Air filters are commonly a giant rip-off at dealerships after the materials markup and labor costs and usually trivial to replace. After replacing the cabin and engine air filters for my Toyota at about 30k miles, I have to agree.

Your Toyota Prius C has two different air filters: a cabin air filter and an engine air filter. The cabin air filter is accessed by removing your glove box, and the engine air filter can be accessed trivially by lifting the hood. The hardest part about replacing the two filters was the effort needed to yank out the glove box.

Please note that the following Amazon links in this post are affiliate links, and I will receive a small commission if you make a purchase after clicking on my link.

Supplies needed:

The best instructions I found for the two procedures were at carcarekiosk.com.

PriusChat had some outdated links to YouTube videos that were either taken down or made removing the glove box much harder than it needed to. 🙂

One last tip: for the air filter I purchased, the air flow arrow on the filter faces up when inserting the filter. Disposable gloves are also very useful when replacing the engine air filter, as the parts are generally very dusty and dirty!

Hope this helps you save over $100 at the dealership! At my local dealer, I was quoted $280 for a major service, $99 for a minor service that was basically a major service without replacing filters, and ended up paying only $70 with a dealership coupon in the mail — a savings of over $180 by spending 15 minutes and about $30 instead.