Honda Odyssey transmission replacement cost: price the gearbox, not the year

KBB publishes a fair repair range for an Odyssey transmission replacement by model year and ZIP code. For a 2019 Odyssey in ZIP 19341, around Exton, Pennsylvania, it lists $5,280 to $8,110, parts and labor included. The dealer breakdown on that page is steeper at the bottom: parts $6,097 to $6,475 and labor $1,509 to $1,635. Its 2009 Odyssey page, priced for ZIP 30528 in north Georgia, shows $4,408 to $7,752, and its 2022 page, priced for ZIP 78380 in south Texas, shows $5,251 to $8,768.

Those figures are KBB’s, read on October 25, 2026 from the text search engines serve for each page. KBB fills its ranges in the browser, so a direct fetch returned only a placeholder ZIP and the line that no range was available. We sell VIN checks, not repairs, and publish no price of our own. The rest of this page is about the question a flat estimate skips: which transmission your Odyssey actually has, because on this van the year alone does not tell you.

Every Odyssey in our data, 2008 through 2022, has a 3.5-liter V6. The transmission behind it changed four times, and twice the change split a single model year by trim. This table lists what Honda’s own releases and service bulletins say each van was built with.

The 2011–2013 split is the one most price guides miss. Honda never reprinted it in a single table, but its bulletins prove it: the 2011–2012 torque-converter extension and the 2012–2013 judder bulletins apply only to the Touring and Touring Elite, the trims with the six-speed. The 2018–2019 split is documented directly. Honda’s launch release, dated May 24, 2017, assigns a nine-speed to the LX, EX, EX-L and EX-L NAVI RES and an “all-new Honda-developed” ten-speed to the Touring and Elite. Car and Driver’s long-term test of an EX-L identified the nine-speed as a ZF unit. In August 2019 Honda announced the ten-speed would be standard on every 2020 Odyssey.

For a replacement quote, this matters more than the model year. A 2018 EX-L and a 2018 Touring sit in the same row of every estimator, and they need different transmissions from different suppliers.

Our corpus of federal NHTSA complaints holds 5,034 owner reports against the 2008–2022 Odyssey. POWER TRAIN, the category that carries transmission and driveline complaints, accounts for 436 of the ones we can count, or 8.7% of the record. That is a modest share. Brakes, the body structure, the engine and, on the newer vans, electrical and collision-avoidance complaints all outrank it in various years.

One caveat governs everything below. Each model year in our data carries its five most-reported categories and their counts. When POWER TRAIN is not among them, the count is not zero; it is simply lower than that year’s fifth-place category. That happens in 2010, 2013, 2019, 2020, 2021. For most of those years the ceiling is low. For 2019 it is 128, and for 2020 it is 64, so neither year can be called clean on this evidence.

With that said, the counted reports group by gearbox. The all-five-speed vans of 2008–2010 hold 59. The mixed 2011–2013 vans hold 43. The all-six-speed 2014–2017 vans hold 159, which is 79% of the fourth-generation total. The 2018–2019 nine-and-ten-speed vans hold 161, every counted one from 2018. The all-ten-speed 2020–2022 vans hold 14 that we can count, all in 2022.

2018 is the tallest bar on the chart by a distance: 161 POWER TRAIN complaints, 36.9% of every one we can count from 2008 to 2022, and 16.8% of the reports filed against that model year. It is also a heavy year overall, with 957 complaints in total, so power train ranks fourth there, behind electrical, forward-collision and engine complaints. A redesigned van with two brand-new transmissions in its first year collected more transmission complaints than any Odyssey before or after it.

The record shows Honda working on both gearboxes. For the ten-speed Touring and Elite, Honda filed recall 19V-299 in April 2019, covered below. For the nine-speed LX, EX and EX-L, it issued service bulletin 19-124 in December 2019: intermittent harsh or jerky upshifts under steady acceleration, or a check-engine light with code P0716, traced to abnormal adaptation values or a miscalculation in the transmission control software. The fix is a software update, after which the bulletin says the control module needs about 500 miles to relearn the driver. Bulletin 19-124 says “the normal warranty applies,” so it carries no extended coverage.

Our data cannot say which of the two gearboxes produced the 161 reports. It records the model year, not the trim. What it can say is that the chart drops after 2018, and that 2019 sits below its own top five, which caps it at fewer than 128 rather than proving it was quiet.

The 2011–2017 Odyssey is the generation most owners have heard about, and its complaint story is not about transmissions breaking in the usual sense. In 2014, the first year every trim had the six-speed, POWER TRAIN is the single most-reported category, at 73 reports or 23.8% of that year’s complaints. It is the only year in our data where power train leads.

Honda’s bulletins describe what those owners felt. Bulletin 17-043, dated June 20, 2017, covers every 2014–2017 Odyssey and describes a judder from the torque converter’s lock-up clutch between 20 and 60 mph. Honda’s finding is blunt: the judder is “typically diagnosed as a bad torque converter,” but the converter was not the cause. The fluid was, breaking down faster than expected under intermittent high heat. The fix is a software update that holds fluid temperature in range plus a fluid flush, and a follow-up bulletin, 17-044, tells dealers to change the fluid again if the judder returns.

That finding is the most useful number on this page for an owner of a 2011–2017 van, and it is not a dollar figure. A shop that diagnoses a juddering six-speed Odyssey as needing a transmission or a torque converter is contradicting Honda’s own investigation. Ask whether the software update and flush were done first.

We queried NHTSA’s recall database for every Odyssey model year from 2002 through 2022 and filtered for the transmission and shifter. Inside our 2008–2022 data range, two campaigns turned up.

19V-299 is the one with a transmission in its remedy. Honda’s safety recall report counts 50,504 vans, 34,607 from the 2018 model year and 15,897 from 2019, built through January 14, 2019, after which production software shifted to Neutral instead of Park on a power loss. Honda’s statement says the recall covers the Touring and Touring Elite and their ten-speed. Dealers secure the battery terminals and update the software, and if the parking gear cannot hold the van without the electronic parking brake, the transmission is replaced for free. It is a recall, so it does not expire with the warranty. If a 2018–2019 Touring or Elite in front of you was never brought in, that free replacement may still be open.

The Odyssey’s reputation for transmission failure was built mostly before our data begins. The failures most often cited were in the five-speed 1999–2004 vans, and our corpus starts with the 2008 model year, so none of the figures on this page include those vans and none should be read as describing them.

The one primary record we checked is NHTSA’s. Recall 04V-176, filed in April 2004 and returned by the API for 2002, 2003 and 2004 Odyssey queries, describes heat building up between two second gears in the automatic until teeth chip or break, which “could result in transmission lockup.” Dealers revised an oil-cooler line on low-mileage vans and replaced the transmission on any with heat-discolored gears. Secondary sources describe a 7-year/100,000-mile extension on 1999–2001 Odysseys and a later California settlement over five-speed automatics; we did not open primary documents for either, and both are long closed.

Owners facing a quote have more routes than the estimators show, and on the Odyssey the cheapest one is often not a transmission at all.

• Bulletin repair first: on a juddering 2011-2017 van, Honda's software update and fluid flush are the documented fix
• Recall check: a 2018-2019 Touring or Elite with a Park problem may get a free transmission under 19V-299
• New from Honda, dealer-installed: the top of KBB's ranges, and the dealer parts line alone runs past $6,000 on the 2019 page
• Remanufactured from an independent rebuilder: usually cheaper, with its own warranty; ask what the core charge is
• Used from a salvage yard: the lowest price and the least information about the donor van

On a 2018–2019 van, confirm the trim before you take any of these routes. A nine-speed and a ten-speed are separate parts, and a listing that matches on “2018 Odyssey” alone is not a match.

The Pilot shares the Odyssey’s V6 and some of its gearboxes, and our Pilot transmission fluid post walks through its own trim split. The difference is which split. The third-generation Pilot, as that post documents, paired a six-speed on lower trims with a nine-speed on Touring and Elite. The 2018–2019 Odyssey paired the nine-speed with its lower trims and gave the top trims a ten-speed. Honda’s nine-speed bulletin, 19-124, was later revised to add the 2019 Pilot Touring and Elite and the 2019 Passport, which suggests the same nine-speed and control software family sat in all three.

So “Touring” means opposite things on the two vehicles. A 2019 Pilot Touring has the nine-speed; a 2019 Odyssey Touring has the ten-speed. If you are comparing quotes or forum advice across the two, check which gearbox each one is talking about.

• Decode the VIN to confirm model year and trim, and with them the gearbox
• Run the VIN for open recalls, especially 19V-299 on a 2018-2019 Touring or Elite
• On a 2011-2017 van with judder, ask whether bulletins 17-043 or 17-052 were performed
• Get the diagnosis in writing: software, fluid, torque converter, or complete unit
• Compare quotes on the same unit: new, remanufactured or used, with programming and fluid listed

The gearbox table doubles as a shopping guide. A Honda VIN decode confirms the year and trim, and a transmission lookup by VIN tells you which automatic the van left the factory with. Run the Honda recall checkon any 2018–2019 Touring or Elite, because an unremedied 19V-299 is a free fix the seller may not know about. Honda’s powertrain warranty runs 5 years or 60,000 miles, so checking what coverage remains by VIN only matters on the newest vans in this range.

Read which Odyssey model years draw the most complaints overall rather than judging the van on power train alone; on the newer years, electrical and driver-assist complaints outnumber it. For a fluid-service comparison on a smaller Honda, the Civic transmission fluid post covers how its CVT and conventional automatics differ.