If you’ve shopped for tires in the last several years, you’ve no doubt run into the Michelin Primacy Tour A/S. It’s from Michelin, one of the biggest tire brands on Earth, and it’s a pretty popular tire in a fairly crowded segment. It’s a touring all-season tire, meaning it’s designed for everyday use by virtually any type of vehicle you can name across all four seasons. Thanks to this, it’s often a target for folks replacing their aging tires on their daily drivers. 

What makes this tire so special? Well, it’s highly available, it’s been around for nearly a decade, and it scores pretty well on most tests. Per Tire Rack, it gets reasonably good wet and dry traction, is good enough in wintry conditions, and it rides nicely, making it a solid all-around experience as a replacement tire. Even its treadwear is pretty decent at 540 UTQG, which means it’ll last 5.4 times longer than UTQG 100 tire, and has a treadwear warranty of six years and 55,000 miles. 

However, Michelin released the tire in 2017, and tire technology has changed quite a bit over the last 10 years. Where this was once a top option, the Michelin Primacy Tour A/S is now closer to the middle of the pack than it is the top. So, whether your local service center is out of stock or you just want to see what the market is like now, here are some pretty good alternatives to the Primacy Tour A/S. 

The Hankook Kinergy 4S 2X is a good place to start for Primacy Tour A/S alternatives. Hankook released the tire to North America in 2020, and while Hankook tires don’t always score well with tire authorities, the Kinergy 4S2 2X is one of the better options in the brand’s lineup. This is a touring all-season tire that boasts a 500 UTQG rating, which is in the same ballpark as the Primary Tour A/S, and a six-year, 60,000-mile warranty, which is also competitive with most competitors in this space. 

The Kinergy 4S 2X competes favorably in most categories when you compare reviews for both of them from the same source. Per Tyre Reviews, wet and dry grip, handling, and winter performance are all superior for the Kinergy, with the Primacy Tour A/S squeaking out a minor victory in terms of comfort. The biggest win for Hankook comes in winter conditions, where the Kinergy 4S 2X outperforms the Primacy Tour A/S by a fairly wide margin. This isn’t terribly surprising given the age of both tires, but even so, the 4S 2X stacks up well against its aging competitor. 

They’re also pretty similar in terms of price, with Hankooks being cheaper per tire by a varying among depending on the size you go with. For our comparison, a 235/55R19 Hankook costs $180 per tire while the Primacy Tour A/S costs $227 per tire in the same size.

The General Grabber APT is a bit of an outlier on this list. It’s more of an off-road tire than a touring all-season, but General makes some of the best off-road tires, and Tyre Reviews still lists it as a touring all-season on its website, so we decided to include it. Obviously, this is a tire you’d get if you want to do a bit of light off-roading alongside your concrete adventures. The treadwear warranty is pretty good for an off-road tire, sitting at six years and 60,000 miles, which is on par with Michelin. 

General stacks up pretty nicely with the Primacy Tour A/S, keeping pace or exceeding Michelin in nearly every metric. Both are similarly okay in winter conditions, but the Grabber does better in all-around traction, and they’re about even in comfort, depending on which website you ask. General’s tire has superior treadwear ratings from Tire Reviews by a fairly wide margin, so that’s something to consider alongside its off-road prowess.

Both tires are in the same ballpark in terms of price, with similar sizes going for around the same amount of money, give or take around $10 to $20 per tire. The Grabber APT is a bit more expensive per tire in a similar size, but that makes sense given that it’s designed for more heavy-duty work. In terms of age, these tires are also roughly the same, with General releasing the Grabber APT in mid-2017. 

Pirelli is a big player in tires, so it’s no surprise they’re on the list. Pirelli and Michelin are compared rather frequently by big authorities like Consumer Reports, and while Michelin usually comes out of those comparisons on top, it’s not usually by a lot. The Pirelli P7 AS Plus 3 is one of the most popular tires that the brand sells, accumulating loads of reviews across the Internet, most of which are quite positive. Pirelli backs up its tire with a six-year, 70,000-mile warranty, and with a UTQG rating of 800, there’s a lot of confidence from review websites that it’ll hit that 70,000-mile mark. 

The AS Plus 3 is the first tire on the list to outdo the Primacy Tour A/S in every category from both Tire Rack and Tyre Reviews. Both websites agree that the AS Plus 3 is better all-around, with the Primacy Tour A/S only really keeping up in terms of comfort and dry grip. This is a theme that will continue for the rest of the article. It’s doubly impressive that Pirelli was able to find a tire compound durable enough to last for 70,000 miles while also keeping it comfortable. 

Pirelli does make you pay for it, though, and the P7 AS Plus 3 is more expensive per tire than the Primacy Tour A/S. The price difference isn’t terrible, with the Pirelli tires being about $20 more expensive per tire on average, but that’s still $80 extra for a set. Whether or not that’s worth it is up to you.

The Vredestein Quatrac Pro+ is one of the tire maker’s most popular touring all-season tires, so its inclusion on the list makes sense. This is another brand that gets pitted against the likes of Michelin and Goodyear all the time and generally comes out as a competitive brand with good tires. The Quatrac Pro+ is an excellent example. Vredestein backs up its tire with a warranty that lasts for eight years from the date of manufacture and up to 55,000 miles. If you get a fresh set of these and don’t drive too much, this is one of the longest warranties on the market. 

In terms of review scores, Vredestein smokes the Primacy Tour A/S in almost every category. Wet traction, dry traction, comfort, road feedback, and even traction over ice are all superior to the Michelin. Vredestein released this tire in 2024, so it’s also one of the newest tires on the block, and new tires mean new technology that generally outperforms the old technology. 

There are only two downsides to choosing Vredestein here. The first is the tire’s 400 UTQG rating, which means it may not last as long as the Primacy Tour A/S. That’s a bit of a bummer considering that Vredestein tires are also way more expensive per tire than Michelin, with prices easily ranging into the $300-$400 range per tire for common sizes. Premium tires come with premium price tags. 

It’s a fun little factoid that Lego produces more tires than any other company, but Goodyear is right up there as one of the biggest and most successful tire brands in the world. It makes several touring all-season tires, and most of them compete fairly well with the Primacy Tour A/S. For this list, we chose the Goodyear Assurance WeatherReady 2. It’s one of the brand’s latest tires, having come out in 2024, and it has some niceties like 3PMSF certification, which Michelin does not include on the Primacy Tour A/S. Goodyear’s warranty is pretty standard, offering six years and 60,000 miles of protection. 

The latest technology in the WeatherReady 2 shows here, as it performs better in every metric from its Michelin competitor, with no exceptions. It doesn’t really matter who you ask: the WeatherReady 2 is just better in every way. The biggest wins are in winter and ice traction, where Goodyear blows the Primacy Tour A/S away. Even the treadwear rating is better with a UTQG 700 score, indicating that the tire should last longer than its 60,000-mile warranty. 

It’s not a terribly fair comparison because Goodyear’s tire is seven years newer and seven years wiser, but you can buy both of these tires, so the comparison must be done. As the final nail in the coffin, Goodyear sells these tires for approximately the same price as the Primacy Tour A/S, give or take a few bucks depending on size. This one’s a winner. 

Pirelli returns to the list once more, and with a tire that, on paper at least, outperforms even its popular P7 AS Plus 3 stablemate. The Pirelli Cinturato WeatherActive is a newer tire than the AS Plus 3, having been released in 2022. The extra year seems to have done Pirelli good, as the Cinurato is considered among the best tires in the touring all-season segment by most relevant authorities. Pirelli backs up its tire with a six-year, 60,000-mile warranty, which just barely beats out the Primacy Tour A/S and its 55,000-mile warranty. 

In terms of overall metrics, take everything we just said about the Goodyear Assurance WeatherReady 2 above and just put it all here again. The Cinturato beats the Primacy Tour A/S in every category, and some of them by a pretty wide margin, including wintry conditions, treadwear, comfort, and especially wet grip. We know this sounds like advertising, but if you look at nearly any comparison between the two, the Cinturato scores better across the board. Our hands are tied. 

The only metric where the Michelin Primacy Tour A/S comes close to the Pirelli Cinturato is in price, because they’re both roughly the same price, give or take a few bucks per tire based on size. The Primacy doesn’t save you any significant money, so if you are shopping for tires, this is a solid alternative in just about every category and for about the same price. 

At the top of the hill currently is the Michelin CrossClimate 2. This may very well be Michelin’s most popular tire, and it’s one you’ll see recommended on every automobile-oriented subreddit in existence. It has thousands of reviews across the Internet, and it’s consistently compared to the other great touring all-season tires on the market. Michelin backs up its tire with a competitive warranty, giving drivers six years or 60,000 miles of coverage. They’re also widely available at most U.S. tire retailers, making them quite easy to find. 

It scores better than the Primacy Tour A/S in all categories, including all forms of traction, comfort, road feedback, and wintry conditions. Its right up there with the Goodyear WeatherReady 2 and the Pirelli Cinturato WeatherActive, with all three tires trading blows in various categories. The 640 UTQG rating is also superior to the 540 rating on the Primacy Tour A/S, meaning that the treadwear is more likely to survive until its warranty expires.

As one of the only true set it and forget it tires, the CrossClimate 2 tires are recommended for a reason. The only downside is that they are a bit more expensive than the Primacy Tour A/S, by roughly $50 or more depending on the size. That’s quite a price hike, but as thousands of customer reviews attest, many believe the premium is worth it.

The idea for this list is to find good alternatives to the Michelin Primacy Tour A/S. To start, we looked at its category, which is either touring all-season, grand touring all-season, or premium touring all-season, depending on who you ask. From there, we looked at Tire Rack and Tyre Review metrics for tires within those categories. Any tires that performed worse were immediately discarded because there were more than enough tires that scored better so we didn‘t need any compromises here. 

From there, it was just making sure the list had good candidates. We didn’t use more than two tires from any one tiremaker so as not to oversaturate the list, and we also removed tires that were similar. For example, The CrossClimate 2 has a few siblings, including the CrossClimate SUV, Agilis CrossClimate DT, and the aged out CrossClimate+ that is still listed on some retail websites despite being discontinued. Those tires were removed from contention. 

Finally, we did not take into consideration tires not reviewed by at least Tire Rack and Tyre Reviews specifically. The reason for this is because it would’ve been nearly impossible to directly compare them to the Primacy Tour A/S. We did take pro and user reviews into account, but Tire Rack and Tyre Reviews both have rating systems that made baseline comparisons more consistent before moving into the pro and user review segments.