In this study, a seventeen‐level diode‐assisted hybrid multilevel inverter (DAH‐MLI) is proposed. The DAH‐MLI eliminates any external voltage balancing and/or sensing circuit by inherently balancing the capacitors using a series–parallel combination of capacitors and DC voltage source. The DAH‐MLI uses only one DC source and a reduced number of active and passive elements to generate a multilevel staircase output voltage. The proposed circuit can also be extended to obtain the higher number of voltage levels than seventeen by the addition of a single module comprising of two diodes, one switch, and one capacitor. The proposed DAH‐MLI can boost the input voltage and possesses reverse current carrying capability. The proposed DAH‐MLI is compared with several existing topologies on the basis of the number of active and passive components, total standing voltage, and peak inverse voltage to verify its advantages. A cost function is used in this study to compare the proposed DAH‐MLI and other existing typologies. Finally, the performance of the proposed DAH‐MLI is validated through a 570 W experimental prototype.