A novel self-balancing nine-level inverter with coupled inductor is presented in this paper. The proposed inverter can generate nine-level voltage with only two capacitors, and makes series charging and series-parallel discharging paths to achieve self-balancing. Compared with the same-level conventional topologies, this topology uses fewer components and achieves voltage balance without using additional voltage-balancing circuits or complex control methods, so its benefits are smaller size circuit, higher power density and lower cost. The total harmonic distortion of the output voltage is low. Lastly, by using controller TMS320F28035, a nine-level inverter with 270 V input voltage, 380 Vrms output voltage and 3 kW output power is implemented. The maximum efficiency is 97.1% at 1725 W and the efficiency is 95.46% at full load.