diff --git a/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.25.1.rst b/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.25.1.rst
index 637ac5c9c8bd1..7b39810a2cf49 100644
--- a/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.25.1.rst
+++ b/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.25.1.rst
@@ -120,7 +120,7 @@ Groupby/resample/rolling
 
 - Bug in :meth:`pandas.core.groupby.DataFrameGroupBy.transform` where applying a timezone conversion lambda function would drop timezone information (:issue:`27496`)
 - Bug in windowing over read-only arrays (:issue:`27766`)
--
+- Fixed segfault in `pandas.core.groupby.DataFrameGroupBy.quantile` when an invalid quantile was passed (:issue:`27470`)
 -
 
 Reshaping
diff --git a/pandas/_libs/groupby.pyx b/pandas/_libs/groupby.pyx
index e3f18572abca1..3069bbbf34bb7 100644
--- a/pandas/_libs/groupby.pyx
+++ b/pandas/_libs/groupby.pyx
@@ -719,6 +719,11 @@ def group_quantile(ndarray[float64_t] out,
         ndarray[int64_t] counts, non_na_counts, sort_arr
 
     assert values.shape[0] == N
+
+    if not (0 <= q <= 1):
+        raise ValueError("'q' must be between 0 and 1. Got"
+                         " '{}' instead".format(q))
+
     inter_methods = {
         'linear': INTERPOLATION_LINEAR,
         'lower': INTERPOLATION_LOWER,
diff --git a/pandas/tests/groupby/test_function.py b/pandas/tests/groupby/test_function.py
index efc3142b25b82..3794120281e1f 100644
--- a/pandas/tests/groupby/test_function.py
+++ b/pandas/tests/groupby/test_function.py
@@ -1247,6 +1247,17 @@ def test_quantile_raises():
         df.groupby("key").quantile()
 
 
+def test_quantile_out_of_bounds_q_raises():
+    # https://github.com/pandas-dev/pandas/issues/27470
+    df = pd.DataFrame(dict(a=[0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1], b=range(6)))
+    g = df.groupby([0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1])
+    with pytest.raises(ValueError, match="Got '50.0' instead"):
+        g.quantile(50)
+
+    with pytest.raises(ValueError, match="Got '-1.0' instead"):
+        g.quantile(-1)
+
+
 # pipe
 # --------------------------------