Top car rental and car hire compared

About Top car rental and car hire compared

Car rental and car hire is a category where the vehicle is usually bought through someone else's desk. An airline, a bank card benefit, a travel app and a local rental counter all sell the same car, and the differences sit in the fee charged on the booking, the deposit held on a card, the cancellation terms and the help available when a branch will not open. This ranking covers 89 brands, from a Bahamas rental specialist to airline and card issuer programmes, and it leans on cost and the size of the offer rather than on brand fame. The main trade-off runs between a low-fee self-service booking and the reassurance of an airline or card network standing behind the booking. A dedicated rental desk lists a narrow range and little else. An airline site bundles cars with flights and hotels, so a change to the whole trip can be handled together, yet it often adds a direct booking fee. A card issuer prices the rental into the annual fee instead. Deposits and cancellation terms decide what a booking really costs once a date has to move.

How we picked

Scores come from three published weights: cost at 40%, offer at 40% and trust at 20%. Cost covers booking fees, cancellation charges and deposits, which is what a reader pays at the counter. Offer covers how much of the travel mix sits behind the car rental desk, so a brand selling cars plus flights and hotels scores differently from one selling cars alone. Trust covers the legal entity, the founding year and the support channels each brand publishes. Evidence is drawn from brand product pages, terms and conditions, contact and privacy pages, and app store listings where a mobile app is offered, alongside the wider site data behind 89 car rental brands. Car rental is the product common to every entry, at 100%, so the extra products separate the field. A mobile app is the norm, at 83.8%, and support is scored on the channels published, with email, phone and a help centre all weighted at 78.8%, 81.2% and 81.2%. Partner listings come first in any ranking; this one has 0, so the order runs on score alone. Licensed providers, familiar from telecom rankings, stand at 0 here.

What to look for

Fees before rates

Daily rates across the wider site run from €0.27 to €43.84 around a median of €5.99. The headline rate says little on its own, because booking fees and deposits sit on top of it, so a plan that looks cheap per day can be the expensive one overall.

Deposits are part of the price

Deposits across the wider site have a median of €50 and stretch from €0 to €263.09. Money held on a card is money a traveller cannot spend, and some are released only once the vehicle is back, so the deposit belongs next to the rate in any comparison.

What sits behind the counter

Car rental is the product every brand in this table shares, at 100%. Hotels and packages follow at 73% and 51.7%, with transfers at 46.1%. A bundled trip is easier to change in a single place.

Support that reaches a person

Email, phone and a help centre carry the most weight in this category, at 78.8%, 81.2% and 81.2%, while live chat stands at 43.5%. Help also matters at a roadside counter with a broken-down car.

Booking on a phone

A mobile app is the norm rather than the exception, at 83.8%, and that matters most when a booking has to change. The app keeps the booking reference, the branch address and the phone number together at the moment they are needed.

Reading the order

Partner entries sit at the top of a ranking by rule, and this one lists 0 of them, so every position here is decided by score. Licensed providers, a common sight in telecom rankings, stand at 0 in car hire.

Frequently asked questions

Top car rental and car hire compared by country

• Australia
• Brazil
• Canada
• China
• France
• Germany
• India
• Italy
• Japan
• Mexico
• South Korea
• Spain
• Turkey
• United Kingdom
• United States

The data behind this ranking

All data and the CSV