The best travel apps: Car Rentals

Updated over 1 year ago

Let's admit it: renting a car won't rank high on anyone's list when traveling, but it's kind of a must when going outside cities without Uber. Thankfully, these services make it easier and in some cases more fun. Who knows, maybe we'll miss renting cars and driving ourselves one day. When autonomous cars are the norm in 30 years, we could be the grumpy adults saying to children: "back in our day, we actually had to drive ourselves ☝️."

Tips
  • If you're in another country, verify if an International Driver's Permit (IDP) is needed
  • If crossing borders, verify with where you're renting from about their border crossing policy along with the country you'd cross into
  • It can often be cheaper to cab into downtown or a suburb and rent there instead of at the airport
  • Make sure to specifically request automatic in regions like Europe and South America where manuals are common
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Turo

Best for multi-day trips in the US and Canada

Rentalcars.com

Best traditional car rental search

AutoSlash

For receiving alerts if your rental's price drops

You can usually cancel a traditional car rental reservation anytime up until you show up at the counter. This means you're free to comparison shop all the way until then and rebook if you find a better deal. Too lazy? Let AutoSlash do it for you. Just give it your car rental booking info and it'll automatically email you if they find a better price for a similar booking. Many report considerable savings without much effort.

MyTripCar

An honest car rental search (Europe only for now)

car2go

Great for short trips within cities

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