Dubai Car Rental Fee Transparency Report
2026
The daily rate is the easy number — every company publishes it. The deposit held on your card, the kilometres included, the charge for going over them, and the mark-ups added to Salik and to traffic fines are the ones that decide what a rental actually costs, and the ones most often left off the page. We read every one from the companies' own websites. This is what we found.
Most of the bill is undisclosed
We surveyed the car-rental companies listed on TripReview against the fourteen terms below — everything except the daily rate, which all of them publish. Each figure is read from the company's own website and carries its source on the comparison page. A company counts as disclosing a term only when it actually states it.
Disclosure by term
How many of the listed companies publish each term. Read from most-disclosed to least, the share falls away fast — and even the most-published term is stated by only about half.
| Term | Companies disclosing it | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Security depositMost disclosed | 7/13 | 54% |
| Driver age limits | 6/13 | 46% |
| Fuel policy | 6/13 | 46% |
| Charge per extra kilometre | 5/13 | 38% |
| Insurance excess | 5/13 | 38% |
| Licence held for | 5/13 | 38% |
| Mileage included, per day | 5/13 | 38% |
| Oman and cross-border | 5/13 | 38% |
| Salik and toll handling | 5/13 | 38% |
| Cancellation terms | 4/13 | 31% |
| Delivery and collection | 4/13 | 31% |
| Mileage included, per month | 4/13 | 31% |
| Traffic-fine admin fee | 4/13 | 31% |
| Additional-driver feeLeast disclosed | 3/13 | 23% |
And where they do disclose, the numbers are all over the map
Disclosure is only half the problem. Among the companies that put an actual figure on a term, the figures themselves swing wildly — the same class of car, wildly different terms. That is the case for reading them before you book, not after.
AED 1,000–10,000
10× spread
Security deposit — the companies that name a figure
AED 0.25–10
40× spread
Charge per extra kilometre — the companies that name a figure
See it company by company
The full comparison lists every company against every term, with the source and date beside each figure — including every "Not published". It is the page none of the comparison sites can write, because an operator will publish its own charges but never set them beside a rival's.
Open the full fee comparisonMethodology
We surveyed the car-rental companies listed on TripReview against fourteen rental terms, reading each one from the company's own published pages (website or FAQ) and recording where and when it was read. Terms published without a traceable source are not counted. Disclosure means the company states the term at all; it does not judge whether the terms are fair. Ranges are taken from the companies that gave an actual figure; several state a deposit "varies by agreement" with no amount, and those are counted as disclosed but add no figure. The data refreshes as the directory updates.
Data read as of 2026
Cite this: TripReview.ae — Dubai Car Rental Fee Transparency Report. The figures are free to reference with a link to this page.
About this report
Why does disclosure matter if the daily rate is clear?
Because the daily rate is rarely the final bill. A low headline price with a large deposit, a tight mileage cap and a high per-kilometre charge can cost more than a higher rate with none of those. The terms in this report are exactly the ones that turn a quoted price into the amount you actually pay.
How is a company counted as disclosing a term?
Only when it states the term on its own website or FAQ. A term read from a company's page carries its source and the date it was read on the comparison page; anything without a traceable source is left out. We do not fill gaps with assumptions.
Does a disclosed term mean a good term?
No. This report measures transparency, not value — whether the company tells you the term before you book, not whether the term is generous. A clearly stated AED 10,000 deposit is disclosed; a hidden AED 1,000 one is not. Reading the terms is how you compare the two.
Can I use these figures?
Yes. The report is free to cite with a link to this page. Every number is computed from the live directory and from each company's own published terms, so it stays current as the data updates.