You find a rental car for $35 a day. You return it three days later and hand over $180. What happened? It was not the car. It was not the fuel. It was the stack of charges that accumulated between clicking "book" and signing at the counter. Car rental companies are extraordinarily good at this. The base rate draws you in; everything else is where they make their real money.
Here are the seven fees that appear most often on final bills, how much they actually cost, and how to sidestep every one of them.
- The Collision Damage Waiver
- The Young Driver Surcharge
- The Fuel Trap
- GPS Navigation
- The Additional Driver Fee
- One-Way Drop Fees
- Airport Concession Fees
1. The Collision Damage Waiver
This is the big one. The counter agent will push it hard, often framing the decision as though only a reckless traveler would decline. At $15 to $40 per day, the Collision Damage Waiver (sometimes called the Loss Damage Waiver) can easily double the cost of a short rental.
The reason most travelers can confidently decline it is that they already have coverage. Cards like Chase Sapphire Preferred, Chase Sapphire Reserve, and many Visa Signature products include rental car protection as a standard benefit. The better cards offer primary coverage, which means they pay first if something goes wrong, before your personal auto insurance is ever involved. Call your card issuer before you travel, confirm the coverage applies in your destination country, and you can walk past the CDW offer without hesitation.
One genuine exception: if you are renting in a country your card excludes, which commonly includes Ireland, Italy, Israel, New Zealand, and Australia, the rental company coverage may be worth having. The full breakdown is in our credit card rental coverage guide.
2. The Young Driver Surcharge
Renters under 25 face a daily surcharge that can run from $20 to $50. In parts of Europe the threshold extends to 30. On a ten-day rental this can add several hundred dollars to a trip that was already expensive.
Some workarounds exist. USAA members under 25 pay no surcharge at Hertz or Enterprise. Enterprise waives it for certain corporate account holders. In the UK, Sixt lowers the minimum to 21 for drivers with a clean license. The rates also vary significantly between companies at the same airport, so comparing directly across brands is always worth doing before assuming the fee is fixed.
3. The Fuel Trap
There are three fuel policies you will encounter, and two of them are structured to benefit the rental company at your expense.
- Full-to-Full: you pick up a full tank and return it full, paying market rate for whatever fuel you use. This is the one you want.
- Prepaid Fuel: you pay upfront for a full tank at the company's inflated rate. If you return the car with fuel remaining, that money is gone. Never choose this option.
- Full-to-Empty: you pay for a full tank and return it however you like. It would only make sense if you were certain you would use every last drop, which almost never happens in practice.
One more thing: wherever you choose to fill up, do it a mile or two away from the airport. Gas stations immediately outside airport grounds often charge 20 to 40 percent more than stations a short distance down the road.
4. GPS Navigation
At $15 to $20 a day, a rental car GPS costs more over a week than the device itself is worth. And it will almost certainly be worse than your phone. The maps are typically outdated, the interface is clunky, and it lacks the live traffic data that makes modern navigation useful.
Download Google Maps or Maps.me for offline use before your trip. Both work without a data connection once the maps are saved. If you are traveling internationally and concerned about roaming costs, a local eSIM for your destination is still far cheaper than seven days of rental GPS fees.
5. The Additional Driver Fee
Adding a second driver to the rental agreement typically costs $10 to $15 per day. Over a week-long trip this becomes $70 to $105 for paperwork that takes the agent thirty seconds.
There are several legitimate ways around it. Many US states, including California, Nevada, and Texas, legally prohibit charging for a spouse as an additional driver. Top-tier loyalty members at Hertz, Avis, and National often receive free additional drivers as a program benefit. Some premium credit cards, including Chase Sapphire Reserve and Amex Platinum, also include this waiver. Check all three before assuming you have to pay.
6. One-Way Drop Fees
Picking up in one city and leaving the car in another is convenient and sometimes essential. The fee for doing so is not always predictable. On some routes, particularly those where the company wants to rebalance its fleet, the one-way fee is zero. On others it can exceed $300.
The key is to check it before you commit to the itinerary, not after. Enter your pickup and drop-off locations explicitly in the search rather than planning to add the one-way detail later. If the fee is high, it is sometimes cheaper to book two separate rentals with a handover in the middle city.
7. Airport Concession Fees
This one hides in plain sight. When a rental company operates from an airport terminal, it pays the airport a concession fee for the privilege. That fee gets passed directly to customers, typically as a percentage added to the base rate, and it can run from 10 to 25 percent of your total.
The fix is picking up at an off-airport branch. A short taxi or rideshare to the company's city location, costing $10 to $20, can save $80 to $150 on a week-long rental. Many companies also offer a free shuttle to the terminal for the return drop-off, so the inconvenience is smaller than it sounds.
The counter interaction is where rental companies make much of their profit, and it is deliberately designed to be fast and slightly disorienting. Going in prepared, knowing your credit card coverage and having already decided what you will and will not add, removes the pressure entirely. A few minutes of research before the trip is worth considerably more than the cost of every one of these fees combined.