Rentalcars.com is owned by Booking Holdings (same company as Booking.com and Priceline) and operates as a car rental comparison engine pulling prices from over 900 suppliers in 160 countries. For Australian travellers renting cars internationally, here is a direct comparison of whether Rentalcars.com delivers better prices than its main competitors and how to navigate the insurance maze it presents.

Rentalcars.com vs Discover Cars vs Booking Direct

In our testing across popular Australian traveller destinations, prices were broadly competitive between Rentalcars.com and Discover Cars with each winning on different routes. The key differentiator: Rentalcars.com has stronger coverage in the USA, Canada and Australia — markets where Discover Cars is weaker. Discover Cars has stronger coverage in Europe and Southeast Asia. For USA road trips from Sydney travellers, Rentalcars.com is worth checking first.

The Insurance Presentation Problem

Rentalcars.com's biggest issue for Australian customers is its insurance upsell presentation. During the booking process, it prominently features its own "excess cover" insurance product at AUD $15-25/day in addition to the base rental price. This insurance is optional but presented in a way that many travellers add it by default. Read the total price carefully — the cheapest quoted rental rate often excludes this insurance, and with it added the total can exceed competitor prices.

Our approach: complete the Rentalcars.com booking process to see the true all-in price with and without their insurance add-on, then compare that total against Discover Cars total (base + Discover Cars Full Coverage). Choose whichever is cheaper.

Free Cancellation and Price Guarantee

Most Rentalcars.com bookings offer free cancellation and a Best Price Guarantee — if you find a cheaper price within 24 hours, they will refund the difference. In practice, the price guarantee is useful for domestic Australia and USA bookings where pricing changes more frequently than international markets.

Coverage in Australia

For Australian domestic car rentals, Rentalcars.com is worth checking. It aggregates Australian operators including Avis, Budget, Hertz, Thrifty, Europcar and local operators. The pricing on Australian domestic rentals is frequently 10-15% cheaper than booking directly with the major brands.

Our Verdict

Rentalcars.com is a legitimate and useful car rental comparison tool. Use it for USA, Canada and Australian domestic rentals where its coverage is strongest. For European and Southeast Asian rentals, compare with Discover Cars. Always calculate the true all-in price including insurance before comparing platforms — the base price headline numbers can be misleading.

Rating: 4.0/5 — Useful platform, strongest for USA and Australian domestic rentals.

How Rentalcars.com Works and Who It's Best For

Rentalcars.com is a car rental comparison aggregator (owned by Booking Holdings, the same parent as Booking.com and Kayak) that searches 900+ car rental companies globally and returns side-by-side price comparisons for your dates, location and car category. The platform covers the major international brands (Hertz, Avis, Budget, Enterprise, Europcar, Sixt) plus local operators in each country that are invisible to direct booking on major brand websites. For Australians renting cars internationally, the most useful feature is the ability to compare a Hertz economy car quote against a local Spanish or Italian operator quote for the same pick-up location -- local operators are frequently 20-40% cheaper for equivalent vehicles.

The Fine Print That Matters

Car rental comparison platforms are only useful if the comparison is genuinely apples-to-apples. The most common Rentalcars.com gotcha for Australian renters: excess liability (the amount you are liable for in the event of damage or theft). The displayed price on Rentalcars.com is frequently the rate with a high excess (EUR 1,500-3,000) that leaves significant financial exposure. Adding the Rentalcars.com excess reduction product (Full Protection, approximately AUD $15-25/day) reduces the excess to zero and makes the comparison against fully-inclusive alternatives meaningful. Always check what the displayed price includes for excess liability before considering it the best deal. The alternative: purchase your own excess insurance before departure through a product like InsureandGo's car hire excess add-on (AUD $8-12/day) and rent on the base rate from whichever operator is cheapest.

Rentalcars.com's affiliate program pays 4-6% commission on completed rentals -- a reasonable addition to travel blog content covering European road trips and international driving itineraries where rental cars are central to the journey.

For Australian travel bloggers, the car rental affiliate category is one of the most underweighted relative to its conversion potential. Car hire is a significant cost component of European and USA road trips -- the average Australian traveller renting in Europe spends EUR 400-1,200 over a 10-14 day trip. A 5% commission on EUR 800 average booking value is AUD $65 per completed booking. If a European road trip post generates 50 completed car rental bookings annually, that is AUD $3,250 in passive affiliate income from a single piece of content. The car rental affiliate income compounds across a portfolio of destination posts in a way that makes it one of the more productive affiliate categories for Australian travel content creators serving the European road trip audience. The Rentalcars.com practical summary for Australian travel bloggers: use the platform as a price discovery and comparison tool, implement deep links to specific pick-up location and date combinations in relevant content, and combine with the standalone excess insurance recommendation for the complete car hire content stack. The combination of a Rentalcars.com affiliate link (comparison and booking) with an iCarHireInsurance link (excess protection) covers both the booking and the risk management in a single piece of content and serves the reader comprehensively. The Rentalcars.com for Australian road trippers summary: the platform is most valuable for European, USA, and New Zealand car hire where the multiple-operator comparison consistently produces prices 15-30% below direct booking with major brands. For Australian domestic car hire, the major brands (Hertz, Avis, Budget, Thrifty) have direct website pricing that is often comparable, and the Rentalcars.com comparison adds less marginal value for familiar domestic routes. Rentalcars.com works best for Australian travellers who approach it as a comparison platform rather than a default booking destination -- run the comparison 6-8 weeks before travel, identify the best price, verify the excess inclusion, and book the best available option. The car rental affiliate category is worth adding to any Australian travel blog with European or American road trip content.