Revenue per day

Revenue per day, often RPD, is your rental revenue divided by the number of days your cars were actually on hire. It's your real average daily rate, after discounts and long-hire pricing.

Formula

RPD = rental revenue ÷ rental days

Decide up front whether revenue includes extras such as insurance and child seats. Many operators track RPD on time-and-km revenue only and report ancillary revenue separately. Pick one and stick to it.

Worked example

Hypothetical. Say in November you had 40 cars and they did 900 rental days between them. Time-and-km revenue was NZ$99,000.

RPD = 99,000 ÷ 900 = NZ$110 a day.

Your rack rate for a compact might be NZ$139, but long-hire discounts, broker commission and promo codes pull the real figure down. That gap is worth knowing.

Why it matters for a rental operator

RPD shows whether your pricing actually holds once the bookings land. Track it weekly and by car category.

On its own it misleads. You can push RPD up by pricing high and leaving cars parked. Always read it with fleet utilisation, or use revenue per unit, which combines both.

See it in Rate Pulse

Rate Pulse shows the market's advertised daily rates, not your realised RPD. For a sense check: in the sweep of 7 Nov 2026, the typical advertised compact at Auckland was NZ$139 a day on a 3-day hire. See the Auckland page. If your RPD for compacts is well under that, ask where the gap goes.