Car hire prices at 18 airports, November 2026

By the DayRunner team · 7 November 2026

Newer version: all 38 airports, from the full sweep of 7 Nov 2026, are in car hire prices at 38 airports, November 2026.

A typical compact hire car cost between NZ$26 a day (about €13, Lisbon) and NZ$210 a day (Queenstown) across 18 airports, for 3-day hires picked up 8 to 21 Nov 2026. The middle of the 17 airports with a compact category was about NZ$86 a day. The three New Zealand airports were the three dearest.

These numbers come from one Rate Pulse sweep of public search results on rentalcars.com, run 6 to 7 Nov 2026. It's one snapshot in November, a shoulder month in most of these markets. Treat it as a reading for those two weeks, not a yearly average.

How we got these numbers

• One snapshot: rentalcars.com search results, searched from New Zealand, swept 6 to 7 Nov 2026 (NZ time).
• 3-day hires, picked up and dropped off at the airport on each of 14 days, 8 to 21 Nov 2026. Driver aged 30. Up to 500 offers per search, so 7,000 is the most any airport can show.
• Daily rate = 3-day total ÷ 3. Prices are in NZD, as rentalcars.com shows them to someone searching from New Zealand.
• Local currency figures are converted from NZD at the ECB rate for 6 Nov 2026 and rounded. Read the NZD figure as the measured one.
• "Typical" is the median of every offer in that category. "Cheapest pick-up day" and "dearest pick-up day" are the lowest and highest of the 14 daily medians.
• These are advertised prices, not what brands earned. Full method: How Rate Pulse works.

Compact car, typical daily rate by airport

Sorted cheapest first. Bali has no compact category in the sweep, so its row is economy.

Bali had 152 offers from 3 brands, so read its row with care. Eight airports reached the 7,000-offer limit.

Economy, compact and SUV side by side

All in NZD, typical (median) daily rate. The last column is the dearest pick-up day's median divided by the cheapest one's, for compact (economy for Bali).

More on the gaps between car types is in car category price gaps.

What stands out

The spread between airports is wide. Queenstown's typical compact was about eight times Lisbon's in NZD.

New Zealand sat at the top. Auckland (NZ$139), Christchurch (NZ$192) and Queenstown (NZ$210) were the three dearest airports for a compact. The three Australian airports came in between NZ$80 and NZ$106.

Some markets barely moved across the 14 days. Athens, Lisbon and Brisbane had less than 10% between the cheapest and dearest pick-up day.

Munich moved the most. Its dearest pick-up day median was 2.35 times its cheapest. The pick-up day research shows the pattern day by day.

The lowest single offers can be far below the typical rate. Rome's lowest compact offer was about €2 a day (NZ$5) against a typical €20. A headline "from" price says little about where the market sits.

What operators can take from it

• Benchmark against the median, not the cheapest offer. At Rome, Barcelona and Lisbon the lowest offer was a small fraction of the typical rate.
• Check how much your own market moves by day. A 3% spread (Athens) and a 135% spread (Munich) need very different rate plans.
• Compare in one currency. Converting everything to NZD here is what makes Queenstown and Lisbon comparable at all.
• Don't carry these numbers into peak season. They're one November snapshot. Look at your airport's latest sweep before you set a rate.

Questions

Sources

1. Rate Pulse sweep of rentalcars.com, 7 Nov 2026
2. Rate Pulse: Lisbon
3. Rate Pulse: Munich
4. Rate Pulse: Queenstown
5. Rate Pulse: Christchurch
6. Rate Pulse: Auckland
7. Rate Pulse: London Heathrow
8. Rate Pulse: Bali
9. How Rate Pulse works