Travel fares · Car rental prices
Car rental price monitoring by pickup location and market
Car rental price monitoring collects what suppliers and brokers quote for a car class at a pickup location, for a given rental length and lead time, in each source market. A broker in Germany and a supplier's own UK site can price the same Munich airport pickup differently, so each quote runs from the market it is meant to represent.
Pay per GB · No subscription · Prices in EUR, excl. VAT
- €2.00
- per GB on ARC Fast, excl. VAT
- −44%
- at 1 TB (€1.12 / GB)
- 185+
- countries, city targeting
- Never
- expires — no subscription
Written for
- Car rental brokers
- Car hire comparison sites
- Rental supplier revenue and fleet teams
- Travel-pricing analysts
The short answer
- The unit of comparison is pickup location × dates × rental length × car class × driver age × market, not "a car in Munich".
- One-way fees, airport surcharges, young-driver fees and pay-at-desk charges change rankings; collect them separately from the base rate.
- Brokers and suppliers often sell the same car class with different insurance excess and fuel policies, so the cheapest headline is not always the cheapest rental.
- EU and UK enforcement has pushed rental sites towards showing a total price that includes unavoidable charges. Collect the total and the components.
The problem
What goes wrong without the right IPs
Rental length changes the daily rate
Weekly and multi-day rates are priced as products in their own right. A four-day rental can cost nearly as much as seven, so dividing a weekly price by seven tells you nothing about a three-day hire.
Airport and downtown are different markets
An airport counter typically carries location surcharges a downtown branch does not, and fleet availability differs. Treat each pickup location as its own price series.
Car classes are not named consistently
"Compact", "Economy" and a model name "or similar" mean different things on different sites. Map to a standard code such as the four-letter ACRISS class where the site shows one, and record the raw label otherwise.
The quote is a multi-step flow
Location, dates, driver age and then the car list, often with a token carried between steps. If the exit changes mid-flow the search restarts or returns another market's prices.
Charges paid at the desk
Some quotes split the price into an amount paid now and an amount paid locally, such as a one-way fee. A dataset that stores only the pay-now figure understates the rental.
What to collect
What you can collect
- Pickup and drop-off location
- Location code and type (airport, rail station, downtown), plus whether it is a one-way rental.
- Pickup date and time, rental length
- The price is set per duration; store both ends, not just days.
- Lead time
- Days between collection and pickup; rental prices move with it.
- Car class
- Raw label, standard class code where shown, transmission and seats.
- Supplier and seller
- Who rents the car and who sells the booking; a broker quote names both.
- Price components
- Base rate, taxes, location surcharges, one-way fee, young-driver fee, pay-now and pay-at-desk amounts.
- Cover and excess
- Included insurance, excess amount and deposit; the real difference between two similar prices.
- Fuel and mileage policy
- Full-to-full or pre-purchase, unlimited or capped mileage.
- Driver age assumed
- Searches default to an age band; store it so young-driver pricing is not mixed in.
How it runs
How a collection run works
- 01
Fix the search grid
Choose pickup locations, rental lengths (for example 3, 7 and 14 days), lead times and a fixed driver age. Changing any of these between runs breaks the time series.
- 02
Run each quote in one sticky session
Hold one sticky session from location search to car list and terms, ten minutes per quote. Target the source market whose customers you are pricing for; for local suppliers, a city exit near the pickup can matter.
- 03
Open terms for the classes you track
Excess, deposit, fuel and mileage sit behind a details link. Fetch them for the classes you report on, not for every car in the list.
- 04
Normalise and rank
Sum pay-now and pay-at-desk amounts into a total, convert currency at a stored rate, and rank on total with cover conditions as a second key.
Setup
Recommended setup
Rental quotes are short, stateful flows. Hold one exit per quote, in the market you are pricing for.
| Plan | Role | Session | Targeting | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
ARC Fast Rotating residential | Default for quotes Residential exits in the source market, held across location search, car list and terms of one quote. | Sticky, 10 minutes per quote | Country, city for local suppliers (e.g. Munich, Rome, Miami) | €2.00 / GB €1.12 at 1 TB (−44%) |
ARC Basic Rotating ISP | Location and branch data Branch lists, opening hours and terms pages change rarely and are light. Refresh them on the cheapest pool. | Rotating | Country | €0.75 / GB €0.59 at 1 TB (−21%) |
ARC Ultra Premium residential | Key competitor sites For the few brokers or suppliers your pricing is benchmarked against, where a missed run is most expensive. | Sticky per quote | Country + city | €3.50 / GB €2.17 at 1 TB (−38%) |
Prices are list prices in EUR, excl. VAT. Volume discounts apply automatically at checkout — full ladder on the pricing page.
Connect
One connection string per market
The country, city and sticky session are tokens in the username. Change the token, change the market; keep the session handle, keep the IP.
http://USERNAME_pool-arcfast_country-de_session-k3f9a1x2_sesstime-10:PASSWORD@proxy.arcproxies.io:8000Swap _country-de for any market you quote. The full grammar is on the residential proxies page.
Illustration
What a daily rental price grid costs
An illustration with round numbers — your pages, payloads and retry rate will differ. The arithmetic is the real price ladder.
Assumptions
- Pickup locations
- 40
- Rental lengths
- 3 (3, 7, 14 days)
- Lead times
- 8
- Sources (brokers + suppliers)
- 3
- Cadence
- daily, 30 days
- Weight per quote
- 400 KB
- Bandwidth per month
- ≈ 35 GB
On ARC Fast
€64.40per month, excl. VAT
35 GB bought in one purchase at €1.84 / GB (−8% volume rung, applied automatically).
The same 35 GB on ARC Basic: €26.25 at €0.75 / GB. Move down as soon as the cheaper pool holds up.
Assumes one source market. Opening terms for every car class roughly doubles the weight per quote; fetch them only for the classes you report on.
Bandwidth never expires, so a bigger single purchase is only ever cheaper per GB. See the ladder.
In depth
Car rental prices, in depth
Brokers versus suppliers: what differs in a quote
A rental supplier sells its own fleet. A broker resells several suppliers' cars, often with its own cover products and terms. The same car class at the same counter can therefore appear at different prices with different conditions:
| Element | Supplier site | Broker site |
|---|---|---|
| Seller of record | The supplier | The broker, naming the supplier |
| Insurance excess | Supplier's standard, reducible at the desk | May include the broker's own excess cover |
| Payment | Pay now or pay at pickup | Often pay now, with local charges at the desk |
| Price per market | Set per country site | Set per broker market, can differ for the same supplier |
| Cancellation | Supplier's terms | Broker's terms |
For a comparison product this is the core data problem: rank on total cost with the cover conditions visible, not on the headline daily rate.
One-way fees, surcharges and the total price
In 2017 the EU's consumer protection authorities (the CPC Network) published commitments by five major car rental companies on pricing transparency and clearer terms; their 2019 assessment noted that these companies account for two out of three private car rentals in the EU. In the UK, the CMA's price transparency guidance lists pick-up or pay-on-arrival fees and mandatory insurance for renting a car as mandatory charges, and works through an example of a rental from Germany to Italy where a one-way fee paid locally must be included in the total shown.
For a dataset this means the total is increasingly available on the page. Store it, and store the components, because one-way fees and location surcharges are exactly the fields your users filter and sort on.
| Charge | When it applies | How to store it |
|---|---|---|
| One-way fee | Drop-off at another location or country | Separate field, with pay-now or pay-local flag |
| Location surcharge | Airport and rail-station counters | Separate field; compare airport with downtown |
| Young or senior driver fee | Driver outside the standard age band | Keep driver age fixed per series |
| Additional driver | Optional | Exclude from totals; optional extras are not mandatory charges |
Choosing pickup locations and markets
Car rental is priced locally but sold internationally: a UK traveller renting in Rome and an Italian renting in Rome may be offered different prices on different country sites. Decide which source markets you represent first, and target exits there by country.
City targeting matters most when you are checking local suppliers' own sites, which may show different offers to local visitors. ARC Basic, Fast and Ultra take a city token for a published list of metros such as Munich, Frankfurt, Rome, Milan, London, Miami and Los Angeles.
How car rental fits a wider travel price product
Car hire is often sold alongside flights and hotels, which is why it belongs in the same pipeline as the rest of travel fare aggregation. If you also collect airline fares or build package holiday comparisons, align the date grids so a trip can be priced end to end. Airport parking is the substitute product for some travellers; see airport parking and transfers.
The same responsibility rules apply as elsewhere in travel: public, logged-out quotes only, modest request rates, and no automated bookings. See collecting travel data responsibly.
Works with anything that takes a proxy URL
Playwright- Puppeteer
- Python requests / httpx
Crawlee- Docker
FAQ
Questions
Something not covered? Write to contact@arcproxies.io.
Why do car rental prices differ by country of booking?
Suppliers and brokers run separate country sites and price lists, so the same car at the same pickup location can be offered at different prices, in different currencies and with different included cover depending on which market the booking is made from.
What is a one-way fee in car rental?
A one-way fee is a charge for returning a rental car to a different location than the pickup, often higher across borders. It may be paid at the time of booking or locally at pickup, so price monitoring should store it separately from the base rate.
Do car rental sites have to show the total price?
In the UK, the CMA's guidance on the DMCC Act treats pay-on-arrival fees and mandatory insurance for car rental as mandatory charges to include in the total price. In the EU, five major rental companies committed to clearer pricing after coordinated action by consumer authorities in 2017. Rules differ elsewhere.
Should I use city targeting for car rental prices?
Usually country targeting is enough, because rental sites price by market. City targeting helps when checking local suppliers' sites that show different offers to local visitors; it is available on ARC Basic, Fast and Ultra for a published list of cities.
How much bandwidth does car rental price monitoring use?
As an illustration, 40 pickup locations, three rental lengths, eight lead times and three sources quoted daily at about 400 KB per quote use around 35 GB a month. Bandwidth is billed per GB and does not expire.
Sources & review
Last reviewed by the ARC Proxies team. Prices are read from the live catalog at build time.
- [1]European Commission: Coordinated actions: other travel services (car rental)
- [2]UK Competition and Markets Authority: Unfair commercial practices: price transparency (CMA209), 18 November 2025
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