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Best car hire brokers 2026 – and the worst rated providers
The best brokers can save you money – and hassle – on your car rental. But in our survey of thousands of customers, many of the biggest firms were criticised for extra charges and poor customer service
Guy is an award-winning travel writer with 20+ years' experience. He runs a crack team of researchers, unearthing everything from the best beaches to the worst car hire companies.
You’ll get cheap rates with excellent providers when you book with the best car hire brokers. The worst use poor companies and disappear at the first sign of problems, leaving you to foot the bill. That’s why it’s so important to choose wisely.
We’ve only ever recommended one car hire broker – Zest Car Rental. Not only does Zest save you money by negotiating great rates (often including an additional driver and excess insurance) but, crucially, it offers excellent assistance, in English, if anything goes wrong.
But things are far less likely to go wrong with Zest because it vets every firm on its website and monitors ratings weekly. If scores fall, a firm will be put under review before being removed from the site completely if there’s no evidence of improvement.
You told us that pricing clarity was one of the biggest issues with car hire, so this year we introduced expert checks into our assessment. Zest scored the best on these new checks, too. That’s because its pricing is honest, and its terms and conditions are fully transparent.
We’d steer clear of DoYouSpain: it scored just two stars for the clarity of its rental conditions and satisfaction with the car hire provider.
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Car hire brokers rated
Only one company met our criteria to merit Which? Recommended Provider status. Zest remains our first port of call for car rental minus the nasty surprises.
RECOMMENDED PROVIDER | 90% | £27 | |||||||
| 79% | £39 | ||||||||
| 78% | £26 | ||||||||
| 76% | £30 | ||||||||
| 75% | £26 | ||||||||
| 74% | n/a | n/a | |||||||
| 72% | n/a |
Using the table: Overall score based on weighted average of the customer score (70%) and Which? expert analysis (30%). Customer score based on a statistical analysis applied to the customer's satisfaction with the brand and likelihood to recommend it. Star ratings based on our survey or a combination of the survey and expert assessment. Online survey of 3,637 Which? Connect panel members and members of the public in Feb-March 2026, based on car hire experiences in the last two years. Sample size in brackets. 'n/a' indicates we did not receive enough responses to provide a rating. Avg price per day Median based on respondents recall of the price paid per day.
What is a car hire broker?
A car rental broker partners with dozens of car rental providers (such as Hertz and Avis, but also local suppliers) to offer you a side-by-side comparison of vehicles available at your destination, and their prices.
When you select your vehicle, you pay the broker directly and it then issues you with a rental voucher. This is different from a comparison site such as Kayak. Comparison sites don’t sell anything, they just scrape the internet and send you to the provider to complete your booking.
The advantage of a broker is that it often buys in bulk, passing on heavily discounted rates that you won’t find by going direct. It also gives you access to smaller, local rental companies that are often cheaper than the major brands.
But not all brokers will give you a better experience. The poor ones hide extra charges in the fine print, sell you inadequate insurance, and add another layer of bureaucracy to deal with if things go wrong.
Cheap car rental company brokers
In our survey, we asked respondents to tell us what they recall paying for the car per day. We gained enough data to generate an average price paid per day for five brokers – of these, Holiday Autos and Expedia were the cheapest, with an average price of £26.
However, just £1 more (£27 per day on average) will get you superior customer service and a far better overall experience with Zest Car Rental.
Should I use a car hire comparison site?
Guy Hobbs, car hire expert says: 'No. We don’t recommend comparison sites for car hire. These sites scrape the internet for low prices and direct you to other websites to pay. But competing on price alone creates a race for the bottom.
'You’ll find providers you’ve never heard of (and aren’t vetted) offering headline prices that simply aren’t sustainable. And as we all know, if a price looks too good to be true, it probably is. You could end up being stung for all sorts of hidden extras and dodgy damage charges.
'Instead, book with a Which? Recommended car hire provider, or with a Which? Recommended broker like Zest Car Rental. Zest vets and monitors the local providers it partners with to make sure they’re up to scratch.'
How we research car hire brokers
In February/March 2026 we asked 3,637 members of Which? Connect and the general public to complete an online survey about their experience of using a car hire company in the past two years.
We then conducted an expert assessment that looked at pricing clarity, the transparency of rental conditions, and the fairness of those conditions. The survey score and expert score were combined to create an overall score.
Only those car hire companies that were top of the table and met our consumer-focused criteria are eligible for Which? Recommended Provider status.