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I'd like to rent a car in Germany, drive to Hungary, and return the car there. Do any car rental agencies allow such a thing (without an enormous fee)?

I'd consider a fee less than 1-2 days additional rental (ie, an extra fee of around €100) to be "not enormous".

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    How much would you consider enormous?
    – Karlson
    Commented Mar 19, 2013 at 18:32
  • You can easily find that, with e.g. Hertz, this is possible. You'll only have to pay 800 euro and up for the simplest cars.
    – Bernhard
    Commented Mar 19, 2013 at 18:33
  • @Bernhard You could put your comment in as an answer.
    – Saaru Lindestøkke
    Commented Mar 19, 2013 at 18:54
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    I had to deal with a similar problem last year and was not able to find a satisfactory solution. I came up with an alternative: use public transport (train or bus) between cities and rent cars locally whenever necessary.
    – Maître Peseur
    Commented Mar 19, 2013 at 19:02
  • @BartArondson There are multiple places providing you with the similar priced cars but until the "enormous" is actually quantified it cannot become an answer.
    – Karlson
    Commented Mar 19, 2013 at 19:03

4 Answers 4

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Hertz lists cars that need to be returned to the origin country, and if you rent one of those they waive the one way fee. The website listing such deals for europe is http://www.hertz-transfer.eu/.

Post Rental Update: I found it hard to call and reserve a vehicle this way: it has to be done a couple days in advance, since they cant hold specific vehicles for you. Plus calling while travelling can be inconvenient, the call drops, etc. So I brought the list of available cars (a screenshot taken a few minutes before) to the counter and I asked for one of the cars in the list. The cust serv rep had to call someone to understand the situation, but she was able to offer me a car from the list without a cross border fee. The rental cost for the day was about ~250 euros, very expensive, but better than 850 euros.

I asked a couple other rental car companies if they had a similar deal available, and Avis did have it, and were more flexible on the price. In the end I just took the train. It would come to the same price, but I didn't have to worry about parking or returning a vehicle.

PS: I imagine a couple more companies would have a similar listing available. If anyone lists them in the comments I will add to the answer.

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Europcar gives 697.87 for a basic rental, I plugged in the dates April 4-23. europcar

AutoEurope, which seems to be AVIS, quotes 772 for the same dates. autoeurope

This site has some good info you could follow up on.

And I realize you are asking in case someone recently has done this same thing and thus can give a fairly definitive answer, but, as usual, Google it. Don't sit around and wait!

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Using meta-search such as Skyscanner's "Car Hire" tab, seems that you cannot do it without paying enormous extra fee.

3 days with pickup and drop off at Berlin Schoenefeld cost between €100 for very small compact like VW Fox, to €300 for luxury car such as Mercedes C class. On the other hand same 3 days with drop off at Budapest Airport range from €700 to €1000 pretty much regardless of the size.

Also seems that the smaller local companies, which tend to be cheaper, to not allow it at all.

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  • You are correct about the smaller local companies, because I am renting often cars. They strictly prohibit that you leave the country.
    – Thorsten S.
    Commented Mar 20, 2013 at 11:13
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Yes you can do that. Most european car rental companies will allow that. Herz, Sixt/Budget, Avis etc will all have no problem with that.

A rental car in Germany will cost you around 40+ (++ depeding on the car) per day. Driving it and dropping it in Hungary will cost you 250+ (++ ...) per day.

So if you drive from the German-Austrian border to Hungary in half a day, the price difference is not too bad. If you drive it from the Danish border to Hungaria, it becomes stupidly expensive.

To sum it up: Since you gave us neither the type of car you want, nor the place where you start off, nor where you drop the car, I can only make the general suggestion that it will be cheaper to rent a car anywhere in Germany, drive as far as you can to the border, maybe even to Austria, drop the car there, rent a new one and drive the rather short last distance either by another rental car or even by train.

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