Rental fees go into reverse: -10.4% since the beginning of the year

If 2024 was the year of the peak, 2025 is the year of the decline. There is a mix of macroeconomic, strategic and regulatory factors putting pressure on car rental fees. Whereas in the first six months of last year the average rental had been around EUR 690, in the first half of 2025 it was around EUR 618, down 10.4%. The drop, with a few exceptions, affects all brands, and is even more evident when comparing June this year with the same month in 2024: more than one hundred euros less in average fees. Taking the pulse of the situation is Dataforce's Rent Observatory, which monitors the evolution of the main market trends and gathers elements for evaluating the commercial strategies of long-term rental companies.

Affecting prices is the ECB's reference rate, which has fallen from 4.5% on average in Q1 2024 to 2.4% in the same period in 2025, which lowers financing costs for rental companies, thus allowing them to offer more competitive rentals without eroding margins. But then there are the aggressive pricing policies, especially by captive rental companies (linked to car manufacturers), which have adopted price reduction strategies to stimulate demand in a saturated market and fierce competition. Finally, renters have also included models in lower price brackets or excluded premium variants, while the effect of fringe benefit changes is also being felt, with new tax regulations on company benefits increasing competition and squeezing prices for low-emission vehicles.

The survey, the result of constant monitoring of the commercial offers published on the websites of the main players in the sector, is based on a coverage of about 70% of the market. The surveys were conducted through the Crf (Competitor Rental Fee) system, which up to June 2025 has collected and analysed almost 375 thousand data relating to all durations and mileage published online.

At the level of fuels, the main cuts were seen for hybrid Hev models, with the average fee dropping by 15.6% over the six-month period, for LPG vehicles (-15.2%) and mild hybrids (-10.4%), while the declines were smaller for petrol cars (-7.2%) and plug-in hybrids (-5.8%). There was also a change on the contract duration front. In the first six months of 2025, there was a concentration of offers with durations of 48 and 60 months (which accounted for almost 82% of all offers), with those with durations of 36 months decreasing, whose weight dropped from 27.6% in 2024 to 6.5% in the first half of this year.

Among the major generalist brands, those registering the largest declines were Tesla and Suzuki. Tesla's decline in the first half of 2025 was mainly due to the withdrawal of the most expensive models, such as the Model S and Model X, from the range, contributing to a downward shift in the average price of the entire range.