Hiring a car at Paris CDG, Orly and Beauvais airports

Paris airport car rental is the hire of a car at Charles de Gaulle (CDG), Orly or Beauvais rather than in the city. The three sit 25, 13 and 85 kilometres from the capital, and the terminal where you pick the vehicle up decides your first hour of driving, the rate you pay and the time you lose on the return.

Three airports serve Paris, and they are not the same rental market

Paris Aeroport, the operator that runs both Charles de Gaulle and Orly, handles the great majority of scheduled traffic into the capital. A third field, Beauvais-Tille, sits well outside the region and carries low cost airlines under the commercial name Paris-Beauvais. A fourth, Le Bourget, is the busiest business aviation airport in Europe but takes no scheduled passenger flights, so it plays no part in the car hire market for ordinary travellers even though it appears on maps of the same corridor.

The practical consequence is that the decision to rent at a Paris airport is really three separate decisions. The fleets differ, the counters open at different hours, and the road you join on the way out points in a different direction. Booking without looking at that is how a traveller ends up crossing the whole of the Ile-de-France before the holiday has begun.

Charles de Gaulle, where the fleet runs deepest

CDG occupies a large site around Roissy-en-France, on the north-eastern edge of the region, and it is laid out as three separate terminals rather than one building. Hire desks sit in the arrivals area of each of them, so the counter holding your booking is tied to the terminal on the voucher and not to the one your aircraft happened to park at. Where the terminal you land at and the one you pick the car up from differ, the CDGVAL runs between them automatically and free of charge, every few minutes, day and night: the mismatch costs a quarter of an hour and never a taxi fare.

Because CDG concentrates long haul traffic, it also concentrates rental fleet. Every category is present, from a compact hatchback to a nine seat van, and it is the one place in the region where a specific model is likely to be available at short notice. Our full guide to collecting a rental car at Charles de Gaulle goes terminal by terminal, lists the operators present in each hall and sets out the deposit each of them takes.

The trade off is volume. Charles de Gaulle is the busiest airport in France, morning arrivals bank up, and a queue at a rental counter on a July Saturday is a real prospect. Checking in online with the operator, where that service is offered, moves you to a separate desk or straight to a bay in the car park, and it is the single change that saves the most time at this airport.

Orly, closer to the city and quicker to clear

Orly sits roughly 13 kilometres south of Paris, astride the boundary between the Essonne and the Val-de-Marne. It is smaller, and the walk from a baggage belt to the desk where you rent is measured in minutes rather than in shuttle rides. That alone makes it the easier airport for a first drive in France, particularly for anyone landing with children and a full trolley.

One point trips up returning visitors and a good deal of older advice online: the terminals are no longer called Ouest and Sud. Since 2019 they are numbered Orly 1, 2 and 3 for the former Ouest building and Orly 4 for the former Sud, all connected under one roof by a walkway. A confirmation that still reads Orly Sud is pointing at Orly 4. Our page on car hire at Orly airport covers where the counters stand and where the pick-up bays are.

Orly also changed rail-side in June 2026, when metro line 14 reached the airport. That matters to a driver for one reason: it makes the airport a credible place to drop a car and continue into the city without a hire car, which is exactly what a one way itinerary that ends in Paris needs.

Beauvais, the airport where a car is almost the default

Paris-Beauvais is 85 kilometres from the capital, in the Oise, and the coach that links it to Porte Maillot takes well over an hour before you have even reached a metro. For a traveller whose destination is Normandy, Picardy or the Channel coast, choosing to rent at Beauvais is not a compromise but the shortest route, and the coach fare for a family is often close to a day of car hire.

The counterpart is choice. A single terminal serves a handful of operators with a modest fleet, opening hours track the flight schedule rather than the clock, and an automatic gearbox or a large estate can simply be unavailable. Book early, and read the small print on out of hours collection: a flight that lands at half past midnight is common here and a desk that closes at midnight is equally common.

What every desk in France will ask for

The paperwork is the same at all three airports, and it is the one part of the process a traveller settles entirely before leaving home. Knowing which documents are accepted and presenting them all at once is what turns a fifteen minute stop into a five minute one.

How old the licence has to be

The licence must be full rather than provisional, and twelve months of seniority is the usual floor, rising to three years once you move into the premium and large classes. Twenty-one is the age at which most companies will hand over a key at all, a surcharge applies below twenty-five, and the upper classes stay closed until you pass it. Any document issued inside the European Economic Area works as it stands, and a British one does too. It has to remain valid on the day the car comes back, not merely on the day it goes out, which catches out a licence expiring mid-holiday. Beyond that, several operators want an International Driving Permit alongside the original: it costs almost nothing and it settles the question at the counter. The case by case detail sits on our page about driving licence requirements in France.

Why the deposit needs a credit card

Nothing is actually taken from the account. The company blocks a sum on a credit card until the vehicle comes back, and that sum climbs with the class: a few hundred euros on a small hatchback, comfortably past a thousand once you reach the large and premium classes. What catches people out is that a debit card will not do, however much sits behind it, and neither will a card carried by a travelling companion rather than by the person signing the agreement. More bookings collapse at a Paris counter for this one reason than for all the others together.

The reservation itself

Carry an identification document, passport or national identity card, and keep the reservation number to hand. One field on the booking form is worth far more than it looks, and that is the flight number. Supplied, it lets the desk watch your inbound aircraft and hold the car when you land three hours late; omitted, a delay can see the vehicle handed to somebody else. It is free, and it is the cheapest protection in the whole transaction.

Which companies operate at the Paris airports

The familiar car rental companies are all present at Charles de Gaulle airport and at Orly: Avis, Budget, Enterprise, Europcar, Hertz and Sixt, alongside brands that share their fleets such as Keddy or Goldcar. Beauvais carries a shorter list. The differences between them at an airport counter are narrower than the marketing suggests, because the fleet is renewed on a similar cycle and the same French rules on third-party cover apply to every one of them.

What genuinely varies from one rental company to the next is three things: the size of the deposit, whether the desk is located inside the terminal or off site, and the opening hours. The off-site question deserves attention. Some low cost offers at a Paris airport are served from a depot a shuttle ride away, which is fine on the way in and awkward on the way out when a flight leaves at six in the morning. A booking page that shows a shuttle icon rather than a walking icon is telling you something about your return, not about your arrival.

Reading reviews of one company against another is of limited use here, because the customer service you meet is that of a single franchise at a single airport rather than of the brand. The more reliable signal is the contract: the excess figure, the fuel policy and the fee list are written down, and they do not change with the mood of the counter.

How to book, and what the terms commit you to

Booking a car to rent at a Paris airport is a two stage decision that most travellers collapse into one. The first stage is the search: comparing what the companies offer for the same dates, at the same terminal, in the same class. The second is the contract you accept at the end of it, and that is where the money is won or lost. A cheap headline rate attached to rigid terms is regularly dearer than a flexible rate booked at the same time.

Prepaid or pay at the desk

Nearly every operator offers the same choice. A prepaid rate is charged to the card at the moment of booking and is the lowest price on the page, often by a wide margin. A pay on arrival rate costs more and can usually be dropped at no cost until the eve of collection. For a trip whose dates are fixed, prepaid is the rational choice; for a business trip that may move, the flexible rate is cheaper the first time a flight is rescheduled. Check which of the two you are buying before a card number goes in: the label is small and what it commits you to is not.

Mileage, fuel policy and the cancellation terms

Three lines in the contract decide more than the daily rate. The mileage allowance is unlimited on most French rentals but capped on some low cost offers, and a capped deal for a road trip through the Loire valley or down to Provence is a trap rather than a bargain. The fuel policy should read full to full, which means the tank comes back as it left; a full to empty policy charges a service fee and a price per litre well above the pump. The cancellation terms say how late you can change your mind and what it costs. These are the three things to check on the confirmation email, and checking them takes a minute.

When to book, and what the rates do

Prices at a Paris airport follow availability rather than a calendar rule, but the pattern is stable enough to plan around. Rates bottom out somewhere between eight weeks and a fortnight ahead, climb steeply over the final ten days, and reach their annual peak at a counter on the day itself. The summer months and the February school holidays are the two peaks of the year, and an automatic car or a van can be sold out at every company for the same week. Booking early costs nothing on a flexible rate, which is the practical reason to do it: you hold a price and keep the right to look again.

Comparison sites are useful for the search and less useful for the contract, because the average price they display is based on classes and suppliers that are not equivalent. Use them to see who is present at the terminal and roughly what a class costs, then read the rental terms and conditions on the supplier's own confirmation before you commit: the payment methods accepted, the address of the desk and the rates charged for the extras are all written there. Reviews deserve the same caution. A review of a car hire brand tells you little about the experience at one particular desk, and the scores shown beside a search result mix airports across a whole country.

What the price is actually made of

No figure holds for long, since what a car costs at a Paris terminal depends on when you book, which month you travel and which class you take. The parts of the bill, on the other hand, never change. At the bottom sits the advertised rate, which buys the vehicle, its mileage allowance and the third-party cover that French law imposes on every rental. Above it comes the collision damage waiver, with an excess attached to it. Above that again are the products sold at the counter to bring that excess down.

That last layer holds most of the money and most of the confusion, and two pages here take it apart instead of summarising it: how the excess and the CDW interact, and the wider guide to car rental insurance in France. Make that choice while you are still at home. An agent with a queue behind him is a bad moment to work out whether the annual travel policy you already hold covers what he is offering by the day.

A surcharge is built into every airport rental too, because a concession has to be bought before a company may trade airside, and the cost of it lands on the invoice. The same model is therefore a little dearer here than at a branch in town, though the difference is usually smaller than a taxi across Paris to reach that branch. It reverses only when the holiday itself begins in the capital, and our page on picking up a car in central Paris works through that case. If the budget is the deciding factor, the economy and compact options are compared separately.

The list of chargeable extras is short and entirely foreseeable: an extra name on the agreement, the surcharge for a driver under twenty-five, a drop fee where the car is left at another location, a child seat, winter tyres in the cold months, and refuelling where the tank returns below the mark. Every one of them appears in the contract, including the drop fee that people notice last, and every one of them is cheaper reserved online than added across a counter.

Choosing the category before you choose the company

The category decides more about the week than the brand does. A compact car is the right default for two people and a boot full of luggage, it is easy to place in a village street, and it is the cheapest to run on a motorway trip. Above it the reasoning changes quickly, and the SUV is the class where it changes most.

• An automatic gearbox is a minority of the French fleet and has to be reserved, not requested at the desk.
• An SUV buys height and boot space rather than off road ability, and costs more at every toll and every pump.
• A seven or nine seat van is the only honest answer for a group, and it is the category that disappears first in the school holidays.
• An electric car suits a week spent inside the region and needs a charging plan for anything longer.
• A convertible is a summer choice with a small boot, and premium categories carry a longer licence requirement.

Whatever you select, the vehicle you are shown at the bay is a car of that class and not the model on the website. The picture is illustrative, the class is contractual, and the group letter on the voucher is what the operator has undertaken to provide.

Reading the classes on a booking form

Every company at a Paris airport sells the same ladder of classes under slightly different names, and the words on the booking form are more precise than they look. A mini is a two door city car, cheap and genuinely small; an economy car adds a boot; a compact is the popular middle of the market and the class most often available at short notice. Above it, an intermediate or medium car has five seats and takes four adults and their luggage without argument, a standard or full-size car adds legroom, and an estate adds boot volume rather than passenger space. Then come the SUV, the seven or nine seat van and the luxury classes, each of which is a smaller selection and a larger deposit.

The SUV deserves a paragraph of its own, because it is the class travellers choose most often for the wrong reason. An SUV rental at a Paris airport is usually a compact underneath with a higher floor: the boot is frequently no larger than that of an estate on the same footprint, the fuel bill is higher over a long motorway run, and the extra width is a real nuisance in the underground car parks the capital is full of. Where an SUV earns its price is a mountain road in winter or a rough track to a rented house, and if that is the trip then it is the right class to choose.

Two habits save money on a rental here. The first is to book the class you need rather than the one you would like, because an upgrade offered at the desk is charged at the daily rate for the whole rental and is rarely a good deal. The second is to accept an upgrade when it is offered free, which happens when a medium or a large class is oversold, but to check the fuel consumption and the size before saying yes: a larger car on a week of motorway driving costs more at every service station, and it is harder to park in a village in the Loire valley than the compact you had booked.

Equipment, assistance and reduced mobility

The options list beside a booking is short, and three of its lines are worth more than the rest. A child seat is required by law in France for a child under ten or under 135 centimetres, and the fee is charged per day with a cap on most contracts; bringing your own is legal and free, but it has to fit in the hold on the way out. The additional driver option also costs a daily fee, occasionally dropped for a spouse, and taking the wheel without appearing on the agreement voids the cover outright. A second set of tyres is a winter question rather than a Paris one, and it matters only for a trip into the Alps or the Massif Central.

The satellite navigation unit offered at the desk is the option that has aged worst. A phone with an offline map covers France without a data charge and is easier to use, and the extra costs more over a week than a windscreen mount. What is worth a minute at the desk is checking that the car has a socket that will hold your phone charged, because a navigation app running on a hot afternoon empties a battery in a couple of hours. Our page on GPS navigation in France compares the apps and the coverage they provide off the motorway network.

Breakdown cover comes with the car in France, without exception. The number it hides behind belongs in a mobile phone before you leave the car park, not in a glovebox at the moment it is needed. It is easy to find, since it appears on the agreement itself and on a label stuck inside the car, the support line is answered in English at both major airports, and the roadside patrol it sends covers a mechanical failure at no charge. What it does not cover, on most contracts, is a flat battery caused by lights left on, a wrong fuel filling or a lost key, all of which are billed. On a motorway or an expressway the rule is different again and not negotiable: you call the orange emergency telephone or the number given on it, because only the concessionaire's own patrol may recover a vehicle from that road, and your own service provider cannot come to you there.

Travellers with reduced mobility are served by the airport rather than by the car hire company. Paris Aeroport provides a free assistance service at Charles de Gaulle and at Orly that has to be requested through the airline, ideally forty-eight hours before the flight, and it runs from the aircraft door to the car park. Hand controls and adapted vehicles do exist here, but they are ordered weeks ahead from a named supplier rather than ticked on a search page. A blue badge from any European Economic Area country is honoured in France and opens the reserved bays, those in the airport car parks included.

Driving out of the airport

The first twenty minutes are where an airport rental either goes well or does not. Set the destination before you leave the parking bay, because the exit ramps come quickly and the signs give town names rather than compass directions.

Leaving Charles de Gaulle

The A1 runs south from CDG towards Saint-Denis and the Paris ring road, and north towards Lille. The A104, the eastern Francilienne, is the way round the city for anyone heading for Champagne, Burgundy or the Alps without touching the capital. The motorway sections closest to the airport carry no toll; the barriers begin further out, and how they are paid is set out in our guide to French toll roads.

Leaving Orly

The A106 is a short spur that feeds the A6 towards Paris one way and towards Lyon and the south the other. It is the reason Orly suits a southbound trip: you are on the main artery within minutes of the barrier. For a first run down to the Mediterranean, the itinerary is set out on our page about the drive south from Paris.

Leaving Beauvais

The A16 runs south towards the northern edge of the Paris region and north towards Amiens and the coast. Traffic is light by regional standards, which is one of the quiet advantages of this airport for a driver who has just landed at midnight.

The low emission zone

Greater Paris operates a low emission zone, and a car circulating inside it has to display a Crit'Air sticker on the windscreen. A car supplied by a French agency will usually have one on the glass already, but glancing at it takes two seconds and the penalty does not. Which class goes with which engine is on our page about the Crit'Air sticker and low emission zones. If the plan is to cross a border during the trip, the rules on taking the car abroad are on the cross-border page, and they have to be cleared with the company before departure rather than at the frontier.

Between the airport and the road, the checks that pay

Walk round the car before you move it and photograph what you find. Wheels, the lower edges of the bumpers and the windscreen are where damage is discovered at the return, and a dated photograph settles a discussion that a memory does not. Note the fuel level against what the contract says, since a full to full policy means the tank comes back as it left and nothing more.

Look for the nearest service station too, before the rental leaves the car park. Around both major airports the pumps sit off the motorway rather than on the exit ramp, and a refuelling stop planned on the way in is a calmer thing than one improvised on the way out. Several unattended pumps reject a foreign card once the shop has closed, which is a poor discovery at eleven at night: the payment systems are compared on our page about fuel stations in France.

Finally, know where you are going to leave the car at the far end. Parking is the part of a Paris trip that people underestimate; the zones, the apps and what it genuinely costs are covered on our page about parking in Paris, and the driving conditions themselves on our page of tips for driving in Paris.

Bringing the car back before a flight

Allow more time than the distance suggests. The wording to look for is "Location de voitures", signposted at the entry to one particular car park and never at the terminal kerb, and the walk back with luggage is longer than the drive in. Two hours before check-in closes is comfortable at Charles de Gaulle, ninety minutes is enough at Orly, and an hour is plenty at Beauvais.

Fill up close to the airport, hold on to the till receipt, and photograph the dashboard with the needle and the odometer both visible. If the desk is closed when you arrive, the key drop is a box beside it and the contract usually makes you responsible for the vehicle until an agent inspects it the next morning, which is the one moment where those photographs earn their place. Ask about after hours return at the time of booking rather than discovering the policy at five in the morning.

When renting at the airport is the wrong choice

An airport pick-up is not automatically the right one. If the first two days are spent in the city, a car parked in Paris costs money and attention for nothing. Few hotels in the centre have a garage of their own, the public car parks around them are among the dearest in the country, and taking the RER or the metro in and hiring later is cheaper and calmer. If the trip is a single day out of the capital, it is cheaper to rent for that one day at a city branch. And if the itinerary starts by train, a station branch in a provincial city will often be cheaper than an airport counter for the same class of car.

Conversely, it pays to rent at the terminal whenever the holiday begins outside the region: a chateau route through the Loire valley, the beaches and cemeteries of Normandy, or the vineyards on the road to Champagne. In those cases the car collected at the terminal saves a transfer at each end, and that is the whole argument for airport hire in one line.

Questions people ask before hiring at a Paris airport

Which Paris airport is best for hiring a car?

Charles de Gaulle has the widest choice of vehicles and the best access to the north and east, Orly is faster to clear on foot and better placed for the south, and Beauvais suits a trip that never goes near Paris. Distance to your first destination should decide, not the size of the airport.

Which terminal do I collect the car from at Charles de Gaulle?

The one printed on your voucher, at the hire desks in its arrivals area. Landing elsewhere is no obstacle: the CDGVAL shuttle joins Terminal 1, Terminal 2 and Terminal 3 free of charge, and it takes only a few minutes.

Must the deposit go on a credit card?

In almost every case, yes. The sum blocked as a deposit has to sit on a credit card carried by the person named as first driver, and a debit card is turned away whatever the balance behind it.

How long does collection take at Charles de Gaulle or Orly?

Budget three quarters of an hour at CDG between the baggage belt and the exit barrier, and roughly half that at Orly. Where the company offers online check-in beforehand, that single step removes most of the wait on a busy morning.

How far ahead should I book?

A window of roughly two to eight weeks ahead gives the lowest rates in summer, and earlier again if you need an automatic, an estate or a van, since those classes sell out first. Turning up at a counter on the day is the dearest route there is.

Is an International Driving Permit required in France?

Not for a licence issued in the European Economic Area or in the United Kingdom. For most other licences, several companies ask for one, so carrying an International Driving Permit is the safe course.

Can I return the car to a different city?

Yes, and a one way drop fee applies. It is quoted at the time of booking, it varies widely between companies for the same journey, and it is worth comparing before the daily rate is compared.