Picking up a hire car is usually the moment a European trip really begins. No timetables, no waiting around for buses, just you, your hire car and the road!
It can also be the most stressful twenty minutes of the whole holiday: standing at a rental desk after a long flight while someone talks fast about excess, waivers and a “premium protection package” you’ve never heard of.
This guide covers everything you need before you land, so pick-up day is quick, the paperwork makes sense, and nothing catches you out at the counter.
CHEW tip: you can hire a car pretty much anywhere in Europe on a full UK photocard licence. You’ll need your passport, a payment card in the lead driver’s name, and to check that your age fits the supplier’s limits. The one thing worth arranging before you fly rather than at the desk is your excess cover, since that’s where most of the pressure (and most of the cost) tends to land.
Before You Fly: The Hire Car Checklist
Pack these before you leave the UK:
- Full UK photocard driving licence (not provisional)
- Passport, valid for the length of your stay
- The payment card used to book, in the lead driver’s name (many suppliers won’t accept cash or a different card at pick-up)
- Your booking confirmation, printed or saved somewhere offline
- Your excess cover documents, if you’ve arranged your own rather than relying on the rental desk
Photograph or photocopy everything and keep a copy somewhere separate, just in case anything goes missing along the way.
Your Documents at the Rental Desk
Alongside your licence and passport, some suppliers ask for a DVLA check code, a short-lived digital code that lets them see your licence details and any points. You generate it on the gov.uk website using your licence number, National Insurance number and postcode, and it’s only valid for 72 hours, so this is a job for a day or two before you fly, not weeks ahead.
In practice, you’re more likely to be asked for this hiring in the UK than abroad, but it costs nothing and takes two minutes, so have it ready rather than discovering at the desk that you need it and can’t get online.
If your licence is the old paper style, or was issued outside Great Britain or Northern Ireland, check with your specific rental company beforehand, since requirements do shift between suppliers and countries.
Age Limits: Renting the Car vs Arranging Excess Cover
There are actually two separate sets of age rules here, and it’s easy to mix them up.
Renting the car itself is entirely down to the hire company, and it varies a lot by country and supplier, so check the specific terms for your destination before booking. As a rough guide:
- Minimum age is typically 18 to 21 depending on the country, with drivers under 25 usually facing a young driver surcharge
- Maximum age limits are less common, but some suppliers in some countries cap it somewhere around 70 to 80, sometimes with a surcharge or a request for a recent medical fitness declaration rather than a flat refusal
Arranging your own excess cover runs on a completely separate set of rules, set by the insurer rather than the hire company. To buy a CHEW policy, for instance, you need to be between 23 and 84, resident in the UK, hold a full valid licence, and not be driving against medical advice or under a current ban. If you’re in your late teens or early twenties, it’s worth checking this before assuming cover will be just as available to you as it would be for an older relative booking the same trip. One thing that does work in your favour either way: age isn’t a rating factor on CHEW, so it doesn’t push the price up or down within that range.
None of the hire company’s own age rules are standard across Europe, so if you’re near either end of the range, confirm directly with the supplier at the time of booking rather than assuming it’ll be fine everywhere.
Understanding the Excess (and the Rental Desk Hard-Sell)
When you hire a car, the price usually includes some level of cover, but that cover comes with an excess: the amount you’d have to pay towards a claim if the car’s damaged, stolen or vandalised, even when it wasn’t your fault. Excess amounts vary by car and supplier.
This is where the desk conversation tends to ramp up. Add-ons sold at pick-up are a genuinely significant earner for rental companies, and asking a tired traveller to decide on the spot, straight off a long flight, is exactly when that pressure works best.
Rental desk excess cover typically runs around £30 a day. Over a week or two, that’s a lot of money, on top of everything else you’ve already paid for.
CHEW’s excess cover starts from £3 a day, arranged before you travel rather than decided under pressure at the desk. It reimburses the excess and deposit you’re charged, up to £6,000 on a single-trip policy or £10,000 across an annual one, plus a range of other benefits covered below. Because you’ve already read the policy, there’s nothing left to weigh up when you’re handed the keys.
What This Kind of Cover Actually Includes
Worth knowing before you get to the counter, because it’s usually the reason people end up paying for the rental company’s “premium” upgrade.
Standalone excess cover like CHEW is built around the excess itself, plus damage to the specific parts of the car that standard rental agreements often exclude or argue over, including:
- Bodywork and the roof
- Wheels, wheel rims, bumpers, trim and tyres
- The underbody
- Glass, including windscreens, windows, mirrors, lights and the sunroof
On top of that, a typical policy also picks up a range of related costs, each with its own limit: car recovery if the car can’t be driven, loss of use while it’s off the road, any administration fees the hire company charges, key cover for lost, stolen or damaged keys, locked-out cover if you’re shut out of the car, misfuelling, drop-off charges if illness or injury means you can’t return the car yourself, road rage or car-jacking cover, and hotel and travel expenses if the car breaks down or is stolen.
Two things worth flagging before you assume the whole car is covered:
- Interior damage generally isn’t covered, unless it’s caused by an accident, malicious damage or fire.
- Personal possessions cover is narrower than the name suggests. It typically protects the lead driver’s bags and suitcases, but not cash, phones, cameras, laptops, jewellery or other “valuables” as policies tend to define the term. Carrying anything expensive? Your travel insurance or home contents policy is the right place to check that, not your car hire excess cover.
- Not every hire car qualifies. With CHEW, the car needs to be under 10 years old, worth no more than £70,000, and have no more than 9 seats. Vans, motorhomes, campers, motorbikes and mopeds don’t qualify at all, so if you’re hiring anything unusual, it’s worth checking eligibility before you assume you’re covered.
Always check the policy wording and IPID for the exact limits and exclusions before buying, since these differ between insurers, and even between the single trip and annual versions of the same product.
New Border Checks: EES and Your Pick-Up Time
If you haven’t travelled to Europe recently, this information is useful for your travels in 2026. The Entry/Exit System (EES) has swapped manual passport stamping at Schengen borders for digital registration, fingerprints and a photo included, for anyone travelling on a UK passport.
For anyone flying out to collect a hire car, the practical takeaway is simple: ensure extra time at passport control, especially in busy periods, since queues can run longer while the new system beds in. A delayed arrival at the rental desk usually means a rushed handover, which is exactly when it helps to already have your excess sorted.
A second system, ETIAS, an online pre-travel authorisation, is expected to follow later. It hasn’t launched at the time of writing, so UK travellers don’t need to apply for it yet, but it’s worth a quick check nearer your travel dates.
Taking the Car Across a Border? Check First
Plenty of European road trips naturally cross a border or two, but rental agreements are stricter about this than most people expect.
- You need to tell the rental company in advance if you’re planning to drive into another country. Skip this and you risk voiding your insurance and breakdown cover entirely.
- Most suppliers charge a cross-border fee, and some restrict which countries are included or how long you can stay there.
- High-value or luxury vehicles are commonly ruled out of cross-border travel altogether.
- If cross-border driving is approved, get the supplier to confirm your insurance documentation covers it, since this varies by country.
Worth knowing: it’s not just the rental company’s own cover at stake here. Standalone excess policies generally require you to stick to the terms of your hire contract as a condition of cover, so an unapproved border crossing could put your excess claim at risk too, on top of whatever the rental company does. Your excess policy’s own geographical area (a defined list of European countries, or a worldwide option) is a separate thing from the hire company’s permission, and both need to actually match where you’re driving.
If your route is likely to cross a border, sort this at the booking stage rather than hoping for the best on the day.
Fuel Policies Explained
Rental companies run on a handful of standard fuel policies, and picking the wrong one for your trip can be a surprisingly expensive mistake:
- Full-to-full: you collect with a full tank and return it full. Cheapest option if there’s a fuel station near the drop-off point.
- Full-to-empty: you pay for a full tank upfront and hand the car back empty. Rarely good value unless you’re confident you’ll use almost all of it.
- Same-to-same: you return the car with roughly the same fuel level it had at pick-up.
Full-to-full is generally the best value for most trips, but check which one applies before you sign anything at the desk.
Protecting Yourself at Pick-Up and Drop-Off
A few habits that make disputes far less likely, excess cover or not:
- Film a slow walkaround video of the car at pick-up, covering wheels, bumpers, windscreen and mirrors, and do the same at drop-off.
- Don’t rush the inspection, even with a queue behind you. Two minutes now saves hours of back-and-forth later.
- No one there to check the car back in? Take your own photos before you walk away. Most excess policies expect this if you can’t get someone from the hire company to inspect it with you at drop-off.
- Keep every document: the rental agreement, inspection notes, receipts and any emails, in case you need to make a claim.
Single Trip or Annual? Choosing the Right Cover
Got one holiday booked? A single trip policy covers one hire contract of up to 31 days, matched to that specific booking.
Likely to hire more than once in the next 12 months, whether that’s two holidays or a work trip and a holiday? An annual policy covers any number of hire contracts across the year, each up to a set number of days (typically 31 or 65, depending on the version you pick). Hire more than once a year, and this usually works out considerably cheaper than buying single trip cover each time.
Either way, cover only applies to hire contracts falling within the dates on your certificate of insurance, and it needs sorting before your hire agreement starts, not after you’ve already got the keys in hand. Worth knowing too: the “Europe” area option also covers hiring within the UK, so you don’t need a separate policy if your travels take in a UK hire alongside a trip abroad.
Rental Desk Cover vs Arranging Your Own Excess Cover
Both protect you from the same basic risk, but they work quite differently in practice:
- Rental desk cover is convenient because it’s bought on the spot, but it’s priced by the day, rarely the cheapest option, and leaves you deciding under time pressure without having read the terms in advance.
- CHEW’s excess cover is arranged before you travel, from £3 a day, in a quote that takes less than 30 seconds online, so you already know exactly what’s included by the time you reach the counter. No hard sell, because the decision’s already made.
CHEW is arranged by Freedom Insurance Services Limited, authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, and underwritten by AmTrust, an A-rated insurer, so it sits behind the same regulatory protections as any other UK insurance product, including the Financial Ombudsman Service and the Financial Services Compensation Scheme if you ever need them.
Thinking about medical cover for the trip too? Freedom travel insurance is built for travellers with pre-existing medical conditions and pairs naturally with CHEW, so your excess and your personal cover can both be arranged before you leave home.
Our Pick-Up Day Checklist
A quick recap to keep handy before you travel:
- Licence, passport and payment card in the lead driver’s name
- DVLA check code, generated no more than 72 hours before travel
- Any cross-border plans confirmed with the supplier in advance
- Your chosen fuel policy, noted so you’re not caught out at drop-off
- Your excess cover sorted before you fly, so there’s nothing to decide at the desk
Hiring a car in Europe is one of the easiest ways to see more of a destination on your own terms, and nearly all of the stress that comes with it happens in the twenty minutes at the rental desk. Sort your documents, know your excess, and decide on cover before you go, so that you can travel with peace of mind.
Want straightforward, affordable excess cover? Get a quote with CHEW and check the policy details before you go, so the only decision left at the desk is which way to turn out of the car park!
