RentalCars Scraper

Scrape and compare car rental prices from RentalCars.com, the world's largest car rental comparison platform (owned by Booking.com). Extract offers from Hertz, Avis, Europcar, Sixt, Enterprise, Budget, and dozens more suppliers in one run. No login or cookies required.

Why use this actor?

Planning a trip and want the best car rental deal? This actor extracts all available offers from a RentalCars.com search, giving you structured data you can sort, filter, and analyze. Perfect for price monitoring, travel agencies comparing supplier rates, or researchers tracking rental car pricing trends across locations and seasons.

How it works

1. Enter a pickup location (city, airport, or station), for example Barcelona Airport
2. Optionally set pickup and drop-off dates (defaults: 30 days from now, 7-day rental)
3. Optionally set the driver age and a result limit
4. Start the actor

The actor resolves your location through the RentalCars location search, runs the search through the same JSON API the site itself uses, and returns structured offers in seconds. No browser automation, no form filling.

Input

Field	Type	Required	Description
pickupLocation	String	No	City, airport, or station. Default: Barcelona Airport
pickupDate	String	No	YYYY-MM-DD. Defaults to 30 days from now. Past dates are replaced by that default.
dropoffDate	String	No	YYYY-MM-DD. Defaults to a 7-day rental.
driverAge	Integer	No	Driver age, affects pricing (default: 30)
maxResults	Integer	No	Maximum number of offers to return (default: 100, max: 500)
searchUrl	String	No	Advanced: a RentalCars search-results URL. The location name and dates are extracted from it.
proxyConfiguration	Object	No	Proxy settings. Residential proxies strongly recommended due to AWS WAF protection.

Output

Each result contains:

Field	Type	Example
supplier	String	"Hertz"
carName	String	"Volkswagen Golf"
carType	String	"Compact"
transmission	String	"Automatic"
seats	Number	5
doors	Number	4
bags	Number	2
totalPrice	Number	287.50
dailyPrice	Number	41.07
currency	String	"EUR"
fuelPolicy	String	"Full to Full"
mileagePolicy	String	"Unlimited"
rating	Number	8.2
reviewCount	Number	1543
imageUrl	String	Car image URL
url	String	Search results URL
scrapedAt	String	"2026-04-07T14:30:00.000Z"

Example output

{
    "supplier": "Europcar",
    "carName": "Volkswagen Golf",
    "carType": "Compact",
    "transmission": "Manual",
    "seats": 5,
    "doors": 4,
    "bags": 2,
    "totalPrice": 287.50,
    "dailyPrice": 41.07,
    "currency": "EUR",
    "fuelPolicy": "Full to Full",
    "mileagePolicy": "Unlimited",
    "rating": 7.8,
    "reviewCount": 2341,
    "imageUrl": "https://cdn.rcstatic.com/images/car_images/web/europcar/golf_lrg.jpg",
    "url": "https://www.rentalcars.com/search-results?...",
    "scrapedAt": "2026-04-07T14:30:00.000Z"
}

Use cases

• Price comparison — Compare rental prices across all suppliers for a given location and date range
• Price monitoring — Schedule daily runs to track pricing trends and find the cheapest booking window
• Travel agencies — Aggregate rental car data across destinations for client recommendations
• Market research — Analyze supplier pricing strategies, availability patterns, and seasonal trends
• Fleet analysis — Track which car models are available at specific airports and cities

Integrations

This actor can be combined with Apify's built-in integrations to:

• Schedule runs to monitor prices daily or weekly
• Export to Google Sheets for easy analysis and sharing
• Send webhook notifications when prices drop below a threshold
• Connect to Zapier/Make for custom automation workflows
• Use the API to integrate car rental data into your applications

Cost estimate

A typical run makes just two HTTP requests (location lookup + search) and finishes in well under a minute, using only a small fraction of a compute unit.

Proxy requirements

RentalCars.com uses AWS WAF anti-bot protection that blocks datacenter IPs. Residential proxies are required for reliable results — the actor defaults to Apify residential proxies.

Limitations

• Results cover a single pickup location and date range per run
• One-way rentals (different drop-off location) are not supported yet
• Anti-bot protection may occasionally block requests even with residential proxies
• Data is scraped from the public website and may change without notice
• Some fields may not be available for all car offers

How to scrape Rentalcars data

1. Go to this actor's page on the Apify Store.
2. Click Try for free to open it in Apify Console.
3. Configure your search query or URL, set the maximum number of results, and adjust proxy settings if needed.
4. Click Start and wait for the run to finish.
5. Download your data in JSON, CSV, Excel, or connect it to your workflow via API.

You can also schedule regular runs, set up webhooks for real-time notifications, or integrate the results directly into your application using the Apify API.