Madeira Handbook

Car hire

What the Madeira desks are asking

Every car below is a real vehicle on a real Madeira fleet, at the price that company advertises. Sort it by what you actually care about — the cheapest car is rarely the right one on an island where everything is uphill.

Checked 10 September 2026 · 13 cars from 1 of 18 companies

13 cars

What the classes mean

mini
Smallest class. Fine for two people and hand luggage; slow up the Encumeada climbs with four.
economy
The default. Enough power for the north-coast gradients without paying for a bigger engine.
compact
More boot and more torque uphill. Worth it for four adults with real luggage.
estate
Long boot, same footprint problems in Funchal car parks.

Reading these numbers

Every price here is an advertised daily rate — the number the company puts on its own site before you pick dates. It is a floor, not a quote. The real figure moves with the season, and the desks make their margin on the two things this table cannot show you: the insurance excess and the fuel policy. Ask both before you hand over a card.

Book the class, not the badge. “Fiat Panda or similar” means you will get whatever is on the forecourt in that class, and on this island the class is the only part that matters — a 1.0-litre with four adults and their bags will find the climb out of Curral das Freiras genuinely hard work.

What is not on this page

17 of the 18 companies we track are not priced above — but they are only 10 actual firms. Funchal airport lists around twenty desks; several of them are one company wearing different badges, which is worth knowing before you spend an afternoon “comparing” Avis against Budget.

CompanyStatusWhy
Europcar Mobility Group — one company, 4 brands
Guerin not scraped Their robots.txt disallows */ajax/*, which is exactly where the price calls go. Not scraped, deliberately — check their own site for rates.
Europcar not scraped No adapter yet. Reachable without bot protection at the front door, so this is the most promising of the big brands for a browser recipe.
Goldcar not scraped No adapter yet. Same group as Europcar, so its rates are unlikely to be independent.
InterRent not scraped Europcar group budget brand. No adapter yet.
Enterprise Mobility — one company, 3 brands
Enterprise not scraped Returns 403 behind Akamai. Not scraped.
Alamo not scraped Same company as Enterprise and National. Not scraped.
National not scraped Same company as Enterprise and Alamo. Not scraped.
Avis Budget Group — one company, 2 brands
Avis not scraped Returns 403 to an ordinary request. Not scraped.
Budget not scraped Same company as Avis. Not scraped.
Discover Cars — one company, 2 brands
Auto Jardim not quoted Books through Discover Cars (affiliate id “autojardim”), not its own fleet. Not quoted separately: its prices are Discover Cars's prices, and listing them again would fake a second option.
Discover Cars not scraped Broker we already partner with, and the intended route to the majors above: their partner API returns dated quotes across Hertz, Sixt, Enterprise and the rest. Linked, never scraped — the API is the supported path.
Centauro not scraped Shuttle from the terminal rather than a desk. Behind Cloudflare; not scraped.
Hertz not scraped Behind Imperva. Same reasoning as Sixt — use a broker feed rather than fighting the defence.
Ilha Verde not scraped No booking recipe yet. Add one to scripts/car-hire/recipes.json — see the README for the shape.
Madeira Rent a Car not scraped No booking recipe yet. Add one to scripts/car-hire/recipes.json — see the README for the shape.
OK Mobility not scraped Shuttle from the terminal. Behind Cloudflare; not scraped.
Sixt not scraped Behind Cloudflare. Not scraped: getting past managed bot protection means building evasion, which breaks constantly and violates their terms. Reachable through a broker feed instead.

Ratings are blank because none have been collected yet. They are pulled from the Google Places API when a key is set, and never scraped off search results — a star rating is the one number here you would believe without checking, so it either has a source or it stays empty.

Discover Cars · affiliate

Price your actual dates

This page shows advertised floors. For a real quote you need real dates — this searches the airport desks, including the ones above we cannot price.

Compare live prices