Renting a car in Orlando

Book Orlando car hire

Almost every city page on this site argues the reader out of a hire car. Orlando is the exception. The region’s attractions are spread across two counties, the commuter railway does not run at weekends, and the airport’s own published price table puts a taxi at anywhere from $14 to $115 depending on where you are going. If your itinerary has more than two destinations in it, driving stops being a choice.

What catches people out is what happens the moment you leave Orlando International. The expressway network around the airport is electronically tolled and, since 30 September 2025, entirely cash-free. There is no coin basket to drop change into, which means every toll you pass through is settled by somebody else and billed back to you — and the rate you are billed depends on a decision you make before you leave the terminal.

Below: whether the car is really needed, where the cars actually are (there is no consolidated facility yet), the published surcharge and tax stack, the toll arithmetic plaza by plaza, the three ways to pay a toll and what each costs, and the licence, age and parking rules.

Whether you need one at all, answered honestly

Start with what the alternatives actually cover, because they are better than Orlando’s reputation suggests and still not enough. LYNX, the local bus operator, boards at the airport on the A-Side of the terminal on the Ground Transportation Level (Level 1) at Commercial Lane spaces A38–A41, and charges $2.00 for each destination or $4.50 all day. A one-way adult fare anywhere on the network is $2.00, an all-day pass is $4.50 valid from 4:00am until 3:00am the next day, and a 7-day pass is $16.00. Transfers are free on request but limited to 90 minutes and not valid on the same link or for a round trip.

The catch is the map, not the fare. The airport’s published bus destinations are Destination Parkway, Downtown Orlando, Florida Mall, Orange County Convention Center, Premium Outlets, Sand Lake Road SunRail Station and SeaWorld — a commuter network that happens to serve some visitor destinations, rather than a visitor network. GOAA’s own ground transportation price table separately lists a local bus fare of $4 to the Disney Resorts Area, so the two airport pages do not entirely agree with each other.

Rail is worse for this purpose. SunRail, the commuter line, “only operates service Monday – Friday” — no weekend service at all — its southern terminus is Poinciana in Osceola County, and its airport connection is a bus rather than a train. Brightline does run from a station inside the airport, reached from Parking Garage C by taking Level 5 to the skyway bridge and walking about five minutes, but it goes to West Palm Beach in roughly two hours and Miami in about three and a half. It does not go to a theme park. That is a genuinely useful east-coast link and no substitute for local transport; see Orlando trains.

The rest of the airport’s published range: hotel shuttle free but for airport hotels only, shuttle van $15–$49 depending on destination, taxi $14–$115, limousine $50–$90. Mears Destination Services is the airport’s Resort and General Transportation Concessionaire. Two adults making three separate excursions at the upper end of the taxi range will pass the cost of a car quickly. One resort, its own shuttle and nothing else is the itinerary where you skip the car.

Where the cars actually are: no consolidated facility, and the level depends on the brand

Most large US airports have moved rental cars into a single off-terminal building reached by shuttle. Orlando has not. A Consolidated Rental Car Facility is in procurement, not in operation: on 17 October 2024 the GOAA Board was notified of two procurement packages, Design/Build and Program Management, to keep it moving, with the airport saying the facility would free up “approximately 4,500 public parking spaces” and that both Requests for Statements of Qualifications would be released “in the coming months with award dates set for later in 2025”. Until it is built, you collect from the terminal garages.

Which means the level you walk to is set by the brand you booked, not the terminal you landed in. From Terminals A and B: Level R1 for Alamo, Enterprise and National; Level R2 for Avis, Budget, Dollar, Hertz, Payless and Thrifty; Level P1 for Sixt. From Terminal C: Parking C1 for Alamo, Enterprise, National and Sixt, Parking C2 for Avis, Budget, Dollar, Hertz, Payless and Thrifty. Ten brands operate on-airport in total.

Returns are not the mirror image of pick-up. Several brands take Terminal A returns on one level and Terminal B returns on the other, so check the return level on your own paperwork rather than driving back to where you collected. Avis describes its own walk plainly: “After collecting luggage, please follow signs to Ground Transportation and proceed to the car rental counter on Level 1. Once you have been assigned a vehicle, make your way to Level 2 in the garage for vehicle retrieval.”

Off-airport firms are a different proposition again. They have no terminal counters and collect from shared kerbside Ground Transportation spaces: A11–A13 at Terminal A Level 1, B60–B62 at Terminal B Level 1, C277–C278 at Terminal C Level 1 and C3–C4 at the Train Station Level 1. You are waiting at a kerb for a van, with luggage, in Florida heat, and then repeating it in reverse against a flight deadline.

The surcharge and the tax stack, and the fee nobody publishes

Florida imposes a statutory rental car surcharge of $2 per day, or any part of a day, on the rental of a vehicle designed to carry fewer than nine passengers. It applies only to the first 30 days of the rental term, and it is itself subject to the taxes imposed by chapter 212 — you pay sales tax on the surcharge. Car-sharing services are treated separately under the same statute: $1 per usage where the member has the vehicle for less than 24 hours, with the standard $2 per day from 24 hours.

On top of that, the state sales tax rate is 6%, and the county discretionary surtax is added to it. Orange County, which contains both Orlando and the airport, levies 0.5%. Osceola County, which contains Kissimmee and the southern approach to the Disney area, levies 1.5%. So collecting the car a few miles further south raises the tax rate on the whole rental by a full percentage point. One caveat on that pair of figures: the file at the Department of Revenue’s current-forms address for the county surtax table is the Calendar Year 2025 edition. Both counties’ rates sit inside their own stated effective windows for 2026, but no 2026 edition could be located.

The two charges everyone asks about — the customer facility charge and the airport concession recovery fee — will both appear on an on-airport bill, and this page is not going to give you a rate for either. Neither figure could be confirmed against a document published by the airport authority or the operator, and a fee a traveller is actually charged is exactly the kind of number that must not be guessed at. Take them as real line items of unknown size, and read the quote breakdown before you commit. General counter advice is on the car rentals page.

Tolls: cash-free since September 2025, and double if you arrive without a transponder

The Central Florida Expressway Authority is blunt about it: “Cash will no longer be accepted at toll booths. As a result, all cash lanes and Reload Lanes have closed as of September 30, 2025.” There is no way to pay a CFX toll with coins in a hire car. Everything is either read from a transponder or photographed from the number plate.

And the gap between those two is not an administration fee. It is the toll: “The cost to pay tolls via Pay By Plate increased to double the E-PASS electronic rate at all toll collection points on CFX expressways.” Double. CFX puts the average electronic cost at 14 cents per mile for E-PASS customers, which makes the camera-billed average 28.

Current rates took effect on 1 July 2026, and under the Customer-First Toll Policy approved in 2017 they adjust annually by 1.5 percent or by the annual Consumer Price Index. Two-axle rates at the plazas a hire car actually meets:

• South Access Rd/Int’l Airport on SR 417, the first toll most rental cars hit leaving the airport: $1.38 with E-PASS, $2.76 by Pay By Plate — and identically doubled for every axle class from 2 to 5.
• Beachline Main Plaza on SR 528, the airport-to-Interstate 4 and airport-to-Port Canaveral route: $1.08 electronic, $2.16 by plate.
• Boggy Creek Main Plaza on SR 417: $1.72 electronic, $3.44 by plate.

Axle count bites harder than people expect, which matters if you have hired something large or are towing. At Boggy Creek the E-PASS rate runs $1.72, $2.40, $3.11 and $3.78 for 2, 3, 4 and 5 axles; by Pay By Plate that is $3.44, $4.80, $6.22 and $7.56.

The doubling is not universal, either, which is the detail that makes budgeting awkward. Beachline West Main Plaza is marked (TPK) on the CFX chart, meaning it is Turnpike-operated, and it charges $1.38 two-axle whether you pay electronically or by plate — the same $2.08, $2.40 and $3.11 for 3, 4 and 5 axles either way. On a single journey west from the airport, the penalty for having no transponder can change from 100% to nothing between one plaza and the next.

If nobody pays electronically, CFX states the chain plainly: “If tolls are not paid electronically, cameras capture the vehicle’s license plate and CFX issues an invoice to the rental car company.” The rental company pays it and charges you the toll plus its own service fees. For a private vehicle the invoice must be paid within 30 days; on day 31 a past-due notice is issued requesting payment within 15 days, and an unpaid invoice may be referred to the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles to place a registration hold on the plate.

Three ways to pay a toll here, and what each one costs

1. Let the rental company handle it. This is the default and it is the expensive one, because enrolment is automatic rather than opt-in. Avis is explicit: “If you drive through a toll in an Avis rental, you will be automatically enrolled in our e-toll service.” Since CFX is cash-free, there is no booth at which to avoid this.

• Avis charges an e-Toll convenience fee of $6.95 for each day on which a toll is incurred, to a maximum of $34.95 per rental period, and bills the tolls themselves at “the maximum prevailing non-discounted or cash rates posted by the toll authority”. On CFX that non-discounted rate is the doubled one — so you pay roughly twice the toll, plus $6.95 for the day.
• Budget applies the same structure: $6.95 per tolled day to a maximum of $34.95 per rental period (not to exceed 30 days), tolls at the maximum prevailing non-discounted or cash rates.
• Enterprise charges a TollPass Convenience Charge of $4.95 per day with a rental period maximum of $34.65, plus the amount of each toll, billed at “the higher of the applicable toll authority’s video toll rate, cash toll rate or highest undiscounted toll rate”. Drivers who use a toll road without their own transponder are automatically enrolled.
• Avis and Budget both sell an all-inclusive alternative, e-Toll Unlimited, at a flat $10.99 to $25.99 per day depending on checkout location — charged for every day of the rental period whether or not you touch a toll road.

2. The Visitor Toll Pass. This exists specifically to route around the programmes above. CFX describes it as “a hangtag placed on the rental vehicle’s rearview mirror, allowing drivers to pay tolls electronically at the lowest toll rate without incurring additional fees charged by rental car toll payment programs”. Terms: a $10 deposit taken when you reserve through the app, used towards your toll transactions; no service fee; and $10 charged if you do not return the hangtag. The operator claims savings of as much as 80% against a rental toll programme, and the airport states that all tolls are billed to the card on the pass “with no additional fees or charges”.

Collect it from vending machines near the car rental counters on Level 1 in Terminals A and B — the Terminal B machine is near bag carousel 28B — or Level 4 in Terminal C, and return it to one of 14 drop boxes around the airport. It works with all ten on-airport brands. The restriction that rules it out for some trips: it currently only serves customers picking up and dropping off at Orlando International.

3. Bring or buy your own transponder. CFX accepts E-ZPass, SunPass, LeeWay, Peach Pass, NC QuickPass, I-PASS and RiverLink across its 125-mile network and throughout Florida; Texas TollTag, Kansas K-TAG and Oklahoma PIKEPASS are accepted on Florida’s Turnpike and FDOT-owned expressways rather than on CFX roads. Florida’s Turnpike Enterprise sells SunPass Mini at $4.99 plus tax and SunPass PRO at $14.95 plus tax; both work in Florida, Georgia, Kansas, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Texas, and the PRO additionally works wherever E-ZPass is accepted. You may bring your own portable transponder and register the hire car’s plate for the rental period at SunPass.com or by phone.

One rule that closes off the obvious DIY option: on the Turnpike system, “The TOLL-BY-PLATE payment option is not available for customers in rental cars”, because the invoice goes to the registered owner rather than the driver. For a private car that invoice covers the tolls incurred over a 30-day period plus a $2.50 administrative fee; the Turnpike says SunPass customers save an average of 25% against TOLL-BY-PLATE, and that TOLL-BY-PLATE cannot be used on Florida Managed Lanes at all.

Licence, minimum age and what parking costs

Florida law exempts a nonresident who is at least 16 and has in their immediate possession a valid noncommercial driver licence issued in their home state or country from holding a Florida licence, when driving the type of vehicle for which a Class E licence is required here — that is, an ordinary car. A separate exemption covers nonresidents aged 18 or over driving any other non-commercial vehicle. Neither provision of section 322.04 imposes an International Driving Permit requirement. The state licensing authority says the same in plainer words: visitors “are required to have in their immediate possession a valid driver license issued in his or her name from their country of residence”, and advises checking with the rental company before travelling to see what it requires.

That last clause is the operative one, because the statutory duty runs both ways. Section 322.38 provides that a person “may not rent a motor vehicle to another until he or she has inspected the driver license ... and has verified that the driver license is unexpired”, and must keep a record of the registration number, the renter’s name and address and where the licence was issued, open to police inspection. Expect the counter to take the licence seriously.

Florida sets no rental minimum age above the licensing rules, so operator policy governs and it costs money. At Orlando International, Avis requires renters to be at least 21, applies an underage surcharge of $27 per day for renters under 25, and charges $13 per day per additional driver in most states. Two under-25 drivers sharing a week is a meaningful number before the rental itself.

Parking in the city is the cheap part. City of Orlando on-street meters are $1 per hour, payable Monday to Saturday 8am–6pm in the Downtown Core, SoDo/Orlando Health and Creative Village areas, and free from 6pm to 8am, on Sundays and on city holidays. City garages are $2 per hour with a $15 daily maximum, $1 for the first 30 minutes, plus flat rates: $8 early bird if you enter between 5:30am and 7am and leave before 5pm, $6 for diners entering 6–10pm, $10 after 10pm and $10 for events, excluding the ThreatLocker garage. City surface lots are $2 per hour or a $10 weekend and event rate, except Grove Park, which is a flat $10 until 4pm and $15 after.

Airport parking is where it gets expensive, and it matters if you are keeping the car until departure. Parking Garage C gives a 20-minute grace period, then $2 for 21 to 30 minutes and $1 for each additional 15 minutes or part thereof from entry, up to $24 per 24-hour period drive-up. A guaranteed reserved space is $32 per 24 hours. Maximum stay is 45 days. If your car is going back to the rental desk anyway, none of that applies — but if you are meeting someone off a flight, the 20 minutes goes quickly. See also Orlando flights and Orlando tours.

Common questions

Do I need a car in Orlando?

Probably, which is unusual. LYNX buses are $2.00 a trip or $4.50 all day and serve seven published destinations from the airport, but that is a commuter network rather than a visitor one. SunRail does not run at weekends and does not reach the parks. Brightline goes to West Palm Beach and Miami, not to an attraction. The airport’s own published taxi range is $14 to $115 depending on destination. One resort with its own shuttle is the trip where you skip the car; anything with three or more destinations is not.

Are Orlando toll roads cash-free?

Yes. The Central Florida Expressway Authority states that cash is no longer accepted at toll booths and that all cash lanes and Reload Lanes closed as of 30 September 2025. There is no way to pay a CFX toll with coins in a hire car, so every toll is either read from a transponder or photographed from the plate and billed afterwards.

How much extra do tolls cost in a hire car?

Two ways. First the toll itself: CFX charges double the E-PASS electronic rate for camera-billed Pay By Plate at all its toll collection points, so the $1.38 plaza leaving the airport becomes $2.76. Then the rental company’s fee on top — Avis and Budget charge $6.95 for each day on which you incur a toll, capped at $34.95 per rental period, and Enterprise charges $4.95 per day capped at $34.65, plus the toll. Enrolment is automatic once you pass a toll point.

Is the Visitor Toll Pass worth using?

It is the cheapest route if your trip fits its rules. It is a hangtag from vending machines on Level 1 in Terminals A and B or Level 4 in Terminal C, it charges tolls at the lowest electronic rate with no service fee, and it takes a $10 deposit that goes towards your tolls, with $10 charged only if you fail to return it to one of the 14 drop boxes. It works with all ten on-airport brands. The limitation: it currently only serves customers picking up and dropping off at Orlando International.

Can I use my own SunPass or E-ZPass in a rental car?

Yes. CFX accepts E-ZPass, SunPass, LeeWay, Peach Pass, NC QuickPass, I-PASS and RiverLink across its network and throughout Florida, and you may bring your own portable transponder and register the hire car’s plate for the rental period. Buying one is cheap: SunPass Mini is $4.99 plus tax, SunPass PRO $14.95 plus tax. What you cannot do is rely on TOLL-BY-PLATE, which the Turnpike states is not available for customers in rental cars.

Do I need an International Driving Permit to drive in Florida?

The law does not require one. Florida’s statutory exemption covers a nonresident aged at least 16 who has in their immediate possession a valid noncommercial licence from their home state or country, and the state licensing authority asks only for a valid licence issued in your own name from your country of residence. It does advise checking what the rental company itself requires, and the rental firm is separately obliged by statute to inspect your licence and verify it is unexpired.

Sources

Fares, journey times and operating rules on this page were checked against these sources on 11 September 2026. Authorities change fares and timetables without notice — confirm anything time-critical on the operator’s own site.

• Orlando International Airport (GOAA) - rental car brands, pick-up levels and off-airport locations
• Central Florida Expressway Authority - official toll rate chart as of July 1, 2026
• Central Florida Expressway Authority - FAQs on Pay By Plate rates, rental vehicles and the Visitor Toll Pass
• Central Florida Expressway Authority - cash-free tolling and accepted out-of-state transponders
• Visitor Toll Pass - deposit, fees, pickup locations and eligibility
• Avis Rent a Car - e-Toll convenience fee, toll rate basis and e-Toll Unlimited
• Enterprise Rent-A-Car - TollPass convenience charge and automatic enrolment
• Florida Statutes s.212.0606 (2026) - rental car and car-sharing surcharge
• City of Orlando - on-street meter, garage and surface lot parking rates