✶ Fifteen points, island wide
Everywhere
you can pick
a car up.
Every one of them is bookable in the search on this page, whichever way you are arriving. Here is the whole list, with what the car rental stock is actually like at each, starting with the terminal that holds most of it.
✶ Search any of the fifteen
139 cars from €17 a day on these dates
Pick-up and drop-off
Dates
Free cancellation on many carsThe deposit is on the car, before you book itPrices in euros, cover levels priced on the car
Pick-up
Dates
Anaga, at the far end of most of these drive timesStock is not spread evenly across this list. The two airports hold most of the island's cars between them, the southern resorts hold a working list, and a small point holds a fraction of either: a rental car delivered to your door in Golf del Sur comes from one of the shortest lists, which decides what you can choose from rather than what you pay. What makes cheap car rental in Tenerife cheap is how far ahead you booked and which class you settled on, and that is true at every address on this page.
✶ Times from Tenerife South, without traffic
Where you can
collect, and how far.
Every figure below is a drive without traffic, quoted at or above the figure. A real drive takes this long or longer, never shorter.
01
Tenerife South Airportthe anchor
One terminal, the TF-1 at the exit, and by a distance the deepest stock on the island.
02
Tenerife North Airport1 h 05
Los Rodeos, at six hundred and thirty metres on the green slope. Quieter terminal, fewer cars.
09
Santa Cruz de Tenerife59 min
The capital. Local prices, city parking, and Anaga twenty-five minutes behind it.
10
Puerto de la Cruz1 h 21
The north coast and a different climate. The longest airport transfer on Tenerife.
✶ In the search on every page
The rest of
the island.
Smaller places, holding shorter lists than the coast, plus the island-wide search that is not pinned anywhere at all. Every one of them is bookable in the picker above.
11
Arona
The hill village the whole southern municipality is named after, above Los Cristianos. A surprisingly reasonable list for a place with no resort attached.
12
Playa Paraíso
Between Adeje and Callao Salvaje on the west coast, low-rise and quiet. A modest list.
13
Guía de Isora
Up on the western slope above the coast road, inland and agricultural. A short list.
14
Las Chafiras
The industrial estate a few minutes from the south airport. The smallest list of them all.
15
Anywhere on Tenerife
Not a pick-up point. It is the island-wide search, which is not pinned to one place and therefore returns the widest set of cars on the island. Useful when you do not mind where you collect.
Where should you rent a car in Tenerife?
Three questions settle it, in this order.
When do you actually want the car? If the answer is the whole trip, the airport is the obvious collection because you are driving from it anyway. If the answer is three days in the middle of a week, collecting in the resort saves you the days you would have paid for while it sat in a garage. The minimum chargeable period is twenty-four hours, so count in whole days.
How much stock is there where you want it? The smaller the point, the shorter the list, and the difference is larger than people expect. A resort point holds a fraction of what the south terminal does, which is invisible in August and decisive in February. A short list on your dates reflects the stock rather than a glitch, and if it is too short, the airport is between twenty minutes and an hour and a half from everywhere on this page.
Is price the thing you are solving for? Then the pick-up point is a smaller lever than the timing. What makes the cheap end of the list cheap is almost never the address you collect from; it is how far ahead you booked and which class you settled on.
Are you leaving from where you arrived? A one-way across the island is worth pricing before you assume you have to loop back. The airport pair is the deepest one-way route on the island and the fee is inside the price you are shown.
What is the same at every one of them?
The suppliers behind these points are the same companies working to the same rental conditions, so the requirements do not change with the address. You need the physical driving licence in Latin script, because photographs of a licence and app-based digital licences are refused everywhere. You need a real credit card in the main driver's name; where a debit card is accepted it still has to be physical, personalised and in the same name. And the deposit is on the listing before you book rather than at collection afterwards.
The cover level is on the listing too, and it is worth more of your attention than the day rate. Reading the cover before you sign takes five minutes and is the difference between an annoying week and an expensive one, because standard cover on this island excludes the parts that mountain roads actually threaten.
✶ Before you choose
Questions about
where you collect.
Two questions decide most of this page: where the cars actually are, and whether collecting away from an airport costs you anything.
Which point has the most cars?
The island-wide option, because it is not tied to a single point. After that, Tenerife South by a wide margin, then Tenerife North, then Playa de las Américas. These counts move constantly, so the live figure on the search bar is the one to trust rather than any number written into a page, here or anywhere else.
Does it cost more to collect away from the airport?
Sometimes, and not in a predictable direction. Resort points carry less stock, so the cheap end of the list empties sooner and what remains costs more. Every so often a resort supplier undercuts the airport outright. The only reliable method is to compare your actual dates, which takes about thirty seconds.
✶ One search, every point
Compare them on your own dates.
The pick-up list in the search above holds all fifteen, so you can price the airport against the resort in the time it takes to read this sentence. Many cars cancel free either way.