✶ Deposits and what they are for
Nothing held
against
your card.
A good number of the cars on this island are listed with no deposit at all. It is a genuine convenience and it is not a free one, and the difference between those two things is the whole of this page.
✶ Deposits are shown per car
135 cars from €16 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, the figure you see is the figure you pay
Pick-up
Dates
Nothing held, and nothing hidden eitherThe depositA holdPre-authorised against your card, released after return.
The excessSeparateWhat you carry on a covered claim, deposit or no deposit.
The card ruleSeparate againMay still be required even where nothing is held.
The exclusionsUnchangedWheels, glass, undercarriage and interior, always.
What a deposit is actually doing
When a supplier holds a deposit, they pre-authorise an amount against your credit card at collection and release it after the car comes back. The money does not usually leave your account, but it stops being available to you, which on a holiday with a tight card limit is the same thing.
The amount is normally set to match the excess, because the excess is the amount you would owe if something happened. So the hold is not an arbitrary fee. It is the supplier making sure the money exists before they hand you the keys.
A no-deposit listing removes the hold. The supplier is accepting the risk that they will have to chase the money rather than already having it reserved, and they price that risk in. That is the entire mechanism, and once you see it the trade becomes obvious.
The trade, stated plainly
You are almost always paying for it somewhere. Sometimes it is a higher day rate. Sometimes it is a higher excess, which is the part that stings, because a zero deposit with a large excess is the worst of both worlds if anything happens. Sometimes it is an older car with more miles on it.
What makes this workable is that all of it is on the listing before you book. The deposit, the excess and the price sit next to each other, so a no-deposit car with a sensible excess is easy to spot and so is one without. What an insured event actually requires is worth reading alongside this, because the exclusions are identical either way.
When it is the right choice
Three cases, in our experience of what people write in and ask about.
A tight card limit. If the hold would eat most of your available credit for a fortnight, a no-deposit car is worth paying a little more for. This is the strongest case and it is a practical one rather than a psychological one.
A long rental. Over two or three weeks a hold sits on your card the whole time. Removing it for a modest premium per day can be worth it purely for the headroom.
Somebody else's card.It is not, actually. If the card is not in the main driver's name the collection can fail regardless of the deposit, because those are separate conditions. This is the case where a no-deposit listing looks like a solution and is not one.
When it is not
If you have the headroom and the excess on the no-deposit car is materially higher, take the deposit. You are trading a temporary hold on money you were not going to spend for a permanently larger liability if something goes wrong, and on an island where the roads you will actually use include a good deal of narrow tarmac, that is not a trade that favours you.
And if the day rate is the thing you are optimising, the honest version of that argument is on why the headline rate is not the total, which covers where the money on a Tenerife rental actually goes.
✶ Asked about deposits
Four questions,
four straight answers.
Does no deposit mean I still need a credit card?
Usually, yes, and this is the part people get wrong. The deposit and the card requirement are two separate conditions. A supplier can hold nothing at all against your card and still require that the card exists, that it is physical and embossed, and that it is in the main driver's name. Read the listing rather than assuming that zero deposit means no card.
So what am I giving up?
Usually a higher day rate, a higher excess, or both, because risk that would have sat on your card is sitting on the supplier instead and they price it. Occasionally it is an older vehicle. None of it is hidden: the excess appears on the listing right beside the deposit, so the whole trade is visible before you commit to it.
Is a no-deposit car safer if I dent it?
No, and it is important not to read it that way. A deposit is a hold, not a cap on liability. With no deposit there is simply nothing pre-authorised on the card; you still owe the excess on a covered claim, and you still owe the full cost of anything the cover excludes. Wheels, glass, undercarriage and interior are excluded whatever the deposit says.
How many of the cars here are no deposit?
It moves constantly, which is why there is no number written on this page and never will be. Search your own dates and each listing shows its own deposit. On a typical week it is a meaningful share of what is on the island rather than a rarity, but the only share that matters to you is the one on the days you are travelling.
✶ Filter it yourself
The deposit is on every car.
Search your dates and each listing shows what it holds and what its excess is, side by side. You will find the zero-deposit ones in about ten seconds and see what they cost you in the same glance.