The Best Rental Car Companies In 2026 According To JD Power

Many auto dealerships have a well-earned reputation for making life difficult for customers, but it doesn't always get easier trying to rent. Whether they're charging customers for breaking the laws of physics or relying on AI scanners to bill $440 for a wheel scuff, rental car agencies obviously have some work to do when it comes to boosting customer satisfaction. The good news is that that seems to be happening.

According to the JD Power 2026 North America Rental Car Satisfaction Study, overall customer satisfaction saw some notable improvements over 2025 — especially in two key areas. First, 90% of rental car customers said that, when they arrived at the counter, a vehicle from the class they reserved was waiting for them. That is, they reserved a mid-size sedan and one was there. Getting a bit more detailed, 85% claimed they "were able to pick a specific vehicle within the class they were given." Those figures were up 3 and 5 percentage points, respectively. Meanwhile, the study's average satisfaction score went from 691 in 2025 — on a 1,000-point scale — to 707 this year.

As for what goes into the results, JD Power bases them on ease of rental, pick-up/drop-off, level of trust, vehicle, staff, value for price paid, and digital tools. Those seven "core dimensions" are then weighted in the order they're listed. The outcome for 2026 was that six of 13 agencies finished with above-average scores, led by Enterprise, National, Advantage Rent A Car, Alamo, Sixt, and Hertz. Bringing up the rear were Thrifty and Dollar. Finally, all this data comes from 7,845 survey respondents, all of whom had rented their cars from airport-based rental companies in the span between August 2025 and August 2026.

It's worth pointing out that all 13 rental agencies earned higher study scores this year than last, with a lot of that improvement coming at the lower levels. Dollar, for instance, was at the very bottom of the rankings for both 2025 and 2026, yet its score jumped from 641 to 663. The biggest advance in terms of points was for Payless — it went from 11th place with 650 points last year to 8th place with 699 points this time around.

The standings didn't change much at the other end of the spectrum, though. The order remained the same, with Enterprise setting the pace, followed by National and Advantage Rent A Car, and they each saw essentially the same improvements: Enterprise was up 5 points to 739, National improved the same amount to 726 points, and Advantage advanced 6 points, rising from 711 to 717. (Technically, Advantage was tied with Sixt in 2025. Despite a three-point bump in its satisfaction score, that last agency slipped to fifth place in 2026, falling behind Alamo's 716 points.)

Oh, and there's one other factoid you should keep in mind about the rental car agencies: every major rental car brand in the country is owned by one of three companies.

Enterprise Mobility owns Enterprise, of course, but it has National and Alamo under its umbrella as well. Likewise, Avis Budget Group controls its namesake rental brands plus Payless, and Hertz has its own trio that extends to Dollar and Thrifty. Hertz also had purchased Advantage and owned that brand for a time. It's just that when Hertz bought Dollar and Thrifty in 2012, the FTC forced Hertz to sell off Advantage to maintain a competitive market.