What each operator will and won’t tell you before you book
The standard excess is the most you can be charged if the car is damaged. It is not a fee — you only pay it if something happens — but it is the number that says how much risk you are carrying. Here is who publishes it.
| Operator | Excess | Standard excess (AUD) | Bond held at pickup |
|---|---|---|---|
| Avis | Published | $5,900 / $6,900 / $7,900 By class: small to large, then 4WD and luxury, then the Signature Series. The figure appears on a protections page, not in the terms document. | $200 Up to $400 on a debit card for commercial vehicles. |
| Budget | Published | $5,900 / $6,900 By class, and stated as including the admin fee, card surcharge and GST. Its terms document is the best-dated of the ten. | $200 $400 for commercial vehicles. |
| No Birds (was Bayswater) | Published | $5,000 A single flat figure across the fleet — unusual. Windscreen, tyres, lost keys and a lost satnav all sit inside it rather than being excluded. | $2,000 Ten times the Avis or Budget hold, reduced to $300 if you take their damage waiver. A credit check also applies. |
| Apex | Counter only | Not published Concedes the excess varies by vehicle group, then declines to publish the groups. Publishes the reduced figure you can buy down to, but not the baseline it reduces from. | Not published Not published. Release can take 7–10 working days. |
| East Coast | Counter only | Not published Same pattern as Apex: publishes the reduced liability, not the standard excess. | $1,000 For first-time local renters within 150km of a branch. |
| Europcar | Counter only | Not published Shown on the rental agreement only. Its protections page describes the excess without ever naming a number. | Not published Not published. |
| Hertz | Counter only | Not published Shown on the rental agreement only. | $500 or $1,000 For first-time renters; higher for prestige vehicles. Otherwise shown on the agreement. |
| Sixt | Counter only | Not published Called a Damage Recovery Fee and shown on the rental document only. Sixt also charges a separate single-vehicle accident fee on top, also unpublished. | Not published Displayed at booking. |
| Thrifty | Counter only | Not published Its protections page publishes the daily price of the waiver products and no excess figure at all — not even the reduced one. | Not published Not established. |
“The amount shown on the Rental Document”
That single phrase, in almost identical wording, is what 6 of the nine say instead of a number. It is not an oversight. It means the first moment you can discover your liability is at the counter, holding a booking you have already paid for, at the end of a flight, with a queue behind you.
Two operators go a step further and publish the reduced excess you get after buying their product — without publishing the figure it reduces from. You are shown what you are being saved, and not what you are being saved from.
The exclusions that survive whatever you buy
This is the part that catches people, and it is near-universal across the industry.
| Excluded by default | What that covers in practice |
|---|---|
| Overhead damage | Anything above the top of the windscreens — car park structures, low awnings, branches, boom gates. |
| Underbody damage | Anything below the door seal — kerbs, gutters, speed humps, rough road. |
| Water damage | Total or partial immersion. Floodwater and beach driving both qualify. |
| Tyres and windscreen | Excluded unless you buy the separate windscreen and tyre product. |
| Roof and glazing | Grouped with overhead damage by most operators. |
Buying excess reduction lowers the number you are liable for. It does not widen what you are covered for. Damage in the categories above sits outside the cover entirely, and a zero-excess product does not bring it back inside — you pay the full repair.
Notice what those categories have in common: they are exactly what happens in a real single-car incident. Clipping a kerb is underbody. A car park pillar is overhead. Driving through water after a storm is water damage.
A court has already ruled on this
In April 2016 the Federal Court found that Europcar’s website misleadingly represented that a renter’s liability for accident damage was capped at a damage liability fee of $3,650 — when that cap did not apply to overhead, underbody or water damage, even for customers who had bought additional coverage. Europcar was penalised $100,000, the terms were declared void, and it was ordered to run corrective advertising.
That case is why this page leads with the exclusions rather than the figures. A published excess without the carve-outs beside it has already been found to be misleading — and every operator in the table above relies on those same three carve-outs.
Do you have a right to know before you book?
Essentially no, and this surprised us. There is no cap on rental excess in Australian law and no statutory requirement to disclose it before booking. We checked the consumer regulator’s own rental-car industry guidance and its fair-trading guidance for the sector: both talk about what operators should do and what is good practice. Neither creates an obligation.
The one instrument that does require disclosure at the point of booking is the car rental industry’s own voluntary code of practice, which also limits single-vehicle-accident charges to the lesser of the excess or the actual repair cost — so you cannot be charged a $5,900 excess for a $400 scratch. But it binds only its signatories, and the signatory list is not published, so we cannot tell you which operators above are covered by it. We asked the question; that gap is the honest answer.
Your reliable right is narrower than it should be: you can read the excess on the rental agreement before you sign it at the counter.
What to do with this
- Ask for the excess in writing before you pay, naming the vehicle class. Six operators will not give it to you on their website; they will generally give it to you by email or phone if asked directly.
- Ask what is held on your card, and for how long after return. The spread here is enormous — $200 at Avis and Budget against $2,000 at No Birds. On a modest credit limit that is the number that ruins a trip, not the excess.
- Ask whether the underbody, tyres and windscreen are included. Usually not, by default.
- If you are driving anywhere unsealed, get it written onto the agreement. A verbal yes at the desk is worth nothing against a printed exclusion.
The same question for New Zealand, where we read all ten suppliers’ gravel-road clauses →
Why there are no product recommendations on this page
Excess reduction is an insurance product, and in Australia comparing or ranking insurance is regulated financial advice requiring a licence we do not hold. So this page tells you what the excess is, who publishes it and what the exclusions do, and stops there. We do not tell you whether to buy the counter product, we do not compare the standalone alternatives, and we earn nothing either way.
One factual note for completeness: Enterprise and National closed their Australian operations on 1 February 2026, so they are not in the table. Sites still listing them as bookable in Australia are out of date.