Indian Ocean · Mauritius
Mauritius Car Hire: Compare Island-Wide Rental Deals
Compare live island-wide rental cars, collect at SSR airport or have one delivered to your hotel.
Island-wide Delivery
Automatics
No Deposit available
Free Cancellation
Mauritius
No credit card or low deposit
Full insurance from €5/day
Up to 50% cheaper than portals
Pickup at Mauritius Airport
Curated results
Mauritius on the podium
One car takes the whole stage. Two get a card. The rest get a line.
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One island, one car, no transfers to book
Mauritius is small enough that a hire car changes the shape of the holiday rather than just the logistics. The island runs roughly 65 km north to south and 45 km across, a motorway links the airport to Port Louis and Grand Baie, and the coast roads join everything in between. Nothing you would want to see is more than about ninety minutes from your room, which is why so many visitors who planned on taxis end up wishing they had picked up keys on arrival.
This site lists what the local suppliers actually have available for your dates, rather than a brochure fleet. Roughly 140 cars show up on a typical search out of SSR airport, and the spread is narrow on purpose: Mauritius is a country of Suzuki Swifts, Kia Picantos, Toyota Yaris and Hyundai i10s, with a thinner layer of compact crossovers and seven seat people carriers above them. Day rates in that band sit around EUR 25 to EUR 55 depending on season and how far ahead you book.
Two things surprise first time visitors. The first is that essentially every car on the island is an automatic, so the gearbox question answers itself. The second is that suppliers will bring the car to you: the resort strips on all four coasts are listed as their own pickup points, and a hotel handover costs the same as an airport one at most suppliers. Browse the area pages if you would rather start the hire at the hotel than at the terminal.
What people said after they landed
Read all reviews“The car was waiting at the airport barrier when we came out of arrivals at half past midnight, which is exactly when most Paris flights land. We were in Belle Mare before two.”
“Automatic Suzuki Swift for nine days, dropped at our guesthouse in Flic en Flac. Nothing was held on the card, which is the whole reason I booked here rather than a counter.”
“Driving on the left made the first hour easy for us. The lane discipline on the coast road near Tamarin takes longer to get used to than the side of the road does.”
The roads you booked the car for
Sugar cane on both sides for most of the centre, then the road drops to the water and stays there.
Driving here: left hand side, small roads, short distances
Mauritius drives on the left, a habit inherited from the British administration and shared with the South African and Indian visitors who make up a large part of the island's tourism. If you are arriving from continental Europe it is the single adjustment worth thinking about before you pull out of the car park, and it takes most drivers about an hour to stop reaching for a door handle instead of a gear lever.
Away from the M1 and M2 motorways the roads are narrow, kerbed and busy with buses, dogs and scooters. Village speed limits of 40 km/h are real and enforced with fixed cameras. None of this is difficult, but it does mean a compact car is genuinely the better tool here than a large one, and it is why local fleets are built the way they are.
Before the first junction
- Keep left, overtake on the right, and give way clockwise on roundabouts.
- 110 km/h on the motorway, 80 on open road, 40 through villages.
- Summer rain arrives hard and clears fast. Slow down rather than stop.
- Filling stations thin out after dark outside the towns. Fill up in the afternoon.
Where suppliers will meet you
Every row below is a delivery point with its own live listing, not a branch office. Drive times are from the airport, taken outside the Port Louis rush.
| Resort area | Coast | Drive from SSR | Listed today |
|---|---|---|---|
| Grand Baie | North | 55 min | 131 cars |
| Flic en Flac | West | 50 min | 139 cars |
| Belle Mare | East | 45 min | 139 cars |
| Trou aux Biches | North west | 55 min | 130 cars |
| Le Morne | South west | 60 min | 111 cars |
| Mahebourg | South east | 10 min | 115 cars |
| Trou d'Eau Douce | East | 50 min | 128 cars |
What the car is actually for
The south west, in one day
Chamarel's coloured earth, the waterfall above it, Black River Gorges and the viewpoint over Le Morne are all on one loop that starts and ends at your hotel. There is no bus that does it, and a taxi for the day costs more than three days of car hire.
65 km
End to end
Cap Malheureux in the north to Souillac in the south, on a good road most of the way.
Grand Bassin at dawn
The crater lake is a working temple. Getting there before the coaches needs your own car and an early alarm, nothing else.
Dinner outside the resort
The reason most families give for hiring. Half board is fine for three nights, and then you want the street food at Port Louis, a table in Grand Baie, or the fishermen's places at Mahebourg. All of them are a twenty minute drive and an expensive taxi.
Pick your dates, see the real fleet
Live availability from local suppliers across Mauritius, up to 50% cheaper than the big portals, with free cancellation on many offers.
Book nowQuestions people ask before they book
A licence in English or French, held for at least one year, is normally accepted on its own. An International Driving Permit is cheap insurance against a supplier with a stricter in-house rule, so if your licence is in another language or another script, bring one and check the specific offer before you pay.
The left, as in the United Kingdom, South Africa and India. Roundabouts turn clockwise and you give way to traffic already on them. Almost every car listed here is an automatic, so there is no gear lever to learn with your other hand.
Yes, and it is the normal arrangement for most of the coast. Suppliers list separate delivery points for the resort strips, so you can start the hire at Grand Baie, Flic en Flac, Belle Mare or a dozen other places and skip the airport entirely.
December through April, and February is the busiest single month on the island. That window is also cyclone season, so book earlier than you would in a European summer and keep a free cancellation option if your dates are soft.
Mauritius is about 65 km top to bottom, so nothing is more than a ninety minute drive away. A week of half day trips covers Chamarel, Black River Gorges, Grand Bassin, Port Louis and the east coast without moving hotel once.