Demand for Car Rental Apps Hits All-Time High

Ariel Ariel
7/1/22

This is a single insight from This Week in Apps #120 - Let's Roam Around the Cabin. Check out the full article for more insights.


Summer is finally here, and with it, something many of us have been missing for the last few years. Travel!

Car rental via app has been around for a long time thanks to pioneers like Zipcar but really started taking off just a few short years ago. In Q2 of 2022, downloads hit a new all-time high, beating the previous all-time high set all the way back in 2019.

I added up the downloads of the leading car rental apps in the US, which include popular names such as Avis, Hertz, Enterprise, Budget, and SIXT, and also mixed in app-only platforms Zipcar, Getaround, and Turo. Together, the group saw a total of 2.7 million new downloads in Q2 in the US, according to our estimates.

Turo was, by far, the most in-demand option, earning roughly a third of all downloads after seeing downloads double quarter over quarter.

Turn is a service that lets car owners, usually of higher-end and exotic types, rent their cars out to app users (aka. strangers) for short periods. Very different than the traditional car rental model. Getaround does something similar but for regular cars and is also one of the top downloads of this group.

Are traditional car rental companies obsolete? Not yet, but having used both in the recent past, I prefer the non-traditional option for its simplicity and speed. I expect more people to do that in the future, forcing traditional rental companies to evolve.

App Intelligence for Everyone!

The insights in this report come right out of our App Intelligence platform, which offers access to download and revenue estimates, installed SDKs, and more! Learn more about the tools or schedule a demo with our team to get started.

Are you a Journalist? You can get access to our app and market intelligence for free through the Appfigures for Journalists program. Contact us for more details.

All figures included in this report are estimated. Unless specified otherwise, estimated revenue is always net, meaning it's the amount the developer earned after Apple and Google took their fee.


Related Resources

GPT-4o Leads ChatGPT to Biggest Spike in App Revenue Ever!
Insights
GPT-4o Leads ChatGPT to Biggest Spike in App Revenue Ever!

Earlier this week, OpenAI introduced GPT-4o, its latest update to roll out of the lab. Many have called GPT-4o magical w...

Game Emulators Took Over the App Store Briefly - Will The Trend Continue?
Insights
Game Emulators Took Over the App Store Briefly - Will The Trend Continue?

Last month, Apple allowed game emulators into the App Store for the first time ever. That created a lot of excitement fr...