Car rental at Stansted Airport

A week of meetings in the City, a family break in the Cotswolds or a late arrival on a budget flight — car rental at Stansted Airport starts with the keys to one of 147 cars, from £22 a day. We deliver the car to any address in London and to London Stansted Airport (STN), and the delivery address, date and time are agreed with a manager before the booking is fixed.

How car rental at Stansted Airport in London works with delivery

Car rental at Stansted Airport in London works the same way every time: we bring the car to the point you agree with a manager, hand over the keys there, and you drive away.

Where the car is handed over at Stansted Airport

Rent-Trip delivers to London Stansted Airport (STN) and to any address in the capital, and the exact hand-over point is agreed with a manager when you book. STN sits 49.4 km from the centre by straight line and 57.9 km by road, roughly 63 minutes without traffic, so the drop-off point matters more here than at a city-centre address. The airport's own Car Rental Village is a separate zone reached by a free shuttle that runs about every 10 minutes from the terminal, and some suppliers sit at the Holiday Inn or the Novotel, also behind a shuttle ride. Delivery removes that leg entirely: the car arrives where you are standing, not where a bus takes you.

Fixing the delivery address, date and time

The delivery address, the date and the time are agreed with a manager before the booking is fixed, and that is the whole mechanism. Flight times move: a 40-minute delay at STN turns a tidy 21:00 hand-over into a 21:40 one, and a web form has no way to absorb that. Agreeing the slot with a person is what keeps the hand-over aligned with a delayed arrival.

Say the flight number and the terminal when you agree the time, and confirm the slot again once you are through passport control. In our practice the bookings that go wrong are the ones where the time was set once and never checked again.

• Delivery address: the exact street address, airport terminal or meeting point is fixed with a manager before the booking is confirmed.
• Date and time: the hand-over slot is agreed the same way and can be re-confirmed if your flight shifts.

What is agreed when booking, and delivery beyond the city

Delivery outside the capital changes which hand-over point is offered, so raise the outer address before the booking is fixed rather than after.

• Outside the places we cover: delivery beyond them is arranged case by case and is not promised on the site — ask before you fix the booking.
• Deposit, excess and delivery fees: set out in the rental agreement, never a number quoted in advance.
• Fuel: the car comes clean with a full tank and must go back full — full-to-full, with any missing fuel and a refuelling service fee charged as set out in the rental agreement.

Choosing a car for your Stansted Airport rental in London

Car rental at Stansted Airport in London runs on fourteen classes and 147 cars, and the right pick depends on seats, luggage and fuel rather than on the badge. Rent-Trip lists every model with its class, gearbox and seat count, so the choice narrows before anyone reaches a booking form.

Classes and daily prices at a glance

A class «from» price is the entry car, not the top of that class — the Crossover band alone runs £22–£58, and the page as a whole reaches £3,300 for the Lamborghini Aventador SVJ. Weekly bookings are calculated at daily × 6 and monthly at daily × 21, so a £23 Comfort car works out at £138 for a week.

Small cars and crossovers for two to five people

The Hyundai Kona and Kia Rio, at £36 and £31 daily, are both five-seaters with a 1.0 L petrol engine and a manual gearbox. Economy holds 14 cars up to £72 and Crossover 14 cars up to £58, which covers the Fiat 500 with its four seats, the Volkswagen Polo at £23 and the Toyota Yaris hybrid at £25. A crossover's raised seating helps on the switch to left-hand traffic — you see the near-side kerb sooner, and the A-road verges north of the airport sit lower than the windscreen line you are used to. In our experience most single travellers and couples settle on the Kona or the Rio and never look further up the list.

Seven seats, vans and group transfers

• Minivans: six cars from £44, the Volkswagen Sharan and Volkswagen Touran with seven diesel seats, up to the Mercedes-Benz V-Class at £176.
• Passenger vans: five cars from £90, among them the Ford Tourneo 9 Seater and the Ford Transit 17 Seater at £138 a day.
• Commercial: three panel and cargo vans from £47, the Ford Transit Cargo and Mercedes-Benz Sprinter Cargo with three seats.
• Estate bodies: four cars, including the Volkswagen Golf Estate at £31 and the Kia Ceed Sportswagon at £31.

Seat count and luggage compete for the same space — a seven-seat minivan full of people leaves little room for cases, so a group of five with four large bags is often better off in a van than in an MPV.

Automatic, hybrid and electric options

101 of the 147 cars are automatic and 10 are electric, starting at £71 daily for the Nissan Leaf, with the Mercedes-Benz EQA at £171 and the Tesla Model 3 at £309. Hybrids number 13, among them the Toyota Corolla at £31 and the Honda Jazz at £32, while petrol accounts for 100 cars and diesel for 24. An electric car still pays the Congestion Charge, only at a lower rate under the current discount rules: the Cleaner Vehicle Discount for cars has ended and a 25% Congestion Charge reduction from 2 January 2026 applies only with Auto Pay.

Picking up your Stansted Airport car rental and driving off

The first ten minutes behind the wheel decide how the rest of the trip feels. A right-hand-drive car on left-hand roads, a roundabout you have never seen and a sign you read one exit too late — all of it happens in that window. The rules below are the ones that matter most for a driver collecting a car at London Stansted Airport (STN) and heading south towards the city.

Which side of the road, and how roundabouts work

Every car we supply at London Stansted Airport is right-hand drive, so the gear lever sits to your left and the near-side mirror looks out over the kerb. Traffic keeps to the left unless signs or markings say otherwise, under Highway Code rule 160, and when you turn you stay nearer the left-hand edge of the road under rule 183. At roundabouts you give way to traffic approaching from your right, per rule 185, and you travel round clockwise. Reading the exit number off the advance sign before you enter beats counting exits once you are circling — on a five-exit roundabout the count is where most first-day errors start.

Speed limits, phones and seat belts

• Built-up areas: 30 mph (48 km/h) in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and 30 mph is the default on any lit road unless signs say otherwise.
• Single carriageway: 60 mph (96 km/h); dual carriageway and motorway: 70 mph (112 km/h).
• City zones: many streets are signed at 20 mph — the sign overrides the national figure, so read it rather than assume.
• Phones: holding and using a phone, satnav or tablet is banned even while stopped at lights — £200 and 6 penalty points, and a driver who passed under 2 years ago loses the licence. Hands-free is allowed if the device does not block your view.
• Alcohol: in England, Wales and Northern Ireland the limit is 80 mg per 100 ml of blood, 35 µg per 100 ml of breath and 107 mg per 100 ml of urine; in Scotland it is 50 / 22 / 67.
• Belts and child seats: a belt is compulsory where fitted; children need a child seat until they reach 135 cm or turn 12, whichever comes first — the fine runs up to £500.

Licences, and the charges that apply inside the city

A full, valid foreign licence lets you drive for 12 months from your last entry into Great Britain — England, Wales and Scotland — and that is the only document rule stated here; anything about an IDP or an age limit is agreed when booking. Our cars come clean with a full tank and go back full-to-full; a missing tank and the refuelling service fee are charged as set out in the rental agreement. Inside the city the Congestion Charge is £18 a day paid on the day or in advance, or £21 if paid by midnight on the third day after the trip, running 07:00–18:00 Monday to Friday and 12:00–18:00 at weekends and on bank holidays, and not charged from 25 December to the New Year bank holiday inclusive. ULEZ is £12.50 a day for non-compliant vehicles, 24 hours a day, seven days a week except 25 December, across all 32 boroughs. Who pays road charges, tolls and penalty notices on a hired car is agreed when booking — check the plate against the TfL vehicle checker before you commit, because a Euro 4 petrol or Euro 6 diesel car pays no ULEZ charge.

Charges a Stansted Airport car rental meets inside London

A car collected at Stansted can be in the centre in about 63 minutes without traffic, and from that point the drive is governed by two charging schemes, toll crossings and a set of driving rules. Each one is handled separately, and anything about who settles what is agreed when booking.

Congestion Charge and ULEZ

• Congestion Charge zone: the area inside the Inner Ring Road — Pentonville Road, City Road, Old Street, Commercial Street, Mansell Street, Tower Bridge Road, New Kent Road, Elephant & Castle, Kennington Lane, Vauxhall Bridge Road, Park Lane, Edgware Road, Marylebone Road and Euston Road, which themselves sit outside or on the boundary.
• ULEZ: £12.50 a day for a non-compliant vehicle, round the clock, every day of the year apart from one date, across all 32 boroughs; the M25 is not inside the zone.
• ULEZ standards: petrol cars and vans must be at least Euro 4, diesels Euro 6 (roughly September 2016 onwards), motorcycles Euro 3; vans and minibuses up to 3.5 tonnes pay too if they fall short.
• Penalty notices: £180 for either scheme, reduced to £90 if paid within 14 days; a Congestion Charge PCN rises to £270 after a charge certificate.

The Congestion Charge has moved from £5 through £8, £10, £11.50 and £15 to £18. Electric cars lost the 100% Cleaner Vehicle Discount — from 02.01.2026 a car pays £13.50 instead of £18 with Auto Pay, and there is no discount without it. In our experience the plate, not the driver's intention, decides the bill: run the registration through the TfL vehicle checker before you leave the airport, because a diesel registered before September 2016 owes ULEZ on every day it is driven anywhere in the 32 boroughs, not just the days you drive into the middle.

Tolls, tunnels and the road you take out of Stansted

Dartford is payable by midnight the following day; its PCN is £70, £35 if paid within 14 days, £105 if unpaid. Tunnel penalties are £180, £90 within 14 days, one PCN a day at most, and the rates above are the current ones. A route from Stansted down the M11 and round the M25 can miss both tunnels entirely — check the crossing before you pick a lane, since the Dartford charge is per crossing and a return leg doubles it.

Speed, alcohol and phone rules

Urban limits are 30 mph (48 km/h) across England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, 60 mph (96 km/h) on a single carriageway, 70 mph (112 km/h) on a dual carriageway and on a motorway; lit roads default to 30 mph unless signs say otherwise, and many zones here post 20 mph, so the sign outranks the habit. The alcohol limit south of the border is 80 mg per 100 ml of blood, 35 µg per 100 ml of breath and 107 mg per 100 ml of urine. Holding and using a phone, satnav or tablet is banned even at a red light: £200 and 6 points, and a driver within 2 years of passing loses the licence; hands-free is allowed if the device does not block the view. Seat belts are compulsory where fitted, children need a child seat until they reach 135 cm or turn 12, whichever comes first, with a fine up to £500.

A foreign licence is valid for 12 months from your last entry into Great Britain. That clock, not the rental dates, is what to plan around — a new entry restarts it, so a long stay should be checked against it before booking.

Longer bookings on a Stansted Airport car rental in London

A week or a month behind the wheel changes the maths of car rental at Stansted Airport in London. On this page a weekly booking runs from £132 and a monthly booking from £462, both calculated from the daily rate of the car you choose — weekly as the daily price times six, monthly as the daily price times twenty-one. A longer Stansted Airport booking is therefore not a separate product with its own tariff: it is the same 147 cars, priced over a longer window.

What a longer booking costs

• Weekly rate: the daily price of the car multiplied by six, so the cheapest weekly figure on the page starts at £132.
• Monthly rate: the daily price multiplied by twenty-one, which puts the cheapest monthly figure at £462.
• Longer than a month: beyond that the term is agreed with a manager when booking, not calculated on the site.
• Class does not change the multiplier: a £36 Hyundai Kona and a £3,300 Lamborghini Aventador SVJ scale by the same six and twenty-one.
• Delivery: the address, date and time are agreed with a manager before the booking is fixed, on a week or a month just as on a single day.

The multiplier is worth understanding before you pick a class. At daily times six, the difference between an Economy car at the bottom of its band and a Comfort car two steps up compounds across a week, and the gap between those two classes is what most travellers are actually choosing between.

Choosing a class for a week or a month

A week of motorway driving and a month of daily errands pull in different directions. For a long stay the Rent-Trip pick is a hybrid or automatic: 101 of the 147 cars on the page are automatic, and the hybrid models — the Toyota Yaris at £25 a day, the Toyota Corolla at £31, the Honda Jazz at £32 — take the sting out of stop-start traffic without a charging routine attached. The Nissan Leaf is the cheapest electric on the page at £71 a day, and 10 electric cars in total are listed, though a month of charging needs a plan for where the car sleeps.

Luggage and seats matter more over a month than over a weekend. A 7-seat minivan carries the family but leaves little room for cases once every seat is filled, while an estate such as the Volkswagen Golf Estate at £31 a day or the Kia Ceed Sportswagon at £31 swallows bags without adding seats you will not use. For a small group on a long stay, that trade is usually the one worth making.

Fuel, condition and the end of a long rental

Every petrol, diesel and hybrid car leaves with a full tank and comes back with a full tank (for an electric car the return conditions are in the rental agreement) — the full-to-full rule applies however long the booking runs, and the missing fuel plus a refuelling service fee are charged as set out in the rental agreement if the tank comes back short. No pre-paid tank or full-to-empty option is offered on the site, so the practical habit is to refuel on the approach to the hand-back point rather than the morning of departure. Fuel prices move, so a month of commuting is a line worth budgeting for.

A month is also long enough that the car's condition becomes a shared responsibility. Check the tank and the bodywork at the start, keep the paperwork in the glovebox, and raise anything unusual with us early rather than at the end — a slow puncture found in week one is a repair, one found at hand-back is a conversation. In our experience the customers who photograph the dashboard on day one are the ones who close a long booking without argument.

If the trip may stretch past the booked term, say so when booking rather than on the last day: the extension depends on the car being free, and a manager can only hold it if the request arrives before the next customer does.

Day trips from your Stansted Airport car rental base

A hire car from STN is not only a way to reach a hotel. The airport sits on the M11, and from that junction the country around London opens up: Cambridge and the university colleges, the cathedrals and half-timbered streets of Canterbury, the stone circle at Stonehenge, the villages of the Cotswolds, Windsor Castle and the coast at Brighton. All of these are day-trip distances rather than overnight expeditions, and a car makes the timing yours instead of a timetable's.

Cambridge is the shortest run of the three from London Stansted Airport — north up the M11 rather than south towards the city, which is why a car collected at STN suits it better than one collected in the centre. Canterbury and Oxford sit further out in opposite directions, so they pair badly with each other on the same day but work well as separate outings across a week. The practical point about all three is parking: historic centres have limited spaces and rising hourly rates, so a park-and-ride on the edge beats circling the one-way system.

• Stonehenge: an open-site monument with a visitor centre, best reached early because the coach parties arrive mid-morning.
• The Cotswolds: a spread of villages rather than one destination, so the drive between them is the trip and a small car is easier on the narrow lanes.
• Windsor: close enough to combine with a morning in the city, with the castle and the Long Walk in one visit.
• Brighton: a seaside run south, where the seafront parking fills quickly on warm weekends.

An estate body such as the Volkswagen Golf Estate at £31 a day earns its keep on these routes — four estates are listed on the page — because luggage for a family of four fits behind the rear seats without anyone holding a bag on their lap.

The drive back to STN is 57.9 km by road from the centre, about 63 minutes without traffic, and that figure assumes nothing goes wrong on the M11 or the North Circular. Build an extra hour into the plan on a weekday morning or a Friday afternoon, and plan a refuelling stop close to the airport on the final approach rather than hunting for a filling station at the last minute. Full-to-full is the rule on every petrol, diesel and hybrid car we supply, so a stop on the approach is cheaper in time than a search at the end.

Comparing classes for a Stansted Airport car rental in London

Fourteen classes and 147 cars is more choice than most travellers need, and the honest answer is that the decision usually comes down to three questions: how many seats, how much luggage, and whether the driver wants an automatic. Everything else — badge, engine size, colour — matters far less than those three. The table below puts the classes side by side on the criteria that actually change the trip.

Side by side on seats, luggage and gearbox

The seat count is the number the car is homologated for, not a comfortable number. Five adults in a five-seat hatchback with four suitcases is a squeeze, and the same group in a seven-seat minivan with the third row folded gives everyone room — which is why the class choice should follow the luggage, not the headcount alone.

Where the money actually goes

• Under £30 a day: Economy, Crossover and the cheapest Comfort cars — the Citroen C3 Aircross and Fiat 500 at £22, the Seat Leon at £23, the Toyota Yaris hybrid at £25.
• £30 to £50 a day: the SUVs, the Toyota RAV4 at £40, the Kia Sportage at £35, the Kia Sorento at £49.
• £50 to £100 a day: larger sedans, seven-seat minivans and the entry Premium cars, the Audi Q3 at £55, the Volkswagen Touran at £65, the Volvo XC60 at £91.
• Above £100 a day: the upper Premium and Luxury bands, the Range Rover Sport at £226, the Mercedes-Benz S-Class at £294.
• Above £900 a day: Exotic and the top Sports, Luxury and Convertibles cars, from the Bentley Bentayga at £920 to the Lamborghini Aventador SVJ at £3,300.

The jump between bands is not linear. Moving from an Economy car to a Comfort car costs a few pounds a day; moving from Comfort to Premium costs several times that, and the difference buys space and finish rather than capability. For most trips the Comfort band is where the value sits, and the Premium and Luxury bands are chosen for a reason rather than by default.

Matching the class to the journey

A city break of two or three days rarely needs more than an Economy or Crossover car — the Fiat 500 with its four seats and the Kia Picanto at £27 both park easily in tight streets and cost little to run. A family week with cases and a pushchair moves the answer to an SUV or an estate: the Kia Sportage at £35 and the Volkswagen Passat Variant at £36 both swallow a full boot. Groups of six or more should look at minivans first and vans second, because a seven-seat MPV with every seat filled has almost no luggage space left. Business travel is the one case where the class is chosen for the arrival rather than the drive. The BMW 1 Series at £63 and the Mercedes-Benz C-Class at £62 sit in a band where the car is part of the meeting, and 101 of the 147 cars are automatic, so an automatic is easy to secure whatever the class. Our own advice is to book the smallest car that fits the luggage and the seats, then spend the difference on a better hotel — the drive is rarely the part of the trip anyone remembers.

Walk round the car with the engine off and the lights on, and look at the things a checklist does not: the spare or the repair kit, the warning lights on the dashboard after ignition, the fuel gauge against the full-tank rule, and the child seat anchor points if you travel with a child seat. Photograph the car before you drive away and again at hand-back.

Reading the agreement before a Stansted Airport car rental in London

The rental agreement is the document that decides what happens if something goes wrong, and it is worth ten minutes before the keys change hands. It is not a formality: the deposit, the excess, the fuel rule and the delivery fee all live there, and none of them is quoted as a figure on this page. What follows is what to look for rather than what the numbers are.

Deposit, excess and what is not included

The deposit and the excess are the two numbers people ask about last and should ask about first. Neither is a price for the rental; the deposit is held against the car and the excess is what the driver is liable for in a claim, both as set out in the rental agreement, which is why the car's condition at hand-over matters.

• Deposit: the amount held against the car is set out in the rental agreement and is not quoted in advance on the site.
• Insurance excess: the figure the driver is liable for in a claim is set out in the rental agreement, not on this page.
• Delivery fee: where a fee applies it is stated in the agreement, so ask before the booking is fixed if the hand-over point is unusual.
• Fuel: the car is supplied with a full tank and must be returned full — full-to-full — with missing fuel and a refuelling service fee charged as set out in the agreement.
• No pre-paid tank: a pre-paid tank or full-to-empty option is not offered on the site, so the full-to-full rule is the only one that applies.

Documents, age and the conditions agreed at booking

A full, valid foreign licence lets you drive for 12 months from your last entry into Great Britain — England, Wales and Scotland — and that is the only document rule stated here. Anything about an international driving permit, a minimum age, a young-driver surcharge, the cards accepted for the deposit or a territory limit is agreed when booking, because those conditions are not the law and not fixed on this page. The same applies to who pays road charges, tolls and penalty notices on a hired car: that is agreed when booking, so raise it there rather than assuming.

What to check on the car itself

Check the plate against the TfL vehicle checker before you commit, because a diesel registered before September 2016 owes ULEZ on every day it is driven inside the 32 boroughs, and a Euro 4 petrol or Euro 6 diesel pays no ULEZ charge. That single check can change the class you choose, not just the bill. A slow puncture found in the first hour is a repair; the same puncture found at the end of the rental is a conversation about who caused it, and photos taken at the start settle it in a minute.