Turo: Make Money With Peer-to-Peer Car Rentals

What is Turo? Review:

Turo is a peer-to-peer car rental service that allows you to list cars for rent, setting your own price, availability and terms.

How it works

Listing a car on Turo is fairly easy. You register and take photographs of your vehicle and decide what to charge to rent it out. Turo has pricing tools you can use that estimate rates based on car rental rates in your area.

There are some rules about the types of cars you can list, however. Not surprisingly, they must be in good working condition, less than 12 years old (unless you’re listing a classic car); and need to have a clean title and registered to be driven on public roads.

If someone wants to rent your car, they message you through the site with the dates and their trip details. Vehicle owners determine whether or not to accept the rental. If they accept, they instruct the renter on how to meet them and exchange keys.

Turo Review:

Turo is the premier peer-to-peer car rental site in the market, challenging big rental companies like Avis and Hertz. What’s fairly amazing about this site is that it compares favorably to the big rental companies in customer experience, and delivers solid side hustle income to car owners as well.

To cut to the chase: We recommend this site highly both to car owners looking for rental income and to consumers, who want to rent a car. Here’s why.

Car-owner experience

You set the price for your rental. You also determine exactly how you’ll meet the renter to swap keys. This can be done in person or by simply instructing the renter where to find the car and key. The site provides instructions for either case, which involve taking copious and detailed photographs to show the condition of the car when it was picked up — and returned.

This process protects both car owner and renter, as we’ll detail more thoroughly below.

Car owners say business is brisk, with even new cars paying for themselves purely through the site’s rentals. (For more details, see our blog post: “Making Cars Earn their Keep.“)

Commissions and fees

Turo takes a commission on each rental. However the commission rate depends on the amount of insurance coverage you, the vehicle owner, choose for your car. Buyers can also buy insurance coverage to protect them from having to cover deductibles and losses that are excluded under their own policies.

Pay

The vehicle owner gets from 90% to 65% of the rental fees, depending on the type of insurance coverage they choose. Waive the insurance and you get 90% of the rental fees; take full coverage and you get just 65%.

But don’t waive the coverage without a back-up. Unless you have commercial lines coverage on your vehicle, your ordinary auto coverage is not going to cover your car when you have a renter. Moreover, a typical policy has a deductible that would prevent it from kicking in when someone simply dents or scratches the vehicle.

If you take out Turo’s premium coverage, which has no deductible, it will compensate you for lost rental fees and provide a replacement vehicle while yours is being repaired. In our opinion, it’s well worth the cost.

Owners are paid roughly three days after the rental is complete via Stripe, PayPal or direct deposit.

The renter experience

While SideHusl.com evaluates side gig platforms from the standpoint of the side hustler — in this case, the car owner — rental marketplaces are only as good as the customers they bring you. Thus, it’s important to evaluate how well this site draws and serves customers too.

Thus, we’ve rented numerous cars through this marketplace and found the customer experience to be as good — or better — than when renting from a traditional car rental agency. That starts with knowing exactly what car you’re renting.

Exact car

When you rent from Avis or Enterprise, you’re typically told that you’re going to get a compact “like” a Honda Civic or a Hyundai Elantra. But you don’t know specifically what car you’re going to end up with until you complete the transaction at the rental car counter. With Turo, you pick the precise car you rent.

Each car is listed on the site, with details and photos, as well as the day rate and weekly rates, where applicable. The car’s owner information is also listed, as are ratings reflecting the experiences of previous renters.

Communicating with owners

When you rent here, you are also renting directly from the car’s owner. You will message this person with details of your trip before he or she approves the rental. Usually, you’ll also work out how you’re going to pick up the vehicle.

In several instances, the car owner has actually met me at the airport to hand-off their keys. That was dramatically more convenient than finding the rental car bus and spending the next 45 minutes waiting in line to get a vehicle. In one case, the Turo owner simply told me where the car was parked and the lockbox code. While that was not as cool as getting picked up at the airport, there were no lines to wait in and the process was relatively seamless.

Returning the car

Returns are much the same — negotiated directly with the owner of the car. There’s one caution here. If the car’s owner meets you at the airport for the return, it works much like it does when you’re returning a car to Hertz. You both walk around it, make sure there’s no damage, and you’re on your way. But, if you return the car to a parking lot and leave a key in the lockbox, it’s up to you to take copious photographs to prove that you’re leaving the car in the same good condition as when you rented it.

Turo has a detailed tutorial showing exactly what photographs you should take before leaving the car to establish that you have no further liability. Don’t ignore this step. If you have the requisite photos, the site will protect you from owner claims of damage.

Worst-case scenarios

What happens if you do damage a car? The owner gets an estimate for the repair. If you think the estimate is out of line, you can contact Turo’s customer support.

I went through this process personally when I scratched the bumper of one of the cars I rented through the site. The estimate was a shocking $1,200. Turo, however, investigated and came to the conclusion that the damage could be repaired for roughly $300. That’s what I was billed.

I paid the invoice with the credit card I had on file and the case was closed. The process was relatively painless and quick. Indeed, it was far better than the experience when renting through a traditional agency, where the rental company might try to charge you for an indeterminate number of days for “loss of use.”

However, not every damage claim goes as well. Both hosts and customers sometimes complain about damage done to their vehicles — or damages claimed by owners that the renters say were exaggerated or fabricated.

Two things I learned from personal experience: Take photos. Lots of photos, before and after the rental. (This applies to both renters and owners.) The site appears to encourage owners and renters to work out problems between themselves, without the site’s intervention. But if you think the other party — renter or owner — is not playing fair, contact the site and have them do their own investigation.

Recommendations

Turo is the best-rated opportunity in this category. However, we recommend the comprehensive insurance and that you carefully inspect your vehicle the moment it’s returned. Although Turo does some background checking on renters, it’s also worthwhile to out the renter’s reviews. You can sign up with Turo here.

(Customers should also check the host’s reviews and take copious photographs when they leave the car, as noted above).

Other sites where you can rent your car to other drivers: GetAround and HyreCar. We don’t recommend either of them. Want an idea of what can go wrong? Read the comments on our HyreCar review or this Ron Lieber column in the New York Times.

However, if you have a classic car to rent, we do recommend signing up with Giggster. Giggster rents classic vehicles (and homes of all types) to photographers and filmmakers. Cars rent on that site by the hour for, sometimes, hundreds of dollars per hour.

What their car listers say: (from Reddit)

I rent out a super deluxe class car for 300 a day, that carries an age minimum and a large refundable deposit. And I have only had renters who treat the car just as good, if not better than I do.

I haven’t had any problem renters yet. But I did have to deny one for having a recent very negative review from another local host, and I’d do it again in a second. The only downside is it counts against my hosting stats. I don’t think denying people with bad ratings within the last two weeks or so should hurt you. I do Turo for extra pocket cash. But I’d drop it if my car was being abused. Luckily I rent a model that prices out the riff raff.

Only rent out cars that’s 10k or cheaper. Sit back and rake in the cash.

Bad experience

Me and my wife had two cars we decided to post on TURO for one year as an experiment to see if it was good. 9 out of 10 people who rented were brand new first time renters, so they had no rating. We were nervous to give our cars to people with no history. In fact, all we had was a first name and sometimes a picture of them, sometimes not. So we were putting our faith in TURO and it’s vetting process 100%.Long story short, we had a lot of drug addicts. We had people damage our cars pretty bad several times. One guy parked in a red zone and I got the ticket on my insurance. We had people not return our car several days past the deadline. So many nightmare experiences.

From Consumer Affairs

With Turo, I was able to pick the exact vehicle I wanted to rent, and was provided all the features available with the vehicle prior to selecting the vehicle. There were no additional fees for Apple Car Play and/or GPS, and one of my favorite features of all…. I got to skip the long line at the rental counter.

I turned to renting from Turo when Enterprise changed their weekend hours making it more difficult to return without being charged for an extra day I didn’t need. And I can usually find more affordable rentals through Turo as well. It’s definitely better & worth trying out. Anytime I’ve had a problem & couldn’t get ahold of a host (which has only happened twice) Turo has worked with me & gotten my issue taken care of quickly.

From the BBB

I am a host on Turo, and have three cars and rent them on a luxury island with great service. Turo does a terrible job supporting its hosts. They recently changed the all star status requirements to make it that if a customer does not rate their trip, it counts the same as if they rated it 0 stars out of 5. This is so pointless and backwards. What am I supposed to do? Harass every guest to leave a review?

Zero stars. Turo is a disaster, unless everything goes 100% correctly on your trip, which it never does. Once there is an issue that requires the involvement of customer service, you are lost. In my case I am due a refund for $1000 for damages that the host claimed I had done to her vehicle, which Turo then charged to my credit card instead of processing through my insurance as I requested. Later, Turo agreed to work with my insurance company to cover the damage and to give me a refund. But when my insurance company paid Turo, Turo’s customer service dragged its feet and made the process of giving me a refund impossible. Three months later I have yet to receive the money back.

Turo mishandled a damage claim against me by allowing a host to submit inflated charges, reopen a closed claim, and engage in harassment. Despite clear evidence of host misconduct, Turo continues to pursue an unjust charge of $450.42, which is inconsistent with the host’s original quote. The evidence submitted by the host shows damage that occurred after I returned the vehicle.

Updated 2/11/2025