July 26, 2026. Maui car rental prices are mixed this week. Minivan and SUV prices are lower compared to one year ago, when the Chrysler Pacifica minivan recall was causing them all to soar sky-high. But prices in all the other categories, compacts, mid-size, Jeeps, and convertibles are higher year-over-year, reflecting a structural shift that has pushed the entire market higher. Our forward-looking indicators continue to predict a drop to low-season pricing right around the corner as the busy summer travel season comes to an end. Keep reading for all the details.

Fig. 1. Prices for Maui car rental at Kahului Airport (OGG) from April 2025 until now.

HOW MUCH IS THE CHEAPEST MAUI RENTAL CAR ON JULY 27, 2026?

Every week, we list the lowest available prices for a one-week car rental from Maui's Kahului Airport (OGG), for a selection of vehicle categories, with the company offering the best price. This is our overview of Maui car rental prices for the week beginning Monday, July 27, 2026.

Category Price Company

Economy $420 Dollar

Midsize $552 Thrifty

Jeep $570 Dollar

Convertbl $510 Dollar

SUV $546 Budget

7 St SUV $646 Dollar
Minivan $877 Thrifty

The prices quoted here include all applicable taxes and fees. Prices for these vehicle types charted week-to-week for the last 14 months are illustrated in Figure 1.

These are the lowest prices in every car category: The lowest price for a compact car from Kahului Airport (OGG) this week is with Dollar, at $420/week. Mid-size cars are starting at $552/week, at Thrifty. Jeeps are starting at $570/week, from Dollar. convertibles start at $510/week, from Dollar. The cheapest standard SUV's are $546/week, at Budget. Large 7-seat SUV's are just $100 more, $646/week, at Dollar. For minivans, the lowest price is $877/week, available at Thrifty.

After several weeks of limited availability across various categories, availability and prices seem to be stabilizing. A surprising development is the low price on convertibles, that are the cheapest vehicles to rent this week aside from compact/economy cars. Convertibles are considered a premium vehicle and are normally priced to the upper end of the scale.

Figure 2. Prices for Maui car rental vehicles compared to one year earlier.

HOW DO MAUI CAR RENTAL PRICES COMPARE TO ONE YEAR AGO?

This week's prices are showing some interesting trends in a year-over-year comparison. The change in prices vs. last year displays clear effects of last year's safety recalls, along with signs that a recovery from the effects of that recall may be finally under way, more than a year later.

Vehicle Current Last Year Change

Economy $420 $277 52%

Midsize $552 $322 71%

Jeep $570 $484 18%

Convertbl $510 $354 44%

SUV $546 $844 -35%

7 st SUV $646 $1,238 -48%

Minivan $877 $2,083 -58%

These numbers are illustrated in Figure 2.

This week's year-over-year change in price was split right down the middle, with larger vehicles and multi-passenger vehicles lower compared to the year before, while prices for all others were higher.

The lowest price for an economy/compact cars increased by 52% year-over-year. For midsize cars, the increase was 71%. Jeeps increased 18%, and convertibles increased 44%. In contrast, the best price for a standard SUVs as down 35% from a year ago. For a large 7-seat SUV, it was down 48%. And for minivans, the drop was 58%.

Last year, a safety recall struck Chrysler Pacifica minivans, that were (and still are) the predominant vehicle in the Maui rental fleets. By law, hundreds (maybe up to two thousand) of these vehicles could not be rented and had to be parked awaiting repair. This caused rental prices to soar for the minivans and their SUV substitutes. A year later, the price to rent any of these vehicles are still high by historical standards, and the effects of the recall can still be seen, with a few hundred minivans still remaining idle in rental company airport base yards. High as they are now, prices in these people-mover categories are lower than they were one year ago in the immediate aftermath of the recall.

On the other hand, prices in all other categories are showing the structural increase that we've been tracking since the beginning of 2026. Among the causes for this increase, that we've explored in previous articles, are reduced competition from off-airport discounters, capacity limitations at the main airport rental facility (ConRAC), and last but not least, the advent of machine-learning processes for price management that have significantly reduced the traditional discounting that travelers had come to expect.

Figure 3. Lowest available Maui car rental prices for airport brands vs off-airport brands, highlighting the disappearance of the off-airport discount..

WHATEVER HAS HAPPENED TO THE OFF-AIRPORT DISCOUNT

This week, we illustrate one of these factors, the reduced level of price competition from off-airport brands. In previous years, prices across all vehicle categories were consistently lower for off-airport rentals compared to airport brands - the so-called "off-airport discount." Simple minds have always attribute higher prices at the airport to higher taxes and fees for vehicles rented on-location. This fallacy is repeated everywhere you look in the media.

Indeed, higher taxes and fees at the airport do account for part of this discount. But this was never the full story, and as we've demonstrated in previous articles, taxes and fees were never enough to explain the full amount of the actual savings on off-airport rentals. The more significant contributing factor - more than the taxes and fees - was a double edged combination of aggressive discounting by the off-airport brands, intended to lure customers and overcome the perceived inconvenience of transit from the airport to nearby off-airport locations, coupled with an aggressive "convenience premium" charged by the airport brands - in other words they charged more for their rentals because they could.

This situation was stable for years and it became accepted as part of conventional wisdom that you could save money by enduring a short free shuttle ride from the airport to pick up your car. However, the situation began to change drastically in late 2025 into early 2026, as the off-airport price leader, Ace Rent A Car, began quietly to wind down operations, effectively ceasing to take reservations in January 2026, and finally closing its doors - literally leaving its location with the building and vehicle parking completely vacant - in early March.

What happened then was completely unexpected. Off-airport pricing went from being predictably lower to being highly volatile and chaotic and more often than not, the off-airport prices were higher than prices from airport brands, at least when it came to the short lead-time and last-minute (spot) prices that we track in our data collection. The smaller remaining off-airport brands frequently sold out weeks in advance of high-demand dates. This drove their short-lead and spot prices to levels higher than the airport brands. This is a hard-to-imagine almost dystopian reversal where up became down and down became up - it has even led us to consider making changes to our data collection methodology to make it reflect the changed market conditions more accurately. Almost all of a sudden, after nearly fourteen years of collecting price data in Maui's car rental market, we find that the methods that served us well for all this time are in need of revision.. But much more significantly for everybody, and, as we've discussed previously, the shift in the market has led to what we believe to be a permanent and significant structural raising of the "price floor" for rentals at Kahului Airport (OGG) - and this is amply clear in the weekly price charts and the monthly price average summaries that we publish regularly (see below for an example).

If you're looking for one data point of confirmation, just look at this week's price chart that compares lowest available prices from airport brands vs. off-airport brands. The airport prices are lower in every category, with convertibles completely unavailable off-airport, and the prices of minivans and large SUV's off-airport reflect a nearly sold out condition off-airport.

For clarification, our price surveys include only Maui car rental companies listed in the Online Travel Agent (OTA) systems that include familiar names like Travelocity, Expedia, booking-dot-com, and so on. A requirement for off-airport listing at an airport locale is for the listing company to provide free shuttle service to and from the airport for its customers. So, what about the multitude of local home-grown rental companies and ride-share providers, that we do not include in our formal surveys. Do they step in to fill in the gap for affordable rentals to budget travelers? In fairness, they do provide some relief, but, the profit motive being what it is, they have hiked up their prices to keep up with the big players. The rising tide of rental car prices in Maui is lifting up all car rental providers, whether they be corporate, local business, or ride-share individuals.

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Figure 3. Three full years of the lowest available price of a one-week rental at Kahului Airport (OGG), for airport (ConRAC) and off-airport locations.

HOW DO WE GET OUR MAUI CAR RENTAL PRICE DATA?

Prices for Maui car rentals vary from week to week, and the company offering the lowest price also changes from week to week. Furthermore, one company may be offering the lowest price in one vehicle category, for example mid-size cars, while a different company has a better price on another category, for example mini-vans.

We have just completed three full years of weekly monitoring of the lowest available price for a one-week rental at Maui's Kahului Airport (OGG), compiling prices for vehicles available at the Consolidated Rent A Car facility (ConRAC) as well as rentals from off-airport locations served by free shuttle. This survey covers 10 different companies, Ace (closed as of March 2026), Alamo, Avis, Budget, Dollar, Enterprise, Fox, Hertz, National, Nu, Payless, Sixt, and Thrifty.

This price survey covering three years from July 2023 to this July is illustrated in Figure 3. This chart marks an important milestone in our multi-year price-tracking effort. We will return to it in future editions of this blog to discuss salient features like the significant rise in the price floor in 2026 compared to 2025 (clearly visible on the chart), and the structural shift in the off-airport market - that we discussed in some detail above.

Beginning in July 2024, we expanded our data collection from just the lowest price available to the lowest prices in seven vehicle categories - compact, mid-size, Jeep, convertible, SUV, 7-seat SUV, and minivan - from 10 different companies at Maui's Kahului Airport (OGG): Alamo, Avis, Budget, Dollar, Enterprise, Hertz, National, Payless, SiXT, and Thrifty. Each week, for every vehicle type, we noted which company offered the lowest price. Later this month we will have completed two full years of this data set - which will again give us plenty of salient findings to dive into, deeply.

Figure 4. Week-by-week variation of Maui car rental prices averaged over five years, from 2013 to 2018.

Previously we conducted a five-year price-tracking study for the lowest price economy car category beginning in February 2013 and continuing to February 2018. A sample of these results is in Figure 4, that shows the five-year average of the price over a one-year duration. For details of this massive price-tracking undertaking, and the most important findings on how and when to rent a car, see our blog post of July 14, 2024 titled "When is the best time to rent a car in Maui? " 

HOW TO CHECK RATES AND AVAILABILITY FOR MAUI CAR RENTAL

Either click through to to our Maui rental cars rate and availability section, or check our booking site at rentals.mauicarrental.biz. This site gives you access to all vehicles from eight different companies - Ace, Alamo, Avis, Budget, Dollar, Enterprise, Payless, and Thrifty - at all their Maui locations, that include the Airport rentacar center, Kahului town locations nearby the airport, and resort locations in Kihei/Wailea, and Ka'anapali. With so many options to choose from, you are assured to find the rental car that matches your preferences and your budget for your Maui trip - and there is never a cancellation penalty if you have to change plans.

ABOUT THIS BLOG

Frank Saab is a thought leader in the rental car industry, quoted by influential publications like SFgate.com. He is the editor of this blog published by Frank's Friendly Cars Maui Car Rental LLC, an independent car rental company operating in Maui, Hawaii, since 2006. Frank's offers low prices on affordable older cars and discount prices on new cars, with a "Lowest Price Guarantee" that assures you of getting the best deal on your rental. The company is a member of the Hawaii Visitors and Conventions Bureau (HVCB) and the American Car Rental Association (ACRA). Visit our website at www.mauicarrental.biz, or call us at 808-280-1196.

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Price Data Sources: rentalcars.com, rentals.mauicarrental.biz