How To Save With ACE Rent A Car

Finding a legit ACE Rent A Car promo code isn’t easy—and most discounts you see online simply don’t work. This guide cuts through the noise by revealing the only active code available, plus exactly how to use it to lock in real savings on your next rental.

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Beyond promo codes, you’ll learn how ACE pricing works, which booking mistakes to avoid, and smart strategies to lower your total cost, including rewards points, location-based fees, and insider car rental tips.

Saving Money At ACE Rent A Car

For travellers, we’ve covered some of the biggest car rental companies including Hertz, Enterprise, Avis, National, Budget, Dollar, Thrifty, and Europcar. One that isn’t as well-known but can offer sneaky good value is ACE Rent A Car.

ACE Rent A Car is a U.S.-based rental company that’s been around since the 1960s, with locations in North America and select international destinations. It’s known for a straightforward rental process, flexible options, and a range of vehicles from compact cars to larger SUVs.

ACE tends to focus on practical service over flashy perks, making it a reliable choice for travelers who want a simple, no-nonsense experience.

Getting The Best ACE Rent A Car Rate

Unlike many of the other car rental agencies out there, they don’t heavily rely in car rental coupon codes since their rates are already low to begin with.

That said, we’ve negotiated a special rate for Going Awesome Places readers to get a no-questions-asked discount.

Simply use AWESOME24 when checking out and enter it in the “Promotion” field as you can see above.

Best part? This isn’t considered to be a corporate code so you can use it stress-free!

When looking at what’s out there, codes such as ACE12OFF3, ENTBOOK, EB15OFF, and SHORT18 don’t work so currently we’re the only ones with this offer.

Other Ways To Find Deals At ACE Rent A Car

Aside from the AWESOME24 coupon code, you can always try this method.

Try a car rental aggregator

Sometimes you can find great prices from car rental search engines. It requires a bit of extra work but it can be worth it.

The two platforms that we always recommend that you check are:

• Discover Cars
• Booking.com

Think of these as the Kayak and Skyscanner of the car rental world. You might not end up booking through here but we do appreciate being able to get a lay of the land to see which rental car company has the best prices.

In addition, when you compare prices with what ACE Rent A Car lists, you also start noticing discrepancies there.

That said, after using our promo code, the rates typically beat what you can find on Discover Cars or Booking.com.

Book a wild card dealer’s choice

When you search for a rental, you’ll see an option for “Special, Dealer’s Choice”. This is effectively a wild card or surprise vehicle rental that’s typically cheaper than the rest of the options.

If you don’t have a specific requirement for a car, this selection could make a lot of sense and will save you a good amount of money as well.

Redeem Member Rewards points

ACE Rent A Car has their own loyalty program and it’s called Member Rewards. As no frills as their rentals are, so too is this program.

Simply earn points for every dollar spent. You can then use any amount of points on future rentals. The cost of points will vary depending on the location, time of year, and type of car.

How Good Is ACE Rent A Car?

Is ACE Rent A Car any good?

Overall, we’d say that anecdotally from our experiences, ACE Rent A Car is great as a no frills rental agency. They keep it simple and the rates are good. Don’t expect any extras from them and service is mixed but if you know what you’re doing and you researched the branch ahead of time, you should be good.

However, just like the big boys, smaller companies like ACE aren’t immune to negative reviews that come from spotty experiences.

One-Way Rentals

If you’re looking for a discount on one-ways, you won’t find it as they charge a “Drop Fee”.

This one-way fee can more than 2-3x the daily rate so it isn’t cheap.

Underage Drivers and Additional Drivers

When it comes to underage drivers and additional drivers, ACE Rent A Car doesn’t make its additional fees obvious when making a booking. Instead, they’re somewhat hidden in their Terms and Conditions.

Here are what we’ve seen from our analysis of the underage fees:

• Most locations in the USA and Canada have an underage fee but ages and rates vary by state/province.
• In countries around the world, the minimum age varies but you’ll notice that they don’t have an underage fee.

Here are what we’ve seen from our analysis of the additional driver fee:

• Most locations have an additional driver fee.
• Some locations allow spouses to drive for free. Others have more lenient rules that include family, employer, and coworkers. There are also others that explicitly say that spouses.

The below table isn’t complete but it gives you an idea of how much variation there is between locations.

CountryMinimum AgeUnderage FeeAdditional Driver

United States – Palm Beach	21	21-24 is $20 USD/day	$5 USD/day (spouse exempt)
United States – NY	18	18-20 is $79.99 USD/day 21-24 $25 USD/day	$5 USD/day (spouse extra)
United States – LA	18	18-24 is $25 USD/day	$10 USD/day (spouse, family, employer, coworker exempt)
United States – Maui	21	21-24 is $25 USD/day	$15 USD/day (spouse, family, employer, coworker exempt)
United States – Albuquerque	21	21-24 is $25 USD/day	$15 USD/day (spouse exempt)
United States – Miami	21	21-24 is $27 USD/day	$14.99 USD/day (spouse exempt)
United States – Fort Lauderdale	21	21-24 is $27 USD/day	$14.99 USD/day (spouse extra)
United States – Dallas	21	21-24 is $25 USD/day	$15 USD/day (spouse exempt)
United States – Minneapolis	21	21-24 is $25 USD/day	$15 USD/day (spouse exempt)
United States – Las Vegas	21	21-24 is $25 USD/day	$12.99 USD/day (spouse exempt)
Canada – Toronto	25	Underage drivers not allowed	$8 CAD/day (spouse extra)
Canada – Richmond BC	19	No young driver fee	$10.99 CAD/day (spouse extra)
Costa Rica – Liberia	23	No young driver fee	$7 USD/day (spouse extra)
Italy – Firenze	19	No young driver fee	$8 EUR/day
Iceland – Keflavik	18	No young driver fee	3000.000 ISK per day
Spain – Barcelona	23	No young driver fee	$5 EUR/day (spouse extra)

It’s possible that the variation in fee is because of their franchise system (more on that below).

How do you make an underage booking? Unfortunately, there isn’t a way to identify that you are trying to make a booking as an underage renter.

This means that when you check in at the ACE Rent A Car counter, you’ll need to let them know

Are there any codes that waive the Young Renter Fee? No, there aren’t any special promo codes to eliminate the young renter fee.

ACE Rent A Car Member Rewards

They recently revamped their Member Rewards program. It’s a pretty straightforward as far as loyalty programs go.

How To Join Member Rewards

Joining is pretty easy as the loyalty program is tied to your login. Start at this Member Rewards page and sign up.

Anyone from around the world can join the program.

Earning Points

• Earn 1 point per $1 USD spent

How To Redeem Member Rewards Points

To spend your points, if you’re logged in, you’ll see a slider bar that appears where you can allocate your points towards the rental to reduce its cost.

This means that you don’t need to have enough points to redeem on a full rental.

What is less clear is that the number of points required will very dynamically based on “destination, time, day of travel, demand, point redemption rate, and other factors.”

It’s also worth noting that you can only redeem a maximum of 10,000 points per rental.

Car Rental Tips At ACE Rent A Car

Beyond coupon codes and promo codes, there are actually a number of tricks that I usually keep in mind. These alone will save you lots of money with ACE Rent A Car.

Now imagine if you combined all of these together, imagine the savings!

• Book early – We’ve learned from experience that the best rates come from booking in advance. Since rentals are easy to cancel, it never hurts to book ASAP and then keep checking along the way.
• Sign up for Member Rewards – This is a low effort thing you can do before you make your car rental. With a few rentals, you’ll be able to apply them for savings.
• Don’t rent from the airport if you can – With ACE Rent A Car, we’ve noticed that in many locations, fees such as a “Customer Facility Charge”, “Premium Location Fee”, “Airport Trans Fee”, or other name. These seem to be different per location but to avoid it, look for a non-airport location.
• Week rentals sometimes cheaper than 5 or 6 days – Discounts often kick in when you hit a full week so if you’re close to that, try getting a quote for 7 days.
• Use credit card for car rental insurance – Instead of purchasing insurance, leverage your credit card for insurance.  Make sure you read your policy beforehand to know what and how you’re covered. Many of the best Canadian credit cards have insurance built in which means you don’t need to pay for additional car rental insurance.
• Prepaying fuel is never a good idea – Don’t be tempted by the prepaid fuel option. We’ve only ever done it if we know that we’ll be on a tight schedule when returning the vehicle. It’s not worth it because it’s a higher fuel rate than if you were to go to a gas station.
• Know where you can drive – If you read the terms and conditions, vehicles are restricted to the state or province that you’re renting from. Cross-border can be allowed or prohibited.
• There are maximum rental ages – We’ve seen some rental locations with maximum ages of 64 so make sure you check the policy. Some have a senior driver fee.

What You Need To Know About ACE Rent A Car

Branding

ACE Rent A Car is an American car rental company founded in 1966. It’s a privately owned brand under the umbrella of the ACE Rent A Car franchise system, with locations across the USA, Canada, and select international markets.

Their franchise system is called the ACE Licensee Program. This means that entrepreneurs can join to become one of the worldwide affiliates. This allows you to build an independently-owned car rental agency under the ACE Rent A Car brand.

Over its decades of operation, ACE has built a reputation for reliable service and a wide range of vehicles, from compact cars to SUVs, catering to both casual travelers and business renters.

In 2014, Avis Budget Group acquired ACE Rent A Car with the intention to fold it into the Payless discount brand but so far, nothing has changed.

What sets ACE apart from larger rental chains is its focus on straightforward, customer-friendly service. With hundreds of locations, many of which are airport-adjacent, ACE emphasizes flexibility, easy booking, and practical extras like GPS, car seats, and roadside assistance.

Travelers often choose ACE for their no-frills approach, which combines affordability with dependable, well-maintained vehicles and a more personalized rental experience than bigger competitors.

Locations

ACE Rent A Car has more than 300 licensed locations in over 45 countries. This makes them the largest independent car rental operator in the world. That said, their overall coverage is still less than the bigger agencies.

If you take a look at their location page, you’ll see that they have good global coverage but they do have some glaring holes in:

• Asia
• Africa (except Tanzania)
• Australia and New Zeland
• Pacific Islands (except Guam)
• Russia
• India

Even within North America, their coverage is quite spotty so it’s great when they’re in the cities you’re traveling to but you’ll be out of luck in others.

Something interesting to note is that that in Australia and New Zealand, there’s a company called Ace Rental Cars. They were acquired by Hertz Global Holdings in 2011. This company has nothing to do with ACE Rent A Car.

Reviews of ACE Rent A Car

We always feel like it’s unfair to seek reviews of car rental companies because people that leave reviews often have a negative experience.

That said, it’s still good to take a look at them to make sure you don’t make the same mistakes.

The below is a screenshot from the ACE Rent A Car Trustpilot page.

Some of the issues can be location-specific and others are poor communication or speed of service. Many of the problems can be avoidable by knowing about fees ahead of time but there are certainly a lot of unexpected circumstances that can go wrong – most of them involving damage.

Our advice is to check the reviews if there are any available and if there’s a really bad trend of scams, it might be better to avoid them.

PRO TIP: Always take a photo of the fuel gauge when you return the car so you have evidence that you returned it with a full tank. Also make sure to take photos of the exterior of the car from all angles before you leave and also after you return the car.

Frequently Asked Questions