Rent a car in Saudi Arabia

Our Saudi Arabia car rental services reach every corner of the Kingdom. Avis has offices at the major airports — King Khalid International in Riyadh, King Abdulaziz International in Jeddah and King Fahd International in Dammam — as well as in the cities, along the Red Sea coast and near the heritage sites of the northwest.

Saudi Arabia has opened to visitors at extraordinary speed, and the road network has kept pace. Highways are wide, modern and well maintained, fuel is among the cheapest anywhere, and the distances between destinations make a car less a convenience than a necessity.

Planning to cover ground? Flexible return options mean you can collect in one city and drop off in another — useful on a route like Riyadh to AlUla, or Jeddah up the coast toward the Red Sea projects.

YOUR TOP RENTAL LOCATIONS IN SAUDI ARABIA

Riyadh King Khalid Airport · Riyadh · Jeddah King Abdulaziz Airport · Jeddah · Dammam King Fahd Airport · Dammam · Al Khobar · Medina · AlUla · Abha · Taif · Yanbu · Jubail · Tabuk · Hail · Buraidah

For most of the last century Saudi Arabia was closed to leisure travellers, which means much of what it holds has barely been photographed. Six UNESCO World Heritage sites, a Red Sea coastline with reefs that have never been commercially dived, and mountain regions that see snow — all of it now reachable on a good road.

Riyadh is the natural starting point. The restored mud-brick city of Diriyah, birthplace of the Saudi state, sits on the capital’s edge and has become its cultural centre. In the middle of the city, Masmak Fortress and the National Museum tell the story that Diriyah begins, while the sky bridge of the Kingdom Centre gives you the whole sprawl at once. Ninety minutes northwest, the escarpment known as the Edge of the World drops away into an ancient seabed — a drive that needs a four-wheel drive and an early start.

Jeddah is the Kingdom’s other half: older, looser, facing the sea. Al-Balad, the UNESCO-listed historic district, is a maze of coral-stone houses with carved wooden rawasheen balconies, now filling with galleries and coffee houses. The corniche runs for kilometres, and the reefs offshore rank among the least-visited world-class dive sites anywhere.

The headline destination is AlUla. Hegra, Saudi Arabia’s first UNESCO World Heritage site, holds more than a hundred Nabataean tombs carved into freestanding sandstone outcrops — the same civilisation that built Petra, with a fraction of the crowds. Nearby stand Elephant Rock, the ancient Dadanite capital, and Maraya, a concert hall clad entirely in mirrors that disappears into the desert around it.

South of Jeddah the land rises into the Asir mountains, where Abha sits at over two thousand metres and summer temperatures stay mild. The village of Rijal Almaa, its stone towers picked out in white quartz, is one of the most striking places in the country. Further southwest lie the Farasan Islands; east, the Gulf coast around Dammam and Al Khobar offers Half Moon Bay and easy access to Bahrain by causeway.

A word on driving: distances are serious — Riyadh to Jeddah is close to 950 kilometres — so plan overnight stops rather than marathon legs. Speed enforcement by camera is comprehensive and automated. November to March gives the most comfortable conditions across most of the Kingdom