Renting a car in Cyprus

Road trips are a great way to see Cyprus outside the main cities. The mountainous inland is home to dozens of beautiful old villages, connected with narrow, winding mountain roads. With your own wheels it’s easy to find also secluded beaches, visit archaeological sites and overall get the best out of your trip to Cyprus. Renting a car is cheap and easy; in this post we provide some tips on it. It’s also possible, though maybe not recommendable, to cross the border between Greek Cyprus and North Cyprus with a rental car.

Costs and practices of renting a car

Rental prices in Cyprus are surprisingly low, even through the big international companies. For comparing the prices for renting a car in Greek Cyprus, we recommend using AutoEurope search tool. For example, we once rented a Kia Rio, which is a 5-door, middle sized sedan, via AutoEurope from Europe Car, with just around 90 € for 11 days, so less than 10 euros per day. Smaller cars can be even cheaper than that, and the price also included basic insurance. Probably the easiest option for most of the visitors is to rent a car straight from the airport. We have once rented a car from Larnaka (Larnaca) airport, and there are rental services in Pafos (Paphos) airport as well, and in Northern Cyprus side in Ercan airport. When arriving in Larnaka international airport, you’ll find the rental offices in the arrival hall. The parking lots are right outside the departures hall in the second floor. There are car rental offices in all the bigger cities as well.

Crossing the border to northern Cyprus

Once you have your car, you might want to explore not just the Republic of Cyprus, but also the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. Most of the car rental companies don’t recommend crossing the border, and their policies state that if you go, you’ll do it on your own responsibility. The normal insurance from such companies won’t cover accidents happening on the northern side, but when crossing the border, you’ll anyway have to buy a third party insurance for driving in North Cyprus.

There are several border crossing points on the island. For exploring the walled city of Famagusta and the ruins of Ancient Salamis in Northern Cyprus side, on the east coast of the island, we used the crossing between Paralimni and Famagusta. Crossing is super easy; all you need to do is to buy the insurance and show your passports (all passengers). There is a booth for buying the insurance, and the cost is 20 € for four days and 35 € for a week (Jan 2019).

Renting a car from North Cyprus

For road trips in Northern Cyprus, it’s of course possible to rent a car from northern side on the island. There are plenty of rental car companies with offices in North Nicosia, Kyrenia, Ercan airport and several other locations, and many of them offer on-line booking, which usually is more affordable than renting a car from an office. Many companies in Northern Cyprus prohibit bringing their cars to Greek Cyprus side, but apparently there are some companies that allow it. If you try this, an additional insurance needs to be bought from the border when crossing to the south side. If you have enough time to make longer road trips in both sides, the safest option is to rent one car in Greek Cyprus side, and then another once you have moved to the northern side.

We rented a car from Northern Cyprus for a road trip in Karpaz Peninsula. We started this tour from Nicosia by crossing the border on foot. When in northern side, we simply walked into Sun Rent A Car office, without booking the car in advance (mainly because our decision of the timing of the trip was made quite ex-tempore). We rented a small Hyundai, that costed 360 Turkish lira for three days, so around 20 € per day, including basic insurance. Compared to the price of renting a car from southern side, this was more expensive, but you probably get better deals when booking online in advance.

Driving in Cyprus

Driving culture in Cyprus is quite flexible and laid-back, not aggressive at all. The greatest challenge for most of the visitors is driving on the left side, and having the steering wheel accordingly on the right side of the car. It takes some time to get used to it, and to understand the dimensions of the car when viewing things from the “wrong” side. But when driving with care and following the traffic, you should be just fine.

The main roads in Cyprus are mostly in very good condition, but the small roads especially in North Cyprus can be poor, so always drive carefully. In Greek side the bigger cities are connected with multi-lane motorways, so getting from one place to another is very quick. In addition, there is a wide network of main roads connecting cities, towns and villages. The roads up in the mountains can be really winding and quite narrow, and especially after rains there can be landslides and as a result of them some loose rocks on the roads, so as always, be alert when driving on the mountains.

When driving in Cyprus, you’ll see different types of registration plates. Rental cars are easy to recognize, since they have red plates. Otherwise, in Greek Cyprus side the cars registered in 2014 or later have white EU plates in front and rear sides. Older plates, both EU and Cyprus plates are white in front side but yellow in rear side.

Do you have some questions or comments about renting a car in Cyprus? Please share in comments below!

To plan your trip, get inspired by reading all our posts about Cyprus