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Heraklion Airport Car Hire (HER): The Best Companies Compared
The airport suppliers side by side, with the collection method and the terms visible before you pay anything.
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Heraklion Car Hire Review
Insurance options available on all cars · TPL · CDW · SCDW · Full CDW
What the best company at HER actually hands you
Ask which company is best at the airport and you get a ranking, which is the wrong shape for the question. Nikos Kazantzakis is one small terminal at Nea Alikarnassos, about 5 km east of the centre, and in summer it moves more people in a morning than it was drawn for. The supplier that suits you is the one whose handover fits the hour you land and whose terms you could read before paying.
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Wheels down at Nea Alikarnassos
The apron is small and the walk is short. In summer you may come down the steps onto the tarmac, which is the fastest way off an aircraft.
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A desk, a board, or a phone call
Here is where the suppliers separate. Some staff a counter in the hall. Some send someone to meet you outside the doors. Some ask you to ring for a shuttle.
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The short walk, or the short ride
Hire parking sits opposite the terminal, close enough to wheel a case across. A yard collection adds a van ride, which the better operators tell you at booking.
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Contract, keys, exit barrier
What you sign should say what the listing said: mileage, fuel policy, who else may drive. If those matched when you compared, this part takes minutes.
Handing it back before a summer flight
The return is the half of the booking nobody rehearses, and in August it is the half that goes wrong.
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1
Fill up on the way in
Full to full is the usual term. Refuel on the road between the city and Nea Alikarnassos, not in the last two kilometres, and keep the receipt.
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2
Count the shuttle twice
If you collected from a yard, the ride back is part of your morning and so is the wait for it. Ask the return timings on collection day.
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3
Leave earlier than the flight suggests
A small terminal with many departures inside the same two hours behaves like a full one. In summer, treat HER as further away in time than in kilometres.
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4
Return to the address on the contract
A desk supplier and a yard supplier want the car in different places, and the airport signs name neither. The voucher is the authority.
The 120 cars the comparison is drawn from
Counted on the live listing rather than estimated: 120 cars across the Heraklion suppliers, of which 71 are compacts, 23 are SUVs, 21 are family cars, 11 are cabriolets, 7 are minivans and 5 are premium. Those labels overlap, so the list is not meant to add up to 120. Four cars are hybrid or electric.
100
will take a debit card
Out of 120. Suppliers set that rule themselves, which is why it belongs on the car you are booking rather than on the country.
32
are automatic
Against 88 manual, so a little over a quarter of the fleet. Available at the airport, never the default.
84
come to you instead
Most of the fleet will be delivered to your hotel rather than collected at the terminal, which in Crete is ordinary rather than premium.
Cars delivered across Crete101
accept a young driver
Nearly all of it. The age floor and any surcharge belong to the supplier and sit in the terms attached to each car.
Three shapes of handover, and who each one suits
Nothing varies more between suppliers here than the twenty minutes after the baggage belt.
Desk in the hall
Best when you land near midnight, or with children who have stopped being reasonable. You walk from the belt to a counter and out again. The suppliers who pay staff to stand there tend to quote above the yard operators.
Met in the car park
Best for a daytime arrival with hand luggage. Someone waits outside the doors with the supplier name you booked, and the car is two minutes away in the hire parking opposite. Give a mobile number you will answer.
Shuttle to a yard
Best when the price gap is what brought you to this page. A van runs you a few minutes off the airport to a lot, which costs time at both ends and usually buys the lowest quote. Sensible on a week, irritating on two nights.
Three arrivals, three different answers
The rep was outside the doors before our cases reached the belt. We were on the road east fifteen minutes after landing.
The shuttle took longer than we expected and the car was still the right call. It saved us more than the wait cost.
We landed at half past eleven with a sleeping four year old. A counter inside the hall was the best money of the trip.
The junction you meet ninety seconds after the keys
The exit from the airport puts you on the National Road almost at once, sooner than most people expect. You are joining a coastal trunk road in a car you have been sitting in for a minute and a half, driving on the right, with the north coast running away in both directions. West is Heraklion and, beyond it, Rethymno. East is Hersonissos, then Elounda and Agios Nikolaos a little over an hour out. Choose before you start the engine.
How that road behaves once you are on it, including the lane habit that surprises every first time visitor, has a page of its own: driving in Crete.
At the first junction
- West, toward the city
- Heraklion is 5 km along the coast, with the old town and Knossos on that side.
- East, toward the resorts
- Hersonissos first, then Agios Nikolaos and Elounda, roughly 65 to 70 km out.
More Heraklion car hire options
Questions about the handover at HER
There is no single winner, and a page that names one is guessing on your behalf. The suppliers here differ mainly in how they hand the car over and in what their terms say about fuel, mileage and the deposit. Compare those two and the ranking writes itself.
Some suppliers staff a counter in the arrivals hall, some send a representative to the hire car park opposite, and some run a shuttle to a yard a few minutes away. Your voucher names which, so read it before you land.
Plan on the better part of an hour between the baggage belt and the exit barrier in the busiest fortnight, and roughly half of that outside the season. At a terminal this size the walking is never the problem. The queue is.
For 100 of the 120 cars in the listing, yes. It is a supplier rule rather than a Greek one, which is why it changes from car to car and why it is worth settling before you compare prices.
Give a mobile number you will answer and your flight number when you book. At a terminal this small the arrivals board is easy to watch and a late landing is usually handled by phone. An arrival outside normal hours is worth confirming in writing.
See who is at the airport on your dates
The counts on this page come from the live listing and move with the calendar. Put your dates in and Heraklion Drive narrows it to the cars a supplier will really hand over at HER.
Compare airport cars