Renting a car in Almaty

If you read nothing else on this page: if you are leaving Almaty, rent with unlimited mileage. It costs about the same once the per-kilometre charges land, and it removes the only part of a rental here that can surprise you.

Cars on Yandex Go are listed with an included mileage — 540 km on a Kia Seltos, 600 km on a Sportage — and it covers the rental, not the day. A three-day booking does not get you three times that. After the limit it is 150 ₸ per kilometre.

Put the drive to Kolsai lakes against that: 292 km each way, so 584 km before you have turned off anywhere. The 540 km car is already over on the way home. The 600 km car has sixteen kilometres of slack, which is not slack.

A Seltos at 29,000 ₸ a day is 87,000 ₸ for three days, plus roughly 27,000 ₸ of excess mileage on that trip, plus a 50,000 ₸ deposit held for up to fourteen working days. An unlimited-mileage Tucson was 37,800 ₸ a day — 113,400 ₸ for the same three days, some of them with no deposit at all. The same money, minus the arithmetic and minus the risk of watching the odometer instead of the road.

The catch is choice, not cost: filter for unlimited mileage and the list gets noticeably shorter. That is the trade, and on a trip out of the city it is worth making.

The age limit is not one number, and it is the requirement most likely to end a plan. Yandex Go asks for 24 years old and four years of licence. Local firms tend to start around 21. Avis starts at 25 on its own booking form. Check the specific rental rather than assuming, because nobody mentions it until checkout.

Documents depend on who you rent from, and this is where advice on the internet contradicts itself. Yandex Go asks a visitor for a passport and the driving licence of the country they live in — that is the whole list, no international permit. Traditional rental desks are stricter: they want a passport and either an international driving permit or a national licence printed in Latin script, and the UK government tells British drivers to carry a 1968-format permit here.

So: you can rent through the app without an international permit, and you should still bring one if you can. It has to be issued at home before you fly, it is only valid next to the licence it translates, and it settles any argument at a desk or a roadside check. There is more on the paperwork, including the convention behind it, on the before you go page. Residents bring a licence, an ID card and an IIN.

The lowest-effort option, and the one I would point most visitors at first. You are installing the app for taxis anyway; the rental sits in the same place, the card you already added pays for it, and the company has a real office in the city if something goes wrong. Free pick-up points around town, or they deliver the car to your address in a time window. Cancellation is free up to 48 hours before.

Fuel is returned at the level you got it. Deposits are typically 50,000 ₸, back within fourteen working days.

Avis operates here, and visitors who plan a road trip before they arrive tend to book it through Booking.com without ever seeing a Kazakh rental site. There is nothing wrong with that — it is a familiar process in a familiar language, and it is genuinely how a lot of people do this. Check the mileage terms in the same breath as the price; the trap on this page is not specific to any one company.

SUV Tours publishes an open price list and has an English version of its site, which puts it ahead of most local outfits for a visitor. Without a driver, they advertise a Renault Duster from 35,000 ₸ a day, a Highlander from 40,000 ₸, and a Land Cruiser Prado or FJ Cruiser from 55,000 ₸. With a driver, from 65,000 ₸ up to 130,000 ₸ for a minibus. Prices read on their site on 27 August 2026; I have not rented from them.

Rent and Go 4x4 is the one I have actually used, for a trip to Kolsai. They run on Instagram rather than a website, so pricing and terms come by direct message. That is normal here and it worked fine for me — but if you do not read Russian it is a slower road than tapping a button in an app.

With any local agency, the price is the easy part. Ask about the mileage limit, the deposit and how it is returned, the insurance excess, and whether the terms allow unsurfaced roads. Those answers change the cost of a trip far more than the daily rate does.

Two rental desks stand in the arrivals hall at Almaty, in the same row as the currency exchange: Avis, the international brand above, and Ruyi Car Rental, signed in Kazakh, Russian and Chinese with Chinese models on the stand behind its glass. The walk-up option exists, then, and nobody mentions it before you land.

It does not change anything above it. What a rental here costs is decided by the mileage limit, the deposit and the age minimum, and those are questions to settle before a flight lands rather than across a counter with your bags at your feet — and a car is a burden inside the city anyway. I have not rented from either desk. If you want a car for the first morning, book it before you fly; if the drive out of town is later in the week, there is no reason to collect one at the airport at all.

• Staying in the city, or one day out. Yandex Go, whatever is cheapest. The limits are generous for city driving.
• Going to the lakes or the canyon. Yandex Go with the unlimited-mileage filter on, or a local agency that will confirm unlimited mileage in writing.
• Booking from abroad, before you land. Booking.com and Avis. Read the mileage line.
• Assy Plateau, Kaindy, or anywhere off the asphalt. A proper 4x4, from a local agency. A saloon reaches Kolsai — there are saloon cars parked at the lake — but it stops short of Kaindy, which is the trap, since Kaindy is just beyond it. The cheaper answer is to leave your car at the guesthouse and let them drive you that last bit.

Everything priced on this page was read off a screen on 27 August 2026, not handed over by me. Rental prices move; the mileage limit is the part that stays true.