Renting a Car in Brazil: What the Protection Does Not Cover

Everything below is what four companies publish about themselves, dated to the day we read it. These figures change without notice. We rented nothing and visited no branch.

Proteção is not insurance, and that is the whole difference

You are buying a limit on what the rental company can charge you, on conditions the rental company writes.

Underneath that limit sits an excess, owed even when the cap holds. Movida and Hertz call it coparticipação, Unidas participação obrigatória, Localiza the custo prefixado de limite de danos — the prefixed damage-limit cost. Unidas spells out what "obligatory" means: it is due whether or not the driver acted with intent or negligence, and in theft it stays due even if the car is recovered. Localiza's waiver applies once per rental, so a second incident in the same booking is charged again.

Protection therefore does not zero your risk. It swaps a five-figure hold on your card for a four-figure bill.

What declining the protection does to your credit card

It moves the deposit by an order of magnitude.

Movida attaches a footnote to that second column, the most useful sentence in the table: customers who rely on their own card's insurance are subject to the no-protection pre-authorization. The coverage your card gives you at home does not move you out of the R$ 30,000 band.

The lists that make the cap disappear

It lives in the contract, never on the product page.

Localiza has two. The first, twelve items, removes every protection in that chapter: driving under the influence or refusing a police breath test, letting an unauthorized or unlicensed person drive, missing the deadlines below. The second is a misuse clause of twenty items — beaches and dunes, submerging the car, leaving it somewhere isolated, carrying a child without a car seat, and driving above the speed limit, which it says may be established by any technological means, telemetry fitted to the car included.

Movida's clause 6.2 covers alcohol and drugs, and also medication prescribed by a doctor, and driving without corrective lenses where your license requires them. Clause 8.13 then sweeps: breaching any obligation in chapter six removes the protection, and that chapter runs to dozens.

Unidas lists sixteen, and its third is the broadest sentence in the four documents — infringing any rule of traffic legislation in force, whether or not the contract specifies it. All three tie traffic offenses to loss of coverage; Unidas writes it most widely.

What nothing covers, whatever you bought

Some items sit outside every product on the shelf.

Movida excludes from any coverage at all: wheels, the spare included, tires, accessories, mats, plates, keys, tools and belongings left inside the car. Unidas excludes theft of tires and accessories by name, down to the child seat the company itself rents you. Localiza excludes theft and robbery of the car from its damage product, along with towing, new keys, new plates and the movable items — spare tire, jack, wheel wrench, warning triangle, antenna.

Three of Movida's exclusions surprise people. Damage from natural events — flooding, hail, falling trees — is not covered, nor is vandalism; the top tier waives the tow truck after a flood, but the damage stays with you. Incidents involving the renter's relatives, spouse or friends fall outside the protection. Movida's cheapest tier covers neither third parties nor your own passengers; the middle tier adds third parties and still excludes them.

Buy nothing and Unidas holds you liable for the whole car at the tabela FIPE reference price once repair passes 65% of its market value.

The clock that starts the moment something happens

Coverage survives the crash and dies in the paperwork.

Unidas requires notice within one hour of learning of the event, the number of the boletim de ocorrência — the police report any Brazilian station registers — within six hours, and the report itself within 24, on pain of losing the protection. It adds that telling your account manager does not count. Localiza's list sets six hours to notify and 24 for the report; the clocks differ, so there is no single Brazilian deadline.

What they want from a foreign driver, and where each contradicts itself

All three Brazilian companies publish two answers to this, and the two do not match.

Movida requires the foreign license to carry a translation into at least English. That requirement sits in the public contract and in the rate card of August 21, 2026 — but not on the Requirements and Conditions page, the one a search engine hands you. The contract also asks for a license "valid for more than one year", wording it never clarifies: a year of driving, or a year of remaining validity. One requirement falls on foreigners alone — paying the full rental price at pickup.

Unidas contradicts itself inside a single page. The requirements block asks for a license "valid and issued in national territory"; a few paragraphs below, the notice for foreigners accepts a valid license from your country of origin. Its contract repeats the national-territory wording, then sends foreign renters to ask at the branch; its 100-item FAQ mentions foreigners zero times.

Localiza does the same, more quietly. Its contract asks for "a driving document valid in Brazilian territory" and never defines it; its pre-requisites FAQ asks only for "a valid license".

Now separate the layers, because the companies do not. CONTRAN Resolution 1,020/2025, article 102, § 3, lists what a foreign driver must carry: the license inside its validity, an international permit alongside it where the license came from a party to the 1968 Vienna Convention, an identity document, proof of your date of entry. Translation is not on that list. Movida's translation clause is a company requirement, not a Brazilian one; Unidas asking for a Brazilian-issued document is stricter than the rule; the 180 days Localiza cites are federal law, not company policy — the permit guide works through which treaty applies to your license.

The mistake runs the other way too: satisfying the law does not get you the car. You can meet every line of article 102 and still be refused under a clause that asks for something no rule mentions.

Sources

• Localiza — clauses 2.1, 2.3, 4.6 and the loss-of-protection list in its contract, requirements on the terms page, the foreign-driver block in its pre-requisites FAQ, and the deposit table its terms page fails to display (accessed August 27, 2026)
• Movida — clauses 1.2, 6.2, 8.1.1, 8.8 to 8.13 and 9.2 in its contract, deposits on its requirements page, the excess table in its rate card of August 21, 2026 (accessed August 27, 2026)
• Unidas — clauses 2.2, 2.3, 6.4, 7.4, 7.5, 8.1 and 9.1 of its contract, whose last line dates it to May 2026, and the two license answers on how to rent (accessed August 27, 2026)
• Hertz Brazil — age, deposits and excess by group. Protections and fees (accessed August 27, 2026)
• CONTRAN — art. 102, § 3, what a foreign driver must carry. Resolution 1,020/2025 (accessed August 27, 2026)

Method on how we research; Jeff Bruno writes from Curitiba. Nearby: driving, foreign cards at the counter, cash without a local card, the tax ID a long stay needs, money, all guides.

What we could not verify

• Anything at all from Avis Brazil. The domain resolves, but the server completes no connection on either port, checked from Brazil and from a United States address. Avis' global site serves a Brazil page: branches, no requirements.
• Hertz Brazil's document requirements and rental agreement. Both addresses return a server error — and so do four addresses we invented, so the error proves nothing. Its robots file disallows the two remaining paths, and we do not go around that.
• Whether Localiza accepts an international permit, or wants a translation. Neither appears in its contract, read by OCR of all 40 pages rather than by text search, nor in its FAQ block for foreign drivers. Not published anywhere we opened — not the same as not required.
• Unidas' minimum age. Four of its documents state none. The closest is its young-driver product, covering drivers from 18 to 20 years, 11 months and 29 days.
• What Movida's young-driver surcharge costs. Three public documents name it and none prices it. Localiza publishes R$ 38.95 a day for its equivalent; Hertz publishes R$ 22.
• What any counter actually accepts. Unidas puts this in writing, sending foreign renters to the branch. We did not call or visit, so the rule as practiced is outside what we can show you.