Car Hire at Dubrovnik Cruise Port (Gruz) for Shore Days
One day, one deadline. Cars you can collect near the Gruz berths and hand back before the gangway comes up, with the day rate and the rules shown up front.
Same as pickup
Rent a car in Dubrovnik with flexible no deposit or low deposit choices. Explore the area with full insurance, unlimited mileage, and zero booking stress.
Fleet inspector
·
↑ ↓ move through the results · ← → step the photos
· ·
€ ·
Full record
- €
- €
Insurance options and the full rental terms are confirmed before you pay.
A shore day is a countdown, and the car has to fit inside it
Your ship comes alongside at Gruz, a couple of kilometres northwest of the walled city, and the card in your cabin already carries the hour you must be back. Everything you do in Dubrovnik happens between those two times. That makes this a one day rental with a hard deadline and no spare afternoon in it.
Taken as a single day the middle of this market sits around 64 to 77 EUR, and the cheaper quarter runs from 36 to 51 EUR. Against four seats on a coach tour that is good value, but it buys no guarantee. The ship's own excursion has the one thing your car never will: if the coach runs late, the ship waits. It will not wait for you.
So book a car only if you are leaving the city. The Old Town is a walk from the berth, about half an hour along the water, and no car goes inside the walls anyway. If your day ashore is the Stradun and a long lunch, keep the money.
Two kinds of boat share the water at Gruz
Gruz is not only the cruise terminal. The Jadrolinija berths run along the same quay, which is why the district is loud at seven in the morning and half empty by ten. Some boats leaving here carry vehicles and some carry only people.
The Elafiti boats are passenger ferries. Lopud and Kolocep are car free, so no hire car rides out on those sailings. Sipan has roads, but the warning holds for every island run out of Gruz: a car on a boat turns the return sailing into a second hard deadline, and a shore day already has one too many.
Walking on as a foot passenger is usually the better call: cheaper, no rental contract, and one timetable to read.
The same district, two different plans
- Cruise and ferry berths
- the same quay
- Elafiti sailings
- foot passengers only
- A car on a boat
- two deadlines, not one
- Old Town from the quay
- about a 30 minute walk
What the car is actually for
The road out of the port
Turn south on the D8, the old coast road, and Cavtat is half an hour away with the green of Konavle just beyond. Turn north and the same road runs to Ston, its long walls and its oyster beds, and on toward the Peljesac vineyards. The Peljesac Bridge has been free and open since July 2022, so that drive stays inside Croatia with no passport check.
Where it cannot help
Inside the walls the car is dead weight. Every hour in the old city is an hour it sits somewhere costing money.
Against the ship's coach
The excursion sells safety, because it is the ship's own contract and the ship's own problem. The car sells choice of where you stop and how long you stay.
One day has no slack in it
On a week's hire a wrong turn costs an hour and you laugh about it. On a shore day it costs the last stop, or the fuel station, or the gangway. Plan the route to finish early rather than exactly on time.
A time budget you can check before you book
Work out your window first: the hour the gangway opens to the all aboard time on your cabin card. Each row adds the drive out, the drive back, a realistic stay and one hour of margin for fuel and the handover. Times stretch in August. Set your window and the verdicts move.
| Where you would go | Drive each way | Time there | Window needed | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Old Town, on foot | no car, 30 min walk | 3 to 4 hours | any | No car needed |
| Cavtat | about 30 min | 2 hours | 4 hours | Comfortable |
| Ston and its walls | about 1 hour | 2 hours | 5 hours | Comfortable |
| Konavle valley | about 50 min | 2 hours 30 | 5 hours 10 | Comfortable |
| The Peljesac road past Ston | about 2 hours | 2 hours | 7 hours | Tight |
Read tight as no: a row that only works when nothing goes wrong is the one that leaves people on the quay watching a ship go. Anything crossing a land border is off this list.
106
cars bookable across the city
92
you can cancel free if the port call changes
83
that do not ask for a credit card
6
that deliver, so expect to walk to the car
Four rules that only bite when a ship is waiting
The tank goes back full
Almost every contract here is full to full and the charge for skipping it is never kind. The trap is the timing: queueing for fuel near the port at three on an August afternoon is how people end up running. Fill up twenty minutes out.
Nobody brings the car to the gangway
Six cars in the whole listing offer delivery to an address, so treat that as luck rather than a plan. Expect a walk to a supplier office or car park, and get the meeting point in writing before you lose the ship's wifi.
All aboard is not departure
The time on your cabin card is when you must be back on board, and the ship sails later than that. Budget to the card, then take another half hour off for the handover.
A day is a day, however few hours you use
Rental days come in 24 hour blocks, so returning five hours early refunds nothing. Free cancellation on 92 of the cars means a skipped port need not cost you anything, provided you cancel rather than forget.
Shore day questions we get asked at the port
Six is the honest floor and seven is comfortable. Below six the window is mostly driving and only Cavtat still works. Take an hour off whatever your number is, because fuel, the handover and the walk back to the berth are not free.
From a supplier office or car park within walking distance of the terminal, not at the gangway. Only six cars in the listing offer delivery to an address. Get the meeting point and a phone number in writing when you book, then save them offline.
No, and it gets in the way. The walled city is pedestrian, nothing drives inside it, and the walk from the quay takes around half an hour along the water, with a local bus on the same route.
That is the risk you accept in exchange for choosing your own day. An independent hire is not the ship's contract, so nobody holds the departure, and catching up at the next port is at your own cost.
Not onto the Elafiti boats, which are passenger ferries serving car free Lopud and Kolocep. Sailings that do carry vehicles exist, but they hand you a second fixed deadline on a day that already has one.
Put your day in port into the search
Set the pickup and drop off to the same date and the list narrows to cars a supplier in Dubrovnik will really hand over that morning, with the card rule and the cancellation terms on each one.
See available cars