What I'm really talking about is the easiest and cheapest way to get a car rental status that gives you a car upgrade (subject to availability). This to me is the "best" way.

I doubt most people are in car rental programs and achieving higher status tiers for the points. Most people are just excited to inadvertently get an upgrade for free.

Some of you have asked about Avis car rental status after seeing my other posts:

I don't feel like doing an exhaustive Avis review so I will jump to the comparison of Avis' highest tier compared to Hertz and SIXT first.

Disclaimer: I matched to SIXT Diamond due to being a Marriott Titanium member. For Avis, I have Preferred Plus status which gets me subject to availability upgrades that I guestimate to be 25% of the time.

Car Rental Elite Tier Comparison (2026)

Feature Avis President's Club Hertz President's Circle Sixt Diamond
Upgrade Policy 2-Class if available 1-Class (Guaranteed) 1-class if available
Skip the Line Yes Yes (Ultimate Choice Lot) Yes, incl. VIP Lounge at select locations
Max Discount Up to 25% Up to 20% Up to 20%
Addl. Driver US only, spouse/employee Yes US only in my experience
Why choose? Fleet Size Picking your own car Great customer service IMHO1

1 I will write about this in another post

What is the fastest way to Car rental status?

There are 3 paths I will cover there.

Direct

I've added mid-tier (one tier lower than the top-tier) just to illustrate how absurd I think the direct requirements are via the direct path. Only Hertz Five Star seems to be an achievable direct path.

The mid-tiers listed below still offer car upgrades (subject to availability). I did not list the low-tier which does not offer car upgrades as I don't think bonus points or small discounts are interesting to you.

Status Tier Requirement
Avis Preferred Plus 10 rentals or $4K
Avis President's Club 20 rentals or $6K
Hertz Five Star 3 rentals or $1K
Hertz President's Circle 15 rentals or $3K
SIXT Platinum ~$4.7K (€4K)
SIXT Diamond $7K (€6K)

Hotel status

I think most people have more hotel nights than car rental days. Top-tier car rental status is hard via this path, but you can get mid-tier relatively easily via hotel status matching.

For some of you, it may be a super easy path: hold a hotel credit card -> get hotel status -> get car rental status.

More details at:

Airline status

Read the next It Depends section instead.

There are a lot of airlines each with their own tiers so it is not a great use of time for me to list everything. Some airlines also have status tiers that are mileage- based, so it does not make sense for me to map mileage-based with a cost. I only compared some of the popular spend-based ones.

What airline status offers is a faster way to get elite status than hotels. You can get status about 48 hours after after 1 expensive flight qualifying for airline status, versus staying many nights at a hotel.

For those prioritizing Hertz, Delta Gold ($10,000 spend) is significantly cheaper for reaching President's Circle than the Marriott Ambassador path, which is anchored by a $23,000 minimum spend requirement and 100 nights.

It depends

As the Direct path does not make sense, that only leaves us with hotel and/or airline paths.

If you're lucky enough to live in a country with Marriott credit cards, achieving Marriott Titanium gets you closer to mid-tier car rental status with less cost.

For everyone else, it depends primarily on how much you spend on hotels, which hotels and how much airline spend. This is what I have come up with.

Low tier - Skip this tier as you do not get car upgrades with this tier, even if you can get it for free just by getting Finnair Silver status.

Mid tier - I've listed multiple options for mid-tier car rental because some of you will undoubtedly want to know because you have Marriott status or perhaps want to have some idea of how much airline spend is required.

Rental Status Goal Car upgrade @ $100 / night @ $150 / night @ $200 / night @ $250 / night
Low Tier (Avis Pref. Plus / Sixt Gold) No Finnair Silver ($2,700) Finnair Silver ($2,700) Finnair Silver ($2,700) Finnair Silver ($2,700)
Mid Tier (SIXT Platinum) Maybe GHA Platinum ($200) GHA Platinum ($300) GHA Platinum ($400) GHA Platinum ($500)
Mid Tier (SIXT Platinum) Maybe Marriott Gold ($2,500) Marriott Gold ($3,750) Marriott Gold ($5,000) Marriott Gold ($6,250)
Mid Tier (Hertz Five Star) Maybe Delta Silver ($5,000) Delta Silver ($5,000) Delta Silver ($5,000) Delta Silver ($5,000)
Top Tier (Avis President's Club, SIXT Diamond) Best chances Hyatt Globalist ($6,000) Hyatt Globalist ($9,000) Hyatt Globalist ($12,000) Finnair Platinum ($14,500)

What may surprise you how easy it is via GHA (Global Hotel Alliance). This is because you can achieve Platinum status via staying at 2 different hotel brands. Read about GHA Discovery loyalty program and my GHA status match.

Top tier - get via Hyatt Globalist if you don't already have some higher airline status. It requires the least amount of hotel nights at 60 to reach that tier. Marriott Titanium requires 75 nights. Both Hyatt and Marriott have credit cards in some countries to reduce the number of actual nights you have to stay at a hotel to reach those tiers.

Takeaway

The fastest way is to get car rental status via airlines. The time to take an expensive flight + 2 days for the (airline) status to take effect. The cheapest way is to spend $200 to get GHA Platinum status via stays at 2 different brands, then matched to SIXT.

Marriott Gold status is also a "relatively affordable" way to get status via 25 nights or hotel credit card status.