What do reviewers say about THE OUT? Five reviews, none since 2022

Affiliate disclosure: this post covers THE OUT referral code CI311. A first booking made with it takes £50 off for you and pays £50 in account credit to the referring member. I have not hired a car from THE OUT, so no verdict below is mine. Every claim is either a named publisher, THE OUT’s own words, or a customer rating, with the date it was read.

THE OUT has been trading since April 2019, and five publishers have reviewed it. Those five are every substantive review I can find, and the newest came out in May 2022. What has accumulated since is customer reviews.

That matters more than an ageing byline usually does, because THE OUT publishes no rate card and quotes every booking inside its app. When there is no price list, a four-year-old review is the price list. These five do not agree with each other on the money, and where they do agree, THE OUT’s current terms have moved on.

Every published review of THE OUT, side by side

The verdict all five reach is the same one, and it is about the service rather than the car: door-to-door delivery is what makes THE OUT worth its premium, and on that they are still right. The numbers they use to support it disagree with each other and with THE OUT’s current terms. Not one of the five gives a star rating, so there is no score to average.

Two of them print the same figure five months apart and mean different things by it. GQ, October 2019: rentals start “from a pretty modest £148 for two days”. Luxurious Magazine, March 2020: “Prices start from £148 per day. That’s based on a three-day rental of a Land Rover Discovery Sport.” One £148 buys two days and the other buys one.

Two declare a commercial interest, in different ways. T3 carries an affiliate notice: “When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.” Forbes says outright that it was “invited to book the F-Type Heritage 60 Edition for a day”, which makes it a press loan rather than a hire. GQ, The Week and Luxurious Magazine carry no notice on their reviews. I take THE OUT’s money too, which is the reason this page is built out of links you can open.

The deposit runs £1,250 to £5,000 depending on which review you read

Read the deposit column in publication order and it goes nothing, £1,250, £3,000, £5,000, £2,000 to £4,000. Two of those were published four weeks apart in August 2021 and differ by £2,000, so this is not a number that climbs with age. What it tracks is the car.

Luxurious Magazine had a Range Rover Velar and was told £1,250. The Week had a Range Rover Sport P400e and describes a £3,000 excess. Forbes was lent what it calls “an extremely rare, one-of-60 Jaguar F-Type Heritage 60 Edition”, and reports “a hefty £5,000 damage excess, which is blocked out on your payment card, then unlocked again when the car is returned unscathed”. T3 gives no single figure at all: “an insurance deposit of between £2,000 and £4,000 is held at the time of booking.” A range is what you write down when the number depends on the vehicle.

Two words are doing different jobs across those reviews and the distinction is worth keeping. The deposit is money held on your card while you have the car. The excess is the bill you face if you damage it: “Without this, a scratch of the wheel or any other damage could mean you fitting the £3,000 excess bill”, as The Week puts it. Forbes describes one amount doing both, and so does THE OUT’s help centre, in the only sentence any of its pages puts a figure to:

All our vehicles have a deposit/excess value of £5000. In practice this means, that we put a hold on this amount of money on your card, the amount is not debited from your account, but you can’t use it until it’s released.

“All our vehicles” is the change. The figure that belonged to a one-of-60 F-Type now applies to every car in the fleet, and the other published figures sit below it: £1,250 is a quarter, £3,000 is three-fifths, the top of T3’s range is four-fifths. Only Forbes’s number matches today’s, and it was written five years ago about a car nobody else was given.

Forbes also prices the excess waiver, which nobody else has: “you can reduce the insurance excess to zero for a fee of £38, which rises to £44 if you plan to drive into Europe”, as of August 2021. Whether paying that also releases the £5,000 or only your liability is the question THE OUT’s own pages answer three different ways.

The one review that has been re-touched is the one furthest from today’s figure. Luxurious Magazine’s page carries a dateModified of 13 February 2024 in its own structured data, three months before the help-centre capture above. Whatever that edit changed, it was not the £1,250.

What the £5,000 hold does on the day, when it lands, and how long it takes to come back is in how much THE OUT costs. The short version is that it is pre-authorised 24 hours before delivery, on the same card you booked with, and takes 3 to 10 working days to clear afterwards.

“Everything’s included” has aged worse than the price has

All five describe a price with the extras already inside it, and each was right when it was written.

Luxurious Magazine, March 2020: “everything’s included. There are no extras or hidden charges. You get fully comprehensive insurance, breakdown cover, unlimited mileage, a futuristic sat-nav and even the Congestion Charge is covered.”

The Congestion Charge is not covered any more. THE OUT’s terms exclude it from the rental fee for bookings made on or after 8 September 2023 and add a £20 handling fee per rental, which applies even if the car is only delivered to or collected from an address inside the zone.

The Week, August 2021, is more careful and still gets overtaken: “there is just one chargeable option worth knowing about, and this is for excess insurance which will add around 10% extra to the above hire costs.” One chargeable option in 2021. THE OUT’s current terms carry eleven, from a £100 fee for changing your delivery time at short notice to £200 for smoking in the car and up to £250 for returning it excessively dirty.

Four of the five call the mileage unlimited with nothing attached: Luxurious Magazine above, GQ (“you get unlimited mileage, car seats, a dog rack and a bike rack if you need them”), Forbes (“mileage is unlimited and there’s no fee for driving to Europe”) and T3 (“The mileage is unlimited and the insurance includes European coverage, so you can really go wherever you want”). The European cover still holds. The mileage has a number on it: THE OUT’s own gloss is a fair usage allowance of 600 miles per 24 hours, with anything beyond that charged at 30p a mile. Six hundred miles a day is generous and most weekends will not touch it, but “wherever you want” is no longer the right description.

None of this is a reviewer being sloppy. Each of them reported the terms in front of them. It is what happens when the newest available account of a service is four years old and the service kept moving.

Manchester used to be free, and now it isn’t

The delivery map is the other place the reviews contradict each other rather than the present.

GQ in 2019 and Luxurious Magazine in 2020 both describe London Zones 1 to 5 plus Gatwick and Heathrow. Then the two August 2021 reviews add a city: The Week has THE OUT “currently only available in central London and Manchester (although they will deliver outside of these areas for an additional fee)”, and Forbes has delivery “to any property in Zones 1-5 of London, and also across Manchester”. T3, ten months later, is back to Zones 1 to 5 plus the same two airports, with a fee past Zone 5 that rises with distance.

Read on 15 August 2026, THE OUT’s own About page (opens in new tab) says free delivery and collection covers “London (Zones 1-5), as well as select airports and Greater Birmingham locations.” Manchester is still a city THE OUT serves, and it is still listed in the site’s own navigation, but it is no longer in the free zone. Greater Birmingham is, and it appears in none of the five reviews because it was not part of the service when any of them was written.

What 1,836 Trustpilot reviews say

The editorial coverage stops in 2022. The customer coverage does not, and it is much larger than the press ever was.

Read on 15 August 2026, THE OUT’s Trustpilot profile (opens in new tab) holds a TrustScore of 4.8 out of 5 from 1,836 reviews. The distribution is unusually lopsided even for a well-rated service:

Nine in ten reviewers give full marks, and the negative tail is 65 reviews, or 3.5% of the total. Be careful reading a distribution this shaped: reviews are volunteered, and a service that emails a review request after a smooth weekend collects a different sample than one that does not.

I read the star counts for all 1,836 and the full text of the 20 most recent, which run from 12 July to 13 August 2026. That is a month of reviews, not a survey, and the themes below are the themes of those 20.

What they rate is the logistics, not the car. Ten of the 20 name delivery or collection, and the specific thing they praise is being able to watch the driver approach: “The delivery of the vehicle at the airport was good as I could track the driver’s arrival time”, and on return, “it was easy to coordinate the drop off as I could track the pick up driver.” The cars come up mostly as a condition note (“practically brand new”) rather than a driving one. Not one of the 20 is really a review of the Range Rover. They are reviews of the handover.

Three of the 20 reach for the word “seamless” unprompted, which turns out to be the same word THE OUT has picked to quote about itself. Drivers get named too: Alessandro twice, Lewis and Salma once each. That is a service being rated on individual people, which is not something that happens at a rental desk.

The gripes in that window are small, specific and mostly about timing. A five-star reviewer whose flight landed at 07:00 could not book a pickup before 09:00 and waited an hour, despite emailing flight details ahead. A four-star reviewer says there is no 24/7 number to call. Another found some of the car’s features sat behind a paywall.

The one-star review in that window is the failure mode the whole model depends on. Posted 12 July 2026:

Warning avoid made me late for my flight. The only reason I went with this service was due to convenience and both at drop-off and pick up. They were 30 minutes late […] I was waiting at the airport when they were meant to drop the car off and I had to go to an event so I had to get a taxi instead […] and then on drop off I almost missed my flight because I had to wait for them again.

One review out of 1,836 is not a pattern, and it is the only one-star in the month I read. What makes it worth quoting is the thing being complained about. THE OUT’s entire premium is bought with door-to-door delivery. A rental desk that is 30 minutes slow is an annoyance; a delivery service that is 30 minutes late has taken away the reason you paid extra.

The App Store is a second crowd score, and it agrees

THE OUT is still iOS-only, close to seven years after GQ noted that “the app only works on iPhone” and four after T3 said the same, and its footer still says “Available for iOS.” So its app ratings are a second, independent customer sample.

Read on 15 August 2026, THE OUT Car Rental on the UK App Store (opens in new tab) holds 4.8 out of 5 from 1,269 ratings (the listing rounds that to 1.3k), on version 13.1.0, released 12 August 2026. Two crowd corpora of comparable size, collected in completely different places, land on the same score to one decimal. That is the strongest single signal on this page, and it is a good deal more current than anything a publisher has written.

One practical detail from the same listing, which no review mentions because it is newer than all of them: the app requires iOS 26.0 or later. On an iPhone that cannot run iOS 26 you cannot install it. Booking still works in a browser on theout.com, so this is a narrowed door rather than a closed one, but the app-first pitch every reviewer describes now has a hardware floor under it.

THE OUT quotes GQ and Forbes on its own site, and trims one of them

Its homepage (opens in new tab) carries two pull-quotes under the heading “WHAT OTHERS SAY”, and its About page carries the same pair further down with no heading over them:

“When you need that bit of extra style and a dash of luxury (…) then there’s little else as seamless.”

“If you are looking for a premium car hire service, THE OUT shows how it’s done”

Neither carries a byline or a date on either page, but both are sourced: each sits under a publisher logo that links to the article it came from. The first is Sam White in GQ, 19 October 2019, where THE OUT’s ellipsis stands in for “or just when you need an excuse to drive something that puts your parallel parking on London’s streets to the test”. That is a fair trim of a long sentence.

The second is Alistair Charlton in Forbes, 31 August 2021, and it has been cut with no ellipsis at all. Forbes wrote: “if you are looking for a premium car hire service, in London and Manchester, The Out shows how it’s done”. The four missing words are “in London and Manchester”, which is the one part of that sentence that is no longer true of the free-delivery map. A 2019 line and a 2021 line, both undated on the page, are the only press praise THE OUT shows.

The Trustpilot widget in that block on the homepage is configured, in the page source, with data-stars="5". That is Trustpilot’s own filter for which ratings a widget is allowed to display. There is nothing improper about it and plenty of brands do it. It does mean the reviews THE OUT shows you on its own site are drawn only from the 89.8% that gave it full marks, while the profile that widget links to shows all 1,836.

What none of the reviewers tested

The honest gaps, because they are large:

• Nobody has hired a THE OUT car and published about it since May 2022. Every editorial account of this service predates the current deposit, the current fee schedule, the current free-delivery map and the removal of the Congestion Charge from the price.
• None of the five states what it paid. Four quote a rate they were shown or told, and Forbes was invited to book its car for a day, so no published figure was ever charged to anybody’s card.
• Nobody has held today’s £5,000 on today’s terms. Forbes had a £5,000 excess blocked and released in 2021, and priced the waiver at £38. Nobody has published what the hold does to a credit limit, how long it really takes to come back, or the question THE OUT’s own three pages disagree on, which is whether buying the waiver removes the hold or only your liability.
• We have not hired one either. Nothing on this page is firsthand, which is why every claim on it carries a named source and a date. If that changes, this post gets replaced by a review with a receipt behind it.

Should you trust the reviewer view on THE OUT?

On the service, yes, and what earns that is the agreement between samples that have nothing to do with each other. Five press reviews written between 2019 and 2022, 1,836 Trustpilot ratings and 1,269 App Store ratings were collected in different places by different mechanisms, and they land in the same spot, to one decimal on the two that carry a score.

On anything with a number attached, no. These five disagree with each other on the deposit by four times and on what £148 buys. Use the reviews for what the experience is like and use THE OUT’s own documents for what it costs and what it holds. Those figures, all of them sourced to THE OUT’s own pages with capture dates, are in how much does THE OUT cost.

And on the one number this site owns: THE OUT runs no public voucher codes, so its refer-a-friend code is the only discount available. Referral code CI311 takes £50 off a first booking and pays £50 in account credit to the member who referred you. Against Skyscanner’s cheapest London day of £452, read on 13 August 2026, that is 11% of a single day.

What do reviewers say about THE OUT FAQs

What do reviewers say about THE OUT?

Five publishers have reviewed it, all positively and none with a star rating: GQ (19 October 2019), Luxurious Magazine (10 March 2020), The Week (3 August 2021), Forbes (31 August 2021) and T3 (24 May 2022), whose verdict was “the best car rental experience I’ve ever had”. All five rate the door-to-door delivery rather than the cars. Customers agree and are far more numerous: 4.8/5 from 1,836 Trustpilot reviews and 4.8/5 from 1,269 UK App Store ratings, both read on 15 August 2026. Every editorial review is at least four years old, and the deposit figures in them run from £1,250 to £5,000.

Is THE OUT any good?

By every published measure, yes, with one caveat about what “good” is being measured on. Nine in ten Trustpilot reviewers give it five stars, and across the 20 most recent reviews what they praise is the delivery and collection, being able to track the driver, and the condition of the cars. The negative tail is 65 reviews out of 1,836, and the one one-star review in that recent window is about a driver arriving 30 minutes late, twice. That is the risk worth weighing, because door-to-door delivery is the whole reason THE OUT costs more than a rental desk.

What is THE OUT’s Trustpilot rating?

4.8 out of 5 from 1,836 reviews, read on 15 August 2026: 1,649 five-star, 91 four-star, 31 three-star, 19 two-star and 46 one-star. The Trustpilot widget on THE OUT’s own homepage is set to display five-star reviews only, so the profile itself is the place to read the full distribution.

Has anyone reviewed THE OUT recently?

Not in the press. The most recent editorial review is T3’s, published 24 May 2022, and I can find nothing published since. That is why the deposit, the fee schedule and the free-delivery area described in every available review are all out of date. Customer reviews are current: THE OUT collected 20 Trustpilot reviews in the month to 13 August 2026.

How much deposit does THE OUT take?

Its own help centre states a deposit and excess value of £5,000 on every vehicle in the fleet, held as a pre-authorisation on the card you booked with rather than charged. Published reviews give four different figures and only one of them matches: £1,250 in March 2020, a £3,000 excess in August 2021, a £5,000 excess four weeks after that, and £2,000 to £4,000 in May 2022. The spread is there because the hold used to depend on the car. THE OUT’s current terms say the binding figure is the one on your booking confirmation.

Is THE OUT worth the money?

That depends on a comparison the reviews cannot make for you any more, because none of them knows the current price. What they establish is that the premium buys logistics rather than metal: delivery to your door, collection from wherever you finish, insurance and extras bundled, and no desk. If that convenience is worth several hundred pounds a weekend to you, the reviewer consensus says THE OUT delivers it. If you want a Range Rover for the least money, it never has been.

Does THE OUT have an Android app?

No. GQ noted in October 2019 that “the app only works on iPhone”, T3 noted the same absence in May 2022, and THE OUT’s own footer still says “Available for iOS.” The iOS app now requires iOS 26.0 or later, so older iPhones are out too. Booking works in a browser on theout.com either way, which is how anyone without a supported phone gets a car.

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Sources

Every third-party page below was fetched and read on 15 August 2026. The dates given are the publication or last-updated dates stated on each page.

• GQ: Jaguar Land Rover’s The Out is the ultimate car rental service for luxury weekends away (opens in new tab) (Sam White, 19 October 2019): “rentals starting from a pretty modest £148 for two days”, unlimited mileage and extras included, zones 1 to 5 plus Gatwick and Heathrow, “the app only works on iPhone”, no deposit figure, no commercial disclosure
• Luxurious Magazine: Hire a top-spec Land Rover in minutes with THE OUT (opens in new tab) (Leanne Kelsall, published 10 March 2020, dateModified 13 February 2024): “a deposit of £1,250 when you book”, “Prices start from £148 per day”, “even the Congestion Charge is covered”, zones 1 to 5 plus Gatwick and Heathrow
• The Week: The Out review, get a Range Rover Sport delivered to your door (opens in new tab) (Fergus Scholes, 3 August 2021): the £510 / £876 / £933 weekend rates, “just one chargeable option”, the “£3,000 excess bill”, “central London and Manchester”
• Forbes: ‘The Out’ delivered this incredibly rare Jaguar to my door with a click (opens in new tab) (Alistair Charlton, 31 August 2021): “a hefty £5,000 damage excess”, the £38 and £44 excess waiver, £210 a day for a Discovery Sport rising to £425 for the F-Type Heritage 60 Edition, Zones 1-5 “and also across Manchester”, “I was invited to book”
• T3: I hired a Range Rover from The Out and it’s the best car rental experience I’ve ever had (opens in new tab) (Spencer Hart, 24 May 2022): “between £550 and £1,000 for a weekend rental”, “an insurance deposit of between £2,000 and £4,000”, Zones 1 to 5 plus Gatwick and Heathrow, no Android app, affiliate disclosure
• THE OUT’s Trustpilot profile (opens in new tab): TrustScore 4.8, 1,836 reviews, and the five-band distribution and recent review text quoted above
• THE OUT Car Rental on the UK App Store (opens in new tab): 4.8 from 1,269 ratings, version 13.1.0 released 12 August 2026, “Requires iOS 26.0 or later”, seller InMotion Ventures 2 Ltd
• THE OUT homepage (opens in new tab) and About page (opens in new tab): the two pull-quotes and the publisher links behind them, the data-stars="5" widget attribute on the homepage, the free-delivery area, “Available for iOS”
• THE OUT help centre: how much is the deposit (opens in new tab) (captured 25 May 2024): “All our vehicles have a deposit/excess value of £5000”
• THE OUT terms and conditions for renting a vehicle (opens in new tab) (captured 29 January 2025): the fee schedule, the 8 September 2023 congestion-charge change, excessive mileage above 600 miles per 24 hours
• THE OUT help centre: how is THE OUT different, and how much does it cost (opens in new tab) (captured 14 June 2024): “Unlimited mileage (fair usage allowance of 600 miles per 24h, extra miles charged at 30p/mile)”
• Skyscanner: car hire with THE OUT (opens in new tab): £452 cheapest London day, read 13 August 2026