Montréal Cruise Port Rental Cars: the Grand Quay and the Desks Uphill

The Grand Quay of the Port of Montréal, Terminals 1 and 2, 200 rue de la Commune Ouest, Montréal QC H2Y 4B2, across from the Pointe-à-Callière museum. That’s the address to give a cab driver — or to type into the car’s navigation before you leave the desk.

Terminal 3 is at the Berri entrance, rue de la Commune Est at Berri (follow Port Road on your right); berths B1 and M5 are at 851 rue des Moulins (Mill Street). Terminal 3 sits at the foot of rue Berri, the same street as Enterprise’s bus-station desk, but every distance on this page is measured from Terminals 1 and 2 — check your documents for which one you’re using.

The Port’s 2026 schedule runs from Apr 24 to Oct 31; Holland America’s Volendam, Viking Mars, Regent’s Seven Seas Splendor, Oceania’s Vista and Seabourn Ovation (at Terminal 3) are among the ships that turn around here. The calendar simply stops there, which settles the winter-tire question before it starts.

Many sailings from Montréal end somewhere else, Boston, New York, Fort Lauderdale or Miami among them; Holland America says Volendam also sails roundtrip from Montréal. So a Montréal rental is often a one-way problem, not a round trip, and the Québec City page handles the most common pairing.

Holland America lists luggage storage at the terminal, C$7 or US$5 an item; a 2022 Cruise Critic article said there was none. Two sources disagree here. Ask your line before you build a free morning around stored bags — a 2022 article can be stale, and so can a cruise line’s page.

Two desks sit within a mile of the quay — Hertz on Saint-Antoine, and Avis and Budget at Complexe Desjardins.

Hertz is the only one we’d walk to with luggage, and its listing is messy enough that we’d phone it first.

Avis and Budget run four of the downtown counters between them — five, if you count Le Nouvel Hotel. Metcalfe is the one to remember. Complexe Desjardins is the nearest, while Metcalfe Street keeps the longest hours and the only published key drop among the four.

Enterprise lists a pick-up service at its rue Guy and Berri desks — a branch service, not a cruise shuttle. Neither page says how far it reaches — call before you plan around it.

National and Alamo on Stanley Street are the odd pair out. Their pages print drop-box windows and no opening hours — so the checker below leaves them off rather than guess.

Avis and Budget also share a desk at Le Nouvel Hotel, 1740 boul. René-Lévesque Ouest (about 1.8 miles out), with the same hours as Central Station. Enterprise lists 33 Montréal neighbourhood branches and none in Old Montréal; its “Rue Saint-Jacques” branch is at 6250 rue Saint-Jacques in the west end, not near the port. Sixt’s Canada page lists no Montréal branch, and Discount’s site wouldn’t load for us.

Sunday is the hard day here, so try half past noon on the checker. Both Hertz desks and the bus-station Enterprise never opened, three Avis and Budget counters have about thirty minutes left, Enterprise on rue Guy has ninety, and Metcalfe runs until 6.

Every downtown desk with published hours closes by 7 PM at the latest (Avis on Metcalfe, Thursday and Friday); Hertz and Enterprise’s bus-station desk close Sundays, and only Avis on Metcalfe and National and Alamo on Stanley publish an after-hours key drop.

After 7 in the evening the airport is the only answer on our list — a 12-mile ride, not a walk. Its counters in the P4 lot keep going until 1 AM, and the YUL page covers the ride out there.

Collecting the morning you dock is its own puzzle — the after-cruise page lines these hours up against disembarkation, Sunday included.

Québec charges 5% federal GST and 9.975% QST, both on the price before tax, so 14.975% together on a rental, per Revenu Québec’s own worked example. On an assumed C$55 day that’s about C$8.24 of tax, our arithmetic, before any company fee joins it. That’s the easy part.

We couldn’t confirm any Québec per-day rental duty on a Revenu Québec page; the government’s rental pages mention only GST and QST, and the C$3 duty we found is per new tire. Our calculator adds none; if your quote shows a provincial daily charge, add it as an extra.

That’s an absence of evidence, not proof there’s no charge — read the fee lines on your quote before you trust any total, ours included.

Avis Canada lists a Québec “tire management fee” that recovers the cost of seasonal tires under the winter-tire law, without an amount. Avis Canada also names a vehicle licence recovery fee, an energy recovery fee and an air-conditioning excise recovery fee, without amounts.

Four recovery fees, none with an amount — each one lands on the contract as its own line, so ask the counter what it comes to.

Collect at YUL and the airport adds a concession fee with no published percentage; the airport calculator leaves that box for your quote to fill.

The Port parks cruise passengers at the Grand Quay lot for C$40 a day, taxes included, under a contract you fill in and email before you arrive (grandquai@port-montreal.com, 514-370-7824). The contract form carries no date and lists Visa, Mastercard, debit or cash.

Arrange it by email, not at the barrier — the contract is what earns the flat daily figure.

The Port’s posted rates for the same lot, low season Oct 1, 2026 to Apr 29, 2027: C$25 up to 6 hours, C$30 for 6 to 12, C$40 for 12 to 24 (C$35, C$45 and C$55 from May 1 to Sept 30); the page doesn’t say whether tax is in. Those posted rates stop at a single day, so for a cruise the contract rate is the one that counts — about C$280 for seven days, our arithmetic.

Open 24/7, up to 250 vehicles; maximum height 3 m at the city-side entrance and 3.5 m on the river side; no trailers or motorhomes.

The Old Port’s Clock Tower and King-Edward Pier lots charge by the visit, taxes included, up to C$90 for less than 24 hours, with no multi-day or cruise rate. Seven days billed at that ceiling would be about C$630, our arithmetic. It’s a visit price, not a cruise rate.

When we first read it in September, the Port gave security@port-montreal.com for the contract; by Oct 3, 2026 the page showed grandquai@port-montreal.com. Write to the newer address.

A rental parked for the week is a worse sum. Keep a C$55-a-day car through a seven-night cruise and the rental alone comes to about C$443 with tax, before the lot — hand it back and rent again afterward.

Our Montréal cruise parking page covers the lot in more depth if your own car is the one making the trip.

None of the routes we price crosses a toll. Québec has two: the A-25 bridge between Montréal and Laval, billed by plate (C$9.05 peak, C$8.03 off-peak without an account, plus an admin fee per crossing), and the A-30 between Châteauguay and Vaudreuil-Dorion, C$4.40 a car by transponder or contactless card, no cash.

So there’s no transponder to rent for the trips on these pages — as far as we can tell, anyway.

A-25, category 1 car: C$3.40 peak and C$2.72 off-peak with a transponder; C$9.05 and C$8.03 without an account, plus an administration fee per crossing that the page doesn’t price. Peak is 6:01 to 9 AM and 3:01 to 6 PM on weekdays.

Plate billing is where a renter gets caught — the operator’s page doesn’t price that per-crossing administration fee, so treat the plate figure as a floor, not a total.

A-30: C$2.20 an axle, C$4.40 a car, Feb 28, 2026 to Jan 31, 2027; transponder or contactless debit or credit card; cash not accepted.

You’d meet the A-30 skirting the island to the southwest, and the A-25 crossing the river into Laval. Neither sits on the YUL, Québec City, Tremblant, Townships or US-border routes we priced, so the calculators on these pages carry no toll line. For these routes, turn down any toll package a counter offers.

Pick the counter you can actually reach while it’s open — then compare totals with GST and QST in. A cheaper rate at a desk that shut at 1 PM on Sunday only buys you a cab to the airport. Hours first, price second.

Two brands, Avis and Budget, share most of the downtown counters, so compare desks within a brand too — the Metcalfe counter and Complexe Desjardins can price the same car differently on the same day.