About
The document that actually gets read at rental desks abroad.
IDP Companion is a multilingual translation companion document built for the moment that matters — when an agent in Phuket, Cancún, or Athens needs to verify your license and hand you the keys. Used alongside your real driver license. Issued in 2 minutes for $35. Honest about what we are: a private digital document, not a government IDP. Direct about what we solve: the language gap that turns rental desks into 90-minute calls home.
The rental-desk reality
Travelers find out at the rental counter in Bangkok, Phuket, Cancún, or Athens that their domestic driver's license — written in Cyrillic, Arabic, Chinese, or just an unfamiliar Latin format — won't be accepted on its own. The agent at the counter doesn't read your alphabet. The underwriter behind that agent doesn't either. The police officer at the next checkpoint just wants something he can verify in seconds. None of these people are checking which government issued your IDP. They're checking whether they can read what's in front of them.
The official answer to this is to obtain a government-issued International Driving Permit before you fly. That answer was built for compliance, not for the moment. The existing options for getting one were either slow (4-week mail-only services), overpriced ($79 for what is essentially a multilingual PDF), or actively dishonest (sites selling 'instant IDPs' that were neither government-issued nor legally valid). None of them solved the practical problem at the practical moment.
We built IDP Companion in 2025 as the missing fourth option: a clearly-named multilingual translation companion document, delivered digitally in minutes for $35–$55, with no marketing tricks and no claims to be anything we aren't. The role this document plays in your trip is the role it actually plays at rental desks, hotels, and roadside checks — being the thing that gets read.
What it actually solves
Four real moments where a multilingual companion document changes the outcome for travelers — even when it isn't a government-issued IDP.
At the rental car desk
The agent reads your license details in their own language. Less back-and-forth, faster pickup, and the friction that turns a 5-minute pickup into a 90-minute argument largely goes away. Major chains like Hertz, Avis, Sixt, and Budget have explicit policies recommending or requiring a multilingual translation alongside non-Latin-alphabet licenses.
At police and traffic checkpoints
Officers in Thailand, Indonesia, Mexico, and other tourist-heavy destinations routinely accept multilingual translations as the practical proof of your foreign license. They can verify your name, license number, and expiry without translation apps or phone calls. In countries where digital IDPs aren't recognized, our printed booklet often is — because what's being checked is readability, not issuer.
At hotel check-in and deposits
Hotels in resort areas often hold an extra deposit when they can't verify your license format — especially when you're using your driver license as a secondary ID. A multilingual companion document removes the ambiguity and routinely cuts the deposit-hold conversation in half.
On the insurance and contract paper trail
When something happens — accident, theft, dispute — your insurance and rental contract reference the documents you presented. A multilingual companion document is one of the papers that goes into that paper trail, in a form the insurer's claims team can actually read on the first pass.
What IDP Companion is — and isn't
Clear, factual, and the same on every page of this site.
A multilingual translation companion document
- A privately-issued multilingual PDF that translates your driver license details into 12 languages
- Designed to be presented alongside your physical license at rental desks, hotels, and police checks
- Built to reduce friction caused by foreign alphabets, unfamiliar formats, and language barriers
- A digital product — generated, delivered, and re-downloadable instantly via the web
A government-issued International Driving Permit
- Not a government-issued IDP under the 1949 Geneva or 1968 Vienna Convention
- Not a substitute for your physical driver license — must be carried alongside it
- Not affiliated with any government agency or transport ministry
- Not a magic document that lets unlicensed drivers operate vehicles
IDP Companion is a private multilingual translation companion document. Authorized issuers of US-origin Geneva 1949 IDPs are AAA and AATA; Vienna 1968 issuers vary by country. We are not affiliated with any of them, nor with government transport agencies. Always carry your original driver license alongside our document.
Why $35 instead of $79
We're not abbreviating quality — the PDF has the same multilingual structure, the same legal disclosures, the same usability at rental desks. We're abbreviating cost structure.
Digital-only delivery
We never ship a physical booklet. Mailing infrastructure is the single largest cost in legacy IDP services — we don't have it.
Lean operation
No paid sales team, no offshore call center, no marketing department. A small product team, one product, no layered overhead.
Transparent product
No 'premium tier' upsells, no rush-delivery fees layered on a base price, no add-ons. The price you see is the price you pay.
By the numbers
Behind the product
Built by travelers who lived the problem
We're a small product team — engineering and product experience between us, plus the kind of country list that comes from spending too much time at rental desks where the agent doesn't read your license. We started IDP Companion in 2025 because the existing options were either slow, dishonest, or both.
The product ships weekly. Customer support, refunds, and any issue with your document go directly to a real human inbox — not a ticketing queue managed by an outsourced call center.
[email protected]Common questions about us
Honest answers to the questions sceptical travelers ask before they buy.
Yes — and we're cheap because we're a digital-only lean operation, not because we're cutting corners on the document. We're a registered private business issuing a multilingual translation companion PDF. We're not pretending to be a government agency, and we're not selling something fake. The price reflects that we have no mailing costs and no marketing department.
In our experience, yes — at major international chains (Hertz, Avis, Sixt, Budget, Europcar) and most local chains in tourist destinations. In countries that legally require a government-issued IDP (Italy, Greece, Spain, Japan, Thailand, and others), our document on its own is not enough — you need a Geneva 1949 IDP from your country's authorized issuer alongside it. In every country it works as a friction reducer at rental desks, hotels, and informal verification stops. We refund in full if a rental refuses with a written reason. See Refund Policy.
Government-issued IDPs are produced by your country's authorized national automobile association under the 1949 Geneva or 1968 Vienna Conventions. We are not one of those issuers — we publish a privately-issued multilingual translation companion document. The functional overlap is large: both documents are multilingual representations of your license. The legal status is different. Use both if your destination legally requires the government IDP.
We process it to generate your PDF, then store it encrypted only as long as your plan duration (so you can re-download). We don't sell data, we don't share with marketers, we don't have ad pixels embedded in the PDF. See Privacy Policy for the full data flow.
Money-back guarantee — request a refund within 12 hours of purchase, any time after that if a rental car company refuses to accept the document with written confirmation, or if you have a download issue. See Refund Policy for full terms.
Ready when you are
2-minute upload, instant delivery, multilingual PDF used alongside your real driver license. From $35 for one year.