Motorcycle Rental in San Francisco: Every Shop, Price, and Bridge Toll Policy

Jul 28, 2026

Four operators rent motorcycles in the San Francisco metro area, and 275 motorcycles were available across all of them. Two names that guides still recommend first, Dubbelju Motorcycle Rental and MotoQuest San Francisco, no longer rent here. Daily rates start at $29 for a Honda Shadow on Riders Share and run to $300, with the cheapest Harley-Davidson in the market listed at $61. No operator in San Francisco publishes a policy on who pays the Golden Gate Bridge toll, which every ride north of the city triggers on the way home. All figures below were pulled from each operator's public website or booking system on August 11, 2026.

San Francisco motorcycle rental comparison chart

About this comparison

The information on this page was compiled from publicly available sources, including each operator's own website, published rate sheets, and booking systems, on August 11, 2026. Sources are listed above.

Rental rates, inventory, deposits, mileage policies, gear, tours, and hours change frequently and vary by season, demand, bike model, and individual listing. Figures shown reflect what each operator published on the verification date and should not be relied on as current pricing. Confirm all terms directly with the operator before booking.

Where a field reads "not listed," it means the operator did not publish that information on its public website as of the verification date. It does not indicate that no policy exists.

This comparison is provided for informational purposes. Riders Share is not affiliated with and does not endorse Dubbelju Motorcycle Rental, EagleRider, EagleShare, MotoQuest, or Twisted Road. All company names, trademarks, and logos are the property of their respective owners and are used here for identification purposes only.

Operators who identify an inaccuracy in this comparison can contact us, and we will review and correct the entry.

Where can I rent a motorcycle in San Francisco?

San Francisco carries more rental inventory than almost any West Coast market, and nearly all of it sits on marketplaces rather than in shops.

Three peer-to-peer platforms list motorcycles from private owners, with each owner setting the rate, the mileage terms, and the gear. Riders Share carries 109 motorcycles, Twisted Road carries 96, and EagleShare carries 48. That accounts for 253 of the 275 motorcycles available across the metro.

One fixed fleet operator remains. EagleRider on Valencia Street in the Mission holds 22 motorcycles and is the only national chain left in the market, stocking Harley-Davidson alongside BMW, Ducati, and Honda.

Riders Share runs both models at once. Rental PowerSports in Millbrae lists 31 motorcycles on the platform from a storefront on El Camino Real, close to San Francisco International Airport, so a rider flying in has a counter within a few miles of the terminal. The remaining listings come from private owners across the metro, and many offer delivery. Riders working the wider Bay Area can compare motorcycle rentals in San Francisco across every pickup point rather than a single shop.

Where you collect the bike shapes the trip more here than in most cities, because the good roads sit in two different directions. Marin, Point Reyes, Napa, and Sonoma are north across the Golden Gate. Skyline Boulevard, Half Moon Bay, and the run toward Santa Cruz are south down the Peninsula. A Millbrae pickup puts you on the southern routes without touching a bridge. A pickup inside the city puts Marin twenty minutes away and a toll on the return.

Why San Francisco rental listings are often out of date

Before comparing anything, a caution about what a search returns in this market. The two operators most often recommended first for San Francisco have not rented a motorcycle here in years.

Dubbelju is the clearest case. The Mission District shop opened in 1991 and became the default recommendation for visiting riders, with founder Wolfgang Taft known for route advice as much as for the fleet. It closed in early 2020, and Taft retired. The company website now serves a placeholder page, and its Yelp listing is marked closed.

Almost nothing else caught up. Its TripAdvisor attraction page is still live and still collecting traffic in 2026. San Francisco visitor guides still list the Shotwell Street address. BMW Motorcycles of San Francisco still publishes a service loaner program directing customers to rent from Dubbelju at $69 per day plus $0.75 per mile while their bike is being worked on. A legal industry blog published in February 2026 named Dubbelju the top pick in the city, six years after it shut its doors.

MotoQuest San Francisco is the second. MotoQuest still operates, and its own rental locations page lists three West Coast pickup points, Anchorage, Portland, and Long Beach. San Francisco is not among them. Local directories still list a MotoQuest San Francisco entry, and a Bay Area shop still hosts a page saying MotoQuest offers rentals in the area.

The pattern matters before you call anyone. A directory listing, a review page, and a partner referral all outlive the business they describe, and none of them carry a date. The chart above works from operator sources and carries a verification date for that reason. Check the date on any comparison you read, including this one, and confirm terms with the operator before you book.

What is the cheapest motorcycle rental in San Francisco?

The lowest published rate for a motorcycle in San Francisco is $29 per day, a Honda Shadow listed on Riders Share. Riders Share inventory spans $29 to $280 across 109 motorcycles, which is both the widest range and the lowest floor in the market.

Twisted Road opens at $48 and runs to $300. Rental Powersports CA lists $40 to $200 on the platform. EagleRider does not publish a rate card for the San Francisco location.

Base rate alone will not tell you what a rental costs here, and San Francisco makes that point more forcefully than most markets. Rental Powersports adds a mandatory damage and liability waiver at $55 per day and a mandatory cleaning fee of $20 on standard motorcycles or $30 on adventure and Harley-Davidson models, then applies a payment processing fee of 4.5 percent on credit and debit cards, 6.5 percent on international cards, and 5 percent on PayPal, with no fee on Zelle. A $40 listing there is closer to $115 on a single day rental once the waiver and cleaning fee land, before the card fee. Its security deposit is $1,000, with physical damage liability capped at $3,000 per incident and $5,000 on total loss or theft.

Owner listings on Riders Share do not carry those mandatory add-ons, and the deposit is waived entirely for riders who submit a comprehensive and collision declarations page from a personal policy. EagleRider authorizes $1,000 to $3,000 at pickup in its published terms, with its FAQ quoting a range of $100 to $5,000 depending on which waiver tier a rider selects.

Read the deposit, the mandatory fees, and the mileage terms together before comparing daily rates across operators.

How much does it cost to rent a Harley in San Francisco?

The cheapest Harley-Davidson rental in San Francisco is a Street 750 at $61 per day, listed on Riders Share.

San Francisco is an expensive Harley market by California standards. Over the same period, the cheapest Harley in San Diego listed at $30 per day, less than half. Riders with flexible plans and a longer California route may find the math works better collecting a bike further south.

Rental Powersports CA carries Harley-Davidson models inside its $40 to $200 band, with the higher cleaning fee of $30 applying to Harley and adventure bikes. EagleRider on Valencia Street is the only fixed fleet operator in the city stocking Harley-Davidson and does not publish a rate card, so a quote requires running dates through its booking system.

Who pays the Golden Gate Bridge toll on a rental motorcycle?

No motorcycle rental operator in San Francisco publishes a policy on bridge tolls. That gap matters more here than it would anywhere else, because the toll is close to unavoidable on the rides people rent bikes to do.

The Golden Gate Bridge has been all electronic since March 2013. There are no booths and no cash, and tolls are collected in one direction only, southbound into San Francisco. Riding north into Marin is free. Coming home is not.

Four payment methods exist, and they are not priced the same. Motorcycles are billed in the two axle class at the same rate a car pays, so there is no rider discount here. Under the rates effective July 1, 2026, a FasTrak account crossing costs $10.25. A License Plate Account or a One-Time Payment costs $10.50. A Toll Invoice, which is what a rider gets by default after crossing with none of the above, costs $11.25.

That last path is the one that matters on a rental. The invoice goes to the registered owner, and the registered owner is not you. On a peer-to-peer booking it is a private individual who gets a bill in the mail weeks after you have flown home, and on a fixed fleet rental it is a company that will typically rebill the toll along with an administrative fee, the way car rental companies do.

There is a clean way around it. Riders can settle the crossing themselves at bayareafastrak.org within 48 hours using the license plate, which is charged as a One-Time Payment at $10.50. That closes the loop before an invoice is generated, and it is the cheaper outcome as well, since the invoice tier runs $11.25. Photograph the plate before you ride so you have the number. Rates step up annually, so confirm the current figure on the Golden Gate Bridge district's own site before you travel.

Two further points catch out visiting riders. Bay Area FasTrak is a separate system from E-ZPass, so an East Coast transponder will not be read. And the Golden Gate is not the only electronic toll in the region, since the Bay Bridge, San Mateo, Richmond, Dumbarton, Carquinez, Benicia, and Antioch crossings all bill the same way, so a route looping through the East Bay compounds the problem. Riders planning a longer route through the state can compare motorcycle rentals across California to find a pickup point that fits the itinerary.

Ask the owner or the shop how they handle tolls before you ride. It is a two-minute conversation that prevents a bill from arriving at someone else's house.

Do San Francisco motorcycle rentals include gear?

Riders Share includes free gear across its listings, with helmets, jackets, gloves, and boots in sizes S through XXL, depending on the bike rented. EagleRider includes helmets in the daily rate at all locations. Rental Powersports CA rents helmets and requires a balaclava with any helmet rental, sold on site for $10 and yours to keep. On Twisted Road and EagleShare, gear comes from the individual owner rather than a central inventory, so it appears on each motorcycle listing.

California enforces a universal helmet law under CVC 27803, so every rider and passenger must wear a securely fastened DOT-approved helmet regardless of age or experience.

Layers matter more in this market than the helmet rule does. Summer in San Francisco runs cold and wet with fog, the Marin Headlands can sit twenty degrees below the inland valleys on the same afternoon, and a rider who crosses the bridge into the sun at Point Reyes will meet the fog again on the way back. Pack for two climates on any ride that leaves the city.

Mileage caps and what unlimited actually covers

Twisted Road states unlimited miles on nearly all rentals, with any limits disclosed in the individual listing. Riders Share includes unlimited mileage on most listings, with certain bikes carrying limits and overage rates set by the owner.

EagleRider offers unlimited mileage on select models only, a qualifier that appears in its rental terms rather than at the top of the booking flow, and does not publish a per-mile rate on capped models. Rental Powersports CA does not publish a mileage policy.

Bay Area distances make this a field to check. A Mount Tamalpais loop is about 60 miles round trip and a Point Reyes run about 90, both comfortable inside any allowance. A Napa or Sonoma day runs closer to 120, a Santa Cruz run down Highway 1 about 150, and a Big Sur push clears 300 in a single day. If you are planning distance out of EagleRider or Rental Powersports, confirm by phone whether your specific model carries a cap before you book.

What is the best motorcycle ride near San Francisco?

Panoramic Highway climbing out of Mill Valley onto Ridgecrest Boulevard over Mount Tamalpais is the closest good road to the city, roughly 60 miles round trip with the Pacific on one side and the bay on the other. It is the ride locals do on a weekday evening.

Highway 1 north through Muir Beach and Stinson to Point Reyes Station is the longer version of the same idea, about 90 miles round trip, with Bolinas-Fairfax Road as the return leg if you want more corners and less traffic.

South of the city, Skyline Boulevard runs the ridge of the Santa Cruz Mountains to the State Route 84 junction and Alice's Restaurant, about 70 miles round trip and the busiest motorcycle meeting point in Northern California on a Sunday morning. Carry on down Highway 1 through Half Moon Bay and Pescadero and you are in Santa Cruz at about 150 miles round trip.

Napa and Sonoma sit about 120 miles round trip north, with the Oakville Grade and Trinity Road offering the tight sections. The San Francisco rider's guide covers the routes and the stops in detail.

Every northern route on that list crosses the Golden Gate southbound on the way home, which is the tolled direction. Plan for it before you go rather than after the invoice arrives.

Do you need a motorcycle license to rent in California?

California requires a Class M1 license to operate a two-wheel motorcycle of any engine size, and every motorcycle rental operator in San Francisco requires an endorsement before releasing a bike. Out-of-state licenses are accepted when they carry the endorsement, and Rental Powersports CA accepts international endorsements as well.

Twenty-one is the standard minimum age across the market. Riders Share, EagleRider, Rental Powersports CA, and Twisted Road all set 21 as the floor, and no operator here publishes a pathway for riders under 21.

Experience requirements layer on top of age. Riders Share limits riders holding temporary licenses to bikes filtered as Easy Rides, and individual owners can set 25 as their own minimum on a listing. Twisted Road documents riding history in the rider profile and applies additional requirements to renters under 25, along with a higher credit card authorization.

Booking a motorcycle in San Francisco

Riders Share lists 109 motorcycles across the San Francisco metro, from a $29 Honda Shadow through premium and specialty models at $280, spanning cruisers, sport bikes, adventure, dual sport, scooters, and three-wheelers. Most listings include unlimited mileage, gear comes free with the rental, delivery is available on many listings, and the deposit is waived for riders who submit proof of comprehensive and collision coverage on a personal policy. Fourteen guided and self-guided experiences run alongside the rental inventory from $50 to $800, and Rental Powersports CA in Millbrae gives riders flying into SFO a storefront a few minutes from the terminal.

Browse motorcycle rentals in San Francisco and book your next ride today.