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Swapfiets now has around 280,000 members in 45 cities after acquiring Dance in 2026.
Bike Club serves more than 60,000 subscribers with kids' bikes. And around 23% of the businesses running on circuly are in the bike industry.
This guide is for brands, retailers, bike shops and founders who want to start a bike rental or bike subscription business. It covers the models, the fleet, the service promise, theft, batteries, pricing and the systems you'll need, with lessons from companies that got it right (and a few that didn't).
The short answer: Pick one customer group (commuters, families, students or businesses) and one model (short-term rental, monthly subscription, rent-to-own or kids' swaps). Choose a small range of bikes you can service and refurbish for years, ideally with standard parts. Make your service promise and theft rules crystal clear, price for realistic occupancy and multiple subscription cycles, and plan how you'll finance the fleet. Then automate billing, swaps, returns and asset tracking from day one.
Which bike rental model are you building?
"Bike rental" covers several very different businesses:
- Short-term rental: hours or days, often for tourists or weekend rides. Revenue depends on season and location.
- Monthly subscription or long-term rental: customers pay a monthly fee for a bike with service included, like Swapfiets or Decathlon Belgium's e-bike rental.
- Rent-to-own: part of the monthly fee counts towards buying the bike. Riese & Müller credits 90% of past subscription payments towards the purchase price, and Oslo-based Joule builds up a buyout discount every month. See how subscribe-to-own works.
- Kids' bike subscriptions: families swap to the next size as their child grows. Read our guide to kids' bike subscriptions.
- B2B rental: cargo bikes or fleets for businesses, delivery services and employers.
And then there's company bike leasing, which is huge in Germany: 2.4 million people currently lease a bike through their employer, according to Zukunft Fahrrad.
It's a different product with different rules, and it's both a competitor and a reference point for subscriptions. We compare them in bike subscription vs. leasing vs. buying.
How to start a bike rental or subscription business: 10 steps
1. Choose your customer group
Commuters want a reliable bike and fast repairs. Families want the right size and no hassle. Students want low prices and flexibility. Businesses want uptime and invoices. Each group needs a different bike range, price point and service promise, so don't try to serve them all at once.
2. Be clear about your starting position
- Manufacturers control the product, the spare parts and often the dealer network. Riese & Müller runs its Bike Abo on a separate site, with local dealers handling pickup, adjustments, maintenance and returns.
- Retailers have stores, workshops and customers. Decathlon Belgium lets customers subscribe online or in store, and store teams create subscriptions at the counter in a few steps.
- Bike shops already have the mechanics. A subscription can smooth out the seasonal sales curve and bring customers back to the workshop.
- Subscription-first startups start from zero. Capital, fleet supply and service capacity are the first problems to solve.
3. Pick a small fleet you can support for years
This is where many bike businesses quietly win or lose. Bike Club's operations team puts it simply:
"To avoid overloading our refurbishment team with a bunch of different models, we make sure that if we add a new bike, we can support it over several years."
Franz Niebler, Digital Operations Manager, Bike Club Germany
Prefer bikes with standard, widely available parts. When VanMoof went bankrupt in 2023, around 190,000 customers were left worrying about proprietary parts and app-dependent features. As a subscription provider, you're the one who has to keep every bike running for years, so proprietary components are your problem, not just your customer's.
4. Define your service promise
The service is the product. Swapfiets built its brand on fixing or swapping broken bikes quickly. Decathlon includes maintenance, repairs, theft insurance and roadside assistance in its e-bike rental. Joule includes winter tyres in Oslo, which is the kind of detail that makes a subscription feel smarter than ownership. Decide:
- What's included: servicing, wear parts, repairs, insurance, lock, accessories
- Where service happens: at home, in your workshop or at partner shops
- How fast you respond, and what customers ride in the meantime
Read how to create a higher perceived value for subscription products.
5. Take theft seriously
Around 214,000 bikes were reported stolen in Germany in 2025, and only 50 to 60% of thefts are reported, so the real number is much higher. Your theft rules decide your margin:
- Is theft insurance included, and is there a deductible? Decathlon's e-bike rental has no deductible for theft or damage.
- What does the customer have to do? Decathlon requires a police report within two working days.
- Which locks are approved? Joule includes an approved lock in every subscription.
- Can you track the bike? GPS trackers help recovery and can lower insurance costs.
6. Manage payment and fraud risk
An e-bike worth €2,500 leaving your shop on a first monthly payment of €70 is a risk you need to manage. Riese & Müller requires a credit check before approval. Bike Club combines basket checks, credit checks, automatic payment retries and dunning, and its swap logic blocks exchanges until the previous bike has actually come back. Read our guide to failed payment recovery.
7. Price for real occupancy and multiple cycles
Market prices give you a starting point: Bike Club charges around €6 to €18 a month for kids' bikes, Decathlon's e-bikes start at €38 a month, and Riese & Müller's premium e-bikes run from €69 to €139. But your price has to work for your costs: what you paid for the bike, service, insurance, the weeks between subscribers, refurbishment and what the bike is worth at the end. We break this down in bike subscription pricing and unit economics.
8. Plan delivery, pickup and returns
Bikes need fitting, so many businesses use pickup points. Riese & Müller customers pick up at a local dealer, who adjusts the bike to the rider. Decathlon customers pick up in store. Delivery models like Swapfiets and Dance bring the bike to the customer, which costs more but converts better in cities. Whatever you choose, every subscription eventually comes back, so plan the reverse logistics too.
9. Build refurbishment into the business
A bike that comes back clean, checked and ready for the next subscriber is where your profit lives. Define a fixed path for every return: inspect, repair, replace wear parts, test, photograph, mark as ready. Track every bike with asset tracking so you know its condition, history and revenue.
E-bike batteries deserve special attention. Under the EU Batteries Regulation, batteries for light means of transport placed on the market from 18 February 2027 need to be replaceable by an independent professional and come with a digital battery passport. For a subscription business, that's good news: replaceable batteries make a bike easier to refurbish, and battery data helps you decide when a bike moves to its next life. Read how refurbishment management works.
10. Finance the fleet and choose your systems
Bike subscriptions are capital-intensive. You pay for the bike upfront and earn it back month by month. Bike Club has raised over €50 million across equity and structured debt, using debt to fund the bikes and equity to fund growth. Swapfiets, with backing from its parent company Pon, reported €91.1 million in revenue and a €14.3 million net loss for 2024. Scale alone doesn't make the model profitable. Read our guide to financing a subscription business for durable products.
On the systems side, you'll need:
- Recurring billing and invoicing that handles minimum terms, price changes and discounts
- A customer self-service portal for swaps, returns, payment updates and buyouts
- Asset tracking per bike, including service history and theft status
- Integration with your shop system and payment provider. Bike Club runs on Shopify, Mollie and circuly.
Legal points to check
Check the consumer protection rules in your markets, including withdrawal rights and the cancellation button in Germany. If your model includes rent-to-own or credited buyouts, read what the EU's Consumer Credit Directive (CCD2) means for you. Theft and damage terms, early termination fees and liability for accidents all belong in your contract, and in front of a lawyer before launch.
Common mistakes to avoid
- Offering too many models, which overloads refurbishment and spare parts
- Choosing bikes with proprietary parts you can't source in three years
- Pricing as if every bike is rented every month without a gap
- Underestimating theft, and leaving it vague in your terms
- Treating the first subscription as the whole business case, instead of planning for the second and third
- Launching a winter campaign in November and wondering why nobody signs up. Plan for seasonal dips: Bike Club uses targeted retention offers, like keeping the current bike at a discount, to get through winter.
How circuly supports bike rental and subscription businesses
circuly is the subscription management software behind bike businesses like Bike Club, Riese & Müller, Decathlon Belgium and Joule. It handles subscription management, recurring billing, swaps, buyouts, credit checks, asset tracking, returns and customer self-service, connected to your existing shop system and payment provider. Learn more about our solution for micromobility rentals and subscriptions, or use the circuly Shopify app if you sell on Shopify. Book a demo to see it for your bikes.
FAQs
Is a bike subscription business profitable?
It can be, but profit comes from keeping each bike rented across several subscriptions and selling it well at the end, not from the first customer. Margins depend heavily on what you pay for the bikes, how long they stay in service and how often they're stolen.
Should I offer e-bikes or regular bikes?
E-bikes have a stronger reason to subscribe because they're expensive and need more servicing. Regular bikes are cheaper to buy and maintain, and work well for students and kids. Swapfiets offers both: in 2024, e-bikes made up about 20% of its membership base.
Do I need my own workshop?
Not necessarily. Riese & Müller uses its dealer network for service, and many startups partner with local bike shops. What matters is that the service promise is consistent and tracked in your system.
How do bike subscriptions compete with company bike leasing?
Leasing works for employees whose employer offers it and who are happy with a fixed term of around three years. Subscriptions work for everyone else: students, freelancers, newcomers to a city, people who want flexibility or a bike for a few months. Read our full comparison of subscription vs. leasing vs. buying.
Related reading:
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