The purpose of the research was to compare the least squares estimatate and the least absolute deviation estimate depending on the probability distribution of the renewal process of the autoregressive equation. To achieve this goal, the sequence of observations of the exponential autoregressive process was repeatedly reproduced using computer simulation, and the least squares estimate and the least absolute deviation estimate were calculated for each sequence. The resulting estimation sequences were used to calculate the sample variances of the least squares estimate and the least absolute deviation estimate. The best estimate was the one with the lowest sample variance. The quantitative measure for the estimates comparison was the sample relative efficiency of estimates, defined as the inverse ratio of their sample variances. Normal distribution, contaminated normal distribution, i.e. Tukey distribution, with different values of the proportion and intensity of contamination, logistic distribution, Laplace distribution and Student distribution with different degrees of freedom, in particular, with one degree of freedom, that is, Cauchy distribution, were used as models of probability distribution of the renewal process. For each probability distribution, asymptotic values of the sample relative efficiency were obtained with an unlimited increase in the sample size of the observations of the autoregressive process. Findings of research show that the least absolute deviation estimate is better than the least squares estimate for Laplace distribution and the contaminated normal distribution with sufficiently large levels of the proportion and intensity of contamination. In other cases, the least squares estimate is preferable.