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Why I Prefer Lyft Over Uber

The Rideshare Guy

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After 12½ years driving for both Uber and Lyft, Joe explains why he generally prefers Lyft, the driver-pay change that pushed him almost exclusively to Uber for three years, and why he eventually came back.
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After 12½ years driving for both Uber and Lyft, which one does Joe actually prefer?

Joe started driving Lyft in March 2014 and joined Uber only a few weeks later. Over the years, he's generally preferred Lyft, with driver pay being the biggest reason.

But in 2019, Lyft made a major change to driver pay in Minnesota and several other markets. While drivers began getting paid for pickup time and distance, Joe says his per-mile rate was cut roughly 50%.

The change was significant enough that he spent the next several years driving almost exclusively for Uber before eventually returning to Lyft and multi-apping.

Joe explains the history, what brought him back, and why he still prefers one platform today.

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About The RideShare Guy:

I'm Harry, the founder of The Rideshare Guy. I started driving for Uber and Lyft in 2015 and eventually quit my day job as an aerospace engineer to run The Rideshare Guy full time.

These days, I'm a trusted media expert on all things rideshare and have a number of contributors across the country who are all driving for Uber and Lyft and other gig companies like Instacart, Doordash, and Postmates.

The RideShare Guy has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, CNBC, NPR, 60 Minutes on CBS TV, The Washington Post, Wired, Forbes, SFGate, and hundreds more.

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Tags
#Uber
#Lyft
#Driver

20 Comments

@Therideshareguy Creator 13 days ago Pinned

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What do you prefer? Uber or Lyft?

@Sharpei_Man 6 days ago

Both are shady but uber takes it to another level

@joymarshall7470 5 days ago

One of the reasons I like Lyft over Uber they start charging for the wait time immediately versus donating 2 minutes of time every time you have a ride. That is a lot of time wasted when you add the number of rides that we give it a week month or year

@pierretoussaint6766 6 days ago

On Longisland NY, what I noticed is uber has a fixed rate per mileage but Lyft doesn’t. For example, a regular 8 miles trip on Lyft can be $25 without any surge right now, but exact same trip and same distance with a 30% bonus is $5 in the next 10mn. A regular trip with Lyft without any surge can be equivalent to an uberX trip with a $10 surge. Therefore I just accept the trip with Lyft that pays a lot more. For that reason Lyft is better for me.

@evilnoriega 6 days ago

I drive almost exclusively for Lyft, for 9 years, because of the frequency of ride requests. The only time I notice über is better, is at large events. Mainly because the "surge" is better than what Lyft offers.

@patricklandry3175 6 days ago

I prefer lyft too. Everything about the app is better even the nav. Also lyft will pay you extra money if you have to travel some distance to pick someone up. Uber usually sends me crap offers i need to travel sometimes 20 miles to pick someone up. Only thing about uber is i get more tips through uber. I wish lyft would make the tip screen more prominent in the app for riders

@jburkett4262 4 days ago

IN So Cal and prefer Lyft (rider types) and yet both have their moments and running their games. Uber does pay better surge (after extended rider requests that don't keep assigned driver). Lyft does have a lower tip rate so riders must return to app to see tip reminder where Uber seems to re-open app with the rate & tip reminder. Either trip summary can be exited quickly so making a positive tip worthy moment of each even if driving in silence if the rider is prefer that approach.

@pauljohnlongua4093 5 days ago

As of right now, Lyft always gives me over 20% and longer trips my trips are usually $20 with Lyft and 4 to $7 with Uber. I would like to keep my percentages good but Uber makes that very difficult. Even my Uber comfort rides seem closer to uberX pay.

@coachcarlrsgnetwork2016 5 days ago

The useful version of this comparison is market by market, not platform by platform. Lyft pays better in some cities and worse two states over, and the only way to know yours is to run both apps for two weeks and compare dollars per online hour, not per trip. Most drivers who swear by one platform are right about their own city and wrong about everyone else's.

@jmartinez9332 6 days ago (edited)

I'm in the Northwest bordering between the Portland airport and the Vancouver Washington area where we have the race card. In Washington we have of course the much better rates and Uber and Lyft have the exact same pay whereas in Portland you make 10 cents less a mile with Lyft as opposed to Uber and it's about overall 60% of what we would make in Washington. I do a lot more Lyft because regardless of my acceptance rate I'm always able to see the exact address miles and time of the ride ahead of time. With Uber your acceptance rate must be 85% and a 5% or less cancellation rate. When I'm in Washington I will get requests to go to the Portland airport which might be 10 mi away and of course I turned it down and that kills my acceptance rate which is really really annoying and to me should be illegal because we are independent contractors we are not employers and shouldn't be punished for turning down a ride. When you are in compliance with Uber they just tell you what direction you're going in and how long the ride is but they don't let you know how many miles it is. I might have a request that says it's going to be 20 minutes going east but I won't know if it's 15 mi or 5 MI and of course they do that on purpose. So early in the day if the ride is nearby with Uber I'll take it but when it becomes rush hour I don't want to be stuck in traffic so I literally turn off the Uber app all together and use Lyft the rest of the way. On one of your next shows can you let us know throughout the country if there's going to eventually be a law across the board which will allow for transparency with Uber ? Drivers absolutely need to have the information as to where they're taking their riders with the mileage and address so we can mathematically assess whether it makes sense to take that ride.
If Uber did the same as Lyft they would actually make more money and I would probably make easily another $75 a day just being able to use it the way I use Lyft.

@diaking2845 5 days ago

I'm with u. In the 10 years I've been ride sharing the times I've spoken to or interacted with a human, in app or in person, with Uber is less than 4x. While I've actually hung out with Lyft's CEO, and other employees, they gave me several TShirts, goodies, cups bags etc. I even had 2 Amps (they break easy tho). In my experience Uber riders are more likely to make u w8 longer, less likely to tip, and more likely to be jerks! Uber does pay a day earlier, tho. But at the end of the day it's all about $, right? So, I multi app and usually go with the one that makes the most economic sense at the time. The last few weeks it's fluctuated between the two.

@jbry888 5 days ago

I am in the Sacramento area and while I don’t drive much, I usually prefer Lyft as well because I almost never see surge on Uber but just wait times. For example Lyft had their flash turbos the whole night after the Aftershock concert while I only saw a surge of only $4.25 at the highest with Uber. Needless to say I made $89 in only 2 hours that night with Lyft

@markfisher7593 2 days ago

Maybe in your market Lyft is better. I drive Uber mainly because I have been hearing from my passengers that lyft is too expensive. I drive in Illinois McHenry area. And I've checked on the Lyft customer app. And it is way too expensive. For example they wanted to charge $30 for a ride that was 1.4 miles. I do turn on the Lyft app but I rarely get any. Because every market is different but unfortunately in my market Lyft is too expensive.

@TheLizzardbreath 5 days ago (edited)

I Exclusively drove for Uber in 2022 as well .
Here in St Cloud MN , our affairs have always been low, but this 30% fee gap is killing us! Six dollars for pretty much every ride unless there is a search regardless the miles and minutes. It’s flooded with lift drivers.. Uber on the other hand does not have as many drivers and as many requests. It’s been two years since I drove for Uber and this weekend was my first weekend and they had a opportunity of 15 rides 20 bucks. I couldn’t even get 15 rides the whole weekend.! I had nine completed and rejected 6. The ones I rejected with the absolute ridiculous ones you know where they offered $40 to go 80 miles. Says they don’t have the thing that Lyft has where you can see where the other drivers are. I would just go to the passenger app and those cars weren’t moving either.

@Metaobserver 5 days ago

Lyft is paying about 40% less in my experience but I like its map, passanger info etc. Uber map is from 2009.

@lifeafterstrokewithtom4804 5 days ago

Less deadhead miles with Lyft. Uber has no problem making me go 8,9,12,15 miles to go pick up the next ride. Less pick up miles= more rides per hour.

@Explorer63-k6d 5 days ago

I prefer driving Lyft in Florida because they compensate the driver when using toll roads.

@ruckes13 6 days ago

I agree with you.

@KelvinMcNeil 5 days ago

Uber pays XL & Comfort drivers far more than Lyft. Primarily because you are allowed to filter by ride type in Uber when that is simply not possible in Lyft. Therefore they’ll send you base level offers. That alone is a enough reason to prefer Uber.

@bearclaws2934 5 days ago (edited)

Lyft is def more profitable on longer rides with some turbo%, beats Uber most times. In other instances Lyft sucks most times, without turbo on average it pays 20%+ less than Uber for comparable rides. Lyft does have better algorithms and matches closer riders than Uber all the time, esp, during peak times, Ubers matching algo is an absolute garbage these days. In a market with guaranteed rates (we don't have it yet in Chicago), I imagine Lyft would be a preferred app overall.