Uber’s Take Rate Surpasses 50%, Affecting Driver Income: Study

Extra of your Uber fare goes to the corporate than the motive force, in accordance with a brand new examine.

Uber’s “take fee,” or the proportion of every fare that the corporate hangs on to, has risen above 50% this yr in some cities, in accordance with an analysis by Len Sherman, an government in residence and adjunct professor at Columbia Enterprise Faculty.

That is nicely above the 15% to twenty% share of every fare that Uber took a couple of decade in the past, Sherman discovered. Uber doesn’t frequently report its take fee.

Sherman’s evaluation examined 9 years of ride-hailing knowledge for 3 Uber drivers in numerous cities — Dallas, Miami, and Tampa. Collectively, the drivers have accomplished about 50,000 Uber journeys in that point.

The findings present one purpose many Uber drivers say it is develop into tougher for them to earn money by the gig in recent times.

Sherman mentioned the rising take fee in its ride-hailing enterprise is powering Uber’s forays into new verticals, like lodge bookings. In a separate examine final yr, Sherman argued that Uber’s rising take rate, pushed by its upfront pricing mannequin, made the corporate’s monetary turnaround underneath CEO Dara Khosrowshahi doable.

“That is nonetheless the revenue engine for Uber,” he informed Enterprise Insider final week.

Uber has pushed again on Sherman’s previous estimates of its take fee. In a January blog post, Uber mentioned it stored 21% of every fare on common within the third quarter of 2025, lower than half of what Sherman estimated.

It is also “false” that Uber grew to become worthwhile “by elevating costs whereas taking an ever bigger share of the pie,” the weblog publish mentioned.

Uber’s ride-hailing enterprise is its largest and most worthwhile, with gross bookings rising 18% to $29.7 billion in income in 2025 and accounting for roughly 90% of its adjusted earnings earlier than curiosity, taxes, depreciation, and amortization — a measure of profitability — for the yr.

Uber’s take fee doubled over the time-frame of the examine

For the examine, the drivers requested and acquired the data from Uber. All drivers used the earnings analysis app GigU, which related them to Sherman.

The drivers labored in numerous markets and turned to gig work at totally different instances — one took almost two years off from driving after the beginning of the pandemic, as an illustration.

Nonetheless, Sherman mentioned, the same sample emerged for every. About 10 years in the past, Uber took not more than 20% of every fare, and its payouts to drivers moved in lockstep with the fares it charged passengers.

That relationship between rider fares and driver payouts started to diverge in 2019, when Uber reduce driver payouts. That decoupling grew to become notably pronounced in 2022, after Uber started utilizing upfront pricing, a system that units fares and payouts individually for every journey quite than charging a set quantity based mostly on time or distance.

Uber’s 50% take fee is larger than that of different digital marketplaces, Sherman wrote in his report. Secondhand marketplaces, resembling eBay and Etsy, say that they preserve between 10% and 15% of every sale, as an illustration.

The examine didn’t study the take fee at different ride-hailing firms, resembling Lyft, and the businesses do not frequently disclose that determine.

Uber makes use of its algorithms to cost journeys and decide payouts based mostly on market circumstances, Sherman mentioned. That has allowed the corporate to extend its common share of every journey, although it is not all the time clear to drivers and riders, he mentioned.

“Whether or not Uber will get to remain there may be now a query for riders, drivers, and regulators who, in the end, have the numbers in hand to contemplate their decisions,” Sherman wrote.

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