What Riders Pay vs What Drivers Get on NYC App Trips

In short: on an average NYC Uber or Lyft trip, the rider paid about $34.49 in the charges TLC records. The driver received $21.20 in pay and $1.27 in tips, so about 65 cents of each rider dollar reached the driver. About $6.30 stayed with the app company from the base fare. The rest, about $5.74, was sales tax, tolls, the Black Car Fund, congestion charges and airport fees. Those charges go to the state, the MTA, the Port Authority or the Black Car Fund (tolls are paid back to whoever paid them). They are charged to the rider, not taken from your pay.

These are averages over 251.6 million app trips in TLC's trip records from September 2025 to August 2026. We added them up ourselves from TLC's public files. Your own trips will differ, so the last part of this page shows how to check one.

The pieces of an app fare

TLC's high-volume FHV data dictionary lists every money field the apps report for each trip. These are the names you will see in TLC data and in research about app pay:

Two definitions matter most. Base passenger fare is the ride price before everything else is added. Driver pay is what the company paid you for the trip, after its commission and without tips or tolls.

Where an average trip's money went

Over the 12 months, riders paid $6.92 billion in base fares and drivers received $5.33 billion in pay and $319 million in tips. Averages hide a wide spread. The share of the base fare paid to the driver is smallest on very short trips and largest on medium trips, and on about 15% of trips the driver was paid more than the base fare. The full breakdown by distance and month is on Uber and Lyft driver share of the fare.

Driver pay share by month

The driver share stayed between 75.6% and 79.2% of the base fare in every month. The minimum pay rates rise each March 1, and the companies change rider prices on their own schedule, so the share moves a little from month to month.

For context, the average base fare on an app trip was $27.49. That is higher than the average metered fare on a yellow taxi ($21.08) or green cab ($17.24), partly because app trips are longer on average (4.91 miles vs 3.54 for yellow taxis).

Charges the passenger pays, not you

Each of these is added to the rider's price. Only the base fare is shared between you and the company.

• NYS sales tax. Black car and limousine rides are taxable "livery service". Taxis are not (NYS Tax TSB-M-09(7)S). The combined rate in New York City is 8⅞% (Publication 718). The Black Car Fund surcharge is not part of the taxable amount. More in does sales tax come out of Uber driver pay?
• Black Car Fund surcharge. The Fund says it is charged to passengers and "does not come out of your pay", even if it appears on your statement (BCF FAQ). See why my pay shows a Black Car Fund charge.
• NYS congestion surcharge. $2.75 per FHV trip and $0.75 per pool trip that begins, ends or passes through Manhattan south of 96th Street (rates as of 2026-10-12).
• MTA Congestion Relief Zone fee. $1.50 per trip for high-volume (app) trips in Manhattan at or below 60th Street (rates as of 2026-10-12). See congestion pricing for TLC drivers.
• Airport fee. TLC's dictionary describes $2.50 for pickups and drop-offs at LaGuardia, Newark and JFK. The Port Authority raised the FHV fee to $3.50 from March 15, 2026 (Port Authority). The 12-month average per trip is low because only about 1 in 12 app trips touches an airport (airport trip statistics).
• Tolls. These pass through. The company must pay you back the entire toll you paid on a dispatched trip (rule 59D-17(c), TLC chapter 59). Who pays tolls on taxi trips is different: see who pays tolls on taxi trips.

When drivers paid these charges: 2014–2017

This is not a theory. The New York Attorney General found that from 2014 to 2017 Uber deducted sales taxes and Black Car Fund fees from drivers' pay, when riders should have paid them. Lyft deducted an 11.4% "administrative charge" from 2015 to 2017, equal to the sales tax and Black Car Fund fees. The November 2, 2023 settlements returned $328 million to drivers ($290 million from Uber, $38 million from Lyft) (NY Attorney General).

The settlements also require the companies to tell drivers, after each ride, how much the rider paid, and to give accurate earnings statements. That rider amount is your best tool for checking the split on your own trips.

Check the split on your own trip

The legal floor is the TLC minimum, not a share of the fare. Rule 59D-22 says the company must pay at least a per-mile and per-minute amount for every dispatched trip, whatever the rider paid. The current rates are on Uber and Lyft minimum pay, and you can run one trip through the minimum pay estimator. To find each number on your weekly statement, see how to read an Uber or Lyft pay statement.

What these numbers can't tell you

• Company costs and profit. "Rest of the base fare" is what the company kept from that field. The data does not show what it spent on insurance, payment processing or anything else.
• Your hourly earnings. Pay is recorded per trip. Waiting time, driving to pickups and your car costs are not in the trip records. See pay by hour of day.
• Cancellation fees, bonuses and promotions may not appear as trip fields, so they are not in these averages.
• Uber vs Lyft. Both had almost the same driver share (about 77% of the base fare). The per-trip comparison is in does Uber or Lyft pay more?