How Many For-Hire Bases Are There in NYC?

Short answer: TLC licensed 791 for-hire bases on December 31, 2025, according to its 2025 Annual Report. Most are black car bases (485) and livery "car service" bases (184). Only 2 are the big app companies, Uber and Lyft, licensed as High-Volume For-Hire Services.

A base is the licensed business that sends trips to for-hire vehicles (FHVs). Every FHV must be affiliated with one.

The numbers and where they come from

There is also a daily list. TLC's Current Bases dataset on NYC Open Data showed 859 bases on October 10, 2026:

Why the two counts don't match

Both numbers come from TLC, but they measure different things:

• Different dates. 791 is a year-end count. 859 is a snapshot more than nine months later. Bases open and close all the time.
• Different rules for who is on the list. The annual report counts license types, including the 2 HVFHS licenses. The Open Data list does not show Uber and Lyft as high-volume licenses. It does show "UBER USA, LLC" (B03404) as a black car base, because that is the base most app cars are affiliated with.
• Licensed is not the same as busy. In 2025, 512 bases (Uber and Lyft included) reported at least one month of trips in TLC's FHV Base Aggregate Report. In a typical 2025 month, only about 370 to 420 bases had trip rows. The rest may be small, late with their reports, or not dispatching at all; the data can't tell which.

So "how many bases" depends on the question. For licenses at a fixed date, use the annual report. For "who can I call today," use the daily list. For "who has work," use the trip report.

What makes each type different

TLC's rules (Chapter 59) define each type by how it works. Black car bases dispatch only pre-arranged trips, their cars are owned by franchisees or co-op members, and more than 90% of their business is not cash. Livery bases dispatch pre-arranged trips in cars built for fewer than six passengers and charge by flat rate, time, mileage or zone; TLC's annual report adds that liveries must offer upfront flat fares. Luxury limousine bases charge "garage to garage." A High-Volume For-Hire Service dispatches more than 10,000 trips a day; TLC's HVFHS page says that license is now "a type of base license."

What to do next

• See who has the most work: biggest NYC bases by trips.
• Trends for these sectors: livery and black car trip statistics and shared-ride statistics.
• All of TLC's 2025 counts in one place: TLC industry by the numbers, with licensed vehicles and the FHV license cap.
• Working for an app base? Know the hours limits for Uber drivers. New to the terms? Start with FHV.