Rider Fare vs Driver Pay: The App Share in NYC

In short: In TLC's trip records for September 2025 to August 2026, NYC Uber and Lyft drivers were paid 77.1% of the base passenger fare, and riders tipped another 4.6%. The share swings a lot from trip to trip: one in ten trips paid the driver less than 55% of the base fare, while about 15% of trips paid the driver more than the base fare. Short trips pay the smallest share.

These are our own totals from TLC's public trip files (about 251.6 million app trips after cleaning). Read the definitions first, because "fare" here is not everything the rider paid.

The words used here

TLC's high-volume FHV data dictionary defines each money field on a trip:

• Base passenger fare: the ride price before tolls, tips, taxes and fees.
• Driver pay: "total driver pay (not including tolls or tips and net of commission, surcharges, or taxes)".
• Tips and tolls are separate fields. Neither is included in driver pay.

So the share on this page is driver pay ÷ base passenger fare. It is not the company's profit and not a "commission" in any legal sense.

Month by month

The monthly share stayed between 75.6% (March 2026) and 79.2% (October 2025). The data we have starts in September 2025, so this page cannot show a trend back to 2019. The minimum pay rates in the rule rise each March 1, which can move the share.

By trip length

A possible reason: TLC's minimum pay is a per-mile plus per-minute amount for each trip (rule 59D-22), so a short trip has a small minimum, while the company sets the rider's price its own way. The trip data cannot show how companies price trips. See Uber and Lyft minimum pay.

Uber vs Lyft

Over the same 12 months, driver pay was 77.1% of base fare on Uber trips (license HV0003) and 77.2% on Lyft trips (HV0005). Tips were 4.4% of the fare on Uber and 5.2% on Lyft. Which company has more trips is on what percent of NYC trips are Uber.

What the rider paid on top

For context, here is what the trip records show riders paid beyond the base fare over the 12 months, against $6.92 billion of base fares and $5.33 billion of driver pay: sales tax $569 million, tolls $278 million, NYS congestion surcharge $238 million, Black Car Fund $170 million, Congestion Relief Zone fee $124 million, and airport fees $62 million. These are taxes, fees and pass-through charges, not company revenue. The question of who pays sales tax is covered in does sales tax come out of Uber driver pay?.

Why one trip and one week look different

TLC's June 2026 driver survey summary prints this example answer from one driver: "Uber and Lyft often take over 60% of the passenger's fare, and while they calculate their commission on a weekly gross basis, it leads to drivers being unfairly underpaid on many individual rides." Our numbers do not prove or disprove one driver's week. They show that single trips vary widely: 25% of trips paid the driver less than 64.5% of the base fare, and 10% paid more than 107.5%. Adding a week of trips evens this out, which is why a weekly total can look very different from the worst trips in it.

What the data can't tell you

• Rider discounts and promotions: the files do not say whether the base fare is before or after a rider promotion.
• Your hourly pay: driver pay here is per trip. Time waiting for requests and driving to pickups is not in this share. See app pay by hour of day.
• Older years: we used only the latest 12 months TLC had published on October 12, 2026.
• Company costs or profit: none of this is in TLC's data.

For comparison, the average base fare on app trips was $27.49, against $21.08 for yellow taxi metered fares in the same months:

More context: how Uber's fare and your pay are calculated, what happens when a passenger complaint gets you deactivated, toll bridge or free route with a passenger, Newark Airport for TLC drivers and can someone else drive my TLC vehicle?.