Tipping on Uber, Lyft and Taxi Trips in NYC: The Data

In short: Most NYC app riders don't tip. In TLC trip records for September 2025 – August 2026, only 19.6% of Uber and Lyft trips had a tip. When riders did tip, the median was $4.79. Across all trips, tips came to 4.6% of the fare — about $1.27 per trip. Yellow taxi riders who pay by card tip on 91% of trips, but taxi data only records card tips, so the two are not a fair like-for-like match.

App tips are recorded in the tips column of TLC's high-volume FHV files and are not part of driver_pay (TLC dictionary). Our numbers cover 251.6 million clean app trips.

The numbers at a glance

App vs taxi

The gap is huge, but read it carefully. A taxi card rider sees a tip screen before paying, and we can only count those card trips. App riders tip later in the app, if at all. For taxi details see yellow taxi tip data.

Month by month

App tipping is flat: between 4.4% and 4.9% of fares every month, and the share of tipped trips stayed between 18.8% and 20.8%. We only hold 12 months of trip files, so we cannot show a trend back to 2019.

By hour of day

Late-night trips (midnight to 3am) are tipped least, about 15–17%. Late morning and midday trips are tipped most, about 22%. The average tip per trip, counting untipped trips as zero, is highest around 5am ($1.48) and lowest around 2am ($0.80).

By borough and airport

Airport trips are tipped about twice as often as other trips (18.3% for trips not touching JFK, LGA or Newark). Bronx pickups are tipped least often — about one in twelve. The data cannot say why; it records only what riders did.

Two ways to measure tipping

This page uses two different numbers, and they answer different questions.

• Share of trips tipped answers "how often?" One in five app trips (19.6%) had a tip.
• Tips as a percent of fare answers "how much, overall?" All app tips added up to 4.6% of all app fares.

A third view helps too: among trips that were tipped, the median tip was about 19% of that trip's fare. So riders who tip in the app tip at roughly taxi-like rates; the difference is how many riders tip at all. Averages per trip mix both effects: $1.27 per trip is roughly one tip of about $6.46 spread over five trips.

For a driver, this means tip income from apps is uneven. Most trips bring nothing extra, and a few bring a lot. The table above shows which trips were tipped more often in the past year; it cannot predict any one rider.

Tips and minimum pay

TLC's minimum pay is calculated per trip from miles and minutes (TLC rates). TLC's trip data records tips separately from driver_pay, and rule §59D-17(b) says the app company must pass the entire tip to you (Chapter 59). The minimum-pay rule itself does not mention tips; if a trip looks underpaid, ask TLC's Driver Protection Unit. On a typical app trip, tips added about 6% to driver pay ($1.27 on an average $21.20). For the tax side of tips, see no tax on tips for TLC drivers.

More data: pay per trip, weekly earnings, tolls on app trips, taxi vs Uber fares, airport trips, wait times, WAV ride requests and the trip statistics overview. Hub: money.