Understanding UberPool fares and fees

When it comes to fares and service fees, UberPool applies another set of rules, keep reading to find out what’s different and why.

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UberPool currently operates to help you earn the same, or sometimes more, than an equivalent UberX trip. And average earnings in London per trip across UberPool trips are currently higher than the average earnings if those trips had been with UberX*, but on some trips the earnings may be less.

UberX earnings are based on actual time and distance of the trip, whereas UberPool is based on an estimate. We try to keep overall earnings similar to UberX by varying the service fee for every pickup, or trip segment on UberPool—and here’s how it works.

UberPool offers more affordable prices and exact fare estimates for riders compared to UberX. This is to encourage more riders to take more trips.

UberPool fares are based on the estimated fare for the fastest route between the rider’s pickup and drop-off points as we believe riders would like to get to their destination as soon as possible.

The fare takes into account the estimated duration of the trip, traffic and distance, as well as surge pricing when demand is high. When the trip goes through a toll, the toll is added to the final fare.

At the end of each trip, the amount you are paid will be this fare or in rare cases, automatically adjusted to an UberX fare using actual time and distance travelled.

Where UberPool involves multiple pickups and drop-offs, a different service fee applies to each trip segment.

The service fee for the first pickup on a trip with UberPool will normally be the lowest of the trip segments, with the service fees for any additional pickups varying based on things like how many riders are picked up, and how much of the trip has multiple riders.

While service fees for each trip segment can be higher or lower than your usual service fee for UberX, the overall goal is to match your earnings compared to an equivalent UberX trip.

However, UberPool currently operates in a way that average earnings in London per trip across UberPool trips are currently higher than the average earnings if those trips had been with UberX* even though UberPool is designed to try and match your earnings to estimated UberX earnings. We’ll update this blog if this situation changes.

Please note that despite the 10% service fee, your earnings on some UberPool trips could be less than the equivalent UberX earnings for the actual time and distance of the overall UberPool trip.

To improve earnings on single pickup trips with UberPool, we reduce the service fee to compensate. The lowest service fee that can be applied is currently 10%—so you earn more of the fare.

See how a range of service fees are applied below.

A driver receives an UberX trip request resulting in a fare of £10. With a service fee of 25%, they would earn £7.50 on this trip.

If the rider requests UberPool instead, and the trip takes the same route, the trip fare on this occasion might be £8.30 due to more efficient routes from riders walking to the pickup spot, waiting, and having the possibility of having multiple riders share the journey.

In this case it’s a single pickup trip, so the service fee is 10% instead of 25% so that the partner-driver’s UberPool earnings (based on estimated time and distance) are similar to an equivalent trip with UberX.

Now let’s use this trip example again for another single pickup on UberPool. This trip would again have a £10 fare on UberX, but it’s an UberPool request in an area and at a time of day with a lot of ride requests. This means a greater chance that there will be multiple pickups on this trip and more earnings.

So the trip fare for this trip with UberPool (assuming no further pickups on this trip) on this occasion might be £7.50, as the trip is in a busy area and likely to benefit from multiple riders paying you at the same time. Again, in this case, the service fee is 10% so that your earnings on UberPool are as close to UberX as possible, although less than UberX in this single pickup example.

It’s not always possible to match the earnings of an UberPool to an UberX, but we can charge a lower service fee of 10%, so even a single pickup trip with UberPool could come close. However, your earnings on some UberPool trips may still be less.

However, average earnings in London per trip across UberPool trips are currently higher than the average earnings if those trips had been with UberX.*

While your earnings on a single pickup are usually protected with a lower service fee, should your UberPool trip be matched with a second pickup, the second service fee will usually be higher than the first. Again, this is because the overall goal is to keep the earnings on UberX and UberPool similar. However, with two people riding and paying you at the same time, total earnings compared to a single pickup would be higher.

This example of two pickups shows how things could work when more people join your journey.

Because the pickup is at a busy time in a busy area, let’s say a second rider is matched with this trip. In this simple example, both riders are going from the same pickup to the exact same destination. Because of this, the partner-driver fare for this entire trip with UberX would still be £10.

The whole trip on UberX would have a fare of £10.00 before the service fee of 25%, which means the partner-driver would earn £7.50 for that trip. In contrast, for this example trip, the partner-driver would earn £11.40 on UberPool (under the current service fees and fares structure) because they had two riders paying them at the same time for the whole journey.

As we’ve mentioned above, in some cases, your earnings may not be as much as the equivalent UberX fare for the actual time and distance of the overall UberPool trip (despite our flexible service fee for UberPool). While this isn’t common, there are things you can do to maximise your earnings:

Unlike UberX, UberPool works with fixed destinations. This means a rider is locked into where they were going when they ordered, and no destination changes mid-trip for you.

Riders cannot change the drop-off location after requesting because the app matches riders and partner-driver based on pickups and drop-offs, so changing the destination would impact other riders on the trip. If they insist, the rider can cancel the trip and request another UberPool or UberX, or you can end the trip early and in most cases you will receive the same fare.

To encourage more trips with UberPool, we sometimes apply additional promotions for riders. When you confirm a trip request with UberPool, your rider may have a promotion applied to the upfront price of their trip, but the promotion applies only to the rider upfront price and will not affect the trip fare or your earnings.

With UberPool we recommend you using Uber’s app navigation. It will automatically update the route with each rider that joins the trip, and tell you exactly where to pick up and drop off each rider—making it easier for you to focus on the road.

You’ll be happy to know that across London since April 2019, more trips are matched than not, and we expect this to increase towards the end of 2019. As more people choose UberPool, there will be even more trips with two riders paying you at the same time.

Follow the link below to visit the FAQ page and learn more about how UberPool works.

*From February 2019 to October 2019 (from when the improved UberPool product was launched), average earnings per UberPool trip (including all segments in a trip) were higher than earnings that would have been generated if those trips were at UberX rates (using the actual time and distance of the overall UberPool trip and the applicable UberX standard service fee applied to those trips as a basis for calculation).