The cost of Uber and Lyft rides rose nearly 10% last year — and riders say they're cutting back
JOSEPH EID/AFP via Getty Images
- Uber and Lyft fares rose nearly 10% on average in 2025, a new report found.
- A majority of riders said they're cutting back on their use of the apps as a result, Gridwise found.
- The ride-hailing companies also increased the share they take of each fare, according to the report.
Catching a ride on Uber or Lyft got more expensive last year, and some riders are cutting back as a result, new data and a survey show.
The prices that customers paid on these apps rose 9.6% in 2025, according to an annual report on gig mobility from data analytics company Gridwise. The report analyzed information about 1 billion tasks over the past year on apps for ride-hailing, delivery, and other kinds of gig work.
It found that the average ride price rose to $23.66 at the end of 2025, up from $21.58 in December 2024.
Over the same period, a majority of ride-hailing customers surveyed — 60.4% — told Gridwise that they've reduced their usage of the apps due to price. That's a jump of 16.6 percentage points over 2024.
The company conducted two surveys, one in December 2024 and the other in January 2026. Each asked 1,000 ride-hailing and delivery customers about their app usage.
The belt-tightening hasn't translated into financial trouble for Uber and Lyft. They have been able to keep growing — and even turn a profit — by expanding their businesses to new markets. Uber has said that it's growing its ride-hailing and delivery operations in less-dense suburbs, for instance.
"People are stating that they are sensitive to prices, but we're seeing growth in the industry overall," Ryan Green, CEO of Gridwise, said in an interview.
For years, many consumers have been cutting back their use of ride-hailing apps and other app-based services, such as Airbnb, which grew out of Silicon Valley and built customer bases with loss-inducing discounts — colloquially known as the "millennial life subsidy."
How fast ride-hailing prices increased depended on which app riders used. On average, Lyft priced its rides about 14% below Uber's, according to Gridwise's data.
The gig-work drivers behind those rides saw their earnings rise, though not nearly as fast as fares: Gridwise found that gross driver pay increased by 3.6% per trip and 4.1% per hour.
Ride-hailing customers also took more trips using premium services, such as black-car rides and XL, which pairs riders with SUVs and other large cars, Gridwise found. Those kinds of trips tend to cost more than standard Uber and Lyft rides.
The companies also took a bigger share of each fare on average in 2025. Average platform fees per trip rose about 33% in 2025, Gridwise found.
An Uber spokesperson said that Gridwise's report "relies on a very small fraction of drivers and delivery workers, and doesn't accurately reflect the facts." In January, Uber said that while "prices have gone up significantly over the last few years," the portion going to Uber has remained largely flat.
Lyft did not respond to requests for comment on Gridwise's findings.
That's good news for Uber and Lyft's bottom line, Green said.
"At the end of the day, it's telling us that these companies are becoming much more profitable on a per-trip basis," he said.
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