How much does a Bolt, Uber or Freenow driver really earn - real earnings, costs and partners' most common lies
Online you will find hundreds of adverts like these:
📢 Earnings of up to 8000 – 10000 zł a month,
📢 The best partner, the highest rates,
📢 Work when you want, earn as much as you want.
Some of these slogans have something to do with the truth, but most of them (especially the ones about earnings) are detached from reality or leave out the partners’ costs and commissions. Before you choose a company to settle with, it is worth looking at the numbers to see how much a Bolt, Uber or Freenow driver can really earn and how much they lose with the wrong partner.
Real gross and net earnings of app drivers
Data from the fleet panel shows the average results of about 100 drivers from Lublin:
gross earnings per hour: 71.74 zł
net earnings per hour: 50.6 zł
In this case:
- The gross amount is the full value of the rides including the app’s commission
- The net amount is what actually reaches the driver after the app’s commission is deducted
With this hourly average, if a driver drives 8 hours a day from Monday to Sunday, we get roughly:
about 4017 zł gross per week
about 2834 zł net per week after the app’s commission, but before fuel costs and before settling with the fleet partner
In practice some drivers drive less and some more, so many weeks end with a turnover of around 2000 – 3000 zł. These levels are very well suited to comparing settlement models with a partner.
How a partner with a 1 percent commission eats into your earnings
The typical market model looks like this:
a fixed weekly fee of about 50 zł
plus 1% of the driver’s gross turnover
At first glance the difference between 45 zł and 50 zł seems small. The problem is that the 1 percent is charged every week on the entire turnover. With real amounts of 2000 – 3000 zł, it adds up to a considerable sum.
With this turnover, the difference between a typical partner and Ramnext is about 30 zł a week, which translates into about 120 zł a month and about 1140 zł a year. For many drivers that is a real extra tank of fuel every month or one leasing instalment a year.
The cost of fuel – how much really stays in your pocket
When driving 8 hours a day, 7 days a week, the typical fuel cost is about 300 zł a week. This is an average situation, because in practice it depends on:
the type of drive
your driving style
the city and the traffic
fuel prices at the time
From an app driver’s point of view, the most cost-effective options are:
hybrids with an LPG system
classic MPI engines with LPG, especially the simpler ones that are less sensitive to fuel quality and to how the system is fitted
Why these configurations are so cost-effective:
with a properly chosen and set-up system, LPG can bring the cost per trip well below that of petrol
MPI engines are simpler in design, cope well with running on gas and are easier to service
a hybrid with LPG combines two worlds: energy recovery in the city and cheap driving on gas
If someone drives less than 8 hours a day or takes days off, fuel costs fall, but so does turnover. The key point is that with a well-configured car, a driver can really keep a bigger share of the turnover instead of handing it over at the petrol station.
How much a driver loses with a bad partner – bar chart
The most telling comparison is how much money a driver loses purely through the difference in partner commission. Let’s take the example of a driver with a turnover of about 2500 zł a week:
with a partner charging 1% plus a 50 zł fee, they pay about 75 zł a week
at Ramnext they pay 45 zł a week
The weekly difference is about 30 zł. Over a month (4 weeks) that is roughly 120 zł. Over a year (52 weeks) it is about 1560 zł.
Summary
The earnings of a Bolt, Uber or Freenow driver do not depend only on how much turnover they make in the app. Equally important are:
the fleet partner’s commission model
fuel costs and the car’s configuration
how expense invoices and VAT are settled
whether the partner supports the driver or only charges fees
Data from the fleet panel for about 100 drivers in Lublin shows that real net rates of around 50 zł an hour are possible. How much of that stays in your pocket after fuel and the partner’s commission, however, depends mainly on who you settle with.
Ramnext’s fixed, low commission with no percentage of turnover, clear settlements and full use of the VAT from invoices mean that the difference between Ramnext and a typical partner over a year runs into thousands of złoty. And that is exactly what you cannot see at first glance in colourful adverts, but can see very clearly in a driver’s wallet.
