DoorDash vs Uber Eats: what do drivers actually keep?
Both apps quote gross. Gross is what the customer paid, not what the shift left behind once the fuel, the servicing, the depreciation and the unpaid miles between offers are counted. Here is what the published research says, and what it leaves out.
- Uber Eats paid more on the 2025 Gridwise data: $18.06 an hour against $12.43, and $1.27 a mile against $0.94.
- DoorDash drivers put in the longer weeks in the same data: 18.8 hours against 11.5.
- Neither number has a drop of fuel in it, and neither counts the miles driven between deliveries.
The side by side
Two delivery apps, one year of tracked earnings, every figure gross.
| measure | DoorDash | Uber Eats |
|---|---|---|
| median trip pay / hour | $11.26 | $14.07 |
| average gross / hour | $12.43 | $18.06 |
| average gross / mile | $0.94 | $1.27 |
| deliveries / hour | 1.51 | 1.70 |
| average weekly gross | $247.00 | $198.00 |
| average weekly hours | 18.8 hrs | 11.5 hrs |
Gridwise Analytics, 2025. Every figure is gross: fuel, servicing and depreciation are not in it, and neither are the hours and miles spent waiting between offers.
What the gross leaves out
The IRS reckons a business mile costs 70 cents all in for 2025: fuel, tyres, servicing and depreciation together. Take that off what each app pays a mile and the picture narrows.
DoorDash
$0.24
left from each mile: $0.94 paid, less the 70¢ the IRS says a business mile costs.
$4.83
left from each shift hour once $7.60 of running costs comes off the $12.43 gross.
Uber Eats
$0.57
left from each mile: $1.27 paid, less the 70¢ the IRS says a business mile costs.
$10.46
left from each shift hour once $7.60 of running costs comes off the $18.06 gross.
Two different studies, two different years and different cities, so read this as a shape rather than a promise. Run a real shift through the free keep calculator for your own numbers.
The number across the whole shift
A UC Berkeley Labor Center analysis of 52,370 delivery trips found drivers netting $13.62 an hour in California and $9.87 elsewhere, tips included, once their costs were taken off. Strip the tips out and the same drivers were at $5.93 and $0.48. Their running costs came to $7.44 and $7.60 for every hour of the shift.
A large part of that shift pays nothing at all. The authors found about half the miles and a third of the hours going on waiting between deliveries, and the driver pays for both.
Why both sets of numbers can be true
Platforms measure engaged time: the minutes you are actually carrying an order. Uber has told reporters its drivers make “more than $30 an hour while working on the app”, and DoorDash’s Earn by Time promises an hourly rate, set by city, for the time you are on a delivery. Drivers count from leaving the drive to getting home. The hours and miles in between are real, you pay for them, and they belong in the maths — which is why the honest number is the one you work out yourself.
Sources
Every number above belongs to one of these. None of them are ours.
- Gridwise Analytics — gig driver earnings data (2025)
Aggregated, anonymised earnings from drivers who run the Gridwise app, covering 101,709 drivers in the 2025 figures. Gross pay only — fuel and vehicle costs are not taken off.
- UC Berkeley Labor Center — Gig Passenger and Delivery Driver Pay in Five Metro Areas (May 2024)
52,370 trips by 1,088 delivery and passenger drivers in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, the Bay Area and Seattle, January 2022. Net earnings after expenses, measured across the whole shift.
- US Bureau of Labor Statistics — Delivery Truck Drivers and Driver/Sales Workers (May 2025)
The salaried comparison: driver/sales workers, the closest employed equivalent, earned a median $38,770 a year.
- IRS — standard mileage rates
70 cents a mile for business driving in 2025 (72.5 cents for 2026): the tax service’s own all-in estimate of what a mile of business driving costs.
Stop guessing — track your own numbers
National averages will not tell you what your market pays. Log the payouts, the fuel, the miles and the hours shift by shift, and Millie tells you what you kept per hour and per mile.
Track every shift automaticallyFree to use, pay what you want.