What's your break-even hourly rate for gig driving?

The formula

Break-even hourly rate = (your real cost per mile × typical miles driven per hour of gig work) + (the minimum you consider an hour of your own time worth).

The first half is a vehicle question. The second half is a personal one — there's no market rate for your own time, only the number you decide you won't work below.

Step 1: find your real cost per mile

Don't use a national average for this — your specific car, its age, whether it's financed, and how many miles you drive it a year all change the number substantially. What does a mile actually cost you to drive? walks through building your own figure from fuel, insurance, maintenance, and depreciation. That page also notes AAA's published range runs roughly 66¢ to $1.00 per mile for a new vehicle depending on annual mileage — your own paid-off car may run meaningfully lower.

Step 2: find your miles per hour of gig work

This isn't driving speed. It's total miles driven while gigging — pickup drives included, not just paid legs — divided by total hours spent gigging, including the dead time waiting for the next offer. A driver who covers 20 miles in a typical working hour has a very different vehicle cost per hour than one who covers 8, even in the identical car.

Step 3: multiply, then add your time floor

A worked example: real cost per mile of 77¢ (AAA's published figure at 15,000 miles/year for a new vehicle), 20 miles driven per hour of gig work.

Anything that doesn't clear $27.40 an hour, true — not the number the app shows before pickup miles and wait time are counted — is structurally not worth it for this driver, on this vehicle. Recompute the same table with your own cost per mile and your own miles-per-hour to get your number.

Why this beats redoing the math every time

The single-offer calculation in is this offer worth it? is the right tool in the moment, but it's slow, and slow decisions under a countdown timer tend to favor accepting. A standing break-even number turns "should I take this" into a fast comparison against a floor you already trust, decided when you weren't staring at a clock.

It's also useful outside any single app: it's the number that tells you whether gig driving is worth doing at all this week, this season, or with this particular car — not just whether one offer clears the bar.

Revisit it, don't set it once forever

Your real cost per mile changes as the vehicle ages, as fuel prices move, and as insurance renews at a new premium — recompute it periodically using the same method as the cost-per-mile page. Many drivers also build a cushion into their time-value floor for self-employment tax, since gig income is taxed at 15.3% on top of ordinary income tax before it's genuinely take-home pay — see self-employment tax for gig drivers, explained for that full calculation.