Why your gig driving pays less than the app says
Because the number on the platform screen is gross revenue, and your car is an unpaid business partner taking a cut of every mile. A delivery app showing "$24.80 this hour" has not subtracted fuel, tyres, brakes, oil, insurance, or the value your vehicle lost by being driven. Add those back in and the same hour is commonly worth 20 to 40 percent less than displayed — more if you drive a thirsty or newly financed vehicle, less if you drive a paid-off hybrid.
The gap is not the platform lying. It is that nobody in the transaction has an incentive to compute your cost per mile, so nobody does. MileTruth's second half exists to compute it: gross earnings minus your cost per mile times every mile including the unpaid ones, divided by hours actually online.
The four costs a gross hourly figure hides
Fuel or charge is the only one most drivers subtract, and it is the smallest of the four for many vehicles.
Maintenance and wear is continuous even though it is billed in lumps. Tyres, brakes, oil, transmission fluid, wipers, suspension. A set of tyres bought once every 40,000 miles is not a $700 event; it is a per-mile cost of about 1.75 cents that you pay every single mile and notice once.
Depreciation is the largest hidden cost and the one drivers systematically ignore, because no money leaves your account. A car with 40,000 additional miles on it is worth materially less than the same car without them. You are converting an asset into cash at a rate you never chose deliberately.
Insurance and the commercial-use question is a real exposure. Personal auto policies commonly exclude or limit coverage while you are engaged in delivery or rideshare work, and platform-provided coverage typically applies only during specific phases of a trip. This is not a per-mile cost so much as a risk you may be carrying unpriced. Check your own policy — it is one phone call and most drivers have never made it.
Unpaid miles: the part that changes the answer
Gig driving has three kinds of miles and platforms only pay for one of them.
| Mile type | Who pays you | Deductible business mile? | Cost to your car |
|---|---|---|---|
| On an active delivery or fare | The platform | Yes | Yes |
| Driving to the pickup or to a hotspot while online | Usually nobody | Generally yes while working | Yes |
| Repositioning between offers, returning from a drop | Nobody | Generally yes while working | Yes |
For many delivery drivers the unpaid categories are 30 to 50 percent of total miles. That means a driver computing cost only against paid miles is understating their vehicle cost by something close to half.
It also means the deduction is bigger than drivers assume. The miles you drove waiting for the next offer are business miles, and they are exactly the miles a manual-start tracker loses. See which gig miles count.
How to compute your real hourly, step by step
- Establish your cost per mile. Add twelve months of fuel, insurance, registration, maintenance, repairs and an honest depreciation figure, then divide by twelve months of total miles. If you have not kept those records, start from a rough vehicle-class estimate and refine it — a wrong-but-reasonable cost per mile beats no cost per mile.
- Pick a period. One week is the smallest useful unit; one month is better.
- Total gross earnings across every platform for that period, including tips.
- Total every mile you drove while working for that period — paid, unpaid, and repositioning.
- Multiply miles by cost per mile. That is your vehicle cost for the period.
- Subtract, then divide by hours online.
real hourly = ( gross earnings - ( all working miles x your cost per mile ) ) / hours onlineA worked example. A driver grosses $780 over 22 online hours, driving 340 miles. Displayed hourly: $35.45. At a cost per mile of 32 cents, vehicle cost is $108.80, so real hourly is $30.51. At 48 cents — an older SUV, or a financed vehicle depreciating fast — vehicle cost is $163.20 and real hourly is $28.04. Same week, same driver, two very different pictures depending on what they drive.
Real hourly is a pre-tax number. You still owe self-employment tax and income tax on the profit. The mileage deduction reduces the taxable figure, which is why tracking miles and computing real pay are the same activity done for two different reasons.
What changes once you know the number
This is the part that makes the calculation worth doing rather than just interesting.
- Offer acceptance gets a floor. Once you know your cost per mile you can compute the minimum dollars-per-mile an offer must pay to be worth taking, and it stops being a feeling.
- Long, low offers stop looking acceptable. A $9 order 11 miles away is not a $9 order. At 40 cents a mile round trip it is closer to $0.20 an hour of profit once you count the return.
- Time slots separate. Most drivers find that two or three hours of their week produce a disproportionate share of profit and several hours are close to break-even. You cannot see that in gross.
- Platforms separate. The platform with the highest gross hourly is frequently not the one with the highest net, because it sends you further.
- Vehicle decisions get numbers. "Should I buy something more efficient" becomes arithmetic instead of an argument.
Why no existing app tells you this
The category is split into two halves that do not talk to each other. Mileage-first apps — MileIQ, Driversnote, TripLog, Everlance, Stride — exist to produce a tax deduction. They total miles; they do not know or ask what your car costs or what you earned. Gig-tracker apps — Gridwise, Solo — sync earnings and show gross or "effective" pay, but they do not build a personalised cost-per-mile model from your vehicle, so their net figures rest on a generic assumption.
Nobody joins the two halves, which is why the question "what did that shift actually pay me" is still answered in parking lots and Reddit threads rather than by software. MileTruth is built around joining them: capture every mile reliably, price those miles against your own vehicle, and report the net. See what a mile really costs you.
Questions and answers
How do I calculate my real hourly pay as a gig driver?
Take gross earnings for a period, subtract your cost per mile multiplied by every mile you drove in that period including the unpaid ones, then divide by hours online. The unpaid miles are the part most drivers leave out and the part that changes the answer most.
Is the IRS mileage rate the same as my cost per mile?
No. The IRS standard mileage rate is a national allowance used to compute a deduction. Your actual cost per mile depends on your vehicle, fuel economy, insurance, maintenance and depreciation. Some drivers are well under the IRS rate and some are well over it.
What is a good real hourly rate for gig delivery?
There is no single answer because it depends on your market and vehicle, but the useful comparison is your own number across platforms and time slots rather than anyone else's average. The point of measuring is to find which hours and which platforms are worth your car.
Do unpaid miles count in my cost calculation?
Yes, and they are usually 30 to 50 percent of the total. Driving to a pickup, repositioning after a drop, and returning from a delivery zone are all real cost. They are also generally deductible business miles even though nobody paid you for them.
MileTruth. “Why your gig driving pays less than the app says.” Baker Ventures LLC, September 6, 2026. https://miletruth.bakerventuresstudio.com/why/gig-pay-is-lower-than-it-looks/