Uber Eats Review: Is Driving for Uber Eats Worth It in 2024?

As mentioned, Uber Eats is a gig app. You can download it on your smartphone or tablet and use it to find work and earn money.

As a driver for Uber Eats, you’ll receive offers to deliver food and groceries from participating businesses. After accepting each order, you’ll drive (or bike or walk) to the business, pick up the food, and take it to the customer.

In most areas, you’ll see how much you’ll be paid for each order before you accept it.

You can set your own schedule, signing into the app and taking orders whenever you want.

How much can you make with Uber Eats?

How much you’ll make per order depends on three factors:

• Base pay: Uber offers a fixed price on each order. You’ll usually earn between $4 and $12 per delivery, depending on how far you have to drive.
• Promotions: Uber Eats offers several types of promotions that may increase your earnings on any given order. These include “trip supplements” and “boosts.” You don’t have to do anything special to get these—they’ll be added automatically before you accept the order.
• Tips: Some of your customers may tip you, although this is optional. You’ll keep 100% of your tips.

This is essentially how every delivery app works; it’s rare to find one that doesn’t feature promotions or allow tipping, and most offer comparable base rates.

Average hourly earnings on Uber Eats

When you’re evaluating whether or not Uber Eats is worth it, you don’t need to fixate on the nuts and bolts of how your earnings are calculated. All you really need to know is that most Uber Eats drivers make around $20 per hour.

You may be able to boost this somewhat if you’re particularly good at getting tips, but that’s about what you can expect as a baseline.

How you’ll get paid

Uber Eats offers three payment options:

• Debit card: If you link your debit card to your Uber Eats account, Uber will transfer your payments to your regular bank account. This costs a small fee (usually under $1 per transaction) and can be done up to 5 times per day.
• Automatic deposit: If you add your bank account’s routing and checking number to your Uber Eats profile, the app will automatically pay you each week for free. This usually happens on Tuesday (although if that’s a major holiday, you’ll get paid on Wednesday).
• Uber Pro Card: Uber Eats offers its own bank account and debit card, which it calls the Uber Pro Card. If you elect to receive your payments in an Uber bank account, you’ll get paid instantly after each ride for no fee.

When we wrote our article on how to become an Uber Eats driver, we spoke to Luke Kirchhoff, who runs a TikTok channel aimed at delivery drivers. We asked him for his input on this review, and he told us that he considers the option to get paid instantly a big perk.

“I’ve wanted to buy lunch before and so I went and delivered one order and then cashed out right after,” he said. “It’s amazing.”

Regardless of whether you choose an instant payment method or not, cashing out your Uber Eats earnings will be relatively painless. That’s one of the perks of driving for a large and well-established company—you can be confident you’ll get paid regularly and reliably.

Where can you drive for Uber Eats?

As of 2024, Uber Eats is available in more than 6,000 cities across the world, including virtually every major city in the US.

To confirm that you can become an Uber Eats driver in your area, look for your city on Uber’s website. The list on that page isn’t exhaustive, so if you don’t see it, double-check in the Uber Eats app.

Uber Eats is a very accessible gig app, but it isn’t perfect. Here’s a brief list of its pros and cons:

Before you spend much time thinking about whether Uber Eats is right for you, you should check whether you’re actually qualified to work for it.

Fortunately, almost everyone is. You technically don’t even need to be able to drive, since you can deliver on foot or by bike (although the vast majority of Uber Eats workers do drive).

Uber Eats driver requirements

Uber’s requirements depend on the vehicle (if any) you plan on using. We’ve broken them down in the table below:

Uber Eats Driver Requirements by Mode of Transportation

When you sign up for Uber, you’ll also have to consent to a background check. Most people are able to pass it. You’ll probably only have trouble if you’ve been convicted of a felony or if you have serious black marks on your driving record (such as a DUI) from the past 7 years.

How long your background check will take

We asked Matt Miller, a veteran driver who mainly focuses on Uber’s rideshare service but has also done food delivery, about his experience with this background check. Uber outsources it to Checkr, a third-party company that also performs similar checks for most of Uber’s competitors, including DoorDash, Lyft, and Instacart.

Miller told us that in his experience, these checks are usually relatively painless and take 1–3 days on average. However, he’s occasionally had problems with Checkr failing to submit his screening results to Uber promptly. If your background check stalls out for what seems like an unreasonably long time (a week or more), call Uber’s support line to inquire about the status of your application.

To start doing deliveries for Uber Eats, you’ll need to create an account on the platform. You can do this in several places:

• In the app: You can register as a driver in either of Uber’s customer-facing apps (i.e., the Uber app that you use to book rides or the Uber Eats app that you use to order food). Just open up the app and click the button in the bottom-right corner of the screen that says “Account,” then click “Earn by driving or delivering.”
• On Uber’s website: You can also sign up by navigating to Uber’s homepage, clicking the tab that says “Drive or deliver,” and then clicking “Sign up to drive.”

Whichever option you pick, Uber will walk you through their sign-up process, prompting you to enter a few key pieces of information and upload several documents. You’ll have to provide:

• Your Social Security number
• A picture of your driver’s license, unless you plan on delivering via bicycle or foot
• Proof of your residency (in some cities); sometimes your ID will list this, and if not, you can provide a utility bill or something similar

Uber will ask you to consent to their background check and take a profile picture, which customers will see when you drop off their orders.

Once you’ve provided everything, you’re all done—you just have to wait for Uber to complete your background check and approve your application. Assuming there are no hiccups, you’ll be cleared in several days and can begin accepting orders.

If you’re deciding whether or not you want to give Uber Eats a try, you’re probably wondering about the day-to-day experience of driving for it. Is the work easy or difficult? Fun or mind-numbing? Relaxing or stressful?

To answer this question, we collected anecdotes from dozens of Uber Eats drivers. Of course, no two workers reported exactly the same experiences, but we picked up on several common threads, which we’ve listed below:

1. The work is relatively simple and easy

How hard Uber Eats is depends on where you live and when you work. Driving during rush hour in a major city is obviously more stressful and draining than driving during the middle of the day in a suburb.

However, overall, most people seem to agree that this is a relatively easy gig and not one that’s likely to exhaust you (assuming you’re reasonably comfortable behind the wheel).

Luke Kirchhoff even compared Uber Eats to a video game, with “missions” that take you all over your city and “bonuses” (tips) that you receive for doing your job well. This seems to be a surprisingly common sentiment—when we researched this review, we saw several other commentators characterize Uber Eats as a version of Pokémon GO that you get paid to play.

Almost everyone agrees that Uber Eats is much easier than driving for Uber’s ridesharing service, which requires you to worry much more about customer experience (e.g., keeping your car clean and inviting, figuring out whether passengers want to chat or be quiet, etc.).

2. Driving for Uber Eats doesn’t require much social interaction

Most drivers also agree that Uber Eats is a good side hustle for introverts (or for anyone who feels like they get enough socialization from their day job). You’ll have to deal with restaurant staff and customers, but your conversations with them will be quick and superficial—in most cases, limited to “hello” and “thank you.”

What’s more, these days, many customers (more than half, by most accounts) opt for Uber’s “leave it at the door” order option. This cuts the chit-chat you have to engage in down even further.

There’s always a chance you’ll run into a rude customer, but most drivers claim this is a rare occurrence, and not a significant deterrent to doing the job.

3. You can listen to music or podcasts while you drive (and most drivers do)

Most of the time, delivering food won’t require your full attention. It’s very possible to do this job while listening to podcasts, audiobooks, or music.

Many drivers cite this as one of the gig’s biggest perks. If you already enjoy tuning into podcasts during your downtime, the chance to earn money while doing it is pretty attractive.

Kirchhoff pointed out that if you listen to self-learning podcasts, you can develop valuable skills and bolster your resume. This can make Uber Eats a decent stepping stone to more lucrative jobs or side hustles, even if delivery driving doesn’t teach many transferrable skills itself.

4. There’s a lot of downtime, and you’ll end up rejecting a lot of orders

Many of the offers you’ll receive from Uber Eats will be very low. In some cases, unless the customer tips you, you won’t even make enough to cover your expenses (e.g., gas).

You don’t have to accept lowball offers, but sorting through them can be frustrating. If it’s a slow night, you may find yourself sitting in parking lots for long stretches, waiting for a decent offer to come in and rejecting up to 90% of what Uber sends your way.

This time isn’t necessarily unpleasant (you can read a book or surf the web), but it will drastically reduce your effective hourly rate.

Most drivers report occasionally having slow nights like this, which makes it hard to rely on Uber Eats as a consistent source of income. This is a major source of frustration for many drivers and probably the single biggest complaint that we found. (That said, it’s less of a problem in large cities with very active markets.)

5. The job will get easier (and more lucrative) as you learn your local market

Every market has its quirks, and it can take time to learn them. Over the course of a few months, you’ll pick up on which restaurants tend to have long wait times, what streets and neighborhoods tend to have good (or bad) tippers, what the best times are to drive, and so on.

You may also discover out-of-the-box strategies that increase your tipping rate. For example, Kirchhoff swears by leaving handwritten thank-you notes for his customers.

The important thing is to experiment and see what works for you. You’ll probably see your earnings from Uber Eats rise somewhat (although not enormously) as you learn how to drive efficiently in your market.

What is a typical day for an Uber Eats driver like?

As an Uber Eats worker, your “shifts” will probably go something like this:

1. Get in your car and wait for a worthwhile offer to come in, rejecting several that don’t pay enough
2. Drive to a restaurant, run in, and pick up an order (if there’s a line or the food isn’t finished yet, you’ll make a note to yourself to avoid this restaurant in the future)
3. Drive to the customer’s location, listening to music or your favorite podcast on the way
4. Park, get out, and drop off the food, which usually won’t require meeting the customer face-to-face
5. Repeat until you’re ready to end your shift

At its heart, this is a pretty simple gig. If you’re like most drivers, how much you’ll like it will largely depend on how much you value the flexibility and relatively undemanding nature of the work versus how annoyed you are by the constant lowball offers you’ll receive from Uber.

This is the biggest question that every prospective Uber Eats driver finds themselves asking: is this side hustle actually worth it?

As mentioned, you can expect to make around $20 per hour with Uber Eats. This isn’t a bad wage for a job that almost anyone can do. However, you need to consider three questions:

1. How much will expenses eat into the money that you actually take home at the end of the day?
2. How much could you earn with another comparable side hustle?
3. Do you enjoy this kind of work or find it fulfilling?

The third question is entirely dependent on you and your personality, but the first two have objective answers. We’ll look at both of them in detail.

How much will expenses eat into your profits with Uber Eats?

As the saying goes, sometimes you have to spend money to make money. This is the case for Uber Eats, which is a side hustle with a fair amount of overhead (expenses that you have to pay).

As a very rough rule of thumb, your expenses will probably eat about 35% of your earnings, leaving you with just 65%. This means that if you earn $20 per hour, you’ll actually take home about $13 per hour.

Your biggest expenses as an Uber Eats driver will include:

Fuel

Plan on budgeting: 10% of your earnings

One of the biggest questions that new Uber Eats drivers have is usually “does Uber pay for gas?” The answer, unfortunately, is no—you’ll have to pay for it out of your own pocket.

It’s hard to predict exactly how much you’ll have to spend on gas because it depends heavily on current gas prices, as well as what kind of mileage your vehicle gets. However, many delivery drivers claim to spend about 10% of what they earn on fuel (and given the recent spike in gas prices, this might be a conservative estimate).

Maintenance

Plan on budgeting: 10% of your earnings

It’s easy to overlook vehicle maintenance. Unlike gas, it isn’t something that you have to think about every day. However, as a delivery driver, you’ll be behind the wheel a lot, which means you’ll have to get your vehicle serviced more often than you’re used to (every few months at minimum).

Tune-ups, oil changes, and repairs will all be significant expenses. A common rule of thumb is to take whatever you spend on gasoline and budget that much for maintenance.

Taxes

Plan on budgeting: 15% of your earnings

As an Uber Eats driver, you’ll be classed as an independent contractor, not an employee. That means you’ll be responsible for your own taxes—Uber won’t withhold them for you.

As with your fuel expenses, it’s hard to estimate exactly what your tax liability will be. A lot of factors contribute to it, including whether you’re able to write off any business expenses and whether Uber Eats is a side hustle or your primary source of income.

You can use this self-employment tax calculator to get an idea of how much you’ll pay, but as a very rough estimate, plan on setting aside at least 15% of what you make to keep the taxman off your back.

What you’ll be left with

After putting away 10% of your earnings for gas, 10% for maintenance, and 15% for taxes, you’ll be left with 65% of what you earned. Again, if you make around $20 per hour, this means taking home profits of about $13 per hour.

That isn’t an embarrassingly low rate—it’s well above the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour—but it isn’t great. (Notably, it’s below the minimum wage in 14 states and Washington, DC, as of January 2024). 1

Is that worth it given the stress and risks of the job? That’s a decision you’ll have to make for yourself.

How to boost your earnings with Uber Eats

Luke Kirchhoff shared several tips with us that he says may be able to boost your earnings to around $25–$35 per hour.

He advised:

• Leaving notes for customers: As mentioned, Kirchhoff keeps a Sharpie marker on hand and writes thank-you notes for every customer, which he says greatly increases his tip rate.
• Only driving in certain neighborhoods: Some areas are more lucrative than others. If you’re able to identify neighborhoods where most customers tip well, then you can increase your earnings by driving exclusively there.
• Picking up and dropping off orders quickly: Kirchhoff told us that he runs (instead of walking) every time he leaves his car. On average, the time he saves allows him to deliver one more order per hour than he otherwise would, which is a significant boost.

If you’re able to increase your hourly earnings to $25 or more, it will do a lot to make Uber Eats more worthwhile.

That said, most Uber Eats drivers don’t earn rates like that. If you’re motivated, strategic, and you live in a city that lets you implement Kirchhoff’s advice, you might be one of the lucky ones—but it isn’t guaranteed.

It’s worth noting that even with these strategies, Kirchhoff only recommends driving for Uber Eats as a side hustle. He told us that if you do this kind of work, you should have a plan for the future, whether that involves getting a degree, progressing in your main job, or starting your own business.

He told us that driving for Uber Eats is a good way to supplement your income and pay for immediate expenses, like rent, but “it should not be your career.”

Whether Uber Eats is “worth it” largely depends on how it stacks up against the competition.

Let’s assume you’re stuck with the average rate of around $20 per hour ($13 after expenses). Is this the easiest and least stressful way to earn $13, or are there better options?

Uber Eats vs. other delivery apps

Uber Eats has several competitors. You’ve probably heard of some of these apps before:

• DoorDash
• Grubhub
• Instacart
• Postmates

All of these operate much the same way that Uber Eats does: you sign into the app whenever you want and accept or reject orders.

These apps also pay similar rates to Uber Eats. You’ll find people arguing about which one offers the “best” pay, but none of them are drastically out of step with their competition.

More importantly, you can use more than one app at a time. This is extremely common. Many delivery drivers download several and use whichever one happens to be offering higher rates at any given time. There are no rules against this, and it’s something that you should probably do if you’re planning on getting into delivery driving as a side hustle.

Uber Eats vs. other gig work that anyone can do

It’s also helpful to compare Uber Eats to other types of gig work. In the table below, we’ve listed several other side hustles with similar traits:

• Almost anyone can do them (you don’t need any special training or certifications)
• You can do them on your own time, with a flexible schedule
• There’s at least one popular app that you can use to find work

How Uber Eats Compares to Other App-Based Gigs

As you can see, Uber Eats (and delivery driving in general) is in the middle of the pack as far as pay goes. You can earn higher pay with several other options:

• Ridesharing: You won’t earn as much with Uber Eats as you would driving for Uber’s taxi service. Ridesharing rates are generally higher than delivery rates because the work is harder—you have to invite strangers into your vehicle and often have to drive longer distances.
• Manual labor: Similarly, Uber Eats doesn’t net quite as much money as manual labor gig work, such as helping people move or doing yardwork. Physically demanding side hustles generally pay a bit more because not everyone is capable of doing them (and not everyone wants to).

Although Uber Eats isn’t as lucrative as either of those options, it’s arguably easier and less stressful. Ultimately, it’s an accessible side hustle that offers reasonable pay, although it isn’t a perfect gig (if it was, everyone would do it). Whether or not it’s “worth it” is something you’ll have to decide for yourself.