How When (and Where) You Drive Affects Your Pay
The most successful Lyft drivers master the art of finding the busiest times and places near them. That’s because the more time you spend booked with passengers, the more opportunities you’ll have to earn.
But what makes certain times of day—and certain places—feel much busier than others?
Driving Toward More Riders
We know that a quick change in ride request volume—sometimes in the span of an hour!—can be a bit of a head-scratcher. Ultimately, the reason for any change is based on the needs of riders.
Whether it feels slow or busy depends on how many people are looking for a ride near you, and how many other drivers are online in the same area. When there’s a high concentration of passengers, and a relatively low concentration of drivers, it’s more likely you’ll be quickly matched to give a ride.
Knowing when and where to drive in your area will help increase the time you spend booked with passengers—also known as your percentage booked time—and therefore, boost your earnings opportunities.
How To Stay Busy
These tips can help increase the time you’re booked with passengers:
Consider when to drive. Check the ride demand graph in the driver app to see when people are more likely to need rides in your city. Morning commute hours, evening commute hours, after special events like concerts, and Friday and Saturday nights are common busy times.
Consider where to drive. Bonus Zones allow you to see which areas have a lot of passengers. Downtowns, college campuses, essential businesses, bars and restaurants, and transportation hubs like airports are common busy areas.
Accept more ride requests. One of the best strategies for staying busy is to accept all the ride requests you receive. Our data shows that drivers with upfront pay who accepted almost all of their ride requests typically had higher hourly earnings than those who were more selective.*
Interested in learning more? Take the tutorial.
*For illustrative purposes only; results may vary. Based on earnings data for drivers utilizing Upfront Pay in the Sacramento, CA and Detroit, MI area from 07/26/21 to 04/15/22. Drivers using Lyft earn by the job, not by the hour. The hourly earnings communicated are no guarantee of future performance and not indicative of any specific driver's earnings, and calculated before taxes, insurance, depreciation, and other costs associated with being a rideshare driver. This calculation includes all online platform time for drivers, including any potential time spent engaged with other app-based services. Current calculations do not include drivers who drove zero rideshare miles with Lyft.