The problem
A ride offer might say £12. That tells you the fare, but it does not tell you how well the offer pays for your time.
If the passenger is close and the trip is quick, £12 may look very different from the same £12 fare with a long pickup and a long passenger journey.
That is why many drivers look at £ per hour as well as the headline fare.
In this guide, “real £/hour” means a more useful time-based rate using the time tied to the offer. It does not mean net hourly profit after every business cost.
Why it matters
The headline fare is only one part of the job.
You may need to spend time:
- driving to the pickup;
- waiting at or near the pickup where that time is known;
- driving the passenger;
- and, depending on how you choose to analyse the job, allowing for relevant driving after drop-off.
If you ignore those minutes, a fare can look better than it really is.
Two £12 offers can pay very differently for your time even though the headline fare is identical.
How to work it out
For a simple starting point:
- Add the pickup time to the passenger-journey time.
- Convert the total minutes into part of an hour.
- Divide the fare by that time.
A quick formula is:
£/hour = fare ÷ analysed hours
If the analysed time is 30 minutes, that is half an hour. A £12 fare over half an hour is £24 per hour.
This is a rate for comparing the offer. It is not a promise that you will earn £24 every hour you are online.
Simple worked example
Illustrative example
- Fare: £12
- Pickup: 10 minutes
- Passenger journey: 20 minutes
- Total analysed time in this simple example: 30 minutes
Thirty minutes is half an hour.
So:
£12 ÷ 0.5 hours = £24/hour
The headline fare is still £12. The useful extra information is that the offer is paying at a rate of about £24 per analysed hour before other relevant costs and any additional distance assumptions are considered.
Now imagine the pickup was only 2 minutes and the passenger journey was still 20 minutes.
The same £12 fare would then use 22 minutes in this simple calculation:
£12 ÷ 22 minutes × 60 ≈ £32.73/hour
Same fare. Very different time-based result.
What to watch out for
£/hour is not profit
A good hourly rate does not tell you what the car costs to run.
Fuel, electricity and other vehicle costs still matter. Insurance, finance, depreciation, maintenance, tax and licensing may also matter to your wider business costs.
The calculation depends on what time you include
A basic calculator might only use pickup and passenger time. FareWorth can also reflect the driver’s selected Dead Miles treatment where relevant, which can increase the time and distance used in the analysis.
Offers do not always turn into completed trips
An offer rate is decision support at the point the offer is shown. It is not a guarantee that the trip will complete exactly as expected.
One offer is not a whole shift
A £30/hour offer does not mean you will average £30/hour across a full Driver Day. Time between offers and other gaps still matter when looking at the wider day.
How FareWorth helps
FareWorth is designed to do this kind of calculation for the driver on supported driver apps.
When a supported offer is captured, FareWorth uses the visible offer information it can read, including the fare and relevant pickup and passenger-journey information. It then applies the driver’s own settings and shows analysed rates such as £/hour and £/mile.
Where the driver has chosen a Dead Miles mode, FareWorth can also include the relevant return allowance in the analysed time and distance.
The important point is that FareWorth is not deciding for the driver.
It shows the numbers against the driver’s own thresholds. The driver still chooses whether the offer suits them.
Practical takeaway
- Do not judge an offer from the fare alone.
- Include the time needed to get to the passenger.
- Compare the fare with the full analysed time you care about.
- Remember that £/hour is not the same as profit.
- Use your own target, not somebody else’s idea of a “good” ride.