Uber/Lyft Earnings Calculator

The gross fare on your Uber or Lyft dashboard is not what lands in your pocket. This tool strips out the expenses that quietly eat into a shift, gas, vehicle wear, and the self-employment taxes drivers most often underestimate, to show what you actually clear. It gives you the net income picture you need to decide when and how much to drive.

The math runs in stages. It first subtracts gas (miles driven ÷ your MPG × your local price), a maintenance reserve of $0.10 per mile, and fixed allowances of $200 a month for insurance and $50 a month for your phone, spread over 4.33 weeks. Enter the average fare as what you are paid per trip after Uber's or Lyft's cut, because no commission is deducted. From there it applies the 2026 self-employment tax rate of 15.3%, made up of 12.4% for social security on earnings up to $184,500 and 2.9% for Medicare, to 92.35% of your net earnings, which is how the deductible half of SE tax is accounted for. Income tax is not included.

Your real costs will drift from these figures depending on how you drive, what you drive, and the conditions where you work. The classic mistakes are failing to bank anything for maintenance and misjudging the self-employment tax bill, both of which turn into nasty surprises at tax time. Logging every mile you drive, not only the paid trips, is what protects your deductions.