A month-long Consumer Reports investigation found that Uber $UBER and Lyft $LYFT prices can vary a lot between customers taking the same trip. On average, the difference between the lowest and highest fares was about 50% for the routes they looked at.
To gather its data, Consumer Reports assembled a pool of 174 volunteers who checked fares on both apps across more than 40 routes in 17 states. Despite volunteers pulling up fares simultaneously — often within the same 60-second window — no route returned a single consistent price. A single Kansas City, Missouri route alone yielded 29 different price quotes among 55 participants, with the top fare exceeding twice the amount of the cheapest one. In Austin, Texas, prices for one route ranged from $25 to $65, a 160% spread, according to NBC News.
The investigation further determined that close to 11% of promotions displayed across both apps were illusory — what regulators and consumer-pricing experts refer to as fictitious discounts or false reference pricing. Riders shown these offers saw a higher figure struck through above what appeared to be a discounted rate — yet that supposedly reduced rate was the same price other customers were quoted without any promotional language whatsoever.
Neither company accepted the characterization. Both companies disagreed with claims that their pricing involves surveillance or fake discounts Uber said the investigation was 'fundamentally flawed,' arguing that prices change so often it is impossible to compare two ride requests directly. Lyft said that having many people check fares at the same time could have changed demand and affected the results, a concept known as the 'observer effect.'rman, an executive-in-residence at Columbia Business School whose research has focused on the rideshare sector, told Consumer Reports that the companies' reasoning fell apart given the study's design. "You controlled for time and supply and demand. So their argument there doesn't hold up," he said.
Whether any of those data signals — including typing speed, address entry patterns, or past trip history — actually feed into fare calculations was something Consumer Reports acknowledged it was unable to confirm. Each company did confirm that customer data informs how promotional offers are targeted, framing the practice as an unremarkable feature of modern digital commerce.
The investigation also found that Uber and Lyft keep between 43% and 49.5% of each fare, a share that has grown over time while drivers get less. Annual reports show Uber's ride-hailing business made almost $7.9 billion in profit in 2025, up from about $2.1 billion in 2019, which is nearly four times more. Lyft's results were also notable: it went from a loss of about $679 million in 2019 to a profit of nearly $529 million by 2025.
Outside researchers who spoke with Consumer Reports noted that meaningful scrutiny of how fares are set remains out of reach, since both companies guard their algorithmic methods as trade secrets. Christo Wilson, a computer science professor at Northeastern University who conducted a prior pricing audit of the platforms on behalf of San Francisco, put it bluntly in the Consumer Reports piece: "Nobody knows what Uber and Lyft are doing. They won't tell us. They won't allow for independent audits."