Toronto ridehail prices through the week, by ward

How to read the map

The map shows one reference trip, 6 km and 13 minutes (about the median of the drivers' trips picked up outside the centre), the same in every ward and priced as if it were picked up there, for one hour of the week (play it, or drag the slider), for riders, drivers or Uber. Monday to Wednesday are shown as one day, their average, because they differ from each other by little more than the noise from week to week; Thursday to Sunday follow on their own (Uber's schedule treats Thursday evening like Friday's). Each hour is averaged with the hours either side so that one-hour wobbles do not flicker. The heat maps below show every day and single hours. The trip is priced on the UberX rate card of the zone it starts in, because the cards differ by zone, and the panel beside the map breaks each price into three levels:

• 1 The zone's rate card and commission rate, fixed for months at a time (see Rate cards), plus the booking fee.
• 2 Pricing by time and place: Uber's fixed weekly schedule of percentage adjustments by time block and zone; other pricing that follows the time and place, on average; and, for drivers, the pickup wait. When the schedule cuts the price, the whole cut comes out of driver earnings and Uber's commission is unchanged; when it raises the price, Uber takes its commission on the increase. For drivers and Uber, "other offer pricing" is the average, for the time block and zone, of what Uber adds to or takes from each offer beyond the card and the schedule (balancing offers toward a target, surge, boosts). The statements do not say why, so we cannot account for it; it often offsets part of the schedule.
• 3 Trip-by-trip pricing that levels 1 and 2 don't explain, shown as the range within which most trips fall. Offers at the same time and place vary this much for reasons we cannot see.

The whole week at once

Every ward (rows, central Toronto first) and every hour of the week (columns), for the reference trip.

Other trip lengths

The map shows one trip length because the pattern across wards and hours is almost the same for any length: every value is the zone's rate card for the trip times a ratio that does not depend on the trip, plus the booking fee, so a longer trip scales the whole map up together. The table gives the dollars over the typical week (trip-weighted, Toronto wards) for four lengths.

The one difference that grows with the trip is Uber's take on central pickups. On the map's trip Uber keeps $0.35 less from a central pickup than from one outside the centre; $0.19 of that is the lower central booking fee, and most of the rest is the cheaper central rate card. On long trips the booking fee is about the same in both zones ($3.84 central and $3.79 outside on the drivers' trips with a rate-card fare over $20), so the gap closes.

Rate cards

UberX rate cards from 2026-07-04 to 2026-07-31, the most common for each pickup zone in the drivers' statements; the commission is the median effective rate on that card. The booking fee is flat for short trips and rises with the fare beyond about $13.

Where the numbers come from

• Riders: The map shows the typical fare that riders pay for trips at the listed time and starting from each ward. The fares are calculated based on the City of Toronto's open data, from 2026-07-04 to 2026-07-31, with HST, tips, and fixed fees removed. The City data includes 6,579,816 ridehail trips, including Uber, Lyft and Hopp trips. The City reports average prices between wards for each hour, and the value is scaled to match the reference trip. median across the weeks, so that event nights do not dominate; they are listed under Nights that were different). Each ward-hour's price, less the booking fee, as a ratio to its zone's rate card is applied to the reference trip, and the booking fee for that trip added back. Lyft and Uber's other products dilute Uber's own pattern, and the level is within about 6% of Uber's own (see algorithmic_notes.qmd). The panel splits the price into Uber's fixed weekly schedule (known exactly) and everything else riders paid in that hour and place.
• Drivers (modelled): predicted driver earnings, as a share of the rate card, from 2,066 trips in the drivers' own statements since 2026-07-01: the weekly schedule (time block by central or outside pickup) plus the pickup wait, applied to each ward and hour with the open data's average wait. It explains 20% of the trip-to-trip variation: most of what drivers are paid varies trip by trip in ways no ward map can show, and the panel's range shows how much.
• Uber (modelled): what Uber keeps of the rider's price, after the driver's earnings and the HST on Uber's fees, modelled the same way without the booking fee, which is then added for the trip. It explains only 7% of the variation from trip to trip, because Uber's trip-by-trip adjustments swing single riders' prices by about a fifth either way. The rider layer is observed for all companies, while the driver and Uber layers are modelled from four drivers' Uber trips, so the three need not add up exactly; the panel gives the difference.

Limits

Shares of the rate card are applied to trips of any length, which is close for the percentage levers but not exact: the pickup-wait pay is per minute, so it is a smaller share of a long trip, and minimum fares matter on short ones. Central Toronto (marked * in the heat maps) is wards 4, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 and 19, standing in for Uber's lower-commission pickup zone, which follows pickup location rather than ward lines. Pearson Airport is shown for riders only, as an approximate outline just west of the city: a trip from Pearson is priced on the airport card with its pickup fees, and the drivers' statements have too few airport pickups to model drivers' or Uber's shares there. Airport riders pay well above the airport card in the open data, beyond the colour scale (the hover text gives the value). Ward-hours with fewer than 14 trips a week in the open data (a few night hours in outer wards) are blank on the rider maps.

Driver earnings and Uber's take vary by place only between central Toronto and outside it, and with each ward's pickup wait. The rider maps show that prices also vary by ward within a zone, and offers may too, but the drivers' statements have too few trips with a known pickup location (about three per ward and time block) to show it.

The panel's difference between sources compares two measures of the rider's price: the City's open data, and what the drivers' statements imply (driver earnings, plus Uber's take, plus the tax lines deducted from drivers) for the same zone, time block and pickup wait. On the reference trip it averages +$0.09 (+1%) for central pickups and −$1.24 (−11%) outside the centre. About three quarters of its variation is a fixed offset for each ward (from about −$2 in Scarborough to about +$1 downtown), which is the ward pricing the statement models cannot see. The lower overall level outside the centre is a real disagreement between the sources, with several possible causes we cannot separate: the open data includes other companies and products; the statements cover only the trips our drivers accepted; and the conversion assumes the booking fee and airport fees are in the City's fare.

Nights that were different

The maps show a typical week: for each ward and hour, the median across the 4.0 weeks. These are the single ward-hours (with at least 150 trips) where riders paid most above that typical level, which mostly means surge pricing around events.

Model details

Weighted least squares of driver earnings / rate-card fare and of Uber's take less the booking fee / rate-card fare (weights: rate-card fare). One level per time block and area, plus a step for each pickup-wait band above 3 minutes. The Uber model explains 7% of the trip-to-trip variation. The trip-by-trip ranges are the 10th and 90th percentiles of each model's residuals in the time block and area (riders: the same model of the drivers' riders' prices, less the booking fee).

Cells with fewer than 20 of the drivers' trips use their area's average: Weekdays 00-07, central, Weekdays 00-07, outside.