Where Every Illinois Ridehail Dollar Goes
When an Illinois ridehail customer pays for a ride, the fare is split. A portion goes to the driver behind the wheel. A portion is retained by the platform (Uber or Lyft) to cover platform fees, insurance, taxes, and booking fees. A new Big Lake Data analysis of the 2025 Illinois market puts hard numbers on that split, and on the tip revenue that flows separately from fares.
The 2025 split
Across an estimated 164 million Illinois ridehail trips in 2025, customers paid about $3.7 billion in customer fares. Of that:
$2.3 billion went to drivers as trip pay from the app (about 65 cents of every fare dollar).
$1.4 billion was retained by the platforms (about 35 cents of every fare dollar).
On top of fares, customers paid an additional $234 million in tips, which moved through the app directly to drivers. Because tips are not part of the fare and are not subject to a platform cut, every tip dollar a customer leaves is a dollar of driver income.
Where every $1 of customer fare goes in Illinois, 2025 Combined, Illinois ridehail drivers earned roughly $2.5 billion from trip pay and tips in 2025. At the trip level, that worked out to an average of about $16 per trip in gross driver earnings (about $14.71 from the app, plus $1.44 in tips, on an average fare of $22.67).
A dollar figure, not a take-home figure
One important caveat: the $2.5 billion figure is gross driver earnings from the app. It does not account for what drivers spend to operate a vehicle. Ridehail drivers are classified as independent contractors and absorb the cost of fuel, maintenance, depreciation, insurance, and cleaning themselves.
Using the 2025 IRS standard mileage rate of $0.70 per mile as a rough proxy, and applying it only to the 1.2 billion passenger miles reported in the brief (that is, miles with a rider in the vehicle, not counting deadhead miles spent driving to pickups or between trips), vehicle costs come out to roughly $840 million, or about 36 percent of app-paid driver pay. Counting the deadhead miles that full-time drivers accumulate between fares would push that figure higher.
Note: Drivers also receive the non-trip bonuses, incentives, and adjustments that platforms pay outside of individual trip fares. Those are not included in the $2.5 billion figure above. Including them would raise the total, though only modestly relative to trip pay.
Why the split matters
Unlike most of the revenue captured by the platforms, the dollars paid to drivers tend to stay in Illinois. Drivers live in Illinois communities, refuel at Illinois gas stations, service their vehicles at Illinois shops, buy groceries at Illinois stores, and pay Illinois state and local taxes. Platform revenue, by contrast, largely leaves the state and flows to the two national companies that operate the apps.
The split between driver pay and platform take is therefore not only a question of how individual drivers fare. It also shapes how much of the ridehail economy’s activity circulates locally.
Methodology and full numbers
Full methodology, definitions, and the complete statistics table are in the 2025 Illinois Ridehail Economy Data Brief.
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