Uber and Lyft are the two famous names in the ride-hailing business. Looking at their popularity, people often question whether they are superior for hitching rides? While both look pretty similar, there are specific differences between them. Knowing the differences between them is beneficial to make each ride valuable.
Lyft vs Uber
The main difference between Lyft and Uber is that Lyft is a ride-hailing service only in the USA and Canada. On the other hand, Uber provides various mobility services in almost 71 countries across the globe. Original Lyft provides a basic ride of up to three people in a vehicle. In contrast, a basic uber ride has an allowance for four people.
Lyft is a San Francisco-based company that offers various services such as ride-hailing, rental cars, food delivery, etc. It is present in 644 cities across the United States, providing the best transportation services. It is the second-largest ride-sharing company with Almost 32% of the market share.
Uber is a mobility service provider in the world. It provides ride-hailing, package delivery, food delivery, couriers, motorized scooters, and electric bicycles in partnership with some companies. Uber doesn’t own any vehicle. Instead, it is merely responsible for providing ride services to people.
Comparison Table Between Lyft and Uber
| Parameters of Comparison | Lyft | Uber |
| Availability | Lyft services are spread only in the United States and Canada. | Uber services are available worldwide in 63 countries. |
| Features | Lyft has fewer features as it is still a developing company. | Uber has more good and innovative features available. |
| Pricing | Pricing differs for the same ride depending on supply and demand in the area. | Pricing of the uber for the same ride is the same. |
| Transparency | Lyft has a more transparent system with receipts. | Uber shows the fair price without mentioning any justification of it. |
| Rewards | Lyft has a limited rewarding system. | Uber has a better rewarding and loyalty program. |
What is Lyft?
Lyft is a ride-sharing company that provides shorter trips within the cities. Logan Green and John Zimmer launched Lyft in the year 2012. They both were computer programmers, and they launched Lyft as an intercity Zimride service. In the year 2014, Lyft emerged as a fantasy car ride Company as it used pink Furry moustaches to do branding of the company.
Later, when the company grew, it began to use magenta plastic dashboard moustaches as the branding. They called it a glow stache. They did this to make the businessman comfortable arriving at the official meeting. This way, with time, Lyft kept on growing. Today it has tie-ups with big names such as rental car company Sixt to provide users with rental cars.
With other services, Lyft is planning to launch the robot taxi service in the various cities of the US in the year 2023. They are planning to do this in collaboration with motional. Lyft has a dynamic pricing model due to which the price of the same ride differs each time based on the supply and demand at the time.
Lyft has a prime time pricing with a percentage. It transparently mentions the prices on the receipts. It helps riders to understand the total cost of travelling. It automatically remembers your favourite travel destination. Along with that, Lyft also has a loyalty program. For every five business rides that the user takes, they get $5 personal credit.
What is Uber?
Uber is a mobility service providing company. It was founded in the year by Garret Camp and Travis Kalanick. The headquarters of the company is situated in San Francisco, California and is available in 71 countries and about 10000 cities.
Uber has a smart car-sharing feature that it refers to as the express pool. In this, you agree to walk a short distance to make the ride easier for the driver. You save some money for yourself by walking some distance. It also offers wheelchair options that are available in many areas worldwide.
The uber reward system is unique. Every user earns two points for each dollar they spend on a ride.
Then based on the points, customers receive benefits. There’s another rewarding system which is called Uber Cash. This discount is given to the person who buys credit for the ride.
Uber has different classes of service such as UberX, Uber comfort, Uber SUV, Uber pool, Uber black, etc.
When the supply doesn’t meet the demand uber, it’s pricing. This increase in the pricing is not mentioned on the receipt of the ride. The prices can go high up to 3 times the regular price. Uber popularly refers to this practice as the price surging.
Main Differences Between Lyft and Uber
- Lyft is a San Francisco based company and is available in about 644 cities across the United States and Canada. On the other hand, uber is an international company public across 63 countries.
- Lyft has a transparent receipts system that mentions the distance of the ride and completely justifies a user’s amount. At the same time, the receipt of uber is quite opaque and doesn’t mention the surge in pricing.
- Lyft discontinued the feature to split the ride fare among Customers. In comparison, Uber has a well-developed feature that separates the ride fare among the customer sharing the ride.
- Lyft has a limited wheelchair option available. On the other hand, uber provides wheelchair-accessible cars across 15 countries.
- In case of more demand and less supply, Lyft has a labelled prime time pricing. This feature lets customers know when the prices are high and how much per cent they are tall. On the other hand, Uber practices a surge pricing model. They increase the price two times or three times depending on the demand. There is no mention of this to the customers.
Conclusion
Being an ordinary person, you might have used Lyft and Uber to hitch hundreds of rides. While using their services daily, you might have just thought of them as similar hailing services. They are just alike in that they have ride-hailing services. Except for that, they both are pretty different.
Uber is reputed, richer in features and available in many countries. Lyft is better in the pricing system but available in Just America. In comparison, we are speaking about the track record. Lyft has a more clean tract of paper. There have been some severe complaints and issues regarding Uber though Lyft has also been accused of tracking the people’s data.
So, there are pros and cons of both, but they are best in providing ride-hailing services in their areas.
References
- https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3178876.3186134
- https://search.proquest.com/openview/5486ff6cc229889a3cdf2df1cd3993cb/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750