Show HN: Real-time Fare Estimate Comparisons for Uber, Lyft, Sidecar, and Taxi | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Real-time Fare Estimate Comparisons for Uber, Lyft, Sidecar, and Taxi

whatsthefare.com

181 pointscoda32265 comments

I love products like these. Slices right through all the promotional noise like "fun drivers," "fast pick-up times," "clean cars," etc and gets right to chase -- price.

At the end of the day, they are all taxi services in my book. Whichever gets me from point A to point B the cheapest wins my dollars. Fast pick-up times, a sexy functional app, and other common sense differentiators are expectations now, not selling points.

> At the end of the day, they are all taxi services in my book.

Unless you live in New York, and are trying to get from Manhattan to one of the outer boroughs, in which case getting a yellow cab is a total crapshoot.

It shouldn't matter one bit. They're legally obligated to take you anywhere in the five boroughs.

Just get in before telling them your destination. If they give you flak (and you feel like fighting them), just take note of their medallion # and state clearly that you will report them if they fail to fulfill their obligation.

Or, you know, pay an extra $3 to Uber and avoid that situation all together.

It shouldn't matter, but it does.

There are even fewer regulations preventing Uber drivers from declining a fare based on location - or race, or gender, or they don't like your sports team, or anything.

Does that actually happen?

This article claims that Uber is actually better than cabs because the drivers don't know your race when they agree to pick you up. http://www.racialicious.com/2012/11/28/cab-drivers-uber-and-...

You're absolutely right, but it's still a crapshoot. You being right doesn't mean that the cabbie won't argue with you, and won't just flat out refuse to take you anyway, despite the risk of being reported.

In a perfect world, etc.

While there are places that have fewer open taxis to hail, I never tell them where I'm going till I'm in the cab (it's against the rules to turn down a valid fair because of location IIRC). Easy enough to get a ride to most places you'd want to pay a taxi to go from there.

I'm not so sure about that, since after seeing a very beat up van with a lyft mustache, I have become very hesitant to using their service.

the quality of the car actually matters to me. in my experience Uber cars tend to be clean and well-maintained internally. i've only tried one Lyft and it was fine, but just not as pleasant to ride in. I'm not saying that's always the case with them, but I still consider that more than cost when deciding which one to use.

Uber API TOS says:

"You may not use the Uber API in any manner that is competitive to Uber or the Uber Services, including in connection with any application, website or other product or service that also includes, features, endorses, or otherwise supports in any way a third party that provides services competitive to Uber’s products and services, as determined in our sole discretion."

https://developer.uber.com/v1/terms/ under 2.A

That's nice of them...

Here's one angle. If this app becomes popular and Uber sends a C&D, then Uber results will no longer show up in this app, meaning Lyft would get all the bookings from people who use it.

Doesn't Google Maps include Uber now? I thought gMaps also had public transportation information as well. inb4 selective enforcement.

Well Uber has been cheaper than any other service in all of my searches so it seems to be in their best interest.

IMO that kind of term is anti-competitive and should not be legal. Uber markets itself as a free market alternative to the old cab monopolies, so why are they doing things like this?

I get the impression from the site that they have the fare rates, but are calculating distance and drive time using google maps and estimating the cost of the service. If this is true, they wouldn't need to use the API to run the site.

Nice.

Now just give me an iPhone app where I push a button and it sends me the cheapest, closest car from any of those companies.

Shut up and take my money.

This. This is exactly what I want. As a poster above said, they're all a taxi service to me -- now get me there cheaper and faster.

One of my buddies tried this idea. It seems to have failed (their website is now down). Archive: http://appcrawlr.com/ios/red-ride-ride-sharing-car-picku

They ended up getting a C&D from Uber.

This how you know when something becomes a commodity. Uber/Lyft/Taxi/Sidecar they will just be competing on price in the long run, since they all compete in a commoditized market, and the player with better ubiquity and infrastructure will ultimately win, because they will be able to cut prices in a way that smaller players won't be able to afford.

This is a problem. If one of them gains a monopoly they will be able to lower service quality, raise prices and still be able to kill/buy off any new small competitor.

...so, like taxi medallions?

Taxi rate in NYC seems too low. I tried a couple of trips that I have taken dozens of times, and they have never, ever been as low as whats being calculated. I like the idea though.

This is brilliant and one of the many reasons I love this site. Simple Bootstrap interface that cuts through the crap, the fancy user interfaces of ride sharing and taxi apps and gives me the information that I really want: the cost.

Now this has hit the homepage, it'll be interesting to see if Uber, Lyft and other providers cut you off from their API's. Presumably, some of these services don't want you to be able to compare estimated costs between competing offerings, but it also means that everyone is being kept honest and as a consumer, I think that is the most important thing of all.

Question to America. Why do you tip the taxi driver but not the uber/lyft driver?

(SFO -> Pier 39 - Lyft is $31, Taxi is $49.96 + 15% standard tip = $57)

Uber fare is supposed to include tip.

Which is kind of a funny way for Uber to say "we don't do tipping."

I mean, I guess you could say that my salary "includes a tip," and that it's really 20% lower but then there's a 20% tip on top of that, but obviously I wouldn't actually say that.

Uber says that their fare "includes a tip" because people are used to tipping cabbies. But tips are only tips when they are optional amounts that customers can vary the size of.

I don't think that rides-for-hire should really be a tipping industry anyhow.

I don't know where you are from, but North America tipping is not optional in certain situations. A waitress in a restaurant does not get payed a salary, but lives solely from tips. I don't know if the same is true for taxi drivers (who are not the owner of the car).

> A waitress in a restaurant does not get payed a salary, but lives solely from tips.

That's not quite true -- they make something like $2 an hour in the US and $9.55 an hour (almost minimum wage) in Ontario, Canada.

Tipping is, in fact, optional (well, except when its not actually tipping, and is instead an included service charge.)

This is independent of whether or not there are people that are paid poor wages.

Yes, I've seen Reservoir Dogs too. Without engaging the extremely shopworn discussion about how much tipping is appropriate, the fact remains that if you choose, you can tip a waiter nothing. It may be a dick move, but you can do it.

You can't "tip" an Uber driver nothing. It doesn't matter how bad your service was. It doesn't matter how much you don't care about being labeled a dick. You just can't do it.

Because the Uber thing is not, in fact, a tip.

Correct, they're just removing the social requirement.

The goal here being "no cash exchanged".

For NYC to New Jersey the fare estimate does not take into account bridge and tunnel tolls. I was getting $19, $23 and $23 for Taxi, Uber and Lyft respectively, which is very low for all of those services. A typical taxi will cost $45-$55 from Manhattan to Jersey City or Hoboken.

Cool idea! FYI, when I clicked the 'locate' button and denied it access, the spinner just kept going and I couldn't manually enter a location.

This is awesome. One suggestion is a permalink for a specific fare estimate that I can forward someone.

Great app! Would be great to estimate "regular" price, right now it's surging and I'd like to know what the price would be for e.g. tomorrow. Hopefully Uber wont shut you off, seems like a breach of ToS to me (I'm not a legal expert).

It says +25%, so should be easy enough to guess.

This is alarmingly inaccurate. Says it'd take $71 to take a taxi from Alexandria, VA to NE Washington, D.C.

If you live in the area, you'd know that's a bold-faced lie. It'd probably cost $25-$30 bucks, the same price being quoted for Lyft and Uber.

I don't know the addresses you're looking at, but it's about $20 from Mill Rd in Alexandria to DCA (I've taken the route a ton of times), which is a much shorter distance than to NE D.C. I don't know if $71 is entirely accurate, but it's definitely more than you're quoting.

EDIT: Just quoted it. It's about $42 in light traffic, about $69 in heavy traffic (from the hotel I stay in Alexandria to an address on Oglethorpe St in NE D.C.). So they're providing the worst possible fare, whereas they should probably provide the median.

There is no universe in which $42-$69 is remotely possible, unless there's something along the order of $20 surcharge for airport dropoff.

I do this bimonthly, and it's ~$25, with tip.

I hate to think of the nefarious reasons for overquoting taxis like this...

I just looked up the ride I took this morning and it doesn't seem to include any add-on charges, like the toll I was charged, the Uber Safety Fee or the Seattle Accessible Driving Fund.

edit: oh yea, it says that in small print at the bottom of the page.

I'd imagine these would be added to all fares so as a price comparison tool it'd still be valid.

I'm confused... if I type in San Fran to Los Ang I get $608 for Lyft and over $1K for the other two.

Why is Lyft so low (like half if not more) competition makes sense, but ~400 mile trip should be more then $600.

At this range, the estimate can be wildly inaccurate. For example, there may be a maximum distance imposed, say 60 miles at about $120 http://orangecountylyftcoupons.wordpress.com/2014/03/05/how-...

Uber claims to be 20% cheaper than yellow cabs in NYC. What gives?

It would be nice for completeness, if either start or end is an airport (e.g. "SFO", "LAX") to include an estimate of a shared-ride van such as supershuttle.

Which locations does this website have actual data for? Just tried two places in San Francisco and it said it had no data.

Is this an actual site or just a one pager looking for interest?

What two places did you try? It works for me.

Tried going to a place on Market to a restaurant in Sunset, both had addresses...

I am trying "2020 Market Street, San Francisco, CA, United States" and "1330 9th Ave, San Francisco, CA 94122" and the site works for me.

I'm on Chrome 37.0.2062.94 on Ubuntu Linux 14.04 on a desktop.

I just got a successful quote from my employer to the Caltrain in Sunnyvale ($12 lyft, $20 taxi: seems right)

How long is this going to last before one of the services shuts it down, claiming some kind of EULA noncompliance (or some other flimsy excuse to avoid competition)?

This reminds me Movigo [1]. Is there any relationship or known difference?

[1] http://www.movigo.com

You'll want to adjust yellow taxi fares from Manhattan to JFK and reverse. This is done on a flat fee.

Looks like none of 'em hold a candle to Taxis in small-to-medium cities like mine.

Huh, in SF starting from my place to all of the places I might go Lyft wins consistently, and sometimes by as much as 1/2 of the taxi price.

Unfortunately (in my limited experience with Lyft) the quality of UberX drivers are far better than Lyft drivers. Half the time in Lyft cars I've been worried about crashing! I'd rather pay that extra dollar or two and have a comfortable ride.

This is really cool. How do you guys get current surge/prime time rates?

Uber has an API, but I looked into Uber's TOU a week a two ago and they explicitly disallowed this sort of thing (comparison shopping). Maybe it's just an estimate?

This is probably just violating the TOU. As a consumer, I think lack of comparison shopping is absolutely the worst thing about lyft/uber, and that they should be required to publish pricing data in a manner accessible to this sort of thing, just like taxis are required to use certified meters and post rates on their doors.

Great app. Pull in wait time and you might have something.

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