A new investigation has found that the rideshare apps Uber and Lyft can give customers wildly different prices for what is essentially the same journey. It is a frustration many riders will recognize, having compared their fares with a friend heading to the same place and noticed the numbers do not match.
The investigation was carried out by Consumer Reports, which found that customers were often given different fares when they booked the same rides at the same time. Rather than a one-off glitch, the report concluded that the mismatch happens a lot, turning what should be a simple price into something far less predictable.
The scale of the gap can be striking. According to the findings, fares can differ by as much as 160 percent for the same trip. In practical terms, that means one person could be charged around 100 dollars for a ride while another is charged 50 dollars for the very same route at the very same moment.
Looking across the rides it examined, Consumer Reports found that the median difference between the lowest and the highest price groups was 50 percent. That figure points to a consistent pattern of price variation rather than a handful of extreme outliers skewing the results.
To put the apps to the test, the investigation relied on a large group of everyday users. A total of 174 volunteers across 18 states checked fares on hundreds of rides, allowing the researchers to compare prices for identical trips requested at the same time and to measure just how often, and how widely, they diverged.
On both Uber and Lyft, the process looks simple from the outside. A customer chooses a destination and is shown a fare. But many riders have been left frustrated by sharp price swings, and the investigation, led by reporter Derek Kravitz, found that those swings are common enough to leave passengers paying very different amounts for the same trip.