Bolt vs inDrive Nigeria: What Each One Actually Pays a Driver

Tax rates and thresholds change every tax year. The Nigeria Tax Act 2025 figures here were checked in September 2026; for the current position see the Federal Inland Revenue Service. General information, not advice on your own return.

Platform fees change without notice. The fee figures below were checked in September 2026 and are used as worked examples, not as current rates. For what a platform charges today, see Bolt, inDrive.

Uber discontinued its Nigerian operations on 2 September 2026, ending twelve years in the market and leaving Bolt and inDrive as the main ride-hailing platforms. Thousands of drivers who had built a working week around one app are now choosing between two others.

Almost everything written about that choice is written for passengers — which app is cheaper, which arrives faster. This is written for the person driving the car, because the question that matters on your side is not what the passenger pays. It is what is left after the platform, the fuel and the vehicle have taken their share.

The commission, and why it is only the first deduction

Bolt charges a 20% commission from the final price per order in Nigeria. That is Bolt's own published position in its driver guide, and the detail around it matters: the commission applies to both cash and card rides, and to cancellation fees. It does not apply to tips, bonuses, or additional airport, toll and operational fees. It is calculated automatically and deducted from your weekly earnings.

inDrive is reported to take roughly 8–10% per trip in Nigeria — materially lower, and it is the headline number the platform is generally known for.

If the comparison stopped there it would be simple, and it does not stop there.

The platforms set fares differently, and that difference can outweigh the commission gap. Bolt sets the fare algorithmically. inDrive is built around negotiation: the passenger proposes a price, drivers accept, decline or counter. So on inDrive you keep a larger share of a fare you had to agree to, and on Bolt you keep a smaller share of a fare set for you.

This is why comparing 20% against 9% tells you almost nothing on its own. A 9% commission on a fare that was negotiated down 25% leaves you worse off than a 20% commission on the full fare. The only comparison that answers the question is naira per completed trip, after commission, on the routes you actually drive.

Rates also vary by city and change. There have been reports of Bolt raising commission at city level — including to 21% inclusive of VAT in Benin City from 1 January 2026, alongside a booking fee — and of transport authorities in Abuja examining commission levels and low fares across the platforms. Treat any national figure, including the ones on this page, as a starting point and confirm what applies in the city you drive in.

The costs that actually decide whether the week was worth it

Commission is the most visible deduction and rarely the largest. For a Nigerian driver the ones that decide profitability are:

• Fuel, which moves independently of fares and is the single biggest variable
• Maintenance and tyres, which are a function of distance rather than income
• Vehicle financing or a daily payment to the car's owner, which is fixed whether you work or not
• Data, without which neither app works
• Time spent unpaid — waiting, repositioning, and trips cancelled after you have already driven to the pickup

That last one is where the two platforms diverge again, and it is invisible in any commission comparison. A platform that sends you longer pickups is charging you fuel and time before the meter starts.

A worked illustration, using round numbers rather than real ones. Take ₦100,000 of gross fares in a week. On Bolt at 20%, commission is ₦20,000, leaving ₦80,000. On inDrive at 9%, commission is ₦9,000, leaving ₦91,000 — an ₦11,000 advantage. Now assume the negotiated fares on inDrive averaged 15% below the platform-set equivalent, so the same trips grossed ₦85,000 rather than ₦100,000: commission of ₦7,650 leaves ₦77,350, and the advantage has become a deficit. Change the discount to 5% and inDrive wins again.

The figures above are illustrative and are not a claim about what either platform pays. The point is the shape: the answer flips depending on a number that is specific to you — how far your agreed fares sit below platform-set ones — and no article can know that number. You can, after two weeks of recording it.

You can run your own version with the Bolt vs inDrive fee comparison, and work out the vehicle side with the inDrive mileage deduction calculator.

What Uber's exit means if you drove for it

Two practical things.

Export your history now. Trip records and earnings summaries live inside a platform account, and a closed account can take them with it. You still have to report the income you earned through Uber for the part of the year you earned it, and reconstructing it later from bank deposits will understate your gross and lose you every deductible commission you paid.

Your gross for the year spans platforms. If you drove for Uber until September and Bolt or inDrive afterwards, your tax position is one figure covering all of them, not separate figures per app. Two part-year records that were never added together is how drivers end up filing a number that matches neither.

The tax point that costs drivers the most

This applies whichever platform you choose, and it is the single most expensive misunderstanding in ride-hailing.

Your income is the gross fare, not the payout. What the passenger was charged is your income. The commission the platform deducted is a business expense, and a deductible one.

Those two statements describe the same money and they are not interchangeable. If you report only what reached your bank, you have understated your income — and you have also silently thrown away the deduction for every naira of commission you paid, because you never recorded it as an expense. The tax authority's view of your income may well come from platform data showing the gross.

So the weekly summary showing fares after commission is not the figure to file from. You need the gross and the commission as two separate numbers, kept as you go.

In Nigeria that sits inside a system that reset on 1 January 2026: the Nigeria Tax Act 2025 abolished the consolidated relief allowance, the first ₦800,000 of annual income is now taxed at 0%, and individuals file with their State Internal Revenue Service — LIRS in Lagos — rather than with the federal Nigeria Revenue Service. Our Nigeria platform income tax guide covers all of it, and the vehicle costs above are the deductions that matter most to drivers.

How to actually decide

Not by percentage. By two weeks of data.

Drive both, and for each completed trip record the gross fare, the commission, the distance, and the time from accepting to dropping off. At the end, divide what you kept by the hours you worked, on each platform. That number — naira kept per hour, after commission and fuel — is the only one that answers the question, and it will be different for a Lagos Island driver and an Abuja one.

That is also, not coincidentally, exactly the record you need at tax time. The income tracker keeps gross, fees and net as separate figures across platforms so the same record does both jobs, and the online earnings calculator will estimate the tax against the current Nigerian bands.

To be clear about the boundary: PlatformTaxHub organises and estimates. It does not file returns, and the Nigeria Revenue Service and the state revenue services run their own portals for that. This article is not tax advice and is not a recommendation of either platform — the figures published by Bolt and inDrive, and the conditions in your own city, are what should decide it.