If you drive in Lagos you have options: Bolt, inDrive, LagRide, and now Intra Cab — and until 2 September 2026 you had Uber too, before it wound down in Nigeria citing "evolving business priorities" across the continent. Each one puts a fare on a screen. None of those fares is the number that matters. The number that matters is what is left in your hand after the platform has taken its share and you have bought the petrol.
This is not a post about which app is best. It is about how the money works on each model, so you can compare them for your own car and your own hours.
What Uber's exit changed
Uber's departure left thousands of Lagos and Abuja drivers looking for somewhere to put their hours, and Bolt and inDrive have both been openly recruiting them. Drivers who spoke to TechCabal around the exit said Uber had pushed its cut to about 30% while lowering fares, with Bolt holding around 25% on higher fares. Whether those figures match your own weekly statement, you know better than we do — but it is a reminder that the cut is set by the platform and can move against you without notice.
The four models you'll run into in Nigeria
Commission per trip. The platform calculates the fare and takes a percentage of it. This is how the big international apps work in Nigeria, and the percentage is typically somewhere between a fifth and a quarter of each fare. On a ₦4,000 trip, a 20% cut is ₦800 you don't see; at 25% it is ₦1,000.
Rider-proposed price plus a service fee. inDrive works differently from the first two: the rider proposes a price, drivers accept or counter, and the two agree. That part is closer to how Intra works. The difference is that inDrive still charges drivers a service fee on each trip, so the agreed figure is not quite the figure you keep.
Hire-purchase. LagRide, backed by Lagos State, is a different proposition again: as it describes itself publicly, you drive a car provided through the scheme and make regular payments towards owning it over a period of years. Whether that is a good deal depends entirely on the terms and on whether you want to own that car — it is a car-financing decision as much as a ride-app decision.
No cut at all. The rider pays you directly in cash and the platform takes nothing. This is how Intra Cab works — the fare you quote is the fare you keep, handed to you at the end of the trip. There is no wallet and nothing to withdraw, because the money never passes through us.
Why the cut matters more than the headline fare
A platform with higher fares and a 25% cut can leave you worse off than one with lower fares and no cut. The comparison that matters is take-home per hour, not the number quoted to the rider.
Run your own numbers:
| What the rider pays | What you keep | |
|---|---|---|
| 20% commission | ₦4,000 | ₦3,200 |
| 25% commission | ₦4,000 | ₦3,000 |
| Service fee of, say, 10% | ₦4,000 | ₦3,600 |
| No commission | ₦4,000 | ₦4,000 |
Multiply that difference across a week of Lagos driving, with petrol at this year's prices, and it stops being small.
The other half: who decides the fare
Commission is only half the picture. The other half is whether you have any say in the price.
On a fixed-fare app you don't — the platform calculates the fare and you accept or decline it. When they run a promotion or cut prices to win riders from a rival, your earnings move with it and you have no say. When a trip means an hour on Third Mainland Bridge, the fare does not know that.
On Intra you send your own price on every trip, in naira, after seeing the pickup, the drop-off and the passenger count. The rider sees your offer alongside other drivers' and chooses. If a trip isn't worth doing at a low price, you don't offer a low price. And because there's no commission priced into what you quote, you can often come in competitively and still keep more than you would elsewhere.
Questions worth asking any platform
Before committing your time to any app, get clear answers to:
- What percentage or fee do you take per trip?
- Are there plans, targets, bonuses with conditions, or daily payments on top of that?
- Who sets the fare — me, or you?
- How and when do I actually get paid, and in what?
- Can I drive for other apps at the same time?
If the answers are hard to find, that's information too.
One more thing: bikes
Every platform above is a car platform. Nigeria's dedicated bike apps have pulled out of passenger rides, and inDrive's motorcycles carry parcels. If you ride okada where it is legal, Intra Cab is at the moment the only app with a live motorcycle option and no commission — and no motorcycle drivers on it yet. Where okada is and isn't allowed, and how bike trips work.
Where Intra stands, honestly
No commission. No fees. No plans. You set your own price on every trip, the rider pays you in cash directly, and you can drive for anyone else you like at the same time — there's no exclusivity.
The trade-off is just as plain: Intra has only just opened in Nigeria, so right now there are far fewer riders than on Bolt or inDrive. Keeping 100% of a trip you don't get isn't worth anything. That's exactly why it makes sense to run Intra alongside what you already do rather than instead of it — it costs you nothing to have installed, and every trip that does come through, you keep whole.
Sign up to drive in Nigeria · What you need to sign up · Riders: what to use now that Uber has left · An honest way to work out what you could earn in Lagos
Commission and fee ranges above are general industry figures, not quotes for any specific platform; the Uber and Bolt percentages in "What Uber's exit changed" are as reported by drivers to TechCabal in September 2026, not platform statements. Descriptions of inDrive's rider-proposed pricing and LagRide's hire-purchase model are based on how those services describe themselves publicly as of October 2026. Always check current terms directly with any platform before signing up.