How to work out your real hourly pay on Spark Driver
The number on a Spark offer is what the trip pays. It isn’t what you earn for your time. To compare offers fairly you need one number: dollars per hour after car costs.
The formula
$/h = (pay − car cost) ÷ total minutes × 60
- Car cost = (trip distance + drive to pickup) × your cost per km or mile.
- Total minutes = the trip time Spark lists + the drive to pickup + your extra time per trip (parking, waiting at the store, walking up to apartments).
Everything here is before tax, and it uses Spark’s own distance and time estimates, so treat it as a planning number rather than a pay stub.
A worked example
An offer pays $16.10 for 5.3 km and 27 minutes. You’re about 11 km from the store in a straight line, which is roughly 15 km by road and 19 minutes of driving. Your car costs $0.10 per km, and you usually lose 15 minutes per trip parking and waiting.
| Step | Math | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Car cost | (5.3 + 14.9 km) × $0.10 | $2.02 |
| Left after costs | $16.10 − $2.02 | $14.08 |
| Total time | 27 + 19 + 15 min | 61 min |
| Your $/h | $14.08 ÷ 61 × 60 | $13.85 |
On the screen the offer looked like about $36 an hour ($16.10 for 27 minutes). Counting the drive to the store and the waiting, it’s $13.85.
Find your car cost per km or mile
Add what driving really costs you per distance:
- Gas: price per litre × litres per 100 km ÷ 100. At $1.45/L and 8 L/100 km that’s about $0.12 per km. In the US: price per gallon ÷ miles per gallon.
- Wear, tires and maintenance: often $0.05–$0.10 per km for a typical car.
- Insurance and depreciation that grow with distance driven.
Small cars often land around $0.20 per km ($0.32 per mile), average cars around $0.30 per km, and SUVs and trucks higher. Use your own numbers if you have them.
Set a goal, then grade every offer
Pick the hourly amount you want to make after car costs. A simple way to grade offers against it:
- Great: 20% or more above your goal.
- Good: meets your goal.
- Bad: below your goal.
- Very low: below half your goal.
Not sure what goal to pick? Look at the offers you actually get. If half of your recent offers pay $24/h or more after costs, a $24 goal means you’d take about half of what you see. TripEye suggests this number from your own offers once it has seen 20 of them.
Why per-hour beats the sticker price
Two offers can both pay $20. One is 4 km from a store you’re sitting at; the other is 15 km away with three apartment drop-offs. Only a per-hour number that includes the drive and the waiting tells them apart. Read more in dollars per mile vs dollars per hour and the hidden cost of the drive to pickup.
Coming soon on theApp Store