Mileage, earnings and tax tracker for Lyft drivers

What Solo does for Lyft drivers

Solo is the mileage, earnings, and tax app for Lyft drivers, powered by Sherpa, the first AI assistant built for gig workers. Link your Lyft account once and Solo logs your business miles by GPS, including the miles between rides and deliveries that Lyft never reports, tracks your payouts from rides side by side with every other app you drive for, and projects and files your federal and state taxes.

Mileage, classified automatically

Solo matches each completed Lyft trip to the drive it already logged and files those miles as business. No start button.

Track every app in one app

Lyft rides next to Uber rides next to DoorDash, so one screen shows what your week actually paid and what gets deducted.

Taxes projected year-round, then filed

You see what you owe in July, and Annual Pro and Pro Plus members file federal and state from inside the app.

Sherpa, answering from your own numbers

Ask whether tonight is worth driving and get an answer built on your history, not a generic tip.

A rate you can lock in

Pay Guarantee fixes an hourly floor before a scheduled shift and pays the gap if you fall short (eligible cities only).

Coverage map

Real pay data for your city

Average Lyft hourly across every major metro in the US, from tracked earnings rather than surveys.

Find your city

Automatic mileage tracking and classification starts on the Basic plan, $96 a year. For manual mileage tracking, no subscription plan is required. It’s also worth mentioning that the cost of Solo is 100% tax-deductible as a work expense — be sure to classify it as such.

Does Lyft track your miles?

Partly, and the part it misses is usually the bigger one.

Lyft logs miles from accepting a ride to completing the drop-off. That figure lands in your weekly summary and it's useful. But it stops at the drop-off. The drive to the pickup zone, repositioning between surge areas, waiting out a slow hour across town, or the drive home at the end of the night — none of that gets counted.

The gap matters even more for Uber Eats deliveries, where restaurant-to-door distances are short but the drives between orders add up fast.

Why Lyft's mileage summary isn't IRS-proof

Lyft presents its mileage as an estimate. The IRS expects a contemporaneous log: dates, distances, destinations, and business purpose, recorded as you drive rather than reconstructed in April. A weekly summary generated by a platform isn't built to satisfy that standard.

These scenarios are rare and most drivers will not get audited for mileage alone. The ones who do, and who can't produce a proper log, could lose their deductions.

One evening of drivingThu, Apr 23

Counted by Lyft31.8 mi

Logged by Solo65.2 mi

Past the line: the drive to your zone, repositioning, and the drive home.

$25.46more deducted, on one evening

How Solo tracks your Lyft mileage automatically

Solo logs your drives in the background and matches them to your Lyft trips.

You link your Lyft account once. Solo's GPS logs your trips as you drive, all of them, including the ones between rides. When you complete a trip on Lyft, Solo matches that job against the drive it already recorded and files those miles as business.

No start button to remember. No swipe-left-for-personal queue waiting for you on Sunday night. No weekly review to catch the trips you forgot to classify.

That last part is where most mileage apps lose drivers. An app that needs you to tap start before every shift will eventually miss a shift, which means more missed deductions and less money in your pocket.

Setting it up

1
Download Solo and link your Lyft account.
2
Start your 7-day free trial on any plan.
3
Turn on mileage tracking and grant location access. Keep the app open in the background.
4
Drive. Solo logs your trips, then files the miles around each completed job as business.

Two minutes, and you don't touch it again.

Keeping personal trips out of it

Solo classifies the miles around your Lyft jobs as business and leaves the rest alone. The school run and the grocery trip stay out of your deduction.

If you'd rather control it yourself, Solo has a manual mode you can switch on any time. Most drivers prefer to have their miles automatically tracked and categorized, but if you want to use manual tracking at any point, it’s only a quick toggle flip away.

Track Lyft earnings alongside every other app

You run Lyft rides through the evening rush, pick up Uber Eats orders when ride demand drops, and take a DoorDash batch on the way home. Three apps, three payout screens, three sets of numbers that never add up to one answer about your week.

Solo links them all: Lyft, Uber Eats, DoorDash, Uber, Instacart, Amazon Flex, Spark, and more. Link your accounts and see your earnings, miles, and expenses tracked in one place. Solo works as a Lyft expense tracker too, so tolls, parking, and equipment sit next to the mileage they belong to as part of your tracked expenses.

Paid this weekSep 8 – 14

$1,284.00+$186.20

Lyft$612.00

Uber$418.40

DoorDash$253.60

Know what an hour pays before you commit

Smart Schedule predicts what an hour will earn before you decide to work it. Drivers using it can earn up to 40% more per year on average.

In most major metros, you can also lock the rate in from your Smart Schedule. Pay Guarantee fixes an hourly floor for a scheduled shift: work the hour, and if you earn less than Solo predicted, Solo pays the difference.

Lyft4:00 – 5:00 PM

$23.50Average

Lyft5:00 – 6:00 PM

$26.40Above average

Ask Sherpa

Sherpa is Solo's AI assistant, and it answers from your earnings history rather than from the internet.

It runs on Claude and on more than $7.5 billion of real gig earnings across 100+ metro areas in the US, layered against your own numbers. When Sherpa tells you Friday evening beats Sunday in your zone, it's reading your history and your market and uses that to give you data-driven recommendations you can count on.

Drive tonight or wait for Saturday?

Lyft taxes: projections and filing

Solo projects your Lyft taxes year-round and files them.

Every classified mile and tracked expense feeds a running estimate: what you owe, what you've set aside, what's left before the next quarterly deadline. You see it in July, not for the first time in April.

Then Solo files. Annual Pro and Pro Plus members file federal and state returns from inside the app or on the web, with income and expenses already filled in from a year of tracking.

Tax projectionyear to date

Gross earnings, all platforms$28,410.00

Mileage deduction · 9,842 mi−$7,479.92

Tracked expenses−$1,236.80

Taxable profit$20,105.40

Set aside so far$3,540.00

Q3 estimated taxesdue Sep 15$1,916

What Lyft drivers can deduct

Mileage is usually the biggest one. After that:

Phone and data plan at your business-use share

Hot bags and delivery equipment

Tolls and parking on deliveries

Roadside assistance

A share of car expenses if you claim actual costs

Solo tracks these automatically as you go, and Sherpa flags what you're missing. Just link your bank account to Solo using Plaid and all of your work expenses will be tracked automatically.

Best mileage tracker apps for Lyft drivers, compared

Most Lyft drivers end up choosing between four or five apps, and they solve genuinely different problems.

Solo's key difference is scope. It's the only one here that tracks earnings across every platform you drive for, classifies your miles by matching them to completed jobs, projects your taxes year-round, and files your federal and state return in the app. The others hand you a report to take somewhere else.

Solo compared with Gridwise, Everlance, Stride and MileIQ for Lyft drivers
Feature	Solo	Gridwise	Everlance	Stride	MileIQ
Automatic mileage	Auto-classified	Manual start/stop, manual classify	Auto-detect, swipe to classify	Manual start/stop	Auto-detect, swipe to classify
Multi-app earnings	11 platforms
Tax projection	Year-round
Tax filing
Pay Guarantee	Covered metros
AI assistant	Sherpa
Free tier	Manual tracking only; auto-classification on all plans. All uncapped tracking.	Yes, uncapped tracking	30 auto trips/mo	Yes, uncapped	40 drives/mo

Competitor details verified September 2026.

Wondering how Uber stacks up? We compared DoorDash and Uber Eats driver pay and Grubhub and DoorDash.

Frequently asked questions

Does Lyft track mileage for drivers?

Partly. Lyft logs the distance from pickup to drop-off on each ride or delivery. It doesn't track the drive to the pickup, repositioning between rides, or the drive home — all of which are deductible business miles. Solo captures every mile, including the ones Lyft misses.

Is there a free Lyft mileage tracker?

Solo's free tier includes mileage tracking with manual classification — no subscription required and no cap on the number of drives. Automatic classification, which matches your miles to completed Lyft trips without any manual work, starts on the Basic plan at $8/month billed annually.

How do I track my Lyft mileage?

Download Solo, link your Lyft account, and turn on mileage tracking. Solo runs in the background and logs every drive by GPS. When you complete a ride or delivery on Lyft, Solo matches that job to the drive it already recorded and classifies those miles as business — no start button needed.

Does the IRS ask for proof of mileage on Lyft?

The IRS expects a contemporaneous log — dates, distances, destinations, and business purpose — recorded as you drive, not reconstructed later. Lyft's weekly mileage summary is an estimate and wasn't built to meet that standard. Solo creates a proper log automatically so you have it if the IRS ever asks.

What's the best app for Lyft drivers who also drive for Uber and DoorDash?

Solo connects to 11 gig platforms — including Lyft, Uber, DoorDash, Uber Eats, Instacart, Amazon Flex, and more — and tracks earnings, mileage, and taxes across all of them in a single dashboard. Most other mileage apps only track miles; Solo tracks what you actually earned alongside them.

What app helps Lyft drivers make more money?

Solo's Smart Schedule predicts what an hour will pay before you commit to driving it, and drivers using it earn up to 40% more per year on average. Sherpa, Solo's AI assistant, answers questions about your own pay patterns so you can focus on the hours and platforms that pay the best in your market.

How much of my Lyft mileage can I actually deduct?

All miles driven for business purposes are deductible at the IRS standard mileage rate — 76¢/mile for July through December 2026. That includes the drive to your first pickup, between rides, repositioning to surge zones, and the drive home from your last drop-off. Solo classifies which miles count automatically.

Do I need a separate app if Lyft already shows my miles?

Lyft's mileage figure only covers the distance during active trips. It misses the drives to pickups, between rides, and home — which are often more than half your total work miles. Solo captures all of them by GPS and builds an IRS-ready log, so you don't leave deductions on the table.

Which mileage tracker works if I multi-app between Lyft and DoorDash?

Solo links to both Lyft and DoorDash (plus 9 other platforms) and tracks all of them at once. When you switch from Lyft rides to DoorDash deliveries mid-shift, Solo matches each completed job to the right miles without you doing anything. One app, one mileage log, one tax filing.

Can Solo file my Lyft taxes, or just estimate them?

Both. Solo projects what you owe throughout the year — including quarterly estimated payments — and Annual Pro and Pro Plus members can file their federal and state returns directly in the app, with income and expenses pre-filled from a year of tracking.

Can I track Uber rides and Uber Eats separately?

Yes. Solo breaks down your earnings by platform, so you see your hourly rate for Uber rideshare and Uber Eats side by side in the same dashboard. Both feed into a single mileage log and tax projection.

Solo for Lyft drivers: mileage, earnings and taxes