The best apps for US rideshare and delivery drivers: mileage, gas and taxes

If you drive for Uber, Lyft, DoorDash or any of the other apps, the money you keep is decided by three numbers the platform never shows you: how many miles you drove, what you paid for gas, and what you owe the IRS. The best apps for US rideshare and delivery drivers are the ones that get those three numbers right, and there are only a handful worth installing.

This guide covers six of them, in the order they matter: a mileage and tax tracker, a gas app, a route planner. None of them raises what a trip pays. All of them change what you keep from it.

Why a mileage log is the first app to install

In the US, independent contractors deduct their business miles at the IRS standard mileage rate. For 2026 that is 72.5 cents a mile for miles driven between January 1 and June 30, and 76 cents a mile from July 1, after the IRS raised it mid-year on fuel prices. One tax year spans two rates, so your log has to show which miles fell where.

That rate is worth more than it looks. A driver covering 20,000 business miles across the year deducts roughly $14,850 from the profit they pay tax on. At the 15.3% self-employment tax alone, that is more than $2,200 kept, before income tax. Without a log, the deduction is a guess the IRS can refuse, and the delivery app's own trip record does not fill the gap: it counts the miles on its deliveries, not the drive to the zone, the miles between offers or anything you drove for a second app.

Two rules from the IRS that shape how you set the app up. The log needs the date, the miles and the business purpose of each trip. And you choose the standard mileage rate or your actual car expenses, not both: the rate already covers gas, maintenance, insurance and depreciation, and tolls and parking go on top of either method.

Mileage and tax tracking: Hurdlr and Solo

Hurdlr

Hurdlr tracks mileage and expenses in the background and estimates your tax deduction as you drive. It links to the rideshare and delivery platforms so it can show net earnings live, which is the number that tells you whether the evening was worth it. There is a free tier, which asks you to start and stop trips, and a paid version that tracks automatically and adds the tax tools. For a driver who runs two apps, the automatic tracking is the difference between a log that holds up and one with gaps.

Solo

Solo does the same job for income, expenses and tax projections, and adds a feature called Smart Schedule that reads your area's historic demand and suggests the hours and gigs likely to pay best. Smart Schedule is available in select metro areas, so check yours before you choose Solo over Hurdlr on that basis. On the core job, a log the IRS will accept and a running tax estimate, either will do.

Gas: GasBuddy and Upside

Gas is the cost you feel every day, and the two apps here attack it from opposite ends: one finds the cheapest price, the other pays part of it back.

GasBuddy

GasBuddy shows current prices at the stations around you, reported by other drivers, so you can pick the cheapest one on your route rather than the nearest. It also has a trip cost calculator and its own fuel rewards program. On a 12-hour Saturday in a big metro, the difference between the cheapest station on your loop and the one by the highway is real money, and this is the app that finds it.

Upside

Upside pays cash back on gas, and on groceries and restaurants, through offers you claim in the app before you buy and confirm by paying with a linked card or scanning the receipt. It is free, and it stacks with a station's own rewards. The habit to build is checking Upside before every fill-up, not after, because the offer has to be claimed first.

Route planning: Furkot

Furkot plans multi-stop routes with estimated arrival times, suggested gas stops and waypoints you can drag around. It is built for long trips rather than a food delivery loop, so it earns its place with drivers who do longer runs: airport rides across a metro, out-of-town deliveries, or a day that strings several pickups across a region. Furkot is not in the app stores; it runs in the browser and you add it to your home screen, where it behaves like a native app.

For the short hops of food delivery, your navigation app is enough. Where Furkot pays is the day with many stops and a real distance between them.

Taxes: Stride, and what the 1099 means

Every platform you drive for sends you and the IRS a 1099 at year end and withholds nothing. You pay self-employment tax of 15.3% on your net profit, which is Social Security and Medicare combined and is filed on Schedule SE, plus income tax on the same profit. If you expect to owe $1,000 or more, the IRS wants quarterly estimated payments.

Stride is a free mileage and expense tracker aimed squarely at that filing: it logs miles, sorts expenses into the categories Schedule C uses and produces a report for tax time. It comes from a company whose main business is health coverage for self-employed workers, so the app also points at insurance plans, but the tax tool is the reason drivers install it and it costs nothing.

Whichever tracker you pick, set it up on the first day you drive, not in March. The miles you did not log are the deduction you do not get.

A setup that works

One tracker, one gas app, one navigation app, and Furkot for the long days. Hurdlr or Solo runs all shift, on every platform, and gives you the log and the live net figure. GasBuddy picks the station and Upside gets a cut of the bill back. At the end of the month the tracker tells you your revenue, your miles and your estimated tax, and that is the figure to judge a platform on, not what its sign-up page said an hour is worth. Our guides to the best delivery apps to work for in the US and to Amazon Flex vs DoorDash put those published figures side by side so you know what to check yours against.

Frequently asked questions

Log the mile before you drive it

Install the tracker first, then decide which platform gets your hours, because the tracker is what tells you whether that decision was right. If you want to see who is hiring drivers in your city, Service Club ® lists the open roles and the form below takes a minute.