Is Being An Uber Eats Driver Worth It In 2026
Some of you all may actually use Uber Eats pretty frequently as a customer, and the same applies to me. Have you ever considered being an actual Uber Eats driver, delivering people's food and making money in the process? Well, I'm here to give you five reasons why you should consider it, because I personally have done it, and I vastly enjoy it. If any of these reasons resonate with you, maybe it's something to consider. It's actually not that big a stretch to make between $11 and $20 an hour as a Uber Eats driver if you know what you're doing. That's why I'm pretty excited to share with you these reasons. So let's go ahead and hop into it.
The question is likely popped up in your head. How did you get involved with Uber Eats in the first place? I was driving for rideshare as a Uber driver. For those of y'all that want more details on that, you can read my five reasons why I became a Uber driver article. A few months after getting involved with Uber, in the app they kept harassing me. "Do you want to do Uber Eats? Do you want to do Uber Eats? Do you want to deliver Uber Eats?" I was kind of against it at first because they didn't have tipping on the platform at the time. People mainly give you cash tips, but they implemented tipping on a platform. That's when I said, "You know what? I'll actually give Uber Eats a try. It turns out, I liked it a lot. So much that they actually started rivaling how much I liked Uber Eats versus the normal Uber, which is kind of crazy.
Ever since then, Uber Eats has proved to be valuable in some ways. Even more so than being a Uber driver. That kind of ties into one of the reasons, so let's go ahead and just get into it.
It’s Mindless
The first reason is, it's mindless. When I say that, I mean it doesn't take a lot of mental energy, or hardly any. If we're being honest, probably after a week or two in, you'll get used to the app. From there, there's nothing more on the tech side you need to learn, and you can just kind of do this on autopilot where your mind is somewhere else. You will bump into some scenarios where something doesn't go as planned, so you might have to improvise like the customer forgot to put the gate codes. Then you got to call and figure out what the gate code is so you can complete the delivery. That kind of takes you out of the mindless autopilot I was telling you about.
Even things like that can be mitigated. If I see someone's in an apartment complex when I start out driving towards them, before I start driving towards them, I have a saved message in my phone that I send them. That message is "Hey, can you send me the gate code, and can you tell me the name of your apartments?" They send the info to me and the whole thing is more efficient. So even that stuff can be mitigated to make it mindless. With it being so mindless, you're free to think about other things, or just listen to your music in the car.
That's one advantage Uber Eats has over Uber X or rideshare in general. No one's in the car with Uber Eats. Listen to what you want and that includes audio books. A lot of books I have in my libary, I've never actually touched the book before, but I've listened to the audio book several times. I just got the physical book as a trophy. These books were largely listened to a while doing Uber Eats. And that actually ties into my second reason.
Want to listen to Elijah’s audiobook on personal finance? Click the picture below!
2. Silence Is Golden
I kind of jumped the gun, but second reason is, it's silent. No one else is in the car, listen to whatever you want. Listen to YouTube videos like the one at the top of this article about how to make more money or listen to ways to improve your health. You can listen to whatever rocks your boat. In my case, I can listen to the audio book while I'm just laying in my bed, or maybe while I'm working on my computer, but I don't like to listen to audio books when I'm doing work on a computer because I can't really give my full attention. I like to listen to music or something in the background. Uber Eats is perfect because there's nothing involved mentally. So reason one and two are kind of piggybacking off of each other, because you just listen to all these audio books and you can just really focus on soaking that game up. At the same time you can be delivering food and making money in a process. Since it's so mindless, it's not distracting you from the content of the audio book, it's beautiful.
For those of you that want to talk on the phone while you're delivering, I do that all the time too. Me and my friend Travis will be talking about all kinds of stuff while we're delivering food, because he was delivering for Uber Eats too.
3. $15+ An Hour Earnings
The third reason why I became an Uber Eats driver is you can make more than $15 an hour if you know what you're doing. What I mean by that is if you just do the stereotypical thing that everyone does, you might not make $15 an hour, but if you know how the Uber Eats algorithm works, you know exactly what restaurants to go to, which ones don't have long wait times, so you can get more deliveries in an hour. These are some tips of many, but if you know things like that, then it's not a stretch to make over $15 an hour, because you have the experience to do so, and also doing it is not that hard.
4. You’ll Learn Your City
The fourth reason why I became a Uber Eats driver, why you might want to consider it, is because you learn a lot about your city. See, when you're being a Uber driver this is true too, but you might be more focused on the person in the back, and not as much on your city. Since there's nothing else distracting you, you're going to notice things about your city. If you're like me, you'll still be listening to that audio book, but you can't help but notice things about your city that you didn't before. And if you are new to your city, this is a great way to learn a city.
You do a few deliveries for a little bit and you’ll know that city a lot better than when you first started. Sometimes that's just a better feeling. Knowing what streets to take and what's the fastest way to get to point A to point B. Just going to various parts of your city that you didn't even know existed because you didn’t have reason to go there, but delivery took you there. It's like, "Whoa, oh man, I just didn't know this."
For those of you that are house seeking, you might bump into a few houses for sale. You can write down the owner's information when you look at a sign and you call them up. You might actually find the perfect home for you. You get exposed to so much stuff. It's lost under your radar when you're just casually driving, but when you're delivering, you tend to pay attention more because you're trying to find a address. So you'll learn a lot more about your city.
5. You’ll Learn About A Lot Of New Restaurants
Speaking of learning about the city, number five is you'll learn a lot about restaurants. If you're like me, when I drop food off, I would ask the customer, "Hey, is that restaurant good?" And they would say, "Hey, yeah, it's pretty solid." Or "It's okay." Obviously, it's got to be decent, otherwise they wouldn't be ordering it. If they're a chatty person, they may actually share some details and you could also talk to the restaurants themselves. Obviously they're going to have a bias opinion, but you could ask them if they have certain things on the menu, or you can take a look at their menu while you're waiting for customer’s order. I've been a vegan for over 10 years, and I'll look at these menus of these restaurants. I'm looking for meat substitutes, like tofu, or seitan, Beyond meat or veggie burgers. I’ve learned a lot about various restaurants across my metroplex because you got to go there and pick the food up.
As someone who's a leader and founder of a vegan meet-up group called The Veggie Outers, where we go to restaurants and actually review them based on the vegan options they have, that was very helpful.
A picture of The Veggie Outers
A lot of the restaurants that The Veggie Outers went to, they were based on me going there as an Uber Eats driver first, scaling their menu, and then I went there to actually try them out. I was like, "Hmm, this is a great place to bring The Veggie Outers." And that resulted in a lot of meet-ups that might not have happened otherwise. I got exposed to the restaurant through Uber Eats. So you'll learn a lot more about restaurants.
So to recap, we have number one, it's mindless. Number two, it's silent. Number three, you can make more than $15 per hour if you know what you're doing. Number four, you're going to learn more about your city. And number five, you're going to learn more about your restaurants in your city too.
I honestly can't recommend it enough. If anything, because of reasons one and two, because it's just an excuse to consume so many audio books. Whatever area of life that you're struggling in, finances, health and wellness, relationships, just grab some audio books on that, and get paid to lace yourself up with game in that area. If you are looking to get started, you’ll want to check out the podcast I did sharing 10 tips that help you make the most money in the least amount of time. That video is shared above reason 4. That’s it for now. I’ll catch you in the next article!