How Much Does It Really Cost Per Mile to Drive for Delivery Apps?
Most drivers can tell you what they spent on gas last week. Almost none can tell you what a mile costs them — which is a problem, because the mile is the unit every offer is priced in.
Without that number, you can’t tell a good offer from a bad one, you can’t rank platforms honestly, and you can’t say whether last week was actually profitable. With it, an offer becomes a two-second decision.
Here is the full stack, then how to build yours.
The Five Costs in a Mile
Worked for a paid-off economy car, 24 mpg, driven 24,000 miles a year. My assumptions are stated for every line so you can swap in your own.
1. Fuel — $0.140/mile
$3.35 per gallon ÷ 24 mpg = 13.96 cents.
Use your real mpg, not the window sticker. Delivery driving is stop-start, short-trip, often with the engine idling in a parking lot — real-world economy commonly runs 10-20% below the rated figure. Fill up, reset the trip meter, fill up again, divide.
2. Maintenance, Tires and Repairs — $0.069/mile
The costs you pay in lumps and mentally file as bad luck:
| Item | Assumption | Per mile |
|---|---|---|
| Oil changes | $75 every 5,000 miles | $0.015 |
| Tires | $700 per set, 45,000-mile life | $0.016 |
| Brakes | $500, every 35,000 miles | $0.014 |
| Other repairs | $600/year over 24,000 miles | $0.025 |
| $0.069 |
Delivery driving is unusually hard on brakes and tires. Constant stopping, low speeds, tight turns, a loaded car in city traffic — the mileage intervals above are already shortened for that, and if you’re in a hilly market you should shorten them further.
3. Depreciation — $0.120/mile
The one nobody counts, and the second biggest.
A $16,000 used car driven 25,000 miles a year for four years arrives at 100,000 additional miles worth maybe $4,000. That’s $12,000 of value consumed over 100,000 miles: 12 cents a mile.
You never write a cheque for this. You pay it in one lump when you sell the car for less than you expected, or when a 140,000-mile car starts needing a $1,400 repair every eight months. Either way the miles caused it.
4. The Insurance Increase — $0.019/mile
Personal auto policies commonly exclude commercial delivery use. The rideshare or delivery endorsement that covers you costs money — assume $40 a month here, $480 a year, over 24,000 miles = 2 cents a mile.
Only count the increase, not your whole premium: you’d insure the car anyway. And confirm the actual cost with your own insurer, since it varies widely by state and carrier.
5. Phone and Data, Business Share — $0.012/mile
$25 a month for the business portion of the plan, plus mounts and chargers, over 24,000 miles.
The Total
| Cost | Per mile | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Fuel | $0.140 | 39% |
| Maintenance, tires, repairs | $0.069 | 19% |
| Depreciation | $0.120 | 33% |
| Insurance increase | $0.019 | 5% |
| Phone and data | $0.012 | 3% |
| Total | $0.360 |
Fuel is 39% of a mile. A driver budgeting on gas alone underestimates the real cost by about 60%.
What It Changes
Offer decisions. A $7.50 order with a 14-mile round trip costs $5.04 to run. You net $2.46. If it takes 25 minutes, that’s $5.90 an hour before tax. Knowing your per-mile number turns that from a gut call into arithmetic you can do while the offer is on screen.
Platform choice. Two platforms paying identical gross hourly rates are not equal if one sends you 16 miles an hour and the other sends you 7. At $0.36/mile that’s a $3.24/hour difference in what you keep. The full platform comparison is here.
Whether the week worked. 420 miles in a week is $151.20 of real cost. Against $695.20 of payout, the car ate 22% of your gross before a dollar of tax.
Building Your Own Number
Borrowed numbers are directional at best. Four inputs move this a lot: fuel price, mpg, what you paid for the car, and how many miles a year you drive. A new $38,000 SUV at 18 mpg can easily run 55-60 cents a mile — worth knowing before you decide the SUV was a good work vehicle.
If you have 12 months of records: total every vehicle cost for the period — fuel, oil, tires, brakes, repairs, insurance, registration, car washes — add your depreciation estimate, divide by the miles driven in that period. That’s your number, and it’s the most accurate one you’ll get.
If you’re starting today: calculate fuel from your pump receipts and measured mpg, then add roughly 60% of that figure as a placeholder for everything else. On 14 cents of fuel that gives you about 22 cents of other costs and a 36-cent starting estimate. Log every receipt from here and recalculate at 90 days with real data.
Recalculate quarterly. Fuel prices move, your car ages, tires wear out on a schedule you can now predict. A cost per mile you worked out two years ago is a guess.
One Thing This Number Is Not
Your cost per mile is not your tax deduction. They’re separate calculations that happen to share a unit.
The IRS lets you deduct at the standard mileage rate — 76 cents per mile for July through December 2026, up from 72.5 cents for the first half of the year. Your real cost in this example is 36 cents. The 40-cent gap is not an error; it’s the structural advantage of gig driving, and it’s why the mileage log is the single most valuable habit in this line of work.
Use the 36 cents to decide which offers to take. Use the 76 cents to calculate what you owe. And keep the odometer readings that justify both.
For how the per-mile figure feeds into net hourly rate and the quarterly tax set-aside, see the complete guide to tracking gig driver income.
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Gig Economy & Delivery Driver Income Tracker — 10 tabs. The 500-row vehicle expense log categorises fuel, maintenance, car washes, insurance, phone, hot bags and equipment with a receipt flag and vendor field, so the year-end total that feeds your cost per mile is already assembled. Pair it with the 500-row mileage tracker (start/end odometer, per-row IRS rate, automatic deduction) and the dashboard returns net profit and effective $/hour after the car. Also includes a Mileage vs Actual deduction comparison that names the better method, a per-platform breakdown across seven apps, a weekly report, a quarterly estimated tax calculator, 12-month trends and a goal tracker. Works in Excel and Google Sheets, no macros. Instant digital download — $14.99.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does it cost per mile to drive for DoorDash?
For a paid-off economy car at 24 mpg with fuel at $3.35 a gallon, the worked example here comes to about 36 cents per mile — 14 cents fuel, 6.9 cents maintenance and tires, 12 cents depreciation, 1.9 cents extra insurance and 1.2 cents phone. A newer or thirstier vehicle can run 50 to 60 cents. Calculate your own rather than borrowing a number, because the four inputs that drive it are all personal to you.
Is fuel the main cost of delivery driving?
No. In this example fuel is 14 cents of a 36-cent mile — about 39%. Depreciation is the second largest at 12 cents, and it is invisible because you never write a cheque for it; you pay it years later in a lower resale price and a bigger repair bill. Drivers who budget only for fuel are underestimating their true cost by roughly 60%.
Should I use the IRS mileage rate as my cost per mile?
No — they answer different questions. The IRS standard mileage rate is a tax deduction figure (76 cents per mile for July through December 2026), while your cost per mile is what a mile actually costs you. For most gig drivers the deduction is considerably higher than the real cost, which is a genuine advantage. Use your real number to decide which offers to accept and the IRS rate to calculate your deduction.
What's the fastest way to work out my own cost per mile?
Total every vehicle cost over the last 12 months — fuel, oil, tires, brakes, repairs, insurance, registration — add an estimate for depreciation, then divide by the miles you drove in that period. If you don't have a year of records, start with fuel from your pump receipts and your car's actual mpg, then add roughly 60% of that figure to approximate everything else, and replace the estimate as real data accumulates.