A Consumer Reports investigation found Uber and Lyft can show radically different fares for the same trip requested at the same time—using AI to charge different customers different prices in tests across the U.S.
By the time the request is sent, the ride is supposed to be the ride. Same pickup. Same destination. Same minute.
But in a new Consumer Reports investigation, the price didn’t behave like a fixed fact. It flickered between customers—sometimes only slightly, sometimes with differences so large that a single route generated dozens of distinct offers.
Consumer Reports. publishing Tuesday. said its testing found that Uber and Lyft “use AI to routinely charge different customers significantly different prices.” In some trip requests. the apps produced only a few different fare options. In others, the spread was much wider. Consumer Reports said that in some cases, the difference between the highest and lowest price groups was 50%.
One route in Kansas City, Missouri produced 29 different prices for 55 potential customers for the same ride at the same time, the publication said.
To reach those results, Consumer Reports virtually requested rides for 30 routes around the U.S. The publication also recruited volunteers to request rides at the same time in-person in Portland, Oregon.
The pattern showed up again in Phoenix. Consumer Reports said that after accounting for discounts, a ride on Uber ranged from $41.21 to $56.96—about a 38% difference. In that test, the publication observed prices among 18 volunteers, each of whom requested the same ride at the same minute.
Consumer Reports said it controlled for time and place by requesting rides on Uber and Lyft in the same location and at the same time, then still found prices varied widely. The report said those results call into question “whether the price differences observed are based only on market forces.”
It wasn’t just the spread that drew scrutiny. Consumer Reports also found that, about half of the time, Uber and Lyft offered customers fares that looked like discounts—lower prices replacing higher, struck-through ones, accompanied by messages like “Fares lower than usual.”
Of those discounts, Consumer Reports found that about 11% appeared to be based on inflated original prices. Uber and Lyft, however, said the struck-out amounts weren’t discounts but reflected past prices for the rides. An Uber spokesperson called them “historical comparison messaging.”
Derek Kravitz, an investigative reporter at Consumer Reports who wrote the report, said: “A reasonable consumer would conclude that those are discounts, regardless of the semantic distinction that Uber and Lyft claim.”
Uber and Lyft did not sit quietly with the findings. They challenged the tests, saying they might have inflated demand. Uber also pointed to the way prices change constantly. “Prices also change every second,” an Uber spokesperson told Consumer Reports, making it “impossible” to compare fares.
In the spokesperson’s explanation, an open dynamic marketplace defines a trip by more than route details. “In an open. dynamic marketplace like ours. with nearly 1.7 million mobility and delivery trips per hour. a trip is defined just as much by when it is requested and what’s happening nearby as where it is going. ” the spokesperson said.
Uber and Lyft said they use a variety of factors to price rides, and Lyft’s privacy policy provided examples. Consumer Reports reported that Lyft might infer riders’ gender based on their name or assume that they’re frequent travelers if they often request rides to or from an airport. Consumer Reports also reported Lyft said it doesn’t “group” customers together. Uber, in turn, said it doesn’t consider “protected characteristics,” such as race or disability.
Consumer Reports did not find an answer to what specifically accounted for the fare differences it documented. Uber and Lyft, for their part, said that their pricing relies on multiple factors and that the test conditions weren’t neutral.
The investigation lands in a moment when dynamic pricing is already familiar across everyday purchases—from Big Macs for delivery to clothing at Old Navy. Uber and Lyft have said they change prices for goods and services based on supply and demand. like requesting a ride to the airport on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.
The question now is sharper: if a price can diverge for customers requesting the same route at the same exact minute—within controlled tests—what else is being priced besides demand?
Uber and Lyft did not respond to an additional request for comment from Business Insider.
Uber Lyft dynamic pricing Consumer Reports ride-hailing fare differences AI pricing Kansas City Portland Phoenix mobility trips