In this blog post, we’ll discover the ride-hailing apps’ market and competition strategies. How many apps do you make for one taxi-booking business? We’ll learn how to build an app like Uber and highlight its essential and advanced features. How much does it cost to build an app like Uber? We’ll also share the estimated time and cost to create an Uber clone app. Being aware of these factors and strategies helps when you make an app like Uber or just use a similar business model to build and promote a taxi app of your own.

Are you planning to start a ride-hailing business? Its long-time success would be impossible without an app like Uber. If you’re reading this blog post, you probably acknowledge that, but let us explain the reasons in more detail. 1. Mobile apps for ride-hailing are already replacing most traditional taxi services. According to Pew Research Center survey, the number of American adults who have ever used such an app has twice increased during 2015-2018. Today, the popularity of quick and convenient taxi-hailing is growing in many parts of the world, including Eastern and Western Europe, China, Middle East, and India. This is why companies are wondering how to make an app like Uber to stay on top of global tendencies and give their customers the expected experience. 2. The taxi booking app development is your chance to survive in the heated competitive environment. Statista predicts the considerable growth of the worldwide taxi booking market – $126,521 million by 2025. Taxi app development has become a must for both startups and existing businesses. Here are the crucial stages of making your project a reality:

However, having a mobile application doesn’t guarantee that you’ll win enough customers from your competitors. There are huge players like Lyft, Uber, Gett, and many more with millions of paying customers, and you should persuade potential users to choose your app. How do you win a competition? The primary ways include coming to the market with a valuable offer (after you build a taxi app), enhancing users’ loyalty, and gradually making a well-recognized, trustworthy brand. There is another success factor – a technology partner. It may appear non-obvious but becomes an absolute game-changer in the long run. By choosing a reliable taxi app development company, you’ll get:

If you study ride-hailing app development (like Uber, Lyft, or any other famous product), you might notice that most of such solutions work in a similar way. Typically, as you build an Uber clone, it will offer different functionality for a passenger and a driver.

What a Passenger can do:

What a Driver can do:

Exceed Team’s experience: Mutial rating is significant for an Uber clone app, as it enhances the reliability of your services for both passengers and drivers. Another distinctive feature of such an app is that the system estimates the price before a trip. It’s incredibly convenient for a passenger, and cashless payments make the overall experience safer.

Do you want to learn more about the Uber clone app development? Then you should study the examples of the most successful taxi apps from all over the world. It’s very likely that their founders once asked themselves a question, “How to create an app like Uber for my taxi business’ success?” and found a unique answer. Despite heavy competition, these companies are performing well. What is their secret?

Let’s discover more information about these (and some other) companies and their mobile products. It’ll help you to understand how to create an app like Uber and find a suitable niche for its promotion. Lyft Launched in 2012 in San Francisco, California, it initially connected drivers and passengers via Facebook. Today, the Lyft application with its presence in over 600 American and 9 Canadian cities, is the main competitor of Uber. That’s why you should consider Lyft's advantages if you wish to make an app like Uber. The most significant feature is a strict rating system that allows only the best drivers to stay with Lyft. The company cares about passengers’ safety and has the $1 million liability insurance. Besides, the app beats its main competitor with more affordable prices. Cabify It’s a Spanish product that you should consider if you’re interested in taxi app development. Each user enters their destination and can choose the type of car (Lite, Easy, or Executive), music preferences, and other conditions. The main focus of Cabify is convenience and comfort. Gett Study this example of a taxi booking application if you’re planning to create an app like Uber. Founded in 2010, Gett now operates in over 1,500 cities in the US, Canada, and Europe. This taxi app’s two main competitive advantages is scheduling a ride two weeks in advance and resolving issues with passenger support. The main focus of Gett is corporate transportation. Careem Based in Dubai, the company works in over 100 cities across a dozen countries in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia. The product is popular among citizens and tourists. This is an excellent example of how to create an app like Uber with a range of innovative features helping in hassle-free journeys to work, airport, meeting points and other places. Bolt Previously working under the name of Taxify, this Estonia-based app is highly popular for taxi booking. These days, it’s available in more than 100 cities across 30 countries all over the globe. The main focus of Bolt is affordable rides when a customer receives a price estimate before a trip and also chooses a pick-up location without knowing the precise address. Grab This company’s experience is helpful for a business interested in taxi app development like Uber, Gett, Lyft, etc. Grab offers cost-efficient services for customers from Southeastern Asia (Thailand, Singapore, the Philippines, Indonesia, and some others) and remains very popular with a wide selection of options and services (Taxi, Hitch, Family, Bike, and Share). DiDi This China-based company delivered a product that you can call a perfect example of an Uber clone app. Available in over 400 cities and popular with over 550 million users, DiDi offers lots of taxi-hailing services, including Designated Driving, Express, Bike Sharing and many more. Curb It’s the world’s first ride-hailing app, founded in 2008 and previously named Taxi Magic. US-based, it’s working across 65 cities nationwide, including megalopolises like New York City and Los Angeles. Passengers can choose from a scheduled or instant ride or simply hail the Curb taxi on the street. Services also include the choice of music, air conditioning, wheelchair, baby seat, and other things one may need. The company focuses on comfort and lower prices to compete with Uber. Uber Launched in 2009 in San Francisco, it’s one of the world-famous taxi booking apps. Today, it's available in over 600 cities and still expanding all over the globe, while many startup owners ask themselves how to make an app like Uber and how much it costs to build an app like Uber. The service offers various categories (UberBlack, UberX, UberGo, etc.) to suit each customer’s needs and budget. The company is constantly experimenting with formats, adding food delivery, parcel delivery, etc. Was Uber a pioneer in taxi booking app development? Many people believe so, though it’s not true. Curb was launched a year ahead (as Taxi Magic), and the two apps have always been competing in the American market. Uber eventually spread wider around the world, and these days its primary competitor is Lyft.

Exceed Team’s experience: Have you heard the word “Uberization”? It was included in the dictionaries and originally came from the name of this taxi app development company. Uberization means changing the whole market through mobile technologies to provide a variety of on-demand services, from taxi booking to delivery of different kinds of goods. Here at Exceed Team we offer cutting-edge app development and can make an app like Uber for any business, from a restaurant to car repair.

Are you interested in Uber clone app development? You already know that it’s not enough to build an app for a taxi-booking experience and that your business should offer something unique and valuable to stand out among competitors and solve problems that no other Uber-like app could before. You may achieve that by finding your niche. At first glance, it seems like there are not many options apart from the standard taxi services. But that’s wrong – we’ll share with you some insight on how to build an app like Uber but make it more special. Environmentally-friendly taxi services, like Green Cabs from New Zealand. You can build an Uber clone, but for the premium electric car taxi, as today more and more people don’t want to feel guilty about their input in air pollution and prefer ecologically safe options. Apart from using electric vehicles, you can add a tree-planting donation to a ride’s cost. Children’s taxi services, like Kango or TaxiMom. You can apply to a taxi-booking app development company to create a helpful app for parents. Maximized safety and real-life tracking options are must-haves for such an app. Women’s taxi services, like Safr. You can create an app like Uber, but with increased safety measures (e.g., Passenger-Driver identification via a taxi app) and the majority of female drivers who went through special training for emergencies. Motorbike-hailing services, like GrabBike from Southeast Asia, Rapido from India, or LimeBike from London. Motorbike taxis are also popular in China, US, and Brazil. If your business is oriented at these countries’ markets, you can opt for such type of app development – like Uber, but with motorbikes. The top features are fast and safe travel through the city, and an option to send a package with a bike driver. Shuttle services, like BRIDJ, that operates as on-demand public transport for office workers in Boston, Massachusetts. Being a typical example of Uber clone app development, this solution brings its customers some valuable offers, e.g., significantly lower price, onboard Wi-Fi, and faster traveling during rush hours.

An app like Uber is actually two apps – for a passenger and a driver. There is also a dispatch panel to administrate rides, payments and user activity; it’s based on the web. Let’s look at a number of essential features you should include in your MVP if you’re looking for ways to make an app like Uber for a taxi-hailing business.

Exceed Team’s experience: How do you show users that your app is worth staying with? Provide them with convenience and time-saving! Excellent UX and UI design is significantly important in taxi app development, so make sure to choose a professional with over three years of experience.

Driver’s functionality in the Uber clone app

How to build an app like Uber and manage all activity on it? This is why you need a web-based admin (dispatch) panel. Here is its typical functionality:

What goals do you achieve? They include managing your drivers’ payrolls, analyzing user data, and reviewing all business processes. You should remember the admin panel’s functionality when discussing details with specialists from a taxi-booking app development company.

Once you created a big, long-lasting business, you’ll be extending it and looking for more exciting opportunities in taxi app development. It means adding some advanced features to your app. Advanced Uber clone app development for passengers:

Advanced Uber clone app development for drivers:

Exceed Team’s experience: We advise you to ask and study feedback from your audience, as it helps understand their pain points and expectations. And of course, watch your competitors’ updates and the taxi industry trends to choose the right features for advanced app development, like Uber and other big players do.

Back in 2009, the investment was several million dollars from nine sources, and within a decade, Uber Technologies had raised over $22 billion in funds as a taxi booking app development company. According to NextWeb’s research, it takes around $1.5 million to build a taxi app of that scale, with passenger's and driver’s solutions. Do you have to raise so much funding to cover the Uber-like app development cost? Businesses are usually interested in making MVPs with basic functionality that can later be advanced and extended. How do you achieve that? How much does it cost to build an app like Uber with the most vital functionality for the market? Let’s look at some estimations of Uber-like app development cost and time. These approximate numbers work well for both iOS and Android platforms.

So, how much does it cost to build an app like Uber? Depending on the project’s scale and sophistication, the end-product might cost you between $70,000 and $150,000.

Exceed Team’s experience: What are the ways to bring down the price? We recommend you consider the hourly rates of developers from different regions of the world, as it’s one of the main price-influencing factors when building a taxi app. In Eastern Europe, for instance, there are plenty of software development companies that offer top-notch quality and affordable prices ($30-40 per hour, compared to $100-250 in North America) .

How did Uber expand to dozens of countries? One of the ways is acquisition – for instance, at the beginning of 2019, the company made a $3.1 billion agreement with Careem. Do monetization models affect competition? Greatly.

For example, Curb became Uber’s great competitor due to the absence of dynamic pricing – which means the ride fare with Curb remains the same even at the peak demand time. This transparency and lack of controversy allowed the company to win a lot of loyal clients, even though passengers pay in-app commission for each ride.

What are the proven ways to make and monetize an app like Uber? You can try:

Exceed Team’s experience: When you combine several monetization strategies, it allows you to convert your startup into a growing, money-making business. This kind of a business model is being implemented by Lyft, DiDi, Grab, and other apps like Uber.

What will be the future of taxi-hailing services? At the moment, customers expect convenient solutions in transportation, so an app like Uber becomes a must for your business. In the coming years, many digital industries may be highly influenced by the blockchain technology that makes data transactions quicker, simpler, and safer. Another possible change is self-driving cars that lower the operating cost. For example, General Motors started producing such vehicles through their long-term partnership with Lyft. Driverless cars are also in Tesla Inc.’s development pipeline, shaping the face of both the car-building industry and the taxi-booking app development. Google's company Waymo launched its own self-driving taxi services, in some cities of Arizona in 2018 and in San Francisco in early 2021.

To summarize, professional app development (like Uber or Lyft) requires a serious investment of time and money. One of the significant steps will be choosing a reliable and supportive team of developers. Working with Exceed Team, you’ll get in-depth business analysis, advanced UX/UI design, and cutting-edge app development for your taxi-hailing project. Contact us, and let’s turn your concept into a reality.