inDrive. Rides with fair fares

Review by eFreeware

Most ride-hailing apps ask you to accept a number you had no part in setting. You tap, a price appears, and the only decision left is whether to pay it or wait for the surge to pass. inDrive was built around a different idea: the rider proposes a fare, and drivers decide whether that number is worth their time.

The app comes from SUOL INNOVATIONS LTD and is free to download, with no ads and no in-app purchases. It has been around a while, arriving on Android in May 2015, and it now reports more than 100 million installs and a 4.8 average across a very large number of ratings. Those figures suggest a lot of people have found the negotiation model workable in practice.

What makes it interesting to me is that the bargaining is not a gimmick bolted onto a normal booking flow. It shapes how requests, driver selection and pricing work throughout the app, and it also underpins the extra services the developer has added over time. Whether that suits you depends on how you feel about a little back-and-forth standing between you and a confirmed ride.

How the fare negotiation actually works

The flow the developer describes is straightforward. You enter your pickup and destination, name the fare you are willing to pay, and send the request out. Drivers who are interested respond with their own offers, and you then choose among them based on the price they propose, the car model, how soon they can arrive, their rating and how many trips they have completed.

That last part is the real difference from a conventional taxi app. Instead of being assigned whichever driver the system picks, you keep the choice, and the developer notes that pricing is not calculated from time and mileage the way a metered service would do it. City rides are also described as having no surge pricing, so a busy evening does not automatically inflate the number on screen.

Drivers get a comparable deal. Before accepting a request they can see the drop-off location and the fare on offer, and if the rider's number looks too low they can propose their own or simply pass. The developer says skipping a ride carries no penalty, and that service rates are low or nonexistent, which is the pitch for why driving here can pay better than working through an ordinary cab app.

I would expect the quality of the experience to depend heavily on how many drivers are active around you at that moment. Negotiation only works when there is someone on the other side willing to engage with your offer, and the app's own reach is the main thing that makes that likely.

Beyond the everyday ride

The developer has stretched the same bargaining model across several other services. Alongside standard city trips, the app offers an intercity option for traveling between cities.

Courier is a door-to-door delivery service for sending and receiving packages weighing to 20 kilos, and Freight lets you book a truck for deliveries or for moving. There is also a tasker side, where you can hire a local professional for whatever job you need done, and you can sign up yourself as a courier or tasker rather than only as a driver.

For me the appeal of this spread is that one app covers errands that would otherwise mean separate bookings with separate companies. Someone moving apartments, for instance, might use Freight for the bulky items and a courier for a box of smaller things, without leaving the app. The trade-off is that each of these services depends on supply in your area, so the breadth is more theoretical in some places than others.

The platform covers more than 888 cities across 48 countries, a scale that makes a multi-service approach plausible rather than aspirational.

Safety details and the comments field

Before you confirm a ride, the app identifies the driver by name, shows the car model, displays the plate, and lists how many trips that driver has finished. The developer points out that this level of detail is uncommon in a traditional taxi app, and it is the sort of information that lets you sanity-check who is turning up before they arrive.

A Share Your Ride button lets you send trip details to family or friends while you travel. Safety features are described as an area the app keeps adding to, though not all of them are listed.

There is also a comments field where you can flag anything the driver should know in advance, such as traveling with a pet or having luggage. The driver sees that note before deciding whether to accept, which is a small feature that avoids a lot of awkwardness at the curb.

None of this is unusual on its own, but it fits the app's overall shape: more information in both directions before anyone commits, rather than a transaction that is already underway by the time either side knows the details.

What it asks of riders and drivers

The app is free, carries no ads and offers no in-app purchases. There is no paid tier to consider, no subscription to weigh against the free version, and nothing to unlock by spending. That is a genuinely simple proposition compared with much of what sits in the Maps & Navigation category.

For riders, the requirement is mainly a willingness to name a price. If you would rather not think about what a trip should cost, the negotiation step is friction rather than freedom. If you have a rough sense of the going rate in your area, it becomes a tool.

For drivers, the app is a way to earn extra money if you have a car, with the flexibility to choose which requests to take and to work around your own schedule. The counterweight is that income depends on how many riders are requesting trips where you drive, and on whether the fares they propose are ones you consider acceptable.

The courier and tasker roles carry their own practical requirements, since delivering a parcel or completing a job is a different commitment from driving someone across town. All of these are open to sign-up, but each depends on local demand.

Getting the most from a negotiation-based app

The single most useful habit here is knowing what a trip is normally worth. A fare that is too low will simply go unanswered, and one that is generous defeats the purpose of using an app built around agreeing on a price. Somewhere near the typical local rate, adjusted for the time of day, is the sensible starting point.

It also helps to fill in the comments field when your trip has anything unusual about it. A note about luggage or a pet takes seconds and saves a cancelation later. The same applies to the details you review before confirming: the driver's rating and completed trip count are there to be looked at, not skipped past.

For drivers, the flexibility is only useful if you use it. Seeing the drop-off and fare before accepting means you can decline the trips that do not work for your route or your fuel costs, with no penalty for doing so. Treating that as a normal part of the process rather than a last resort is how the model is meant to function.

The app's most recent update is a maintenance release, with bug fixes and small improvements rather than new features, and the developer invites reports from anyone who runs into a problem. That is a modest signal, but it does suggest the app is being tended to.

A fair-fare app for people who like to bargain

inDrive is a well-established option for anyone who finds fixed, algorithm-set pricing frustrating. The core idea, that a rider and a driver can settle on a number themselves, is carried through the whole product, and the extra services for intercity travel, parcels, freight and local tasks give it more range than a straightforward ride app. The scale, along with a 4.8 average from a very large pool of ratings, suggests the model has held up for a lot of users.

It is not the simplest option available. Naming a fare and choosing among offers asks more of you than tapping a button and waiting, and the experience depends on how many drivers are active nearby when you send your request. The breadth of services varies with local supply as well.

If you are comfortable proposing a price and comparing a short list of offers, this is a strong fit, and the absence of ads and purchases keeps the whole thing uncluttered. If you would rather the app just tell you what the trip costs, the negotiation at the center of it will feel like work.

What's new

In this update, we’ve fixed some bugs and made small improvements to create a better experience for you. If you run into a bug, please let us know. We are happy to get your feedback and work on it in our future releases.