Don't rely on app dashboards alone. Learn the 5 steps to calculate your real net daily income, including mileage, wait times, and expenses.
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The gig economy has opened up flexible ways to earn money from driving, delivering, cleaning, tutoring, and dozens of other services. Government data shows just how big this world has become.
The U.S. Census Bureau finds that nonemployer businesses that likely involve gig activity, such as couriers, ride services, janitorial services, artists, and child care, numbered in the millions and generated more than 150 billion dollars in receipts from individual proprietors in 2023.
At the same time, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports that about 7.4 percent of workers in July 2023 were independent contractors on their main job, and millions more held a second job where they worked as independent contractors. For many of these workers, juggling several apps at once is normal.
The challenge is understanding what they truly make per day after expenses, not just what the apps show as yesterday’s payout.
This guide walks through a practical, data-informed way for gig workers to estimate their real daily earnings across multiple apps, using ideas that line up with how official statistics describe work, income, and costs.
1. Understand What “True Daily Earnings” Really Means
When economists and statistical agencies talk about earnings, they usually distinguish between:
Gross earnings: what you receive before subtracting any costs.
Net earnings or income: what is left after subtracting business expenses.
Effective hourly pay: net earnings divided by total hours worked, including waiting time.
The BLS supplement on contingent and alternative employment arrangements highlights how independent contractors differ from traditional employees not just in job security but also in earnings, benefits, and risk exposure. In July 2023, full-time independent contractors had lower median weekly earnings than workers in traditional arrangements, and they were less likely to have employer-provided health insurance.
For a gig worker who uses multiple apps, “true daily earnings” should capture three things:
All income from all apps, including tips and bonuses.
All main variable costs that scale with work, especially vehicle costs.
The value of your time, including waiting between orders and switching apps.
2. Why One App’s Dashboard Is Not Enough
Platform dashboards are optimized to keep you engaged, not necessarily to show your actual net pay per hour across all apps.
Common blind spots include:
They show gross earnings without netting out fuel, maintenance, or extra phone and data costs.
They usually ignore time spent waiting in parking lots with the app on.
If you drive for two apps at once, each one counts the trip as “their” order, but neither accounts for the fact that you were already out on the road anyway.
Official data on digital platform workers in Europe shows why this matters. Eurostat’s pilot survey on digital platform employment found that about three quarters of platform workers said they fully controlled their own working hours, and more than half set their own prices or had them set by a party other than the platform.
High flexibility means that two workers using the same app can have very different earnings, depending on how they schedule and combine tasks.
3. Step 1: Track Your Income Across All Apps
For at least two to four weeks, record income for every day you work:
App A: base pay, tips, promotions, and bonuses.
App B: same categories.
Any cash tips or off-platform payments.
A simple spreadsheet or notebook works. For each day, create a row with:
Date
Apps used
Number of completed jobs per app
Gross earnings per app
Total gross earnings for the day
This mirrors how government data separates different kinds of arrangements, but then aggregates them at the worker level.
The BLS, for example, counts multiple jobholders and notes that many have independent contracting as their second job, which is exactly what happens when a worker stacks a side app on top of a primary job.
4. Step 2: Track Your Time the Way a Labor Statistician Would
Surveys like the European Labour Force Survey or the U.S. Current Population Survey classify someone as employed if they worked at least one hour for pay or profit over a given period.
For gig workers, the more important question is how many hours per day are actually being devoted to gig work.
For each day you work gigs, record:
Start time when you first go “online” on any app.
End time when you finally go offline.
Any long unpaid breaks, like going home for lunch for an hour.
Total working time for the day is:
End time − Start time − Long unpaid breaks.
You can optionally break this into:
Active time, when you are driving to pick up or deliver, or doing the task.
Waiting time, when you are parked or online but have no active job.
From the point of view of your income, both kinds of time matter. Government audits and reports on nonstandard work note that these arrangements often involve unpredictable schedules and gaps in paid activity, which can reduce effective hourly earnings even when headline pay per job looks high.
If you are logged into multiple apps at once, treat that period as a single block of working time. Do not count the same hour twice just because two apps were open.
5. Step 3: Estimate Your Daily Costs, Starting With Mileage
For drivers, vehicle expenses are usually the largest single cost. The U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) publishes an optional standard mileage rate that bundles fuel, maintenance, depreciation, and some other costs into a single amount per mile. This is widely used as a proxy for the true economic cost of driving.
Beginning 1 January 2025, the IRS standard mileage rate for business is 70 cents per mile.
Even if you are outside the United States, using a per-mile or per-kilometer rate based on your own local costs is a simple, repeatable way to estimate daily vehicle expenses.
Daily vehicle cost can be approximated as:
Business miles driven × your chosen per-mile rate
You can then add other daily costs that scale with your work, such as:
Parking and tolls
Extra phone data or hotspot costs
Supplies, such as insulated bags or cleaning materials
Fixed costs such as annual insurance or vehicle registration can be handled by estimating a monthly amount and dividing by the approximate number of days you work per month.
6. Step 4: Calculate Your Net Daily Earnings and Effective Hourly Rate
Once you track income, time, and costs, calculating true daily earnings is straightforward:
Total gross income from all apps that day.
Subtract your estimated vehicle and gig-related expenses for that day.
The result is your net daily earnings before tax.
Divide net daily earnings by total hours worked to get your effective net hourly rate.
Example:
You work 9 total hours (including waiting).
You earn 180 dollars in gross pay across three apps.
You drive 90 miles for deliveries and rides.
Using 0.70 dollars per mile gives 63 dollars in vehicle costs.
You spend another 7 dollars on parking and supplies.
Your net daily earnings would be:
180 − 63 − 7 = 110 dollars
Your effective net hourly rate would be:
110 ÷ 9 ≈ 12.22 dollars per hour
That number may be very different from what any one app shows you as your “earnings per active hour” because it includes waiting time and all your gigs, not just one platform.
7. Step 5: Smooth Out Good and Bad Days With Averages
Gig work earnings are volatile. Some days are packed with high-paying jobs, and others are slow. Official statistics recognize this variability; for instance, Eurostat’s work on platform employment found that many platform workers only do a few hours a month, while others do much more.
To get a stable picture of your true daily earnings:
Collect at least two weeks of data; four is better.
For each day, compute net daily earnings and effective net hourly rate.
Compute the average of your recorded numbers to understand what your typical day really looks like.
A mean calculator can help you quickly compute that average by adding your daily earnings and dividing by the number of days you worked. This gives you a clear, simple view of what you truly earn on an ordinary day, especially when some shifts are unusually high or low.
8. Compare Apps and Strategies, Not Just Jobs
Once you have this data, you can evaluate questions like:
Does adding a second app in the same time window raise your net hourly earnings, or does it just add complexity?
Is a long power-shift of 10 or 12 hours really better than two shorter, targeted shifts that hit peak demand?
Are certain neighborhoods or zones profitable when you factor in the extra miles you drive?
The BLS data on multiple jobholders shows that millions of workers now have combinations of jobs and gigs. Government assessments of nonstandard work arrangements also note that contract workers often have greater earnings uncertainty and fewer employer-provided protections, making careful income tracking even more important.
By treating your gig work like a small business, using the same concepts that government statisticians apply to measure employment and earnings, you move from guessing to knowing.
Instead of asking “How much did that app pay me yesterday?” you can answer a better question:
“On an average workday, after fuel, wear and tear, and my time, how much do I really earn, and which combination of apps and hours makes that number as strong as possible?”
Senior Marketing Consultant
Michael Leander is an experienced digital marketer and an online solopreneur.