Show HN: Real-time Fare Estimate Comparisons for Uber, Lyft, Sidecar, and Taxi

I love products like these. Slices right through all the promotional noise like &quot;fun drivers,&quot; &quot;fast pick-up times,&quot; &quot;clean cars,&quot; etc and gets right to chase -- price.<p>At the end of the day, they are all taxi services in my book. Whichever gets me from point A to point B the cheapest wins my dollars. Fast pick-up times, a sexy functional app, and other common sense differentiators are expectations now, not selling points.

Uber API TOS says:<p>&quot;You may not use the Uber API in any manner that is competitive to Uber or the Uber Services, including in connection with any application, website or other product or service that also includes, features, endorses, or otherwise supports in any way a third party that provides services competitive to Uber’s products and services, as determined in our sole discretion.&quot;<p><a href="https://developer.uber.com/v1/terms/" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.uber.com&#x2F;v1&#x2F;terms&#x2F;</a> under 2.A

Nice.<p>Now just give me an iPhone app where I push a button and it sends me the cheapest, closest car from any of those companies.

This how you know when something becomes a commodity. Uber&#x2F;Lyft&#x2F;Taxi&#x2F;Sidecar they will just be competing on price in the long run, since they all compete in a commoditized market, and the player with better ubiquity and infrastructure will ultimately win, because they will be able to cut prices in a way that smaller players won&#x27;t be able to afford.

Taxi rate in NYC seems too low. I tried a couple of trips that I have taken dozens of times, and they have never, ever been as low as whats being calculated. I like the idea though.

This is brilliant and one of the many reasons I love this site. Simple Bootstrap interface that cuts through the crap, the fancy user interfaces of ride sharing and taxi apps and gives me the information that I really want: the cost.<p>Now this has hit the homepage, it&#x27;ll be interesting to see if Uber, Lyft and other providers cut you off from their API&#x27;s. Presumably, some of these services don&#x27;t want you to be able to compare estimated costs between competing offerings, but it also means that everyone is being kept honest and as a consumer, I think that is the most important thing of all.

Question to America. Why do you tip the taxi driver but not the uber&#x2F;lyft driver?<p>(SFO -&gt; Pier 39 - Lyft is $31, Taxi is $49.96 + 15% standard tip = $57)

For NYC to New Jersey the fare estimate does not take into account bridge and tunnel tolls. I was getting $19, $23 and $23 for Taxi, Uber and Lyft respectively, which is very low for all of those services. A typical taxi will cost $45-$55 from Manhattan to Jersey City or Hoboken.

Cool idea! FYI, when I clicked the &#x27;locate&#x27; button and denied it access, the spinner just kept going and I couldn&#x27;t manually enter a location.

This is awesome. One suggestion is a permalink for a specific fare estimate that I can forward someone.

Great app! Would be great to estimate &quot;regular&quot; price, right now it&#x27;s surging and I&#x27;d like to know what the price would be for e.g. tomorrow. Hopefully Uber wont shut you off, seems like a breach of ToS to me (I&#x27;m not a legal expert).

This is alarmingly inaccurate. Says it&#x27;d take $71 to take a taxi from Alexandria, VA to NE Washington, D.C.<p>If you live in the area, you&#x27;d know that&#x27;s a bold-faced lie. It&#x27;d probably cost $25-$30 bucks, the same price being quoted for Lyft and Uber.

I just looked up the ride I took this morning and it doesn&#x27;t seem to include any add-on charges, like the toll I was charged, the Uber Safety Fee or the Seattle Accessible Driving Fund.<p>edit: oh yea, it says that in small print at the bottom of the page.

I&#x27;m confused... if I type in San Fran to Los Ang I get $608 for Lyft and over $1K for the other two.<p>Why is Lyft so low (like half if not more) competition makes sense, but ~400 mile trip should be more then $600.

Uber claims to be 20% cheaper than yellow cabs in NYC. What gives?

It would be nice for completeness, if either start or end is an airport (e.g. &quot;SFO&quot;, &quot;LAX&quot;) to include an estimate of a shared-ride van such as supershuttle.

Which locations does this website have actual data for? Just tried two places in San Francisco and it said it had no data.<p>Is this an actual site or just a one pager looking for interest?

How long is this going to last before one of the services shuts it down, claiming some kind of EULA noncompliance (or some other flimsy excuse to avoid competition)?

This reminds me Movigo [1]. Is there any relationship or known difference?<p>[1] <a href="http://www.movigo.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.movigo.com</a>

You&#x27;ll want to adjust yellow taxi fares from Manhattan to JFK and reverse. This is done on a flat fee.

Looks like none of &#x27;em hold a candle to Taxis in small-to-medium cities like mine.

This is really cool. How do you guys get current surge&#x2F;prime time rates?

Great app. Pull in wait time and you might have something.