What happens if I do not finish an Uber Quest?

You get nothing extra. A Quest is all or nothing: finishing three trips short of the target pays A$0, not a proportion. That is why a target sitting at the edge of what you can manage is worth less than the number printed on it, and why a quiet week or one sick day can cost you the whole bonus after you have already driven the hours.

Do Quests make drivers take worse trips?

They can. A Quest counts trips rather than dollars, so it rewards short fares and penalises the long, well-paid run that ties up an hour. Drivers chasing a trip count often accept pickups they would normally decline. If you chase one, compare your net per hour for that week against a normal week.

How many trips an hour does an Australian rideshare driver do?

Usually between 2 and 3 once pickups and empty running are counted, varying more by city and time of day than by driver. Use your own figure from several weeks of your own records rather than an average: the whole calculation for a bonus depends on it.

Is the Uber Quest Worth It? Do the Maths Before You Chase It

Q: Is the Uber Quest worth it?

Often not. The test is not the size of the bonus, it is how many extra hours the target needs beyond the week you were already driving, and what those particular hours pay. Because you are already working your best hours, a Quest gets filled with your quietest ones, so price the extra hours at your Tuesday-afternoon rate rather than your average. If the bonus spread across them does not clearly beat what you usually keep per hour, skip it.

Often it is not, and you can work out which in about two minutes.

A Quest pays a lump sum for hitting a trip count by a deadline: A$120 for 65 trips this week, say. Whether it is worth chasing comes down to one comparison. Work out how many extra hours the target needs on top of the week you were going to drive anyway, then ask what those particular hours pay you. If the bonus spread across them does not clearly beat what you usually keep per hour, the answer is no.

No part of the Uber app will ever run that sum for you. Here is how to run it yourself.

The target is set just above your normal week, on purpose

A promotion exists to buy hours that would not otherwise be driven. If the target sat below your usual pace, the platform would be paying a bonus for work it was already getting, which is not what the budget is for.

So the number is usually set a little above where you already are, and the gap is the thing the bonus is actually buying. Occasionally you will be offered one you would clear without changing anything. That one is free money: take it, and stop thinking about it. The rest need the sum below.

The three numbers you need

1. Your trips an hour

Not the platform's figure, yours, from your own records, over several weeks rather than one. Most Australian rideshare drivers land somewhere between 2 and 3 once pickups and empty running are counted. It varies more by city and time of day than by driver.

2. What you keep per hour

After fuel or charging, tyres and servicing, your share of insurance, rego and finance, and the GST you have to set aside. Not gross fares. If you have never worked this out, do that first: every other decision in rideshare rests on it, not just this one.

3. What your worst hours pay

The one nobody calculates, and the one that decides the answer.

Why the worst hours, and not your average

This is where the maths quietly turns against drivers.

You are already working your best hours. Nobody skips Friday night and then adds it on for a Quest. The hours a bonus gets filled with are the ones left over: a Tuesday afternoon, a Sunday morning, the last two hours of a shift you would otherwise have ended. Those hours pay well below your average, and the reason is circular but true: if they paid well, you would already be driving them.

Price the extra hours at your average and almost every bonus looks worth it. Price them at what they actually pay and about half of them stop.

Worked example: one driver, two Quests

Take a driver doing 22 hours a week at 2.4 trips an hour, keeping A$26 an hour after costs. Their quiet hours, Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons, keep them A$17.

Their normal week is about 53 trips.

Quest A: A$120 for 65 trips

Short by 12 trips
12 divided by 2.4 is 5 extra hours
A$120 across 5 hours is A$24 an hour on top of what those hours already pay
A$17 plus A$24 is A$41 an hour, against a usual A$26

Worth chasing. Five hours is one long Tuesday afternoon, and the bonus nearly doubles what that afternoon is worth.

Quest B: A$40 for 80 trips

Short by 27 trips
27 divided by 2.4 is 11 extra hours
A$40 across 11 hours is A$3.60 an hour
A$17 plus A$3.60 is A$20.60 an hour, against a usual A$26

Skip it. Eleven extra hours, and every one of them pays less than the hours you already drive. You would finish the week more tired and, per hour, worse off than if you had ignored it.

Same driver, same app, same week. One of those is money. The other is eleven hours of your life for A$40.

Three things the card does not mention

It pays nothing if you do not finish

A Quest is all or nothing. Miss 80 trips by three and the bonus is A$0, not A$38. The eleven hours in Quest B are not a bet with a partial payout, they are a bet you can lose outright, and the closer the target sits to the edge of what you can manage, the likelier that is. A quiet week, three days of rain or one sick day and the whole thing is gone.

That risk belongs in the sum. If finishing depends on everything going right, price it lower than the number on the card.

A trip count pays you to take worse trips

A Quest counts trips, not dollars. That rewards short fares and punishes the long airport run that pays three times as much and takes four times as long. Drivers chasing a trip count start accepting pickups they would normally decline, and some of them end the week having lost more on poor fares than the bonus paid.

If you do chase one, check your net per hour for that week against a normal one. The comparison is uncomfortable and worth having.

Surge and boost are a different animal

A multiplier on fares in a zone for an hour has no target and no deadline, so there is nothing to chase and nothing to forfeit. Take those on their merits, in the moment.

Everything on this page is about promotions with a target and a date on them: Quests, consecutive-trip bonuses, and the "earn A$X extra for Y trips" cards.

Fatigue is part of the price

Eleven extra hours is not only eleven hours of pay. Transport Victoria advises no more than eight hours of driving in 24 with a break every two hours, and NSW Point to Point suggests avoiding midnight to 6am. Neither is a legal cap for point-to-point drivers, and both arrive long before the app logs you off.

A bonus that only works if you drive tired is not a bonus that works.

The short version

Work out the extra hours the target needs, not the total hours.
Price those hours at your quietest times, not your average.
Add the bonus spread across them, and compare that with what you usually keep.
If it is close, treat it as a no: the same money for more hours away from home is not a win.
Remember it pays nothing if you fall short.

DriveWise AI does this sum for you

You type the promotion in once, because no app can read another app's promotions. From there it counts your progress from the shifts you have already logged, works out the extra hours left in it, and prices them at your own weakest time of week. Then it says worth it, a wash, or skip it.

It is allowed to say skip it, and it often does. That is the whole reason it exists: a driver working the sum out for themselves three weeks later, having already driven the hours, is the version we wanted to avoid.