Uber mileage tracker: the miles between rides are yours to log

Uber's Tax Summary gives drivers a mileage figure, and in Uber's own words it "is not an official tax document." It counts from the moment you go online, which leaves out the drive to your first staging spot, the miles between sessions, and everything you cover with another app open. GigOdo logs the whole shift automatically, free, and never asks for your Uber account.

Does Uber track your miles?

Yes, while you are online, and more generously than most platforms. Uber's figure includes the waiting and the driving out to a rider, not just the miles with someone in the car. For a driver who goes online in the driveway and offline back at home, that covers most of the day.

What it cannot do is observe you outside its own app. The Tax Summary is a record of your Uber session rather than your working day, and the difference is largest for exactly the drivers who work hardest at it: the ones who reposition before going online, sit in an airport queue lot with the app off, or run a delivery app during the afternoon lull.

Where to find your Uber mileage report

• drivers.uber.com, under the Tax Information tab - the reliable route, with the monthly breakdown.
• The Uber Driver app, under Account > Tax Info > Tax Forms.

There is no live mileage screen to check mid-week and no per-trip mileage history to browse. Every Uber earner gets a Tax Summary whether or not a 1099 arrives, so if no tax form shows up, the summary is still there.

When does Uber send it?

By January 31, covering the year just finished. The lag is the real problem. The number lands months after the driving, and nothing about it can be corrected then - you will not reconstruct which March evenings you drove across town before flipping online. Whatever the summary says becomes the ceiling on what you can claim, because by January it is the only record left. Our line-by-line Tax Summary decode covers the rest of the document.

Online miles vs on-trip miles: one correct reading

The summary shows two mileage lines and they are nested, not alternative:

• Online miles - every mile with the app on: waiting for a ping, driving to the pickup, and carrying the rider. The headline figure and the superset.
• On-trip miles - only the miles with a passenger aboard. The floor, and already inside the online figure.

Start from online miles. Adding the two lines together double-counts every mile you drove with a rider in the car, and it is an easy mistake because both appear on the same page under similar labels.

What the online figure still misses

• Staging before you go online. Driving across town to the entertainment district or toward the airport before you flip the app on. Uber's clock has not started.
• Queue and lull miles with the app off. Leaving a slow zone, circling while offline, or moving between airport lots between sessions.
• Multi-app driving. Online in Uber and a delivery app at once, and each platform claims the same physical mile. Add both summaries and you have counted it twice; use one and you have undercounted the shift.

The last drive home at the end of the night is generally nondeductible commuting either way. Everything before it, while you are available for hire, generally is deductible - and only a log that sits above all the apps records it once and records it correctly.

What the gap is worth

Take a driver whose summary shows 1,400 online miles for the month, who also covered roughly 160 miles staging before login, moving between sessions, and working with a second app open. At the 76-cent rate applying from July 2026 (72.5 cents for the first half of the year):

The 160-mile figure is an illustration rather than a measurement - your gap is whatever you drove outside the login window, which only your own log can tell you. On that example it is about $1,459 a year in deduction that exists only if it was recorded at the time. For context, Gridwise driver data published April 2026 put the median Uber driver at $21.18 an hour, so a full-time year of mileage deduction routinely runs into five figures.

How to log the miles Uber does not count

1. Start tracking before you go online. Install GigOdo and switch on Auto-Detect, or set a Home Zone so the log opens when you leave the driveway. The staging drive is exactly the mileage Uber's clock will not see.
2. Drive as you normally do. GigOdo records in the background while you run the Uber Driver app, with a floating bubble showing live miles over any screen. Afterwards, swipe right to keep the working drives and left to drop personal ones.
3. Record fares and tips separately. The IRS occupation list for the qualified-tips deduction includes rideshare drivers, up to $25,000 of voluntary tips a year through 2028, but only if your records split tips from fares. GigOdo's ledger has a tips column for that reason.
4. Export at tax time. Take the free CSV or the Pro CPA pack to whoever files for you, and use Uber's online miles to corroborate your total rather than to produce it.

No login, no link, nothing to flag

Since mid-2025, Lyft has sent drivers formal warnings about third-party apps that link to driver accounts, and Uber has told reporters the same tools violate its terms - the coverage named earnings trackers that work by signing into your platform accounts. Whatever the platforms do with that policy next, it is simply not about GigOdo: there is no Uber login to give, no account connection, no automation. GigOdo is an independent odometer and ledger on your own phone. We covered the crackdown and what it means for trackers in detail. Switching from a linked tracker? The import presets bring your history over in one tap.

Your 1099 might not tell the whole story

Rideshare fares flow through the 1099-K, whose federal threshold is back to $20,000 and 200 transactions - and it reports gross customer payments including Uber's fees, which you deduct using the Tax Summary's expense lines so you do not pay tax on Uber's cut. Promotions and quests ride the 1099-NEC, whose threshold rises to $2,000 for 2026 payments. Plenty of part-time drivers will get no federal form at all while owing tax on every dollar - and when no form arrives, your own log is the only record of your income and your miles. The tax guides take it from there (estimates, not tax advice).

Uber driver questions

More for Uber drivers

• Uber's Tax Summary, decoded - every line of the document: online miles, fees, tips, and the 1099s.
• The Uber/Lyft third-party app crackdown - what's actually being flagged, and what isn't.
• Delivering on Uber Eats too? The courier version of this page - same account, different miles.
• Also driving Lyft? One independent log solves the multi-app double-count.