Lyft App Usage Up 27% YoY in Q2 After Price Cuts, Uber Up 2.5%

Meanwhile, Uber Eats is down 23.5% as part of a broader downturn in delivery

As the major ride-share and delivery app companies prepare to announce earnings in early August, ride-share is gaining while delivery is weathering a downturn.

Key takeaways

• Lyft, which is about 40% smaller than Uber in monthly active users, drove its user count 27% higher, year-over-year, in the second quarter, according to Similarweb estimates for iOS and Android combined. All of the estimates in this report are for the US market.
• Engagement with the Uber Eats delivery app, which became very important for helping Uber sustain its revenues during the pandemic, dropped 23.5% as measured by monthly active users, while the Uber ride share app was up 2.5%. The user count for Postmates, which is owned by Uber, dropped 27.4%.
• Monthly active users of Doordash were down 19%, year-over-year. Grubhub DAU was down the most, 33.9%, and Seamless was down 17%. Both Grubhub and Seamless are owned by Just Eat Takeaway of the Netherlands.
• Instacart usage dropped by a comparatively minor 6%.

These estimates take advantage of an improved Similarweb data model for mobile apps, and iOS in particular, which will be introduced initially in the US.

Ride Share app usage continues to climb

While ride-share app usage has its ups and downs, it has generally seen increased usage since the pandemic. Meanwhile, Lyft has used lower prices to increase its share of this digital market.

Delivery apps in a downturn

While people getting out of the house more frequently has helped ride share, consumer willingness to go out to eat and go out to the grocery store has taken the wind out of the sails of delivery apps. While some people have held onto new habits formed during the pandemic, the audience for food and grocery delivery has retreated from its past heights. Economic worries could also factor into people not wanting to pay delivery fees.

DoorDash wins for 30-day user retention

For both ride-share and delivery apps, 30-day user retention (the number of people using the app on day one who are still using it on day 30) tends to fall off sharply, perhaps because they are used on an occasional basis.

For example, here’s how that drops over 30 days for Uber and Lyft, based on Android app usage in the US.

Of the apps with enough usage for us to track that statistic, DoorDash does the best with 30-day retention of almost 7% compared with 5.8% for Uber, 5.2% for Lyft, 3.6% for Instacart, and 3.9% for Grubhub.

The retention stat for Instacart appears to be a bit of an anomaly, given that it ranged from 5.8% to 6.2% for the previous months in 2023. Retention for the other apps shown in the chart was more consistent over the past several months.

Uber is well-positioned and Lyft gaining

App engagement is a leading indicator of consumer engagement with these apps, but consumer willingness to book a ride or order a delivery also matters, as does the cost structure of these companies.

Despite the decline in Uber Eats business, analysts tend to be bullish on Uber’s business, on balance.

Meanwhile, Lyft has laid off employees and used the savings to cut prices, a strategy that appears to have succeeded in driving user engagement. Pure play delivery app companies like DoorDash appear to have a harder road ahead.

Public companies mentioned in this report include Uber Technologies (NYSE: UBER), Lyft (NASDAQ: LYFT), DoorDash (NYSE: DASH), and Just Eat Takeaway.com N.V. (TKWY.AS).

The Similarweb Insights & Communications team is available to pull additional or updated data on request for the news media (journalists are invited to write to press@similarweb.com). When citing our data, please reference Similarweb as the source and link back to the most relevant blog post or similarweb.com/blog/insights/.

Contact: For more information, please write to press@similarweb.com.

Methodology

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by David F. Carr

David covers social media, digital advertising, and generative AI. With a background in web trends since the 1990s, he’s also the author of "Social Collaboration for Dummies".