Waymo Still Cost More in a New Test, but Waits Were No Longer Twice as Long

The claim that Waymo is both more expensive and twice as slow no longer works as a general description of the service. A newer cross-platform comparison still found higher Waymo fares, but its average pickup estimate was nowhere near twice those of both human-driven rivals.

The original result remains useful as a snapshot of Los Angeles in November 2024. Since then, a larger San Francisco dataset has complicated the waiting-time story, while Waymo has begun giving public riders access to freeways—a material change to one of the conditions that made the earlier Los Angeles routes so long.

What the 2024 Los Angeles comparison actually measured

The widely repeated finding came from a contributor analysis, not an academic study or a controlled trial of 50 completed passenger journeys. The November 2024 Los Angeles comparison collected 50 sets of quotes from Waymo, UberX and Lyft at different locations and times of day, recording the booking price, quoted pickup time and estimated arrival time.

Within that sample, the average human-driven ride-hail quote was $28.14, while Waymo cost $9.50 more. The author noted that a customary 20% tip would narrow the effective difference because Waymo rides do not involve tipping a driver.

The time results were more dramatic. Waymo’s quoted pickup time was more than double the rideshare average, and its estimated arrival time was 121% longer. In the largest example reported, a Santa Monica-to-Downtown journey was estimated at 29 minutes by a human-driven service and one hour 18 minutes by Waymo.

Those figures need precise labels. UberX and Lyft are app-based ride-hailing services, not conventional street taxis, and the reported times were estimates displayed before booking rather than measured door-to-door durations. The comparison was also limited to one city, one period and a relatively small set of searches.

Newer data preserved the price premium, not the twofold wait

A larger comparison published in June 2025 supports the narrower conclusion that Waymo could command a premium. The Obi pricing and pickup-time analysis examined standard Waymo, UberX and Lyft offers on selected San Francisco routes from March 25 to April 25, 2025.

The researchers began with 88,998 offer records and retained searches in which all three services returned valid quotes for the same origin and destination within the same minute. After grouping the data by hour, the final dataset contained 705 comparable search instances and 2,115 provider observations.

Waymo’s mean quoted fare was $20.43, compared with $15.58 for Uber and $14.44 for Lyft. Expressed against each rival’s price, Waymo was about 31% more expensive than Uber and 41% more expensive than Lyft. Its median fare was also higher, so the result was not produced solely by a few extreme quotes.

The pickup estimates told a different story. Waymo averaged 4.28 minutes, versus 3.15 minutes for Uber and 5.14 minutes for Lyft. On those figures, Waymo’s expected pickup took about 36% longer than Uber’s but about 17% less time than Lyft’s. That is a competitive disadvantage against one service, not a universal twofold delay.

This later benchmark does not invalidate the 2024 Los Angeles observations: it covers another city, a later period and a much larger set of simultaneous quotes. Nor does it answer whether completed Waymo trips were faster. It measured the vehicle’s estimated arrival at the pickup point, not the passenger’s travel time to the destination.

Freeway access changed a central condition of the old result

The 2024 analysis attributed part of Waymo’s longer Los Angeles routes to the service’s inability to use freeways. That condition began changing on November 12, 2025, when Waymo announced freeway rides for a growing group of public passengers in Los Angeles, Phoenix and the San Francisco Bay Area.

The rollout was gradual, so it should not be interpreted as a promise that every eligible ride immediately received a freeway route. It nevertheless weakens any attempt to present the 121% Los Angeles difference as a current, system-wide performance figure: the operational restriction that helped produce it no longer applies in exactly the same way.

Freeway capability does not automatically eliminate a fare premium, reduce the distance from a vehicle to its next passenger or guarantee the shortest route. It changes one important variable. A fresh Los Angeles test would still need simultaneous quotes, identical endpoints, comparable service tiers and enough observations across different hours before supporting a new citywide conclusion.

What riders can reasonably conclude now

The durable finding is the price premium, not the claim that Waymo always takes twice as long. Two comparisons conducted under different conditions found higher Waymo prices, but the later and larger dataset showed pickup performance between Uber and Lyft rather than far behind both.

For an individual trip, the practical comparison is the live offer shown at the moment of booking. The relevant total includes the quoted fare, any planned tip for a human driver, the pickup estimate, the projected in-vehicle time and whether the proposed pickup or drop-off requires extra walking.

That approach also respects how dynamic ride-hailing markets work. Fleet supply, demand, traffic and route eligibility can change a quote from one hour to the next, so a historical average cannot tell a rider which option is cheapest or fastest for a particular journey.

The 2024 result therefore belongs in the record as evidence of Waymo’s early Los Angeles limitations. By the evidence available through August 2026, it should not be promoted as a current universal verdict: Waymo’s premium remained visible in a later comparison, while the twice-as-long characterization did not.

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