Solo can guarantee your pay on the top gig apps! [Review]

Note: We are affiliated with Solo and may receive a commission for referring you

Every gig economy driver knows how unpredictable the pay can be. One day could be your best day ever and the next can be your worst. It’s hard to plan your life around that kind of volatility!

Solo is an app that promises to help smooth out the lows by guaranteeing your hourly income on top apps like Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Amazon Flex, Spark, and more.

Solo uses data to predict hourly pay, and they will pay you the difference if you earn less than the guaranteed rate. 

You can also track your income & mileage across apps and get tax projections. It’s an all-in-one business solution for drivers to help you earn more and spend less.

What you can do with the Solo app

• Get guaranteed hourly pay when you use their Smart Schedule system
  • Solo pays the difference if you earn less than the daily guaranteed rate
  • Smart Schedule available in these cities
• Automatically track your deductible business miles
• See detailed earnings data for all the major apps in your area
• Learn the best days and times to drive for each app
• Get tax projections
• Three subscription levels: Basic ($5.99/month), Pro ($11.99/month), and Pro Plus ($19.99/month)

All you do is link your driver accounts. Yes, they do pay you the difference if you don’t meet the guarantee! – Apple App store review

Article contents

• What is Solo?
• Smart Schedule: Guarantee your pay
• Solo pricing
• Mileage & expense tracking
• Earnings data for the top apps
• Upsides & downsides of Solo
• Reviews

What is the Solo app?

Solo is a business app for gig workers that can guarantee your daily pay and help you track & manage your business expenses.

Solo’s Smart Schedule feature shows you how much you can expect to make on all of the top gig apps. Solo will pay you the difference if you earn less than their predictions over the course of your daily schedule. 

How does it work? Solo anonymously aggregates driver data to provide performance benchmarks and future earnings predictions. Their algorithm also accounts for anticipated events that can impact earnings.

Solo supports DoorDash, Uber Eats, Uber, Lyft, Grubhub, Instacart, Shipt, Amazon Flex, Spark, and more.

Top Solo features

• Guaranteed hourly pay when you use their Smart Schedule system
• Automatically track your income & business mileage
• Earnings leaderboard & analysis – See how you compare to other drivers
• Tax projections – See how much you owe
• Net Income calculator – See how much you actually make after expenses

Try Solo! Get $10 when you download Solo and link your active gig work accounts in the Solo app. See promotion rules, and how to get your bonus

Smart Schedule: The Solo Pay Guarantee program

One of the unique features on Solo that isn’t available anywhere else is their Smart Schedule & pay guarantee program.

The Smart Schedule shows you hourly income predictions for each gig in your area. Select hours that you want to work, Solo will pay you the difference if you earn less than what the app predicts.

Your hourly pay is guaranteed as long as you are online, accept the majority of requests, and average at least one job (a ride on Uber, a delivery on DoorDash, etc) for every hour.

Smart Schedule is only available for Pro and Pro Plus subscribers, and you’ll also have to pay for credits to reserve hours. Credits cost around $2 to guarantee your pay for 8 hours. More on pricing below.

How guaranteed pay & Smart Schedule works on Solo

1. Download Solo and create an account
2. Link your gig work accounts and opt into location tracking
3. Use the Solo Smart Schedule to add hourly blocks to your schedule
4. Be online and average at least one job for every scheduled hour
5. Be located within the pay guarantee zone
6. Keep Solo running in the background while you work
7. Link Venmo or PayPal via the Solo app to receive any payout
8. If you earn less than the hourly guarantee, Solo will pay you the difference on Tuesday of each week

Smart Schedule and guaranteed pay are currently available in these cities

The pay guarantee program is available in many major cities. See the full list of cities here and check the map below.

If guaranteed pay isn’t available in your city, you can still use other Solo app features like automated mileage tracking and detailed earnings info.

How much more can Solo help you earn?

Solo claims that Smart Schedule users can make 20% more per hour, or up to $360 per month in cities like Seattle.

How? Smart Scheduling helps you identify the most lucrative gigs and the best days & times to work.

You can skip the bad hours and only work the good ones. And you can use a data-driven approach to select the gigs that you choose to work.

How much does Solo cost? Pricing options

Solo is a subscription service with 3 pricing options, Basic ($5.99), Pro ($11.99/month), and Pro Plus ($19.99/month)

Smart Schedule—only available on the Pro levels—operates on a credit system. Credits cost $0.25/hour.

All new users can get a 14-day free trial that unlocks all app features and provides 10 free credits for Smart Schedule. After the trial is over, you’ll have to choose between the Basic and Pro levels to continue using the app.

To use the Smart Schedule system, you The Smart Schedule system works

Basic level: $5.99 per month

• Personal income dashboard
• Weekly income/market reports
• Automated mileage tracking
• Expense tracking
• Federal & state tax projections
• Earnings leaderboard

Pro level: $11.99 per month

Everything offered by Basic level and:

• Solo Smart Schedule
• 20 monthly credits for Smart Schedule (you can purchase more in the app)
• 1 credit is for 1 hour

Pro Plus: $19.99 per month or $199.99/yearly

Everything offered by Basic & Pro, and:

• 60 Smart Schedule credits per month

Smart Schedule credits: $0.25 per scheduled hour, bulk discounts available

Smart Schedule operates on a credit system. Scheduling 1 hour costs 1 credit.

Credit prices:

• 1 credit for $0.25
• 40 credits for $7.99 (20% off)
• 80 credits for $14.99 (25% off)

If you drive full-time for 40 hours per week, you can guarantee all 40 hours for about $7.50 per week.

Manage your business with mileage & expense tracking

As a gig worker, you need to maximize your earnings AND minimize your expenses to be truly profitable.

One of the best ways to reduce expenses is to track your miles and your business expenses.

Full-time rideshare drivers using can drive around 33,000 miles per year. This can save you a whopping $18,000 in federal tax deductions if you track your miles.

Solo has an automatic mileage tracker that runs in the background while you work.

You don’t need to remember to turn the mileage tracking on and off because the app is linked with your gig accounts. It knows which miles you drove while you were online and working, and the personal miles you drove while you were offline.

You can also edit your mileage manually to make sure that every single mile is counted.

Solo also has an expense tracking feature to record your business expenses. And when you pay for Solo, it counts as a deductible business expense too!

Tax projecting: See how much you’ll owe

Taxes can be one of the biggest headaches for gig workers. If you’ve only ever worked a W-2 job, you might be surprised by how much more complicated it is to file taxes as an independent contractor.

Solo has a tax projection feature that simplifies taxes for you. It uses your earnings and expense data to give you an accurate estimate of your federal & state tax bills. Solo can also connect you with discounted tax preparation services if you don’t want to file on your own.

Net income: Automatically calculate your true profits

Solo has a unique calculator that uses data from your expense tracking, mileage tracking, and tax tracking to calculate your true net income.

They call it Net Income, and it’s an easy way to see how much you are really making.

Understanding your true bottom line—your profits after considering ALL expenses—isn’t easy when you drive for multiple gig apps.

With Net Income, Solo puts all of the pieces together for you.

It’s a good reason to use the entire suite of features inside Solo to give the app enough data for the Net Income calculator to come up with an accurate number.

Pay insights: Real-time earnings info for 13+ apps

Lately, it seems like there’s always another app you can try. But how do you know if it’s worth your time to sign up and get started?

The Solo Pay Insights feature shows real-time earnings information for 13+ top apps.

So if you’re only delivering with Uber Eats or DoorDash, you can finally find out if it’s worth trying Shipt, Instacart, or any other top app in your area.

Leaderboard: See the top earners in your area

The leaderboard area of the app shows the top earners in your area and the apps that they work for. It’s a good way to see how other drivers are doing, and if you are reaching your peak potential earnings.

Solo vs Gridwise, Stride, and other apps

Solo isn’t the only mileage and business expense tracking app in the game. App like Stride and Gridwise are popular with drivers, so how does Solo compare?

Solo is the only app that offers the guaranteed pay feature. That alone sets it apart from the competition.

Stride has no-frills mileage tracking, but it doesn’t have automatic tracking. You have to remember to turn the tracker on and off every time you drive.

With Solo, the automated tracking knows which miles are related to your gig driving and which are for personal driving.

Gridwise offers market data reports that can help you pick the most lucrative gig for each day of the week, but Gridwise won’t guarantee your income like Solo does.

• The top 8 free (and paid) mile tracking apps

How Solo uses driver data

Solo uses a big-data approach to provide earnings predictions. The app uses real, anonymized driver data to feed the predictive algorithms that can help them create accurate earnings guarantees.

That means that as a Solo user, you have to opt into location tracking, and you have to link your gig accounts to Solo.

All of your data is anonymized—none of your personal info is ever available to anyone else. And your gig account login info is encrypted, so nobody will ever know your exact login details.

Upsides of Solo

Get guaranteed pay – Solo is like an insurance policy that guarantees that your earnings won’t dip too low on a bad day. It helps to eliminate a lot of the risk that comes with gig economy earnings.

Quickly analyze pay on all of the major apps in your area – Knowing the right day and time to drive is one of the biggest challenges. Solo takes out the guesswork for you, so you don’t have to waste weeks trying to find the perfect times to drive.

Discover new apps to drive for – Solo has real-time earnings data for all of the top gig apps. If you are only signed up with one or two apps, Solo can show you how much drivers earn on other apps. You might find that you can earn more by signing up for more services.

Automated mile track miles – The hands-off mile tracking is a great way to accurately record your mileage so you can maximize your mileage deduction at the end of the year.

Downsides of Solo

Losing some flexibility to gain more income stability – To qualify for guaranteed pay, you have to schedule hours and be online during those hours. That might be an unwelcome change of pace if you’re used to logging in to work whenever you want.

There is no penalty for not working the hours that you schedule—you just won’t get the pay guarantee.

It’s possible for an earnings guarantee to be lower than what you typically experience – You might find that the hourly guarantees on Solo may be lower than what you typically experience on the apps.

For example, if you typically earn $25 per hour on Uber Eats but the Solo guarantee is only $20 per hour, then the guarantee isn’t very valuable to you.

Solo is not a free app – You need to pay a monthly subscription to use Solo and pay for Smart Schedule credits. The cost is low, around $15 per month, but it might not be worth it if you don’t end up using the features.

Solo reviews: Is it legit?

Solo has been up and running for nearly 2 years, and so far, they are delivering on their promises.

Solo will guarantee your pay—and actually pay up if you miss the guarantee—as long as you work your scheduled hours and meet the minimum number of jobs per hour.

If you are struggling with low hourly pay, Solo is a good way to guarantee that you’ll never dip below a minimum amount.

The income and mileage tracking is slick, user-friendly, and accurate. The tax projection and Net Income calculator are helpful but may not apply perfectly to all tax situations.

Here’s what drivers online say about Solo:

Yes, they do pay you the difference!

You get a complete breakdown analysis of your driver earnings

An easy insurance policy for when it’s slow

I love using it to track my miles, hours, and days I should work

Great app for testing all the platforms in one spot