Para vs SOLODRIVE.PRO: Track Your Gigs or Build Your Own Riders

Para is a trip-detail and offer-filtering app, and it is free for drivers.

It connects to Uber, Uber Eats, Lyft and Grubhub, and it opens up the part of an offer those apps show only partially. Before you accept, Para surfaces the exact pickup and drop-off address including the house or apartment, the total payout, the distance, and the trip broken down into dollars per mile and dollars per hour. That turns an accept-or-decline reflex into a decision with numbers behind it.

The rest of the app is built around the same idea:

• Auto-decline. You set a floor, and Para filters offers below it by distance, dollars per hour, dollars per mile, payout, stacked offers, and pickup or drop-off location.
• Flagging. You can mark good and bad customers, restaurants and locations, so a bad experience becomes information the next time it comes around.
• Tracking. Para tracks earnings and mileage across the platforms it connects to.
• Pulse. A live view of offers near you.
• ParaWorks. A delivery job board, listing thousands of positions across dozens of companies and more than a hundred cities.

That is a real toolkit and drivers who multi-app get value out of it. It is worth being precise about what it is optimizing, though. Every one of those features acts on an offer that already exists, sent by a platform that decided who to send it to. Para makes you better at choosing among the rides you are given. It does not change who gives them to you.

There is a second thing worth knowing, because it is the structural risk in every tool of this kind. An app that reads offers out of another company's app depends on that company allowing it. DoorDash cut off Para's access to order details in 2021, and drivers who had built their routine around seeing those numbers lost them in a day. That is not a knock on Para. It is what it means to work on top of someone else's platform, and it is the same reason a rider who only knows you through the app is not really your rider.

SOLODRIVE.PRO starts after the ride, at the moment Para's job is finished.

You get a booking page at your own handle, at `app.solodrive.pro/t/{handle}`. You set your hours and you set your rate. When a passenger you already drove wants that trip again, they open your page, pick the date, the time and the pickup, and send the request. No app assigns it. No other driver is offered it. You review it and send back your fare, the rider puts a card on that fare to confirm the ride, and the fare is captured through SOLODRIVE.PRO when the trip is complete.

There are three ways to hand your page over: say your handle, text your booking page to a rider you are already messaging, or let them scan your booking QR code from a headrest or a window. The QR is the one that does not depend on anybody remembering anything.

Then the part that actually changes a week. When a rider takes the same trip on a repeating schedule, you can mark them as a regular. The rider consents, their card is saved, and SOLODRIVE.PRO bills that ride automatically each week on a Stripe subscription. Ten regulars is ten rides you can count on before the week starts, at a fare you set, from riders who asked for you by name.

Everyone who books you lands on your customer list, which is a read-only list of your own riders. It is not a marketing machine and it does not send anything for you. It is a record of who they are, and it belongs to you rather than to a platform.

SOLODRIVE.PRO also lets you log your earnings from Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and the rest in one place, alongside your direct rides, so you can track earnings and stay tax-ready across everything you drive. You enter those other-platform figures yourself. The Schedule C tax-ready block is on the Pro tier; basic earnings and mileage render on every tier.

Put them next to each other and the split is clean.

• Para answers: is this offer worth accepting?
• SOLODRIVE.PRO answers: how does this passenger book me next time?

Para works on the supply the apps send you. It makes a variable, opaque stream of offers legible, and it declines the bad ones for you. It is a filter on somebody else's dispatch.

SOLODRIVE.PRO works on demand you own. A regular on your booking page is not dispatched to you, not bid on by another driver, and not priced by an algorithm. There is no offer to evaluate, because the rider is asking for you specifically.

That is why the two do not really overlap. The best possible outcome with an offer tool is that you take better app rides. The outcome with a booking page is that a share of your week stops being app rides at all.

SOLODRIVE.PRO works alongside Uber and Lyft, not instead of them.

You keep taking app-assigned rides exactly as you do now, and a ride the app sent you is completed on the app's terms. Your booking page is for riders who choose to come back to you on their own, for trips the app was never going to send you. Most drivers building a direct base are still driving app hours around it, and direct bookings fill the gaps rather than replacing the work.

So running both tools is a normal setup, not a contradiction. Use Para to read and filter the offers you take. Hand your booking page to the passengers you want back. One makes today's shift smarter, the other makes next month less dependent on the shift.

Para is free for drivers.

On SOLODRIVE.PRO, your booking page, your handle, direct bookings and your QR code start on the Free tier at no monthly cost, so you can take a direct booking before you pay anything. Every plan takes a fee on your direct rides, and it is a fraction of what the apps take:

• Free: $0 a month, plus 12% per paid ride with a $2.00 per-ride minimum.
• Basic: $10 a month, plus 6.5% per paid ride with a $1.50 per-ride minimum.
• Pro: $45 a month, plus 4% per paid ride with a $1.00 per-ride minimum.
• Elite: $100 a month, with no SOLODRIVE.PRO per-ride fee.

Advance and scheduled bookings start at Basic. Recurring regulars run on Pro. The fee comes off a fare you set yourself, on a ride nobody dispatched to you. Full details are on the pricing page.

If most of your week is delivery and you are accepting offers blind, an offer-detail tool earns its place immediately and costs you nothing.

If you have passengers who ask when they can ride with you again, that is a different problem and no offer filter solves it. Those riders are already trying to come back and there is nowhere for them to go. Give them somewhere.

The two questions are not ranked against each other. They are just asked at different points in the ride.

What is the difference between Para and SOLODRIVE.PRO?

Para is a trip-detail and offer-filtering app for Uber, Uber Eats, Lyft and Grubhub. It shows you the pickup, the drop-off, the payout and the dollars per mile before you accept, and it can auto-decline offers below your standards. SOLODRIVE.PRO is a booking page at your own handle. It lets a passenger book you directly, captures the fare on that ride, and bills your weekly regulars automatically. One improves the rides you are assigned, the other creates rides that are yours.

Is SOLODRIVE.PRO a replacement for Para?

No. They do different jobs and they do not conflict. Plenty of drivers read offers with a tool like Para during a shift and hand their SOLODRIVE.PRO booking page to the passengers they want back at the end of a good ride.

Does Para help you get repeat customers?

No, and it is not built to. Para works on offers the platforms send you, so the customer relationship stays with the platform. Getting a repeat rider means giving that rider a way to book you that is not the app, which is what a booking page at your handle does.

Can Para track my earnings for taxes?

Para tracks earnings and mileage across the platforms it connects to. SOLODRIVE.PRO also lets you log your other-platform earnings next to your direct rides so you can track earnings and stay tax-ready in one place, with the Schedule C tax-ready block on the Pro tier. Basic earnings and mileage render on every tier.

Do I need to stop driving Uber or Lyft to use SOLODRIVE.PRO?

No. SOLODRIVE.PRO works alongside the apps. You drive your normal app hours and your booking page handles the riders who come back to you directly. For the fuller answer, see Is It Legal to Take Riders Off Uber?.

How does a rider pay me on a direct booking?

Through SOLODRIVE.PRO. The rider sends the request without a card, you send back the fare, and the card goes on before the ride is confirmed. It is authorized at that point rather than charged, and the fare is captured when the trip is complete. Taking payment on a direct ride is included on every tier, including Free. You never handle cash or chase an invoice.

What happens to my riders if an app cuts me off?

Your booking page, your handle and your customer list are not administered by Uber or Lyft, so a rider who books you directly can still reach you. You would still lose the volume the app was sending you. Direct riders are the part of the week that does not depend on a platform decision.