About
RYDES is a worldwide chauffeur service, based in Seattle and built on fifteen years of running ground transportation the hard way. We know what this work costs, because for most of that time the vehicles were ours.
RYDES is a chauffeur service operating in 1,200 cities across 90 countries. Journeys are booked in advance at a price fixed before travel, and carried out by independent licensed transportation operators held to a single published standard. RYDES selects and vets the operator, sets the standard, prices the journey, holds the booking and answers for it alongside them.
We do not own vehicles. We used to, and that is the more interesting half of the story, because it is the reason the standard on this site reads the way it does.
Every promise on this site was written by someone who has personally failed to keep it at least once, and remembers exactly why.
RYDES began in Seattle as a ground transportation operator with its own vehicles and its own chauffeurs. Fifteen years of that teaches you what a set of tyres costs, what an insurance renewal feels like, and what happens to a Tuesday when a driver calls in sick at five in the morning with four airport runs already confirmed.
It also teaches you the calls. The flight that diverted to a different city. The passenger standing at the wrong terminal. The vehicle that would not start in a January car park. Nobody who has taken those calls writes a waiting policy carelessly, because they know precisely which sixty minutes matter and why the clock has to start when the wheels touch rather than when a timetable says so.
Owning cars works beautifully in one city and not at all in a hundred. Nobody owns a fleet in 1,200 cities. Any company claiming to is describing something else, usually a badge on somebody else's door.
Going worldwide meant a decision: keep the vehicles and stay local, or let the vehicles go and take the standard with us instead. We let them go. What travels is not the metal. It is what the vehicle has to be, what the chauffeur has to hold, what the passenger is owed, and who answers when it fails.
The operators carrying RYDES work today are the business we used to be, in cities we will never live in. That is not a positioning statement. It is why we know what the work is worth, and what happens to an operator when a network squeezes them.
The booking and dispatch platform behind RYDES was built in-house, by the same people who had spent fifteen years dispatching cars. That combination is rarer than it sounds, and it shows up in small places rather than large ones.
Software written by people who have never dispatched a vehicle handles the happy path well. A booking is made, an operator accepts, a car arrives. What it handles badly is the ninety seconds after a flight diverts to another airport at one in the morning. Or that a child seat removes a passenger position, so a party of three with a toddler no longer fits the class they selected. Or that a terminal moved its pickup zone last month and the map has not caught up.
Those are not edge cases. In this industry they are Tuesday. Designing for them from the beginning, rather than patching them in once the complaints arrive, is most of the difference between a chauffeur service and an app that dispatches cars.
Almost every complaint in this industry comes from ambiguity about which of these three is responsible when something fails.
You choose a vehicle class and a time, and you see the final local price before you commit, with tolls, road charges, airport access fees and the waiting allowance already inside it.
We vet the operator, publish the price, guarantee the class, track the flight, brief the chauffeur and answer the phone at three in the morning. If the car does not arrive, we and the operator answer for it together, and you deal with us.
An independent licensed local business that holds the transport licence, the vehicle, the insurance and the chauffeur. Sometimes a fleet of two hundred, sometimes one immaculate car. They know which door of that terminal works, because they live there.
We say operators rather than companies deliberately. A great deal of the best chauffeur work in the world is done by individually licensed owner-drivers who are not companies in any meaningful sense, and excluding them would lower the standard rather than raise it. We were one of them.
A network only means something if the promise survives crossing a border. This is the part that does not change.
| Guarantee | What it means | Where it varies |
|---|---|---|
| The fare covers the journey you booked | Taxes, tolls, road pricing and airport access fees are inside the quoted figure, and traffic does not change it. | The figure itself, which reflects local operating costs |
| Only your changes change it | Adding a stop on the day, or waiting beyond the free allowance, adjusts the total. Nothing else does, and you are told before it applies. | Nowhere |
| Sixty minutes free at airports | Measured from the actual landing time rather than the schedule. Fifteen minutes at every other pickup. | Nowhere |
| Free cancellation | Free up to 24 hours before pickup, for every booking type. Inside that window it is charged in full. | Nowhere |
| The class you booked, or better | Named models are representative. The vehicle that arrives meets the class standard or exceeds it, and substitution runs upward only. | Which models represent a class in that city |
| A licensed operator | Licensing, insurance and driver credentials verified before the operator can accept work, not checked ride by ride. | The licence itself, set by each jurisdiction |
| Service animals travel free | In every class, with no advance notice and no add-on. No operator may decline one. | Nowhere |
| Kerbside pickup at no cost | Meet and greet, child seats and pet carriage are the paid add-ons, priced openly. | Where the kerb actually is, which some airports decide for us |
The right-hand column is the honest part. A guarantee that quietly changes shape in some markets is not a guarantee, so where something does vary we would rather name it than let you discover it.
This is where our model parts company with the way most networked chauffeur services run, and it is a difference we chose to pay for.
The standard arrangement is an auction. Rides are released to local operators who compete to take them, and the margin improves as the accepted rate falls. It is an efficient mechanism and it is entirely legal. We have simply spent fifteen years on the receiving end of it.
RYDES offers work at a published net rate. The operator is told what a journey pays before deciding whether to take it, and that figure does not move because two other operators happen to be awake. Nor is an operator penalised for declining. Acceptance-rate scoring is common and its effect is predictable: operators take work they cannot properly service, at hours they should not be driving, in vehicles already committed elsewhere. The passenger experiences that as a car that does not arrive.
Real money, and it is worth saying so rather than presenting the decision as pure principle. We fill some jobs more slowly than an auction would. We pay more for them. Our margin on a given ride is thinner than it needs to be.
What comes back is an operator who accepted the work because it made commercial sense to them, which remains the only reliable predictor of whether the car turns up. Having run a fleet on the other side of that equation, we think it is the better trade.
Everything that is not a choice is already in the fare. The one thing left to you is the one thing that should be.
Taxes, tolls, road charges and airport access fees are inside the price you are quoted. You will not find them itemised at the end, and they do not move because a road was slow. That is the part we can settle in advance, so we settle it.
Gratuity sits outside the base fare and is offered at payment, where you can add a percentage, enter your own figure, or decline. Declining is a visible option rather than a link you have to hunt for.
The reason we can leave it genuinely open is the published net rate. Your chauffeur agreed what this journey pays before accepting it. Their income does not depend on what you choose, which is precisely what makes the choice free. A network that leaves gratuity optional while also auctioning the work downward has moved the shortfall onto the driver and called it generosity.
The ask is also made once, in advance, on a screen. Nobody is standing in front of you at the kerb with a card reader while you work out what is expected. That moment is the part of tipping most people dislike, and it does not happen here.
Anything you add goes to the chauffeur who drove you. If you would rather not, choose no tip and nothing further is asked, at payment or afterwards.
Four things we are regularly assumed to be. Correcting them here saves somebody a disappointing booking.
Anything not covered here, write to info@rydes.co, or reach dispatch at any hour on +1 888 881 7933.
Not any more. We ran our own fleet in Seattle for years, which is where the standard on this site comes from, but a fleet cannot follow you into 1,200 cities. Every vehicle in the network today belongs to a licensed chauffeur operator in that city, held to a published standard, with licensing, insurance and driver credentials verified before they can accept work.
Seattle, Washington. The network reaches 1,200 cities across 90 countries through contracted local operators rather than through offices, which is why the car meeting you in Osaka or Lisbon is run by people who live there.
With RYDES to arrange the journey, and with an independent licensed transportation operator who carries it out. The operator holds the transport licence, the vehicle and the insurance. What separates us from most platforms is what happens when a booking fails: that is answered for by RYDES and the operator together, and you deal with us rather than being sent to argue with a company you have never spoken to.
A professional chauffeur working for a licensed local operator, which may be a substantial fleet or an individually licensed owner-operator. You receive their name, photograph, vehicle and registration roughly three hours before pickup. We say operator rather than company because many of the best chauffeurs in this industry are licensed individuals, and we were one of them.
No. Work is offered at a published net rate, so the operator knows what a journey pays before deciding whether to take it. There is no auction and no mechanism by which the operator willing to accept least wins the work. We fill some jobs more slowly as a result and we pay more for them.
No. Acceptance-rate scoring is widespread and its consequence is predictable: operators take work they cannot properly service, at hours they should not be driving, in vehicles already committed elsewhere. The passenger experiences that as a car that does not arrive. We would rather an operator declined.
No. Your chauffeur agreed what this journey pays before accepting it, so nothing about their income depends on your decision. A tip is offered at payment where you can add a percentage, enter your own amount, or decline, and declining is a visible option. Anything you add goes to the chauffeur who drove you.
Only if you change the journey. Adding a stop on the day, or keeping the car beyond the free waiting allowance, adjusts the total, and you are told before it applies. Traffic, route, weather and time of day do not change what you pay. Taxes, tolls and airport access fees were settled when you booked.
Contact us rather than the operator, and we resolve it. Dispatch is staffed around the clock. Depending on the circumstances that means re-dispatching another operator, arranging an alternative, or refunding the booking. Delivering the booking is a joint responsibility of RYDES and the operator, so you are not left chasing anybody.
A different product entirely. An app matches you with whoever is nearest, at a price that moves with demand, minutes before you travel. RYDES assigns a named chauffeur and a specific vehicle class hours or months ahead, at a price fixed when you book, and holds the car for an hour if your flight is late.
Yes. The booking and dispatch platform was built in-house by the same people who spent fifteen years dispatching vehicles. That is why it handles the parts that actually go wrong: a diversion at one in the morning, a child seat taking a passenger position, a terminal that moved its pickup zone last month.
Frequently, and each city guide says where. In Paris the regulated taxi flat fare into the centre is genuinely competitive. In Singapore the MRT and metered taxis usually beat us for one or two people. From JFK in evening traffic the AirTrain and Long Island Rail Road beat any car. We would rather tell you than have you find out.
Three hours before pickup as a working minimum, which is what an operator needs to allocate a vehicle and brief a chauffeur. Reservations open a year ahead. This is not an on-demand service and does not try to be one, because a named driver and the right child seat in the car cannot be arranged in eleven minutes.
The difference between what you pay and the net rate paid to the operator. That margin covers the vetting, the pricing, twenty-four-hour dispatch, flight tracking, the technology and the guarantee behind the booking. It is not taken by reducing the operator's rate afterwards or by adding charges to your fare at the end.
Start at the become an operator page, which sets out the licensing, insurance and vehicle requirements before you invest time in an application. Published net rates, no auction and no acceptance-rate penalty apply from the first booking. Applications that do not meet the standard are declined rather than provisionally accepted.
See what a journey costs in your city, with everything already inside the number.
