There are two separate kinds of money here and they are worth keeping apart: what the driver pays to use Gojimbo, and what the rider pays for the trip. They are handled separately and decided in different places.
What the driver pays
Nothing for the first month. Then $20 a month. Zero commission per trip.
The fare you charge is entirely yours. No percentage comes off it, neither when you get paid nor afterwards.
Why that is not the same as a low commission
A 20% commission and a flat fee are not the same deal with a different number. They change who earns what:
- With a commission, the platform earns more the more expensive your trip is. It wants you to raise your rates, take more trips, and keep the client as its own — because if the client goes with you directly, it stops earning.
- With a flat fee, it earns the same whether you charge $30 or $300. It has nothing to gain by standing between you and your client.
The arithmetic, in round numbers:
| You bill per month | With commission | With Gojimbo | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| $500 | $400 | $480 | +$80 |
| $1,000 | $800 | $980 | +$180 |
| $2,000 | $1,600 | $1,980 | +$380 |
| $4,000 | $3,200 | $3,980 | +$780 |
The break-even point is $100 billed per month. Below that, a 20% commission would cost less than the fee, and we would rather say so here than have you find out on your invoice. That is what the free first month is for: you can check with your own trips whether it pays off before paying anything.
You can plug in your own numbers in the calculator on the home page; the math is the same.
What it includes
No tiers, no add-ons. The fee gives you the whole product: schedules, zone rates, a public page with its QR code, verified documents, calendar, history and the bookkeeping of your trips.
No lock-in: cancel whenever you want.
What the rider pays
Booking is free. There is no rider fee and no charge for using the app.
What gets paid is the trip, and the price is locked before confirming. It does not change afterwards: not with traffic, not because demand is high at that hour. There is no surge.
What makes up the price
It depends on how the driver has set up their rates, and there are two ways:
- Flat rate by zone. "Airport, $45." One price per route, stated up front. It is the norm on routes that repeat.
- By distance and time. A base, plus so much per mile, plus so much per minute, with a minimum it won't go below. The distance is the real street route, not a straight line between two points.
On top of that, shown itemized before confirming:
- Night surcharge, if the driver has one and the pickup falls within their night window. It is a percentage of the subtotal.
- Airport fees, when there are any. They are not ours: the airport charges them and they are passed through as is.
Cancelling, waiting, not showing up
The driver publishes these terms and you see them on the trip before booking. The defaults:
| Default | |
|---|---|
| Free cancellation until | 2 h before |
| Late cancellation | $25 |
| No-show | $50 |
| Included wait | 10 min |
| After that, per minute | $1 |
| No-show marked after | 15 min |
| Window to dispute | 48 h |
Two things the table doesn't show that change how it reads:
- The free window is measured against the pickup time, not the moment you booked. "Free until 2 h before" means two hours before you are picked up.
- Only a driver who has already arrived can mark a no-show. It is not a box anyone can tick from home: the trip has to go through "I've arrived" first, and that is the time the wait counts from.
Disputes
Every charge other than the fare is recorded separately, with its reason and its dispute deadline —the 48 hours in the table—. A trip cannot pile up two charges for the same reason, and the deadline is frozen when the entry is created, not when someone looks at it. These charges are settled between rider and driver, just like the trip.
Something worth saying about payments
These are two different things and it helps not to mix them up.
The trip does not go through us, and it won't. The rider pays the driver directly: cash, Zelle, Pago Móvil, bank transfer, USDT, whatever the driver accepts. We charge no card for a trip, we don't hold that money for a minute and we don't take a percentage. That is not a phase before we start charging: it is the product. The driver lists on their profile how they get paid, and anyone with a trip with them sees it before getting in — so nobody has to sort it out over chat when getting out of the car.
The driver fee is ours, and that does go through a payment processor (Stripe): 30 days free, then $20 a month on the driver's card. It is the only thing Gojimbo charges.
We say this here because it is exactly what people assume the other way round: that the platform moves the trip money and the fee is symbolic. It is the opposite.