Waymo has launched a US$29.99 monthly membership programme called Waymo Premier, offering frequent riders in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Phoenix priority pickups, 10% cash back on every trip, up to five free monthly cancellations and early access to new city launches. The programme is launching on an invite-only basis to tens of thousands of qualifying riders; eligibility criteria has not been disclosed publicly. 

In order to justify the monthly fee, riders would need to make fairly extensive use of the service. The median Waymo fare in the Bay Area was US$17.25 at the end of 2025; at a flat 10% return, a subscriber needs roughly four rides per week to break even. Waymo Premier will not be available in Austin or Atlanta, where rides are hailed exclusively through Uber’s app rather than Waymo’s own platform. 

Indeed, the subscription launch is a shot fired at Uber every bit as much as it is an appeal to riders. Waymo has been deliberately expanding into new cities—Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Miami and Orlando—on its own app rather than through ride-hailing partnerships, reducing Uber’s cut and building a direct customer relationship. In Atlanta and Austin, however, the only way to book a Waymo is via Uber’s app. 

Signs of tension have been forming elsewhere: the two will be competing head-to-head in London later in 2026; Waymo via its own platform, and Uber through an autonomous driving partnership with Wayve. Uber’s chief technology officer publicly also called out unsafe Waymo behaviour on social media recently, reacting to a video of a viral Waymo incident and calling it “scary”. 

Waymo rolled out the Ojai minivan in May 2026

Waymo’s new programme closely mirrors the playbook that has made loyalty schemes transformatively profitable for airlines and, to a lesser extent, Uber. Uber One counts more than 50 million paying members at US$9.99 a month, generating predictable revenue that cross-subsidises discounts and strengthens its platform retention. At three times the price, Waymo Premier is undeniably targeting a narrower and more committed user base: the urban commuter for whom a robotaxi is already a daily utility rather than an occasional novelty.

To be sure, Waymo continues to expand its user base rapidly: weekly paid rides have doubled to approximately 500,000 across ten US cities in less than a year, and the company is preparing for its first international deployments later in 2026. Beyond London, it is highly likely that Tokyo will be its next overseas deployment location; testing in the city began in mid-2025. 

Waymo recently rolled out its next-generation robotaxi, the Ojai minivan, built by Zeekr in China with software added on arrival in the US. The new vehicle, offering more interior space than the incumbent Jaguar I-Pace fleet, has begun rolling out in Los Angeles, Phoenix and San Francisco, giving the Premier programme a premium hardware component to accompany the subscription tier.

The membership is also a monetisation experiment at a pivotal moment. Waymo’s technology is capital-intensive—appreciably more so than Tesla’s sensor-light approach or the broadly lower costs of Chinese players—and parent company Alphabet has not disclosed a timeline to profitability. A recurring revenue stream from high-frequency users provides more predictable cashflow than per-ride income alone and gives Waymo behavioural data on its most committed customers.