What’s the Cheaper Bike Sharing Option in Seattle: Lime Bike or JUMP?

How to decide? Lester Black

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An earlier version of this post incorrectly stated the cost of Lime Bikes. It has been amended. We apologize for the error.

Lime Bike’s monopoly on citywide bike sharing in Seattle is officially over. For the last five months, Lime was the only game in town, but on Tuesday Uber announced that they were expanding their pilot of JUMP bicycles to stretch across the entirety of Seattle’s city limits. Previously, JUMP would have charged you a $25 fee if you parked your bike outside of their service area.

So now that we have a bike rental choice, what’s cheaper—Lime Bike or JUMP?

And the answer is: JUMP.

JUMP announced on Tuesday that they would no longer charge a fee to start their bikes, instead charging $0.15 for each minute of riding, according to a press release from the company. Lime Bike, which immediately raised its rates back in September when its competitors left town, charges a $1 start-up cost and then $0.15 per minute. Previously, Lime also offered a cheaper non-electronic bike option, but the company has been removing those manual bikes from the streets and will have an electric-only fleet in Seattle sometime this month.

That means that no matter how far you pedal your rideshare bicycle, JUMP will always be one dollar cheaper.



Correction: an earlier version of this post incorrectly stated the cost of Lime Bikes. We apologize for the error.