Amazon Flex UK rates: £14 to £18 gross, about £4 an hour net

Amazon Flex UK advertises £14 to £18 an hour for car blocks, before costs. Take off vehicle costs at HMRC’s 55p a mile and basic-rate income tax, and the numbers say roughly £2.40 to £5.60 an hour. That is before the insurance Amazon requires you to buy yourself.

The numbers

Assumptions: gross from Amazon Flex UK’s earnings page; 20 miles per block hour, derived from Gridwise’s US per-block mileage (no UK figure exists); vehicle cost at HMRC’s 55p a mile; 20% basic-rate tax on profit and no Class 4 NI; no tips; insurance not included. Figures are to the penny.

US Flex is a separate program with its own pay, free insurance and IRS rules (the US math is here). Apart from the mileage assumption, which is labelled, no US figures go into the UK numbers below. This is arithmetic, not tax or financial advice.

What Amazon advertises in the UK

Amazon’s UK earnings page says delivery partners can earn £14 to £18 per hour. The homepage words it as most drivers earning “up to” that range. The footnote qualifies it:

• It is an estimate, and it depends on location.
• It assumes you deliver a set number of packages in an estimated block of time “while driving a standard motorised vehicle.”
• Hourly earnings “may vary,” because deliveries can take more or less time than estimated.
• It is a before-costs figure, and Amazon does not present it as a guarantee.

Older articles still quote lower rates. One insurer’s April 2026 article cited £13 to £17, up from £13 to £15. Amazon’s own pages are the most recent and most official source, so £14 to £18 is the rate used here.

Two things that could raise the number are left out. Amazon’s UK earnings page doesn’t mention tips, so this breakdown counts none. Some blogs mention surge or peak pay, but Amazon’s UK pages don’t, so that isn’t counted either.

You see each block’s length and estimated earnings before you accept it, and you can book blocks up to a week ahead. The rate covers only the time inside the block.

Block lengths by vehicle

Amazon’s UK requirements page and its vehicle types page set out what you can drive and for how long:

The two pages disagree about vans. The requirements page accepts vans and enclosed-bed pickups, but the vehicle types page doesn’t list them. If you drive a van, ask onboarding before you count on getting blocks.

To sign up you must be 18 or older and have the right to work in the UK (checked during onboarding), a compatible Android phone or iPhone, and a bank account. Car deliveries need a full UK license. E-bike riders don’t need a driving license.

Assumptions

Swap in your own figure for any of these.

1. Gross pay is £16.00 an hour, the midpoint of £14 to £18. Amazon’s homepage calls the range “up to,” so £18 is the top of the range, not the usual rate.
2. Tips are £0.00, because Amazon’s UK earnings page doesn’t mention them.
3. You drive 20 miles per block hour. There is no published UK mileage figure. In the US, Gridwise estimates a block covers 80 to 150 miles. Its median pay per block ($83.14) divided by its median hourly pay ($20.89) gives about 4 hours per block, so 80 miles ÷ 4 hours = 20 miles an hour, the low end of its range. UK routes may be shorter or longer.
4. Vehicle cost is 55p a mile. That is HMRC’s simplified rate for cars and vans on the first 10,000 business miles in the 2026 to 2027 tax year, up from 45p. We use it as a stand-in for fuel, wear and depreciation. It is also the amount you can deduct, which keeps the tax arithmetic simple.
5. Insurance is not included. You have to buy it, but the quotes in the research disagree too much to use one number (see the insurance section below).
6. Tax is 20% income tax on profit. We assume a main job already uses your Personal Allowance and that your Flex profit stays below £12,570, so there is no Class 4 National Insurance.
7. Phone and data costs are not priced. You need a compatible phone, and you pay to run it.
8. Working is shown to the penny, and the only rounding is on the final line of each calculation.

Worked example: one 4-hour car block

The block pay is assumed. Amazon shows the real figure before you accept.

Gross:          4 hours × £16.00          = £64.00
Miles:          4 hours × 20 miles        = 80 miles
Vehicle cost:   80 miles × £0.55          = £44.00
Net:            £64.00 - £44.00           = £20.00
Net per hour:   £20.00 ÷ 4                = £5.00
Income tax:     £20.00 × 20%              = £4.00
After tax:      £20.00 - £4.00            = £16.00
After tax/hour: £16.00 ÷ 4                = £4.00

That counts only the 4 paid hours. Now add the unpaid time and miles. We assume a 30-minute round trip to the delivery station and back, covering 10 miles:

Extra cost:     10 miles × £0.55          = £5.50
After tax:      £16.00 - £5.50            = £10.50
Hours out:      4 + 0.5                   = 4.5 hours
Per hour out:   £10.50 ÷ 4.5              = £2.33

To stay cautious, the tax stays at £4.00, so the station trip isn’t treated as deductible. Whether HMRC lets you claim that travel depends on your circumstances, so check before you claim it.

What changes the answer

Mileage moves the result more than anything else. Net per block hour before tax, at 55p a mile:

Other inputs that shift it:

• Real running cost. If your records show the car costs much less than 55p a mile, use your own figure. At 25p a mile, the 20-mile, £16 hour costs 20 × £0.25 = £5.00 and nets £11.00.
• Your tax position. If Flex is your only income and your profit fits inside the £12,570 Personal Allowance, income tax is £0 and the after-tax figure equals the net figure. At the 40% higher rate, the £5.00 hour drops to £3.00. Scotland’s bands differ from those in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
• The 10,000-mile line. At 20 miles an hour you pass 10,000 business miles after 500 block hours. After that HMRC’s rate falls to 25p, so your deduction shrinks and taxable profit rises, while the car costs just as much to run.
• Unpaid time. Every minute spent driving to the station or waiting there spreads the same pay over more hours.

The cost Amazon doesn’t price: insurance

This is the biggest difference from the US program. Amazon’s UK requirements page says car drivers must have their own Hire and Reward insurance plus at least SD&P cover. It names Inshur (hourly, monthly or annual cover) and Zego (monthly or annual) as partners and doesn’t say it provides any cover itself. E-bike riders need public liability and personal accident insurance, and the named partner is Superscript (annual cover).

No price is used here because the figures in the research conflict. One comparison site gives different hourly costs on different pages, and blog estimates for annual policies vary widely. Get a live quote, turn it into a cost per block hour, and subtract it from the net line above. Hourly cover is easy to convert. For annual cover, divide the premium by the block hours you expect to work in a year, which means a part-timer pays more per hour than someone driving full weeks.

Tax: what HMRC takes from a month of blocks

We assume two 4-hour blocks a week (8 a month), with the same figures as the worked example:

Monthly gross:    8 × £64.00              = £512.00
Monthly miles:    8 × 80                  = 640 miles
Mileage cost:     640 × £0.55             = £352.00
Monthly profit:   £512.00 - £352.00       = £160.00
Income tax (20%): £160.00 × 20%           = £32.00
After tax:        £160.00 - £32.00        = £128.00

Yearly gross:     £512.00 × 12            = £6,144.00
Yearly miles:     640 × 12                = 7,680 (under 10,000)
Mileage deducted: 7,680 × £0.55           = £4,224.00
Yearly profit:    £6,144.00 - £4,224.00   = £1,920.00

How HMRC’s rules apply to that year:

• If your gross trading income is £1,000 or less in a tax year, you generally don’t need to tell HMRC. Above that, you must register for Self Assessment by 5 October after the tax year ends. £6,144 is well over.
• You can deduct either the £1,000 trading allowance or your actual expenses, not both. A £4,224 mileage deduction beats the allowance easily.
• Under the 2026 to 2027 income tax bands, you pay 0% up to £12,570, 20% to £50,270, 40% to £125,140 and 45% above that. Your Flex profit is added to your other income.
• Under GOV.UK’s self-employed NI rates, Class 4 is 6% on profits from £12,570 to £50,270 and 2% above that, so a £1,920 profit pays none. Profit under £7,105 also means no Class 2, though you can choose to pay it voluntarily at £3.65 a week.
• Once you use the mileage rate for a car, you must keep using it for as long as that car is used in the business. You can’t use it for a car you’ve already claimed capital allowances on. Parking can be claimed on top. Keep a mileage log for every block.

When the money arrives

Amazon UK pays every Wednesday for deliveries completed from the previous Monday to Sunday. If that Wednesday is a bank holiday, payment may move to the next business day. A Sunday block is paid 3 days later and a Monday block 9 days later. Unlike US drivers, UK drivers can’t choose their payment days, so your fuel spending can be up to 9 days ahead of your pay.

Amazon also mentions discounts on fuel, EV charging, e-bike accessories and vehicle maintenance from day one. It doesn’t publish their value, so they aren’t in the numbers.

Compared with

For an employed alternative, the UK National Living Wage is £12.71 an hour for workers 21 and over from April 2026. That is £1.29 less than the bottom of the Flex range, but nothing comes off for mileage or insurance. At the same 20% income tax it leaves £10.17 an hour before employee National Insurance (not modelled here), compared with £4.00 for the assumed Flex hour. For other side work ranked the same way, see side hustles by after-tax pay per hour and weekend options by net hourly pay.

E-bike blocks have no 55p-a-mile car cost and need no license, so they are the option to check if you live in London or Manchester. You still pay for the bike and its insurance, and with no published e-bike rate the offer in the app is the only figure to rely on.

Verdict in one number

£4.00 an hour: what a £16, 20-mile block hour leaves after mileage at 55p and basic-rate tax, before insurance and unpaid travel, so the miles you drive decide how much of the £14 to £18 you keep.

Sources

• Amazon Flex UK earnings
• Amazon Flex UK requirements
• Amazon Flex UK vehicle types
• Amazon Flex UK locations
• GOV.UK simplified expenses: vehicles
• GOV.UK trading allowance
• GOV.UK income tax rates
• GOV.UK self-employed National Insurance rates
• Gridwise: how much Amazon Flex drivers make (US)