Amazon Hub vs Amazon Flex: $5.69 net an hour vs per-package pay

Amazon Flex is the one an individual with a car can sign up for, and its 2025 median of $20.89 an hour gross falls to about $5.69 once 80 miles a block is charged at the IRS mileage rate. Amazon Hub Delivery is a program for local businesses. It pays per package, and Amazon doesn’t publish the rate, so no honest hourly comparison exists yet.

The numbers (Amazon Flex, per hour)

Gross: Gridwise 2025 median, block pay plus tips. Costs: a 4-hour, 80-mile block at the IRS standard mileage rate of 76¢ (July to December 2026). Tax: 15.3% self-employment tax only, no income tax. Rounded to the nearest cent.

Hub Delivery has no column. The only pay figure Amazon publishes for it is an “up to” annual revenue number that Amazon itself says isn’t typical, and you can’t get an hourly rate from that.

Which “Amazon Hub” this is about

“Amazon Hub” is the name of two different programs, and only one of them involves delivering.

1. Amazon Hub Delivery. Amazon drops packages at a local business every day, and the business scans, sorts and delivers them in its own community using the Hub app. This is the program that competes with Flex, and it’s the one compared here.
2. Amazon Hub Counter. These are staffed pickup points inside partner stores, where customers collect their own packages. Hub Counter is part of the wider Amazon Hub network, along with Hub Locker. When Amazon announced the expansion in 2019, stores held packages for 14 days, and the first partners named were GNC, Health Mart and Stage Stores. Counter hosts don’t deliver anything, and there’s no confirmed U.S. figure for what they’re paid.

Side by side

The Flex details come from the Amazon Flex FAQ. The Hub details come from the Hub Delivery homepage and its How It Works page.

There is also a difference in commitment that the table doesn’t show. On Flex you take a block when you want one and skip the weeks you don’t. A Hub Delivery route runs 5 to 7 days a week and has to be finished by 9 PM every day. Owners can give the deliveries to staff they already employ, but those wages then come out of the per-package revenue.

Assumptions

Swap in your own figures for any of these.

1. Flex gross pay: $20.89 an hour, the Gridwise 2025 median for block pay plus tips. Gridwise doesn’t say whether its “hour” means active time or logged-in time.
2. Block length: 4 hours. Amazon uses that length in its own example of a $72 block, and it fits Gridwise’s median block pay of $83.14 ($83.14 ÷ $20.89 is about 4).
3. Miles per block: 80, the low end of Gridwise’s 80 to 150 mile estimate. This is the generous case.
4. Cost per mile: 76¢, the IRS rate from 1 July to 31 December 2026. From 1 January to 30 June 2026 the rate was 72.5¢. The IRS rate is a deduction rate, not a measurement of your car, so if your car is cheap to run your real cash cost may be lower.
5. Tax: we assume 15.3% self-employment tax on the whole net profit, which simplifies the real calculation. Federal and state income tax depend on your bracket and state, so they’re left out.
6. Hidden costs not priced in: phone plan and data, parking tickets (the driver pays them), and the drive to and from the station if Gridwise’s mileage doesn’t include it.

Worked example: one Flex block

Gross: 4 hours x $20.89                 = $83.56
Mileage: 80 miles x $0.76               = $60.80
Net before tax: $83.56 - $60.80         = $22.76
SE tax: $22.76 x 15.3%                  = $3.48
Net after SE tax: $22.76 - $3.48        = $19.28

Per hour: $19.28 / 4                    = $4.82

Three details from Amazon’s FAQ affect this figure:

• Amazon’s own share of pay is at least $15 to $19 per scheduled hour, depending on location and demand, and tips make up the rest of the advertised “$18 to $25”. Gridwise’s median tip is $0.00 per block, and the average is $1.97. For blocks with tips, only the low end of the offered range is guaranteed.
• Amazon provides commercial auto cover in every state except New York. It applies only while you’re actively delivering during a block, and claims are denied if anyone else was driving.
• You choose your payment days. Instant Pay is free to the Amazon Flex Debit Card (the card’s fees and cash back, worked out). Standard bank transfers are free, and a faster Real Time Payment transfer or a payout to any other debit card costs $0.50.

For the full Flex breakdown, including wear, see Is Amazon Flex worth it?.

Worked example: a Hub Delivery week at the headline figure

Amazon publishes no per-package rate. Its only number is “up to $30K” in extra revenue a year. The footnote calls this an “upper-end annualized revenue figure” based on 2025 partners and says it “is not a representation of typical results or a guarantee of earnings.” When the program launched in 2023, the same headline said up to $27,000.

Dividing that ceiling down shows what the best partners take in, before any costs:

Per week: $30,000 / 52                  = $576.92

Per delivery day, 7-day region: $576.92 / 7 = $82.42
Per delivery day, 5-day region: $576.92 / 5 = $115.38

Implied per package, 60 a day, 7 days: $82.42 / 60  = $1.37
Implied per package, 20 a day, 5 days: $115.38 / 20 = $5.77

Amazon doesn’t say what volume or region produced the $30,000. The implied per-package figure therefore sits somewhere in a range more than four times wide, and it describes the top of the program, not the typical partner.

Amazon doesn’t publish the costs either:

• You must provide a certificate of insurance, and Amazon doesn’t say how much cover it needs. The Hub homepage and How It Works page don’t mention any Amazon-provided insurance like Flex’s.
• Routes are local, but Amazon publishes no route distances to estimate vehicle and fuel cost from.
• If an employee drives the route, their wages come out of the revenue. If you drive it yourself, someone has to cover the store while you’re out.
• The 50 sq ft of secure storage has a cost if that floor space could earn money some other way.

To get an hourly figure for your own business:

(weekly package revenue - weekly vehicle, insurance and labor costs)
/ hours spent sorting and delivering each week

Ask Amazon for the per-package rate before you commit. The Hub Delivery site checks eligibility by zip code.

For scale: a median Flex block of $83.14 every day for 364 days grosses $30,262.96, which is about Hub Delivery’s best-case headline. For Hub that figure is the ceiling. For Flex it’s the median.

What changes the answer

On Flex, mileage moves the number most. Here is the 4-hour block at $83.56 gross, charged at 76¢ a mile:

Other things that change it:

• Higher pay. The top 10% of Flex drivers in Gridwise’s data make $25.96 an hour. At 80 miles that’s $103.84 - $60.80 = $43.04 a block, or $10.76 an hour.
• The first-half rate. At 72.5¢, 80 miles costs $58.00, and net per hour is $6.39.
• A cheaper car. If your real running cost per mile is below the IRS rate, your cash net is higher than these figures. Your tax deduction still uses the IRS rate, and deductible mileage depends on commuting rules.
• Shorter blocks. Amazon Now blocks run under an hour and grocery blocks run 2 to 4 hours. Any block with fewer miles per dollar of pay nets more.
• Dropping blocks. Drop a block at least 45 minutes before its start, or within 5 minutes if you accepted it less than 45 minutes before the start. Late drops and no-shows can hurt your standing.

On Hub Delivery, the answer depends on the per-package rate you’re offered, how many packages your area produces, and whether the route is driven by a paid employee or the owner.

Compared with

The three apps are within about a dollar of each other on gross pay, and Gridwise ranked Flex third for 2025. After costs the gap widens, as shown in Amazon Flex vs Spark after mileage. The generous-case Flex net of $5.69 is below the federal minimum wage, which an employer pays without you supplying the car. Many states set a higher minimum, so compare against your own state’s figure.

Some local rules raise Flex’s floor:

• California (Prop 22): pay before tips is guaranteed to be at least 120% of the local minimum wage, plus $0.37 a mile in 2026. On an 80-mile block that adds 80 x $0.37 = $29.60 toward vehicle costs.
• Seattle: for blocks with a stop in the city, the minimum is the greater of $0.47 a minute plus $0.80 a mile, or $5.34 per offer, before tips. If all 240 minutes and 80 miles of a 4-hour block counted, that would be $112.80 + $64.00 = $176.80. The city’s ordinance decides how time and miles are counted.

Taxes on either one

Flex drivers are independent contractors. Business income and expenses go on Schedule C, and self-employment tax of 15.3% goes on Schedule SE once net earnings reach $400. Three rules matter in 2026:

• Split your mileage log by date. The IRS rate is 72.5¢ through 30 June and 76¢ from 1 July.
• The reporting threshold for “certain payments” is now $2,000 for tax years beginning after 2025. Income below it is still taxable.
• If you expect to owe $1,000 or more, estimated payments are due 15 April, 15 June, 15 September and 15 January.

The “no tax on tips” deduction now names app-based delivery drivers as an example, but it doesn’t reduce Social Security or Medicare tax. With a median tip of $0, it’s worth little to most Flex drivers.

Hub Delivery money is business revenue. How it’s reported depends on how your business is set up, and Amazon’s Hub homepage doesn’t say what tax form partners receive. Everything here is arithmetic, not tax advice, so check what applies to you with a tax professional.

Who each one suits

• Flex suits someone with a qualifying car and phone (iOS 17+, or Android 14+ with a 4500mAh battery) who wants to pick their own hours. Most people can start delivering in less than a week. It only nets anything if you keep the miles low.
• Hub Delivery suits an existing local business with spare storage, an employee with slack time, and enough local demand for a route 5 to 7 days a week. Get the per-package rate before you sign anything.

Sources

• Amazon Flex FAQ
• Gridwise: How much do Amazon Flex drivers make
• Amazon Hub Delivery
• Amazon Hub Delivery: How it works
• IRS standard mileage rates
• IRS self-employment tax

Verdict in one number

$5.69 an hour. That’s Flex’s net before tax in the generous low-mileage case, and it’s the only figure in this comparison anyone can calculate. Hub Delivery stays unknown until Amazon tells you what it pays per package.