If you are searching for how to book Uber in Pakistan, the short answer is that you cannot. Uber stopped running its own app in Pakistan on 30 April 2024, when it switched off Lahore, its last city. It had already pulled out of Karachi, Islamabad, Peshawar, Multan and Faisalabad in October 2022 (Dawn, 30 April 2024). The fallback it pointed users to, its own subsidiary Careem, then suspended ride-hailing in Pakistan on 18 July 2025 (Dawn, 18 June 2025). So if you land in Lahore with the Uber app on your phone, it will not find you a car.
That leaves two ways to get around: an on-demand app used on the day, or a car you book before you travel. Most people flying in from the UK, the Gulf or North America with luggage and family choose the second. This guide covers that choice. It also covers something people rarely ask until it bites them: a pre-booking fixes some things when you book, and other things only when a driver is assigned.
Decision summary
- Does Uber work in Pakistan? No. The app was withdrawn completely in April 2024.
- Is Uber coming back to Pakistan? None of the sources checked for this guide mention a planned return. Careem, which Uber owned, has since left ride-hailing in Pakistan too.
- Quick trip across town on the day: a local on-demand app can do the job. Expect to agree the price live and get whichever driver is nearby.
- Airport arrival, intercity run, elderly parents, a wedding day: pre-book a car with a driver and treat the booking as a process with stages, not a single tap.
- Safety baseline for British travellers: the UK Foreign Office advises against street taxis and online taxi apps, and recommends licensed companies where an operator dispatches the driver (FCDO safety and security advice).
How to book Uber in Pakistan: where things stand today
The exit came in two steps, and much of what still turns up online was written in between.
In October 2022 Uber stopped operating in five cities and moved them onto Careem, which it had bought in 2019 for $3.1 billion. Lahore stayed on the Uber app for another eighteen months. On 30 April 2024 Uber emailed Lahore users that the app would no longer be offered there, and anyone who opened it saw “Uber no longer in Lahore”. At the time Uber said Careem would carry on providing ride-hailing across Pakistan.
That lasted just over a year. In June 2025 Careem’s co-founder and chief executive, Mudassir Sheikha, announced that Careem would suspend ride-hailing in Pakistan on 18 July 2025. He gave three reasons: the macroeconomic reality, tougher competition, and where global capital was being spent. Careem kept a technology team in Pakistan building its wider app, but the ride product stopped. Dawn’s report also said Careem’s support channel would stay open until 18 September 2025 for leftover wallet balances and questions.
Any guide telling you to “just use Careem if Uber is down” is therefore out of date twice over. Treat a blog post promising Uber’s return as speculation until it cites Uber itself. Even then, an on-demand app matches whoever is nearby when you ask, which is a different product from a car arranged for a 03:40 landing.
The Pakistan Uber alternative that suits your trip
There is no single Pakistan Uber alternative. There are several kinds of transport, and each is good at a different job.
The on-demand app most visitors hear about is inDrive. It started in Pakistan by 2021, and within a year it was reported as the country’s most downloaded ride-hailing app (Wikipedia, citing Daily Times). Its model is different from Uber’s: the terms of each trip, fare included, are agreed between passenger and driver rather than set by the app. It also runs a City to City product in Pakistan. That can suit a flexible local traveller. It is less comfortable for a jet-lagged family of five with six cases who want the price and the car settled before they leave home.
Then there are street and airport-kerb taxis, hotel cars, a relative’s friend with a Corolla, and pre-booked cars with a driver. The FCDO’s position is blunt and worth reading in full: avoid street taxis, e-taxis and online apps for taxi services, and use reputable, licensed companies where you call for a taxi and the operator contacts a driver. A pre-booked, operator-dispatched car is the option closest to that advice.
| Option | How the price is set | Who picks the driver | Best for | Weak spot |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| On-demand app (e.g. inDrive) | Proposed and agreed live, trip by trip | Whichever nearby driver accepts | Short city hops, locals with a Pakistani SIM | No advance commitment; you need data and a local number on arrival |
| Airport kerb or street taxi | Agreed with the driver, often under pressure | Whoever is at the front of the rank | Last resort | FCDO advises British travellers to avoid street taxis |
| Hotel car | Hotel’s rate, usually quoted in advance | The hotel | Hotel-to-airport runs | Tied to one property; limited for intercity or family pickups |
| Pre-booked car with driver | Quoted before travel for a stated route and vehicle class | The operator, which dispatches the driver | Airport arrivals, intercity trips, family groups, bookings made from abroad | Driver details arrive later than the booking, which is the subject of the rest of this guide |
For a head-to-head on price models, our comparison of iDrive with the on-demand apps still operating in Pakistan goes through each one.
Booking ahead instead: the steps that hold up
Booking ahead is simple in outline. Where it goes wrong is when the booker and the passenger are different people in different countries. A son in Bradford books a car for his mother landing in Islamabad. A daughter in Dubai arranges an intercity run for her father. Here is the sequence that holds up.
- Get the facts before you ask for a price. Final flight number and Pakistan arrival date. The exact destination address with a checked map pin. Every passenger counted, including children. Checked bags listed by size, not just by number.
- Choose the vehicle class for the load, not the photo. Four adults and five large cases will not fit in an economy hatchback, whatever the listing looks like. Size up to an MPV or SUV class when in doubt.
- Keep the whole booking in one channel. On iDrive you start on the journey planning page: enter the route, date, time, passengers and bags together, and it shows the vehicle classes run on that road with an indicative fare where the road is priced. Where a live price exists you can book online; otherwise a person replies by email with a quote. Nothing is confirmed until you have a booking confirmation with a reference.
- Save the booking reference somewhere that works offline. Forward the confirmation email to the passenger and to one backup adult.
- Wait for the assignment message, and know when to chase it. That step gets its own section below.
If you are doing this from Britain for relatives, our walk-through for booking a Pakistan taxi from the UK covers the UK side: paying from abroad, and getting the confirmation to the person actually travelling.
What a pre-booking settles when you book
People who grew up on Uber assume a booking means a car and a named driver on a map. A pre-booking made days or weeks ahead works differently, and on purpose.
When you complete an iDrive booking, the record holds the journey itself:
- The route: pickup point and destination as you entered them, including any stops you declared.
- The date and pickup time, in Pakistan time. For an arrival, the flight details sit alongside it.
- The vehicle class: economy hatchback, saloon, family MPV, SUV and so on, with the seating and luggage capacity you chose against.
- The fare quoted for that journey and class, with the reference number, in the confirmation email.
- The passenger count and luggage you declared, which is what the vehicle class was checked against.
Read that list for what it leaves out. A specific car is not on it. Nor is a registration plate, a driver’s name or a phone number. None of those can honestly exist at booking time for a trip that is still a week away.
The quoted fare also relates only to the journey as declared. Add a stop at a cousin’s house in Gujar Khan, turn two passengers into five, or bring a flatpack wardrobe, and the vehicle or the route may need to change. Tell the operator before the day rather than negotiating with the driver at the kerb.
What only becomes definite when a driver is assigned
Assignment is the moment the booking stops being a plan and becomes a person with a car. At that point you should receive:
- the driver’s name and a contact number;
- the vehicle: make, model, colour and registration;
- the booking reference, so the passenger can match the message to the confirmation;
- any meeting-point note from the operations desk, such as where to wait at an arrivals hall.
The model within the class is one of the things that settles here. As an example, if you booked a saloon, a Corolla and a Civic are both honest outcomes. A hatchback turning up for a saloon booking is not. The same goes for the driver. iDrive’s cancellation policy asks passengers to check the driver, the registration plate and the vehicle details against the booking confirmation before setting off. Do it before anyone loads a bag. If they do not match, do not get in: call the number on the booking and sort it out from the terminal, not from the back seat.
Why not assign on day one? A driver named three weeks out is a guess. His car can go in for a service, a family wedding can take his week, or the vehicle can fail its pre-trip check. Assigning closer to the date lets the desk match the journey to a driver and vehicle that are actually free and fit. A name you got early and then had to replace is worth less than one you get later that holds.
Booked but driver not assigned yet
This is the status that worries people, and most of the time it means nothing is wrong. “Booked but driver not assigned yet” usually means the journey is on the desk’s list and has not reached the point where it gets matched. What matters is how close to pickup you are.
How long before pickup the driver details arrive
A straight answer first: iDrive does not publish a fixed hour by which every booking gets its driver. Its booking page says only that driver or vehicle details follow by email before travel. The timing depends on the route, the vehicle class and the time of day. A mid-morning Lahore airport run in a saloon is easier to fill than a 7-seater SUV for a pre-dawn pickup in a smaller town.
So there is no promised hour to hold anyone to. What you can do is plan around checkpoints. The ones below are a sensible rule of thumb for a traveller. They are not a service guarantee.
| Time before pickup | What is normal | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| A week or more | Booked, no driver yet | Nothing. Check the flight number and the address pin are right on the booking. |
| Two to three days | Often still unassigned, especially for common classes on busy routes | Confirm any late changes (extra passenger, new flight time) in writing now, while they are easy to absorb. |
| The day before | Most people want a name by now, and it is reasonable to ask | If nothing has arrived, reply to the confirmation email quoting your reference and ask for the assignment status. |
| Under about six hours, or before you board a long-haul flight | An unassigned booking at this point deserves a direct answer | Chase through the booking channel and get a clear yes or no. You will be out of contact in the air. |
The flight matters more than the clock. Nobody on an overnight from Manchester can sort out a problem at 35,000 feet, so for arrivals your deadline is before the passenger boards the last leg.
If you installed the iDrive app on your phone’s Home Screen and allowed notifications, booking, driver and pickup updates arrive as alerts as well as by email. That helps if a relative checks a phone more often than an inbox. The email is still the record.
What to do if the assignment is late
Work through these in order.
- Check spam and the right inbox. Assignment messages go to the address used at booking. When a relative booked for you, that is their inbox, not yours.
- Reply on the booking thread with the reference. One clear message: reference, passenger name, flight number, pickup time, and the question “Has a driver been assigned?”. Several vague messages on different channels slow things down.
- Offer flexibility if you have any. A slightly different vehicle class, or a pickup fifteen minutes later, can be the difference between assigned and not assigned for an awkward slot. Say what you would accept, then let the desk tell you what that means for the price before anything changes.
- Know what happens if no car can be provided. iDrive’s cancellation policy (published, and marked as in legal review) says that where it cannot properly provide a booking it will first try to offer a replacement vehicle or driver, and that if it cancels, anything paid is refunded in full with no cancellation fee. That protects your money. It does not get your mother home from the airport, so the next step matters.
- Keep a fallback ready for arrivals. Before the flight, agree who in the family could collect at short notice. At the airport itself, use the terminal’s official arrangements rather than touts. The FCDO advice on street taxis applies at arrivals too.
What not to do: accept a lift from a man in the arrivals hall who says the booked driver “sent him”. A real change of driver shows up as a new assignment message with a new name and registration. It does not arrive as a stranger with a story.
Before you book: check the destination, not just the driver
A well-run booking does not make a route safe. Check the current FCDO travel advice for Pakistan for your exact destination before you pay for anything. At the time of writing, in September 2026, it advises against all travel to parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, including the city of Peshawar, and to Balochistan. It advises against all but essential travel to Azad Jammu and Kashmir, to Sindh north of and including Nawabshah, and to Dera Ghazi Khan. That matters to a lot of diaspora families whose home towns sit in or near those areas. If your trip goes there, a pre-booked car does not change the advice, and it can affect your travel insurance.
The same advice also warns that planned protests in Islamabad, Rawalpindi and other cities can close roads and disrupt mobile and internet services at short notice. It notes that monsoon flooding and landslides usually run from late June to early October. Both are good reasons to save your booking reference and the driver’s number where you can read them offline, and to leave slack in any schedule that ends at a departure gate.
If you are planning an ordinary arrival into the capital, our Islamabad Airport transfer page has the pickup and onward-route options for that airport specifically.
Two related guides from the same group
If you are still at the stage of working out what to arrange rather than booking it, our sister service Pakistan Taxi has a practical checklist on what to sort out before you fly to Pakistan. Pakistan Taxi is an iDrive brand, and its journey pages are for planning and enquiries rather than instant booking.
Many overseas Pakistanis combine a trip home with Umrah. Booking stages work the same way in Saudi Arabia: a paid booking, a check, then a driver. Our sister company Saudi Cab Co sets out each of its stages in its guide to booking statuses from payment to arrival, including why a driver is not named on the day you pay.
Questions people ask
Does Uber work in Pakistan at all, even at the airport?
No. Uber switched off its Pakistan app on 30 April 2024, and there is no airport exception. Careem, its subsidiary, suspended ride-hailing in Pakistan on 18 July 2025.
Is Uber coming back to Pakistan?
No return had been announced in the reporting checked for this guide. If you are flying in soon, plan as if it will not be available.
My booking says booked but driver not assigned yet. Should I worry?
Not a week out, and usually not two or three days out either. Drivers are normally matched closer to the date. Ask for a status update the day before if nothing has arrived. For an arriving passenger, get a clear answer before they board their last flight.
Can the driver change after assignment?
It can happen, for example after a breakdown or illness. A legitimate change comes through the booking channel with a new name and registration. Never accept a substitute who simply turns up in person.
What is the best Pakistan Uber alternative for a family arriving from the UK?
For an airport arrival with luggage and older relatives, an operator-dispatched, pre-booked car with a driver fits both the practical needs and the FCDO’s taxi advice. For short hops later, a local on-demand app may be enough.
