Zed’s Year in Motion reveals Dubai’s ride-hailing habits in 2025
As 2025 draws to a close, Zed, Dubai’s homegrown ride-hailing platform, has released Zed’s Year in Motion 2025, a year-end snapshot offering data-driven insights into how residents and visitors moved across the city over the past year.
The report combines rider behaviour, travel patterns, and lifestyle trends to provide a detailed picture of mobility in Dubai, highlighting how ride-hailing has become an integral part of daily life—from routine commutes to long-distance journeys.
Zed’s data shows record-breaking usage across the platform. One rider completed 572 trips in a single year, while the longest journey by time lasted 224 minutes. In terms of distance, the longest single ride covered 265 kilometres, while the shortest measured just 450 metres, illustrating the platform’s role in supporting both cross-city travel and short convenience trips.
Reflecting Dubai’s multicultural population, users from 165 different nationalities used the Zed app in 2025. Payment preferences also revealed continued demand for flexibility, with cash accounting for 47 per cent of all rides, making it the most popular payment method on the platform.
Destination data highlighted Dubai’s key commercial and leisure hubs. Business Bay emerged as the most popular drop-off location, while Dubai Mall was the most-booked attraction of the year. In terms of activity peaks, October 30 recorded the highest number of bookings, while March 24 saw the greatest number of completed trips, pointing to seasonal patterns in urban movement.
Time-of-day trends revealed a distinct rhythm in how the city moves. The most popular booking time was 6pm, coinciding with the transition from work to evening social activities. Late-night bookings were most frequent in Dubai Marina, while Jumeirah Village Circle (JVC) recorded the highest volume of early-morning ride requests, reflecting varying mobility needs across communities.
Promotional activity also influenced rider behaviour, with ‘ZED50’ emerging as the most-used promo code of the year, encouraging first-time users to test the platform with discounted introductory rides.
Commenting on the findings, Badr Al Ghurair, CEO of Zed, said the insights offer a clear picture of how Dubai moves, not just in numbers but in everyday habits and routines. He noted that understanding these patterns enables Zed to design mobility experiences that better serve the needs of the city’s residents.
Abhinav Patwa, Executive Vice President and Head of Zed, added that the data underscores how ride-hailing has evolved from a convenience into a daily essential. He said the trends—from early-morning residential travel to late-night social journeys—help the company build more intuitive, user-focused mobility solutions.
As Dubai continues to grow and evolve, Zed’s Year in Motion 2025 highlights how mobility is increasingly shaped by lifestyle, community patterns, and personal routines. By translating data into meaningful insights, Zed reinforces its commitment to delivering a people-first, locally rooted mobility platform that moves with the city and its people.
Zed is available for download on iOS and Android devices.
