Pricing on Helpward

Our comparison matrix pages don't have a pricing row. That's deliberate — and the reason is the same anti-fabrication posture that runs through everything else on /vs. This essay lays out what Helpward charges, what helpers keep, and why we won't publish competitor prices we can't keep accurate quarter by quarter.

What you pay

Every booking has three line items. You see all three before you confirm — there's no post-task pricing surprise.

• Base service price.Set per-service on our catalog. You see it on the service tile before you book. For a one-shot booking, this is whatever the catalog says for that service in your city. For a multi-task bundle, it's the sum of every stop's base price.
• Flat $4.50 service fee per booking. One fee per booking, regardless of how many stops the helper makes. This covers dispatch, payment processing, marketplace insurance, and platform support. It does not change with demand, time of day, weather, or how many other people are booking nearby.
• Optional tip.Set by you, after the task ends. Defaults to 0% with suggested options of 10 / 15 / 20% on the rating screen. There is no “recommended tip” pre-checked. You can also add or change a tip later from the booking detail page within the dispute window.

What helpers keep

• 80% of the base service price.Same split on every booking, no tier gates, no “Pro” bump for hitting volume targets.
• 20% to the platform. Fixed. Funds dispatch, payments, support, insurance, and platform engineering.
• 100% of the tip.We don't take a cut of tips. The helper gets every cent.

What we don't do

• No surge pricing. Saturday at 6pm costs the same as Tuesday at 2pm. If you book the same service in the same city next week, the line items will be the same.
• No per-stop fees on bundles.Five stops in one trip is one $4.50 fee, not five. The bundle is genuinely cheaper than booking five one-shots — that's the whole point of the bundling feature.
• No platform-fee hikes during demand spikes.If supply tightens, helpers may be slower to accept, but the price quoted at booking is the price you pay. We won't quietly raise the service fee on holiday weekends.
• No minimums.No “you must book $20 of services to start.” A $9 dog walk is a fine first booking.
• No premium tier.There is no “Helpward Plus” that gives you a larger pool of helpers or faster matching. Every customer hits the same engine.

The bundling math

Concrete example. Three errands on the same Saturday: grocery pickup ($18 base), dry-cleaning return ($8 base), pharmacy run ($12 base). Booked as three separate one-shot requests, you pay the $4.50 service fee on each: $38 base + $13.50 in fees = $51.50before tip.

Booked as one three-stop bundle, you pay the $4.50 service fee once: $38 base + $4.50 fee = $42.50 before tip. Same three errands, $9 cheaper, AND one helper does all three on one trip so you tip one person instead of three.

Why we don't publish competitor prices on the matrix pages

Every comparison page in the /vs catalog deliberately excludes pricing rows. Three reasons:

1. Competitor prices drift fast.Service fees, delivery fees, minimum-order thresholds, surge multipliers — these change quarterly at the platforms we'd be comparing against. The day we publish a comparison page with their numbers, the comparison is already aging.
2. Apples-to-apples is harder than it looks.A $1.99 delivery fee with a required $10 minimum, a $1 markup per item, and a tip suggestion default of 20% is not the same shape as a flat $4.50 service fee. Forcing both into a single “average price per task” row would be misleading either direction.
3. Anti-fabrication.We don't publish numbers we can't verify each quarter, and we don't want a matrix page to subtly drift from honest into stale into wrong. So we excluded the pricing axis entirely and wrote this essay instead.

How to compare prices yourself: open the apps. Pick one task you actually need to do. Get the all-in quote from each platform — including delivery fees, service fees, minimums, and the platform's default-suggested tip. That's the only comparison that's honest at the moment you're making the decision, because that's the only comparison that's up to date.

One thing to do today

Pick the service you book to most often. Drop the address. The price you see before confirming is the price you pay — no surge, no Plus tier, no surprise. First booking is free to sign up.