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The new law ended cars registered in other people’s names and forced thousands of drivers to redo their sums. Here you compare the three remaining routes with your own figures, see what each engine type costs to run, how much you must bill for each route to break even, and what is left per hour at the wheel.
Durante anos, muita gente trabalhou com carros registados em nome de terceiros, o chamado problema das slots. A Law no. 59/2026 put an end to that arrangement: proibiu o comodato e o usufruto to afectar veículos à actividade e deixou apenas uma excepção estreita, a do motorista que é dono do carro e o conduz sozinho. Quem estava fora dessa excepção tem agora de escolher entre três caminhos, e cada um deles tem uma estrutura de custos muito diferente.
Your car, your operator licence
You buy or already have the car and take out a TVDE operator licence in your own name. You keep everything the platform pays you, but bear every cost: instalments, insurance, road tax, roadworthiness test, maintenance, accountancy and the licence itself.
Your car, tied to an operator
The car is yours, but it is assigned to the activity through a licensed operator, who charges you a commission or a flat fee. You still pay every cost of the car. Under the new law, this route is only possible within the owner-driver loan-for-use exception.
Car rented from the operator
You have no car. You rent one from the operator for a weekly fee, which usually includes insurance and maintenance, or you work for a percentage of what you bill. You tie up no capital and run no depreciation risk, but you pay every week, whether you work a lot or a little.
Start with your own figures. The default values are market references from agosto de 2026, recolhidas em anúncios do sector e, nos combustíveis, nos preços médios nacionais. Servem de ponto de partida: substitua-os pelos seus. O resultado actualiza à medida que escreve.
1. O seu trabalho
Comece por dizer que número vai usar, porque isto engana muita gente: as aplicações mostram-lhe normalmente o que já lhe foi transferido, ou seja, o valor depois de a plataforma tirar a comissão. Se indicar esse e mandar descontar a comissão outra vez, o resultado sai errado.
Os bónus, promoções, aceleradores e gorjetas entram por inteiro, sem comissão, porque é assim que costumam chegar. São também a parte que menos controla: mudam de semana para semana e não deve contar com eles to pagar contas fixas. Experimente pôr esse campo a zero e ver o que acontece ao resultado.
2. A engine type
Ao escolher, os consumos, preços e custos fixos ajustam-se a valores de referência de August 2026. Altere-os to os seus.
3. Se o carro for seu (vias A e B)
Nos custos fixos anuais some seguro do carro, IUC, inspecção, manutenção e pneus, que no TVDE se gastam depressa. Os eléctricos estão isentos de IUC e têm manutenção mais barata, o que já está reflectido no valor sugerido.
4. Outros custos, os que quase ninguém conta
Os três primeiros aplicam-se seja qual for a via, porque existem mesmo quando o carro não é seu. O último só conta na via A, em que é você o operador.
Em outros cabem portagens, estacionamento, água to os passageiros, suportes e cabos, e o que mais lhe sair da carteira todos os meses. Nos seguros da actividade, o valor depende do seu enquadramento: quem tem trabalhadores é obrigado a ter seguro de acidentes de trabalho, e quem trabalha por conta própria costuma fazer um seguro de acidentes pessoais, que a nova lei já não exige mas continua a ser prudente.
5. Se alugar o carro (via C)
Preencha o que se aplica ao seu acordo. Alguns operadores cobram renda, outros ficam com uma percentagem, e há quem faça as duas coisas.
This is not your take-home pay
What you see is what is left before tax: antes de IRS, antes de contribuições to a segurança social e antes de qualquer despesa pessoal. Serve para comparar as três vias entre si, que é a pergunta desta página, e não to saber quanto lhe fica no bolso ao fim do mês. Os valores por defeito são referências de mercado e variam bastante conforme o modelo, a zona e o acordo concreto.
This is the missing step, and it is a big one. The figure the calculator shows comes before tax and contributions, and the next calculation cannot be done in your head. We do not do it for you because it depends on your specific position, but we leave the orders of magnitude so that nobody mistakes that result for a salary.
If you work as a self-employed service provider, the social security contribution rate is 21.4 %, applied to 70 % of income, which comes to about 15 % of everything you bill. On an income of 2000 euros that is roughly 300 euros a month. The basis is assessed quarterly from the average of previous months, there is a minimum floor even when you bill little, and there is an exemption in the first year of activity. If you are set up as a sole trader, a taxa sobe to 25,2 %.
On top of this comes IRS, which under the simplified regime is calculated by applying a coefficient to income and then the relevant bracket. Which coefficient applies to passenger transport is not settled ground and it changes the result significantly, so we do not risk a figure here: that is precisely the question to take to an accountant. And if the activity sits in a company, the logic is different, with corporation tax at company level and taxation of whatever you draw from it.
The practical reading is this: between the figure on this page and the money left to live on there is a considerable slice, and it exists on all three routes. If the decision to buy a car only adds up when you look at the pre-tax result, it does not add up.
Há coisas que pesam na decisão e não cabem numa folha de cálculo. Com carro próprio, uma avaria grave é sua e pode deixá-lo parado sem receber, enquanto no aluguer é normalmente o operador que resolve, embora deva confirmar se continua a pagar renda durante a imobilização. O carro próprio desvaloriza, e ao fim de alguns anos deixa de cumprir o limite de idade da lei, que é de 10 anos, ou 12 se for eléctrico. Já o aluguer cobra-lhe a semana inteira mesmo quando adoece, tira férias ou tem menos serviço.
Há ainda a questão da flexibilidade. Com licença própria fica preso a obrigações administrativas, contabilidade e responsabilidades de operador, mas ninguém lhe fica com uma percentagem. Com o carro alugado tem menos risco e menos trabalho, e é a via com que muita gente começa precisamente to testar se a actividade lhe serve antes de investir.
It depends above all on how much you bill and how many kilometres you drive. Renting carries a fixed weekly cost that does not vary with the work, between roughly 230 and 350 euros a week on the Portuguese market, which punishes anyone billing little. Owning spreads the fixed costs the more you work, but demands capital, carries the depreciation and leaves you to deal with insurance, maintenance and the unexpected. Above a certain level of billing, owning almost always wins: the calculator on this page shows where that point falls in your case.
Market listings point to between roughly 230 and 350 euros a week, depending on the model and what the fee covers. Small electric city cars appear at around 230 to 250 euros, and higher-category cars above 275. Always confirm what is included: insurance, maintenance, tyres, the excess in case of an accident and any mileage cap.
It varies with the arrangement. When the car is yours and you only use the operator’s structure, the market charges commissions in the order of 10 per cent, sometimes as a flat weekly fee with a cap. When the car belongs to the operator, the driver commonly keeps a percentage of the billing, which in listings often falls between 40 and 55 per cent. Always add the platform commission on top: 25 per cent at Uber and 20 at Bolt.
No. The new law banned loan-for-use and usufruct for assigning vehicles to the activity, with a single exception: loan-for-use between the qualified driver who owns the vehicle and the operator, provided that driver alone drives the car and the link is registered with the IMT and on the platform. It is precisely this change that is forcing so many people to redo their sums.
On energy, almost always, but it depends entirely on where you charge. At home the kilowatt-hour is around 0.18 euros, and in that scenario an electric car uses a fraction of what a diesel does. At a rapid charger you may pay 0.45 euros or more for the same kilowatt-hour, and the advantage shrinks sharply. There are also two advantages that are not about energy: fully electric vehicles are exempt from road tax, and the law lets them work until they are 12 years old, two more than the rest, which gives longer to pay off the purchase. On the other side of the scales sits the higher purchase price, which this calculator does not compare.
It does, and this is the commonest mistake in the decision. A paid-off car has no instalment, but it still depreciates, and in TVDE there is a deadline for that depreciation to happen: the law only lets it work until it is 10 years old from first registration, or 12 if it is fully electric. A car worth 14 thousand euros today with five years of work left is costing you around 230 euros a month, even if you pay nobody anything. If you compare a paid-off car, putting zero in that field, against a rental with a visible weekly fee, the sums always favour owning and the decision comes out skewed. That is why the calculator asks for the registration year and the current value.
The calculator answers that route by route, with your costs. The minimum is the point where the result is zero, and below it you are working to pay bills. Note that the rental minimum is always higher, because the fee exists even in weak weeks, whereas with your own car a large part of the cost, the fuel, only exists when you drive. That is the underlying difference between the two routes: one has high fixed costs and the other has costs that follow the work.
Either, as long as you say which in the first field. It is a distinction that catches many people out: the apps normally show the amount already transferred to you, that is, after the platform has taken its commission. If you enter that figure and the calculator deducts the commission again, the result comes out wrong, and too low. That is why the page first asks which figure you are using, and reconstructs the other from it.
Enter each one separately, because the commission is not the same: the legal ceiling is 25 per cent and Uber applies it, while Bolt usually stops at 20. Adding everything up and applying a single percentage gives a wrong result, the more so the more lopsided the split between the two. Note that the average percentage the calculator shows is weighted, not the simple average of the commissions: someone billing 1990 euros on Uber and 199 on Bolt ends up with an average of 24.5 per cent, close to Uber’s 25, because Uber carries almost all the weight.
In a separate field, and they go in whole, with no commission, because that is how they usually reach the driver. It is worth eyeing them with suspicion in this calculation: they change from week to week, depend on campaigns the platform decides alone and can vanish without warning. If the result only turns positive because of the bonuses, set that field to zero and see what is left. It is that figure, and not the other, that should carry the decision to buy a car.
The three in the fourth block of the calculator, which exist whichever route you take. The phone and data, because the activity lives inside an app and the plan has to withstand hours of navigation and maps. Car washes, which in TVDE are no indulgence: dozens of people get in each day and cleanliness weighs on your rating. And tyres, which on a TVDE car wear out far faster than on a private one, and which belong in the annual fixed costs. Add tolls, parking and small consumables. Together they easily come to a hundred euros a month that vanish from the sums if nobody writes them down.
Besides the car costs, you have the structure. Accountancy is the obvious one and is practically unavoidable once the activity is registered. Add the operator licence fee and its renewal, now for periods of no more than five years, and the activity insurances, whose cost depends on your set-up: anyone with employees must have workplace accident insurance. In exchange, no operator takes a percentage of what you bill, and that is the trade-off the calculator helps you weigh.
Because there is no single price. At home it depends on the tariff you signed up to: on a two-rate tariff charging at night it can be around 0.13 euros per kilowatt-hour, on a flat tariff nearer 0.22. On the street it depends on the type of charger: a normal public charger is around 0.30, a rapid one 0.45 and an ultra-rapid can reach 0.55 or more. Between charging at home overnight and relying on ultra-rapids, the same car over the same distance can cost three to four times as much. That is why the calculator asks for both prices and the split between them, instead of assuming a single figure.
LPG costs less than half of petrol per litre, around 0.92 euros against about 1.99, but consumption is roughly 25 per cent higher, so the real saving is smaller than the price gap suggests. It remains one of the cheapest options to run. Bear in mind the compulsory periodic inspection of the system and that, for the law, it is a vehicle like any other: the age limit is 10 years, not 12.
No. The law speaks of exclusively electric passenger cars when it extends the limit to 12 years. A hybrid, even a plug-in hybrid, has a combustion engine and is subject to the general limit of 10 years from first registration.
No. What the calculator shows is what is left before tax, that is, before income tax and social security contributions, and before any personal spending. To know what actually reaches you, you need to consider your specific tax position, which depends on your regime and your total income for the year.
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This is now the reference site in Portugal on the new TVDE law. In little over a month, with content written from the text published in the official gazette and available in eight languages, the numbers speak for themselves. People really do need to know what is changing.
If you have spotted an inaccuracy, want to advertise, propose a partnership or talk to us about anything else, write to geral@leitvde.pt.