[System Design] Surge Pricing Algorithm: How Ride-Hailing Engines Calculate Surge Rate in Real Time (opens in new tab)

Series context: This is Part 5 of the series. For location ingestion and geospatial indexing, start at . What Is Surge Rate? (And How Is It Calculated?) Surge rate is the real-time price multiplier (e.g., 2.0×) applied by ride-hailing platforms when ride demand in a geographic zone exceeds available driver supply. It is recalculated every 30–60 seconds per H3 hexagon cell using a demand/supply ratio fed into a lookup table or ML model. {{ }} Surge rate (also call...