Desk research against primary sources, with the issuing authority linked where a page states an official fee, rule or deadline.
The 5–15% gap between Careem and Uber is an average across ride types, not a guarantee on any single trip — surge pricing during peak hours or rain can erase or reverse it for either app in the moment, which is why comparing both at the time of booking beats trusting a general rule you read somewhere. Hala sits outside that comparison entirely, since it is booking an RTA-licensed taxi through the Careem app rather than a Careem-branded ride.
For airport trips specifically, the comparison set changes again, because a metered RTA taxi is competing directly with both apps rather than sitting outside the market the way it might for a short local hop. Whichever option you default to for everyday rides is not necessarily the cheapest one for that particular route, so it is worth running the same three-way comparison — app, app, and metered taxi — each time rather than assuming yesterday’s cheapest option still is.
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