Almost 3 years ago I wrote about the online taxi’s in Bali, namely the 2 giants in Indonesia: Gojek and Grab. Both have extensive services like paying for insurance, water, buying your listrik token and the list goes on. Most general services used by tourists is for delivery and transportation.
I often hear about just use Grab / Gojek. Each have their own preference. But if I would ask why would you rather use on over the other, there is no simple or clear answer.
This is where it get’s interesting because I decided to try them out while in Yogyakarta and will test it out in Bali for their app, delivery and transportation. I would look at timing and cost, because these matter most for the customer.
The Application
Installed they have both a different size. Both applications take up a sizable amount of space: Gojek installed 264MB and Grab 330MB. This would matter if you have space issues on your phone due to the many pictures and media we make with our phone’s nowadays. Both Gojek and Grab
Winner in this case would be Gojek because of the app size.
Their Rating
On the iOS store Grab Superapp has a 4.9 rating with over 534k votes. Gojek with 300k votes received a 4.5. On the Android Google Play store Grab flaunts with a 4.8 rating 98k reviews, and Gojek 4.7 rating with 56k reviews. On the Android both installed over 100 million times, this is a massively used application.
What we can tell from this is that Grab has way more reviews and votes than Gojek. On average they are also higher. If we would combine them both are above 4.5 out of 5 stars, which I would consider good.
Tip: Check out what to do in Yogyakarta
General Pricing
Downloading is free, but using the services will cost some money. When you buy groceries or have take-out dinner, you would see that there is a little price difference. Each item in the actual store or warung/restaurant would have a lower price than on the app. Besides this difference in price, the company behind the app also makes a fee on the delivery and service.
The price of the Gojek or Grab is also dependant on how many people are using it currently. The price of one app can suddenly raise more than 50%, while the other app is a lot cheaper at that moment.
Bike
Leaving from the same place, Neko Kepo Cat cafe, towards the north, there is a slight difference. The Gojek App has a cheaper service. Besides that I can see the estimated time it takes for a GoRide to appear in front of me.
In both cases, The GrabBike and GoRide would be accepted within 10 seconds of time in Yogyakarta. I think that it is safe to say there are enough bikes around to transport people, groceries or the takeaways. From 10x that I took the Grab and Gojek the longest time I would wait was 3 minutes. This would be near the center, in and in the north of Yogyakarta.
Car
With Gojek, I received a 20k IDR discount. It’s always nice to get a price reduction. The normal fare would be 35k IDR and because of the discount I only had to pay 15k.
Which app do you prefer? Gojek or Grab?
If I would use Grabcar 30 times in a month, I would have saved 30k IDR in Yogyakarta compared to using Gojek 30 times a month. In reality I would keep checking the prices. One could give a promotion and the other would not have it. Sometimes the price also changes when there are many people using one of the apps.
Another factor besides the promotion, is that Gojek comes with gopay, and Grab comes with OVO. Besides I think the prices are based on supply and demand. If there is more demand, and less people available to provide the service, I can imagine the price of a ride becoming more expensive. So if you have the space on your phone available, why not install Both.
OVO vs Gopay
Places you will go you can pay with money from your digital wallet. These are not to be confused with cryptocurrencies, because they aren’t. But paying paperless, or digital does come with a lot of conveniences:
- contactless payment
- no worries about paying for your ride, if you have enough, you won’t receive a low credit warning.
- No need to carry cash around (and in Indonesia that’s somewhat a big thing)
- in general safer
You would be more dependant on your mobile phone, but at this digital age, aren’t we all. With OVO and Gopay we can receive cashbacks sometimes even up to 50%! The annoying thing is, we can’t easily shift funds around like that, and perhaps you as a tourist won’t be super interested in paying with OVO or Gopay. But think about it, the option is there, and going out for a meal somewhere would potentially give you a nice sum of cashback in the form of digital credit.
At this point I am not looking into getting to score the cashback here and there, I believe in the end I would have to split my funds too much that I would be bound too much by a choice if it is supported by either gopay or OVO and if i would have enough money on it.
Food Delivery
I haven’t tested this enough to make a solid conclusion. Besides we should take Shopee Food into account since they also deliver food. I haven’t used the Shopee app for ordering food (yet) but who knows when I am back in Bali I could also test that one out.
Hi I am Dwi. I am a blogger, travel agent and a mom of a lovely daughter and wife to a supportive husband. I customize and plan tours in Bali and islands nearby for a living and have been doing this for more than 14 years. Get in touch via contact [at] taletravels.com