Proudly local · changing e-hailing
South Africa’s safest ride — every driver verified against Home Affairs, with a Secure Drive face-check at pickup the big apps can’t match. Your price, shown upfront before you book. Built here, with local drivers who earn more and look out for you.
Cape Town pilot · Joburg & Durban next · POPIA-compliant
Watch a ShotLeftCab happen
Why ShotLeftCab
Truly local — built here, banking local drivers and rewarding the excellent ones. Safer for everyone in the car, and not a cent of your fare flying overseas.
Distance + time, shown upfront before you book — no estimate that creeps higher, and surge never goes past 1.5×. We take a small fraction of what the big apps take in commission, so more of every fare stays with your local driver.
Every rider and driver carries a Bronze, Silver or Gold tier built purely from your two-way ratings — everyone starts Silver and climbs with great trips. Your tier shows on your profile photo, both ways. Verify your ID to unlock cash and Secure Drive.
Verified drivers, a Secure Drive face-check at pickup that proves the driver who passed our checks is the one actually driving you, panic buttons for both sides, live trip sharing, and a women-driver option.
Ways to ride
The big apps make you download a heavy app and burn data just to book a ride. We don’t. Ride from your browser, or book entirely inside a WhatsApp chat — the lightest way to hail a ride in South Africa.
Open it in any browser, on any phone or laptop — book, track and pay with nothing to install and nothing eating your storage. Works on the most basic handset.
Book a whole trip inside a chat — quote, driver, PIN and all — on barely any data. You won’t find this on Uber or Bolt, and it’s a lifeline when data is tight or the phone is basic.
Native apps are on the way — Cape Town first. For now everything runs on the web and WhatsApp, so there’s nothing stopping you riding today.
ShotLeftCab Plus
A club of perks for about the price of one trip a month — priority pickup even in surge, no 2% service fee, and 2% back as ride credit (up to R30 a month). Pay weekly, monthly or yearly, cancel anytime.
Weekly
R9/week
Try it out. Cancel anytime.
Most popular
Monthly
R29/month
Pays for itself in about six rides.
Yearly
R290/year
Two months free vs monthly.
When cars are scarce and surge kicks in, members are matched to a driver first — you jump the queue ahead of non-members, exactly when it matters most. Plus doesn’t change the surge price: members pay the same live rate as everyone else, capped at 1.5×.
Everyone else pays a 2% rider service fee on every trip. While your membership is active you pay none — you’ll see it struck through on your receipt.
Complete a trip and 2% of what you paid comes back as ride credit — automatically, up to R30 per calendar month. It’s credit towards your next rides, not cash, and it quietly pays your membership back.
A live savings meter in the app totals your waived fees and cashback, so you always know exactly what Plus is worth to you.
For drivers
No 25% bite — 5% commission on FREE, or 0% on PRO where you also keep every rand of surge. And drive protected: a panic button that’s yours too, and you see each rider’s trust tier before you accept.
FREE
5%per trip
Free weekly payout. Nothing upfront. On surged trips we also keep 0.1 of the surge multiplier.
PRO
R200/week · or R750/month
0% commission, all your surge · free instant cash-out, any day.
Straight about surge: the rider pays the true surge rate, capped at 1.5×. On FREE we keep 0.1 of that multiplier out of the driver’s side — never below the normal 1.0× fare, and never a cent extra for the rider. On PRO it doesn’t apply at all. See the full breakdown →
Fair by default: your first month on PRO is money-back — if it’s quiet, we refund down to what FREE would’ve cost. After that, a fixed fee.
Safe by default: panic button, live trip sharing, cashless card payments, and a 24/7 ops desk — because driving should pay and protect.
Need a PrDP, SA licence, police clearance and a 2005+ vehicle. KYC under 24 hours.
Safety
Safety runs both ways on ShotLeftCab — riders and drivers each get the same protections, and trust is earned and shown, not assumed.
Before anyone picks up a rider we check their SA licence, Professional Driving Permit, SAPS police clearance, e-hailing insurance, and match their face to their SA ID at Home Affairs. Documents are re-checked as they expire — a driver whose clearance, licence or insurance lapses is blocked from going online until they re-verify. No valid checks, no trips.
On a Secure Drive trip, a live face-check at pickup proves the driver who passed our KYC is the same person actually driving you — and confirms you to them. No swapped cars, no lent accounts, no impersonation.
Riders and drivers get a one-tap panic button. It sends your live location to your emergency contacts and alerts our 24/7 ops desk straight away.
Everyone — rider and driver — carries a Bronze, Silver or Gold tier built purely from two-way ratings (everyone starts Silver). You see your driver’s tier before you accept; they see yours. Riding well is how you climb.
Women riders can ask for a woman driver and we’ll try to match one first. To protect our women drivers, the option is for verified women riders only.
Send a live tracking link on WhatsApp — your family sees the route the whole way.
Safe & legal, by the book
South Africa’s e-hailing rules (the NLTA and its 2023 amendments) set a real bar for who may drive you. We don’t treat it as paperwork — every check is enforced in the system before a driver can take a single trip.
Every driver holds a valid e-hailing operating licence and a Professional Driving Permit — verified before they go online, and printed on your trip e-receipt (NLTA reg 26).
SAPS criminal-record clearance is mandatory and re-checked. No clearance, no driving — no exceptions.
Drivers and riders are checked against their SA ID with the Department of Home Affairs — one-way, never stored or shared. For riders it’s optional: verifying unlocks cash payments, Secure Drive and the women-driver option.
E-hailing passenger insurance is required of every driver, and your personal data is handled to POPIA — minimised, encrypted, and never sold.
No app? No problem.
Message ShotLeftCab, share your pickup, and our assistant sorts the rest — quote, driver and PIN, right in the chat.
Good to know
A base charge plus a per-kilometre and per-minute rate for your ride class — roughly R10–R12 a kilometre all-in on Economy, depending on how long the trip is — plus a 2% service fee. It’s all shown upfront before you book; estimate a fare here. Surge applies in busy areas but is capped hard at 1.5× for everyone, members included. ShotLeftCab Plus members don’t pay the 2% service fee at all and get 2% of each fare back as ride credit, up to R30 per calendar month. After 22:00 a minimum-fare guarantee kicks in so drivers willing to work late don’t get short-changed on short trips.
Most of it. On the FREE plan we take a 5% commission, and on a surged trip we also keep 0.1 of the surge multiplier out of the driver’s side (you pay the true surge rate either way — the spread comes out of our share, never yours, and it can never pay a driver less than the normal 1.0× fare). On PRO we take 0% commission and the driver keeps every rand of surge, for a flat R200/week or R750/month. Tips are always 100% the driver’s. The full driver breakdown is here.
Verifying your SA ID unlocks the safety and payment features: cash payments, Secure Drive (a live face-check with your driver at pickup) and the women-driver option, plus a verified badge your driver can see. It’s optional — you can always ride with a card without verifying. We check your ID one-way with Home Affairs and never store the document or share it. (Money perks like cashback and zero service fees come with ShotLeftCab Plus, not with verifying.)
Every rider and driver has a trust tier built purely from your two-way ratings. Everyone starts on Silver; great trips move you to Gold, and it can slip to Bronze if ratings drop — but a low tier never blocks you from riding. Your tier shows on your profile photo to your driver (and theirs to you). Riding well is the only way to climb — verifying your ID is separate (it unlocks cash and the safety features).
Cash is available once you verify your ID — it’s a verified-rider option, and cash fares round up to the nearest R5 so there’s no change to count. Card is available to everyone, even before you verify.
Share your code from Profile → Refer a friend. When they verify and take their first trip you both get a ride credit (R30 for them, R50 for you).
In-app: Help → Send us a message, or email support@shotleftcab.co.za. We aim to reply within 4 hours during the day.
Verified drivers, fairer driving, safer the whole way home. Local e-hailing, done right.
Runs in your browser now · native iOS & Android coming soon, Cape Town first.