Under four euros an hour – PAM’ findings reveal Wolt couriers’ real earnings

— This is absurd in a welfare state. We are like ants on the street. I can see in my colleagues’ eyes that they could cry. That is how harsh the reality is.

The man, who moved from Bangladesh to Vaasa to study in 2018, has worked as a Wolt courier in Turku for more than five years. He holds a bachelor’s degree in international business.

The Turku-based courier and two other Wolt couriers from different parts of Finland tracked their working hours, kilometres driven and fees for one week in January 2026. PAM has seen screenshots from the couriers’ Wolt app showing paid fees and accumulated driving distances.

The interviewees do not appear under their own names, as they fear possible consequences from their contracting partner, Wolt. Couriers have no form of protection against termination. PAM is aware of the identities of all interviewees.

A courier’s real hourly pay before tax is just a few euros

Wolt does not disclose its couriers’ hourly pay. The company states that the “average fee during active time” is 20–21 euros per “active hour”. This message has also been repeated by Wolt’s founder, Miki Kuusi. Only the time spent carrying out deliveries is included in this calculation. Time spent waiting between deliveries is not included in Wolt’s examples.

In the examples used in this article, working time includes the time when the courier is active and available to receive orders. If the courier took a break during the day, that time has not been counted as working time.

According to the Turku-based courier, the real hourly pay after expenses is extremely low.

— In its examples, Wolt only counts the time when you are picking up or delivering an order. That is misleading. The true hourly pay is terrible. I have no decision-making power, and as an “entrepreneur” I cannot decide the price of my work. What kind of entrepreneurship is that?

Based on his tracking week, the Turku courier’s real hourly pay is four and a half euros per hour.

A courier living in Kuopio has been living in Finland since 2008. He has graduated in Finland with a master’s degree in information technology and has worked as a Wolt courier for almost eight years.

— Previously, Wolt treated us like partners, and we had, for example, monthly meetings. Nowadays I work long days because fees have been cut unilaterally. To pay my bills, I need to earn 100 euros a day in fees. I keep riding until I reach that. Yesterday I worked twelve hours to earn 116 euros before expenses and taxes, he says.

Wolt has significantly reduced couriers’ fees in recent years. The company can cut fees unilaterally without negotiations, as it treats couriers as entrepreneurs.

According to the Kuopio courier, expenses are substantial. Pension contributions alone amount to 398 euros per month, and fuel costs almost one hundred euros per week. In addition, the courier must pay for car insurance, accounting services and the phone used for work. Even if the car has been acquired cheaply, maintenance is expensive due to heavy use.

— This year alone, I have already spent almost one thousand euros on car repairs.

“This is not freedom”

A Helsinki-based courier with more than five years of experience working as a Wolt courier has lived in Finland for over 10 years and originally comes from East Africa.

— I am so exhausted. Sometimes I work more than 60 hours a week. It doesn’t feel good to work 10–15 hours a day and come home empty-handed.

Wolt often claims publicly that its entrepreneurial model gives couriers freedom. Do couriers feel that they have genuine freedom as Wolt delivery partners?

— No, no, no, absolutely not. I can choose when I start working, but I cannot choose how much I will earn. This is manipulated freedom, the Turku courier says.

— Look at the definition of partnership and entrepreneurship. This is not genuine entrepreneurship; we have no say whatsoever. This situation should not be sugar-coated — this is modern-day slavery. I do not understand why the Finnish government allows this. There is no excuse for allowing people to be exploited in the way Wolt does, the Helsinki courier states.

— Wolt calls this freedom, but they define all the terms. They say I am free, while at the same time setting conditions under which I am not free. They say I am free to come to work. I have been logged in and available to receive orders for 90 minutes and earned four euros. This is not freedom. Having to work unlimited hours to earn one hundred euros is not freedom. There is no sense of freedom in this, the Kuopio courier says.

Wolt enables the exploitation of substitute couriers and does not intervene

At the end of January, YLE reported in a wide-ranging article on the resale of Wolt courier accounts. According to information PAM has received from couriers, the use of so-called substitutes is now very common. Wolt has not disclosed the number of substitutes publicly.

Substitutes pay rent for the use of an account amounting to 30–40 per cent of their earned fees, or even a fixed monthly fee of several hundred euros. If an intermediary were to take one third of the earnings in the hourly pay calculations presented in this article, the substitute courier’s hourly pay would fall to under three euros before tax.

Wolt justifies the possibility of using substitutes with entrepreneurial freedom. In reality, the company appears to fear that banning substitutes would create yet another argument for couriers being classified as employees.

The couriers interviewed for this article do not work as substitutes; they deliver orders through their own accounts.

— When fees have been cut, many couriers have quit and now rent out their accounts. I would not blame the account holders — Wolt has accepted a model that allows exploitation to occur, the Kuopio courier says.

The Helsinki courier wonders why Wolt accepts the exploitation of substitutes and does nothing about it.

— Wolt exploits us, and on top of that there are even more desperate people working as substitutes.

Helsingin Sanomat reported on the use of substitutes already in 2023. At that time, Henrik Pankakoski, who is now Wolt’s Head of Northern Europe, stated that the company instructs that compensation paid to substitutes must be fair, reasonable and lawful. Wolt also said it wanted to address the problem of undeclared deliveries and that its empathy lay particularly with couriers who may be experiencing injustice.

In reality, the company has moved in the opposite direction over the years. In 2023, Wolt had to be informed about the use of a substitute. All three couriers interviewed confirm to PAM that today there is no longer any requirement to inform Wolt about the use of substitutes.

“Courier work is a pyramid of exploitation”

In the view of the Turku courier, all parties — including politicians — should consider whether Finland wants to allow the current fee levels and conditions for couriers. He considers the present situation unbelievable for a welfare state. Above all, transparency from Wolt is essential.

— First and foremost, we need honesty and transparency from Wolt. Without them, solutions cannot be found — we already know this from the past.

According to the Kuopio courier, couriers need security that guarantees a livelihood.

— Regardless of the model, we need security in courier work. Wolt should continue negotiations, because now all the cards are in their hands.

PAM negotiated with Wolt for over a year in 2023–2024, but the negotiations were suspended. According to PAM, the fee level proposed by Wolt would not have genuinely improved couriers’ livelihoods.

At the end of 2025, Papy Nkunda, chair of the trade union branch PAM Couriers Finland, also stated that couriers need three kinds of protection.

— We couriers made Wolt’s owners millionaires, but people are suffering. We need occupational safety, employment security and income security, Nkunda said in the autumn.

The Turku courier hopes that information about couriers’ current hourly earnings will reach as many people as possible. The delivery fee paid by the customer is not the same as the fee received by the courier. The couriers interviewed say they also do not receive additional compensation from late-night fees paid by customers or from so-called priority delivery surcharges.

— At the moment, courier work is a pyramid of exploitation, the Turku courier says.

Text and photos: Pauli Unkuri