Abstract: With the rapid expansion of ride-hailing services driven by their affordability and convenience, it is important to determine the conditions under which platforms should adopt uniform subsidy strategies and targeted subsidy strategies to maximize profits. Motivated by the common practice of offering coupons to passengers, this study investigates subsidy strategy selection for a ride-hailing platform. Passengers are divided into two categories according to their sensitivity to the subsidy amount: a highly subsidy-sensitive group and a low subsidy-sensitive group. On the basis of constructing the game models for no-subsidy and uniform-subsidy strategies, a strategy of targeted subsidy is further examined, and the optimal decision of the platform is obtained by backward induction. Numerical examples are used to compare platform decisions and the optimal profit under the three strategies. Results show that the subsidy amount is positively correlated with the commission rate. Any of the three strategies may yield the maximum profit. Passenger subsidy decisions depend on the sensitivity of the highly subsidy-sensitive group, while the choice of subsidy strategy jointly depends on the proportion of this group and its subsidy sensitivity coefficient. In addition, the impact of different strategies of the platform on social welfare is deeply discussed, providing managerial insights for platform subsidy design.