Third-party delivery apps like DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub typically charge restaurants 15% to 30% of every order. On a $50 order, that’s up to $15 gone before food or labor costs are even counted. Here’s the real math behind delivery commissions, and how restaurants are getting that margin back.
How much do delivery apps actually charge?
The exact number depends on the platform and the plan tier a restaurant signs up for, but the ranges are well documented and haven’t moved much in 2026:
- DoorDash charges roughly 15%, 25%, or 30%, depending on the service tier. Lower tiers get less visibility in the app.
- Uber Eats charges a similar 15% to 30% range, also tied to plan tier and how much in-app placement a restaurant wants.
- Grubhub uses a package-based pricing structure that historically lands in a comparable range, plus optional paid advertising add-ons.
None of these numbers are secret — they’re published, or close to it. What catches most owners off guard isn’t the rate itself. It’s that the rate applies to every single order, forever, for as long as the restaurant stays on the platform.
What happens when you’re losing margin on three apps at once?
Most restaurants don’t pick just one delivery app. They’re on DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub at the same time, because customers are split across all three and turning any of them off feels like turning off a tap of orders.
That’s where “commission stacking” comes in. It’s not one 25% fee — it’s 25% on your DoorDash orders, another 20–30% on your Uber Eats orders, and another chunk on Grubhub, all at the same time, on top of the actual cost of the food. Every app is taking its cut independently, and none of them know or care what the other two are taking.
For a restaurant doing meaningful delivery volume across all three, that’s not a line-item expense anymore. It’s a second rent payment, quietly deducted order by order instead of showing up as one number on a bill.
The real math: what a 30% commission does to a thin-margin business
Here’s the part that doesn’t show up until someone does the arithmetic. Independent restaurants typically run on a net profit margin of around 3% to 5% — meaning after food cost, labor, rent, and everything else, a restaurant might keep $3 to $5 out of every $100 in sales.
Now look at what actually happens on a real order, comparing a typical third-party delivery app to a commission-free direct order — same restaurant, same order, two different ways of getting it to the customer.
What the customer pays:
| Delivery app | Direct order | |
|---|---|---|
| Menu subtotal | $42.19 (marked up ~25% to cover commissions) | $33.75 (no markup) |
| Delivery fee | $3.99 | $2.99 |
| Service fee (15%) | $6.33 | $0.00 |
| Total | $52.51 | $36.74 |
The customer pays $15.77 less ordering direct — about 30% less than the same order through a delivery app. That’s not a discount the restaurant is eating; it’s the markup and fees a delivery app adds simply disappearing.
What the restaurant pays:
| Delivery app | Direct order | |
|---|---|---|
| Commission (30%) | $12.66 | $0.00 |
| Service fee | $0.00 | $1.00 |
| Credit card processing | $0.00 | $1.37 |
| Delivery subsidy | $0.00 | $4.00 |
| Total cost to the restaurant | $12.66 | $6.37 |
The restaurant keeps $6.29 more per order — roughly half the cost of taking that same order through a delivery app. On a single order, that’s the difference between a good ticket and a break-even one.
What that adds up to over a month
One order doesn’t change a restaurant’s finances. Hundreds of them do. Here’s what that same per-order savings looks like at different volumes of delivery-app revenue, assuming a restaurant shifts just 1 in 5 of those orders to a commission-free direct channel — not all of them, just one in five:
| Monthly delivery-app revenue | Orders/month (at $34 avg. ticket) | Monthly savings | Annual savings |
|---|---|---|---|
| $5,000 | ~148 | $186 | $2,237 |
| $10,000 | ~296 | $373 | $4,473 |
| $15,000 | ~444 | $559 | $6,710 |
| $25,000 | ~741 | $932 | $11,184 |
| $50,000 | ~1,481 | $1,864 | $22,367 |
A restaurant doing $15,000 a month in delivery-app orders — not an unusual number for a busy independent spot — is looking at roughly $6,700 a year back in its pocket, just from moving a fifth of that volume to a direct channel. Nothing else about the business has to change for that number to be real.
Can you actually get this margin back?
Delivery apps aren’t the enemy here — they’re genuinely useful for reaching new customers who’d never have found the restaurant otherwise. The problem isn’t using them. It’s having no other option.
The fix most restaurants land on is building a direct ordering channel of their own — a website or app where customers can order straight from the restaurant, at a flat, predictable cost instead of a percentage cut. It doesn’t replace the delivery apps overnight. What it does is give repeat customers, the ones who already know and like the restaurant, a reason to order directly instead of defaulting to whichever app is on their phone.
“Innowi helped us cut delivery fees and boost sales. We keep more profits while customers order directly from us.” — Mohammed Hazeem, owner of Mr. Falafel
One Innowi restaurant, Pho Ha Plus, tracked this directly over a full year: after shifting a share of their orders to a commission-free direct channel, they saved $28,932 in commissions and processing, drove $144,662 in direct sales, and processed over 3,174 direct orders that would previously have gone through a 20–30% commission.
Neither restaurant dropped the delivery apps. They just stopped being the only option.
Where innowi fits
Innowi’s online ordering runs on the restaurant’s own website with $0 commission on every direct order — no percentage taken off the top, ever. There’s still a small, flat cost per order (a service fee, standard credit card processing, and an optional delivery subsidy if the restaurant offers its own delivery) — which is exactly what the math above shows: $6.37 total on that sample order, instead of $12.66 in commission alone. The difference is that the cost is small, flat, and predictable, instead of a percentage that scales with every sale a restaurant makes. Every order still fires straight to the kitchen the same way a delivery-app order would, so there’s no extra step for staff.
FAQs
Can I negotiate a lower commission rate with DoorDash or Uber Eats? Sometimes, but usually only at real scale — multi-location brands with high, consistent order volume have occasionally negotiated rates down a few points. For a single independent restaurant, published rates are typically non-negotiable.
Should I just stop using delivery apps entirely? Not necessarily. They’re often the best way to reach new customers who don’t know the restaurant yet. The goal isn’t to quit them — it’s to stop relying on them as the only ordering channel, so repeat customers have a commission-free way to order directly.
What is “commission stacking,” exactly? It’s what happens when a restaurant is active on multiple delivery platforms at once, each charging its own commission independently. The restaurant isn’t paying one fee — it’s paying several different fees on different slices of its order volume, all at the same time.
Does a commission-free ordering system replace delivery apps, or work alongside them? Alongside, for most restaurants. Delivery apps stay useful for new-customer discovery; a direct ordering channel captures the repeat business that shouldn’t have to pay a commission every time.
How fast can a restaurant actually recover this lost margin? It depends on how much of their existing customer base they can move to direct ordering. Pho Ha Plus reached over 3,100 direct orders and recovered nearly $29,000 in a year — but that took consistent promotion of their direct channel, not just having it available.
See what commission-free ordering would look like for your restaurant
Curious how much of your own delivery volume is going to commissions right now? See how a commission-free direct ordering channel would fit into your existing setup.
[See how Innowi’s online ordering works →]
