Ask a restaurant owner what a delivery app costs them and most will say a number off the menu — "15%" or "30%." Then the monthly statement lands and the real figure is somewhere else entirely, because commission is only the first line. There's the payment processing, the optional marketing tier you got talked into, the customer-side fees that quietly suppress your orders, and the cost that never shows up on any statement at all: the customer whose name and email you'll never have.
So let's do the actual arithmetic on a single $30 order, the way it works in 2026.
The commission everyone quotes
The headline number is the commission — the app's cut of each order subtotal. The big three publish tiered rates, and independent reporting has tracked them consistently: marketplace delivery commissions commonly run in the 15% to 30% range depending on the plan you pick. The low tier looks cheap until you read what it does — it usually pushes you far down the search results, so you pay less per order and get far fewer orders. The top tier buys you visibility. Most owners end up on the middle or top tier because the cheap one barely generates volume.
On our $30 order, take a 25% commission. That's $7.50 gone before anything else.
The fees under the commission
Commission isn't the whole bill. Depending on the app and plan, you're also often paying:
- A payment-processing fee on the transaction, frequently around 2.9% plus a fixed per-order amount. Call it roughly $1 on this order.
- Marketing or "sponsored listing" spend, if you opted in to be promoted. This is real money on top of commission, and it's easy to leave running.
- Chargebacks and refunds. When a customer reports a missing item, the app often refunds them and debits you, sometimes without much of a dispute.
Add a payment fee and you're at $8.50 on a $30 order, over 28%, and that's before any marketing spend.
The fee you don't see: the customer-side charges
Here's the part that doesn't hit your statement but hits your sales. The apps add delivery fees, service fees, and small-order fees on the *customer's* side. A $30 basket of food can ring up at $40+ once the app stacks its charges. That inflation doesn't cost you a cent directly. It costs you in the orders that never happen because someone saw the total and closed the app. You're paying commission on the orders you get and losing volume on the ones the fees scared off.
The cost with no line item: you don't get the customer
This is the one that compounds. When someone orders your food through a marketplace, the app owns that relationship. You typically don't get their email, their phone number, or permission to contact them. You cooked the food, packed it, and made it good — and the next time they're hungry, the app decides which restaurant they see first, and it may not be you.
That's the difference between renting demand and owning it. We wrote about what owning it actually looks like in You Don't Own Your Marketplace Customers, because it's the single biggest hidden cost on this list and it never appears on a statement.
The 2026 math, side by side
| On a $30 order | Marketplace order | Your own ordering page |
|---|---|---|
| Commission (~25%) | −$7.50 | $0 |
| Payment processing | −$1.00 | −$1.00 |
| Platform cost | included above | flat monthly fee, spread thin |
| You keep (before food/labour) | ~$21.50 | ~$29.00 |
| You get the customer's contact | No | Yes |
The marketplace order isn't worthless. It found you a customer who didn't know you existed. The mistake is treating that channel as your whole business instead of your top-of-funnel.
What to do about it this week
You don't have to quit the apps to stop overpaying them. Do these three things:
- Read your last statement line by line. Separate commission from payment fees from marketing spend. Most owners have a "sponsored" line running that they forgot they turned on. Pause it for two weeks and watch whether orders actually drop — often they barely move.
- Stand up your own ordering page on your own domain, taking direct card payments, so you have a channel where that $7.50 stays in your pocket. If you haven't set one up, our restaurant online ordering walkthrough covers it start to finish.
- Move your regulars off the apps. Put a small card in every delivery bag with your direct-order link and a reason to use it. Your regulars are the ones costing you the most in commission, because you'd have kept them anyway — you shouldn't be paying 25% to serve someone who already loves you.
Where's the honest line? If you're brand new and nobody's heard of you, the apps are a legitimate discovery cost — pay it, and treat every new customer as someone to win over to your own channel. If you're established and a big share of your delivery volume is repeat customers ordering through an app, you're leaving real money on the table every single night. That's the point to fix it, and the 1CLK ordering products exist to fix exactly that.
Frequently asked questions
How much does DoorDash actually charge a restaurant?
DoorDash uses tiered commission plans, and independent reporting puts marketplace delivery commissions broadly in the 15% to 30% range depending on the tier. On top of the commission you may pay payment processing and any sponsored-listing marketing you opted into. The lower-commission tiers usually come with worse placement in the app, so you pay less per order but receive fewer orders. Check your own statement — your effective rate is the number that matters, not the advertised tier.
Is Uber Eats or Skip cheaper than DoorDash?
They're broadly in the same range. All three big apps run tiered plans in roughly the 15% to 30% commission band, plus processing and optional marketing. Small differences in rate matter far less than your channel mix — how much of your delivery business runs through any marketplace versus your own ordering. Chasing a slightly lower app tier saves pennies; moving repeat customers to a channel you own saves the whole commission.
Do delivery apps charge the customer too?
Yes. The apps add delivery fees, service fees, and small-order fees on the customer's side, which can push a $30 order of food to $40 or more at checkout. That inflation doesn't hit your statement, but it costs you the orders people abandon when they see the total. You pay commission on the orders you win and lose volume on the ones the fees drive away.
Should I just quit the delivery apps?
Usually not — quit the dependency, not the apps. Marketplaces are good at putting you in front of people who've never heard of you, and that discovery has real value when you're new. The problem is running your whole business through them and paying commission on repeat customers you'd have kept anyway. Keep the apps for discovery, run your own ordering page for everyone else, and move regulars to the channel you own.
What's the real cost of a marketplace order beyond the fees?
The uncounted cost is the customer relationship. A marketplace order typically doesn't give you the customer's contact details or permission to reach them again, so the app keeps control of who they see next time they're hungry. You paid to acquire a customer and don't own the result. Your own ordering channel keeps both the margin and the relationship, which is why the channel mix matters more than any single app's rate.