How Much Does DoorDash Actually Take From Restaurants?

Our first DoorDash payout was a gut check. The week looked solid. Good volume, steady tickets, the kind of numbers that make you think delivery is finally pulling its weight. Then the deposit landed and it was nowhere near what I had in my head. I had been running the menu price against the commission rate in my head all week, and I had it wrong, because the commission rate is not the whole story and nobody tells you that going in. Here is what these platforms actually take, including the part that never shows up on the rate card.

The short answer #

DoorDash takes 15 to 30% commission per order, depending on which partnership plan you are on, plus payment processing on top. The other big platforms are similar. Uber Eats runs roughly 15 to 30%, Grubhub 15 to 30%-plus with add-ons. The plan tier you pick is the single biggest lever, and most restaurants are on the expensive one without realizing it.

The DoorDash plan tiers #

DoorDash sells three commission tiers, and they are priced around how much visibility you get in the app:

Plan	Commission	What you get
Basic	15%	Lowest commission, smallest delivery radius, lower placement
Plus	25%	Bigger radius, DashPass access, better placement
Premier	30%	Largest radius, top placement, a delivery guarantee

Most restaurants land on Plus or Premier because the Basic tier’s smaller radius and lower placement choke off orders. So the “15%” headline number is rarely the one you are actually paying. Plan on 25 to 30% as your real starting point.

The fees the rate hides #

The commission is not the end of it. The real take after everything is usually higher than the tier number:

• Payment processing. Roughly 2.9% plus a flat fee per order, on top of commission.
• Marketing and promotions. Sponsored placement and discount campaigns come out of your pocket and stack on top of commission.
• Commission on the full ticket. Depending on setup, commission can apply to the order including fees, not just the food subtotal.

Add it up and a “25%” plan often nets out closer to 30%-plus once processing and any promo spend are in.

That is the gap that gutted my first payout. I budgeted for a quarter and paid closer to a third, on every order, all week.

When delivery still makes money #

This is the honest part. Third-party delivery is not free money. It is also not automatically a loser, and the operators who write it off entirely are leaving real orders on the table. It makes sense when:

• The orders are incremental, meaning customers who would not have come in anyway. A 30% commission on a sale you would not have made is still a sale.
• Your marginal food cost is low enough to absorb it. High-margin items (pizza, pasta) survive the commission better than a tight-margin entree.
• You treat the commission partly as marketing spend, buying visibility and new customers you convert to direct orders later.

It stops making sense when delivery cannibalizes dine-in (you pay 30% on customers who would have walked in anyway) or when low-margin items get sold at a loss after the cut. The answer is not “delivery good” or “delivery bad.” It is “model it per item.”

What this looks like in the calculator #

The third-party delivery calculator on this site runs your real take-home after commission, processing, and packaging, so you can see what an order actually nets at 15%, 25%, or 30%. Run your top delivery items through it. Some will clear it fine and a few will be selling at a loss, and you want to know which is which before you build a delivery-only menu. The broader cost picture is in what third-party delivery actually costs you.

What to do today #

Check which DoorDash plan you are actually on. A lot of operators assume they are paying 15% and are really paying 30%, and that one fact changes whether your delivery menu makes money. Then take your three best-selling delivery items and run them through the calculator at your real commission rate. If any of them net negative, raise the delivery price on those items or pull them from the platform. You can charge more on delivery than dine-in, and you probably should.

Sources: DoorDash for Merchants, Uber Eats, National Restaurant Association, Toast.