Grubhub publishes its restaurant pricing, and its structure is genuinely different from DoorDash’s and Uber Eats’. The rates below are quoted from its own pricing page, read in a browser on 2 September 2026 — the tiers are rendered by JavaScript, so they do not appear in the page source.
Two numbers, not one
Every other marketplace bundles the listing and the courier into a single commission. Grubhub splits them, and that is the thing to understand before comparing its 5% to anybody’s 15%.
| What you pay | Rate | When |
|---|---|---|
| Marketing commission | 5%, 15% or 20% | Every marketplace order |
| Delivery fee | from 10% | Only if Grubhub’s drivers deliver |
| Payment processing | not published here | Every order |
Grubhub’s page is explicit that the delivery fee is separate: “Choose Grubhub Delivery for a delivery fee starting at 10%.” And its footnote is equally explicit that the pricing “does not include payment processing fees.”
The 5% is real, and it is not the whole number
If you use Grubhub’s fleet, the arithmetic on their own published figures puts the entry plan at roughly 15% before processing — close to DoorDash’s Basic plan rather than a third of it. That is arithmetic on their numbers, not a rate Grubhub publishes.
But there is a case where the 5% stands exactly as advertised, and it is the most interesting thing on this page:
Self Delivery. “Pay zero delivery fees and use your own delivery driver fleet for orders placed on Grubhub.”
A restaurant that already has a driver pays 5% and nothing else to be listed on a national marketplace. No initiation fee, no platform fee, no monthly minimum. In a market where the alternatives start at 15% and go to 30%, that is not a gimmick — it is the cheapest marketplace listing available in the US, and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise.
There is a third option too: Supplemental Delivery, where Grubhub’s fleet covers orders beyond your own delivery boundary or during your busy periods, and the delivery fee applies only on those orders.
What the higher tiers buy
The three plans differ on how much of the delivery fee your customer pays — Grubhub describes them as standard, lower and lowest customer delivery fee — plus Grubhub+ visibility and a monthly ad credit equal to your commission rate on ads bought through Grubhub.
That last one is unusual and worth reading twice: the ad credit scales with the rate you are already paying. It only pays off if you were going to buy Grubhub ads anyway.
Grubhub also cites Grubhub+ members ordering “4x a month — almost 70% more often than non-members”, which is the argument for the higher tiers. As with every marketplace, treat it as an advertising decision: the extra points are only worth it if they bring orders you would not otherwise have had.
Grubhub Direct is a different product, and we should say so
Grubhub sells a commission-free branded ordering page called Grubhub Direct, listed with zero setup fees, zero marketing commission for online orders, zero platform fees, zero monthly hosting fees.
That is a real commission-free direct-ordering product, from the same company as the marketplace, and anyone comparing options should know it exists. It competes with what we sell, and pretending otherwise would make the rest of this page worth less.
Two things to check before treating it as equivalent. Payment processing is excluded from Grubhub’s published pricing, so that cost sits outside every zero on that list. And Grubhub operates in the United States; if you are in the UAE, the Gulf, India or most of Europe, it is not an option you can take.
What it costs in a year
At 400 orders a month and a $32 average — $12,800 of monthly revenue:
| Setup | Rate | Annual cost |
|---|---|---|
| 5% self-delivery | 5% | $7,680 |
| 5% + Grubhub Delivery | ~15% | $23,040 |
| 20% + Grubhub Delivery | ~30% | $46,080 |
Before payment processing, and before anything you spend on ads. The spread between the top and bottom rows is the whole reason to read a pricing page properly.
Run your own numbers against your real volume, or see what DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub charge side by side.
Where Grubhub genuinely earns it
Discovery. Grubhub cites “7 out of 10 consumers use Grubhub to discover new restaurants” — and whatever you make of a vendor’s own statistic, the underlying point holds: a marketplace puts you in front of people who have never heard of you, and your own ordering page cannot do that.
If you are new, or opening in a new area, that reach is worth paying for. The question is not whether to be on Grubhub — it is whether your regulars, who already know your name, should keep arriving through it. Those are the orders worth moving to a page you control.