6 June 2026 · 9 min read

Deliveroo, Uber Eats & Just Eat Commission Explained (2026 UK Guide)

If you run a UK restaurant or takeaway, the delivery apps are a major sales channel — and one of your larger running costs. The headline commission rate is only part of the story. Once you add VAT, customer-side fees and the orders you'd have received anyway, the real cost of each delivery order is often higher than owners first expect.

This guide sets out what Deliveroo, Uber Eats and Just Eat typically charge in 2026, shows what's left of a £10 dish after commission, and looks at the practical ways smaller restaurants balance the apps with their own ordering channels.

What each platform actually charges

Commission is negotiated per restaurant and varies by city, cuisine and whether the platform does the delivery for you, so treat these as typical ranges rather than fixed numbers:

The pattern is consistent: the more of the work the platform does (delivery, marketing, payment), the bigger the slice it takes. A full "they deliver everything" setup on Uber Eats or Deliveroo commonly lands around 30% of the order value, before VAT.

The bits that aren't in the headline rate

The commission percentage is what gets quoted. These are the costs that quietly sit on top:

• VAT on the commission. The apps charge 20% VAT on their fee. If your business is VAT-registered you can usually reclaim it, but it's still cash that leaves your account first — and plenty of small cafes sit under the VAT threshold and can't reclaim it at all.
• Customer-side fees. Diners typically pay a service fee plus a delivery fee (often around £2.50 in total). That doesn't come out of your pocket, but it does raise the total price your customer sees — which quietly pushes them toward bigger, less frequent orders.
• Card / processing. On most "they-handle-payment" plans this is bundled into the commission, so you rarely see it as a line item. It's still being paid; it's just hidden inside the percentage.
• Promotions and ads. "Buy one get one", featured placement and in-app ads are extra, on top of commission. Many owners feel pressured into them just to stay visible.

A worked example: what's left of a £10 dish

Take a £10 main on Uber Eats or Deliveroo at roughly 30% commission:

• Order value: £10.00
• Platform commission (~30%): −£3.00 (plus £0.60 VAT, reclaimable if you're VAT-registered)
• You're left with roughly £7.00 — before you've paid for ingredients, packaging, gas, labour and rent.

For a typical food-cost of 30% (£3) and packaging of 50p, that £10 order can leave you with under £3.50 of contribution — and that's on a good day with no promo discount applied. On Just Eat at ~15%, the same dish keeps about £8.50 before costs, which is why so many takeaways push customers there.

Put plainly: on a full-service delivery order, the platform's share can rival your own contribution once all your costs are counted in.

So should you ditch the apps?

For most restaurants, no — the honest answer is rarely a clean yes or no. The platforms genuinely bring three things that are hard to replace overnight:

1. Discovery. New customers who'd never have found you scroll the app and order.
2. A delivery fleet you don't have to hire, insure or manage.
3. Trust and payment handled end to end.

For a brand-new site with no following, that reach is worth paying for. The opportunity is less about leaving the apps and more about not relying on them for your repeat customers — where you can be paying around 30% to reach someone who already knows you.

How to cut your commission bill

The goal isn't zero apps. It's shifting your regulars off them, so you only pay commission to win genuinely new customers. The levers that work:

• Own ordering channel. Give repeat customers a direct way to order — a QR menu for the table and your own takeaway/collection site for at-home orders. Orders placed direct carry no marketplace commission: you keep the full £10, minus only standard card fees.
• A reason to come direct. A small loyalty perk, a flyer in the delivery bag, or "order direct next time and skip the service fee" converts app customers into direct ones over time.
• Collection over delivery where it suits you. Collection orders dodge the delivery portion of the fee entirely.
• Review your tier. If you do (or could do) your own delivery, an order-only or "lite" plan can roughly halve your commission.

This is exactly the gap ShopOps is built for: it's an all-in-one ordering system for small UK restaurants — QR self-ordering at the table, a staff POS, and your own branded takeaway site — so the customers who already know you can order direct rather than through a commission-charging marketplace. You can still run the apps to find new faces, while keeping more of what your regulars spend.

Key takeaways

• Full-service delivery on Uber Eats and Deliveroo commonly costs ~30% of the order, plus VAT; Just Eat's order-only plans are cheaper at ~14–17%.
• The real cost is higher than the headline once you count VAT, promos and the orders you'd have won anyway.
• A £10 app order can leave under £3.50 of contribution after the cut and your own costs.
• Keep the apps for discovery, but move your repeat customers to a direct, commission-free ordering channel — that's where the margin is.

Rates quoted are typical 2026 UK ranges and are negotiated per restaurant; check your own platform agreement for the figures that apply to you.