- For customers: Uber Eats has the closest overall reach to DoorDash. Caviar offers a more curated restaurant selection in select cities. Gopuff is the better choice for fast convenience items rather than restaurant meals.
- For restaurant owners: every marketplace alternative still charges 15-30% commission. ChowNow is structurally different, a flat monthly subscription with 0% commission on direct orders, which is the only option on this list that changes the underlying economics rather than just the percentage.
- For drivers: Uber Eats and Instacart both pay competitively with DoorDash in most markets, and running multiple apps simultaneously is the standard strategy among top earners rather than picking just one.
- The real question isn't which marketplace charges the least. It's whether you keep paying a commission on every order, forever, or build a channel that doesn't charge one at all.
Quick comparison: DoorDash alternatives at a glance
| Platform | Customer delivery fee | Restaurant commission | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Uber Eats | $0-$8 | 15% (self-delivery) to 30% (full marketplace) | Closest reach to DoorDash, urban areas |
| Grubhub | Varies by restaurant | 5-30% depending on plan tier | NYC, Chicago, Boston-concentrated markets |
| Caviar | $0-$10 | 12% (pickup) to 30% (delivery) | Curated, upscale restaurant selection |
| ChowNow | $3.99 split with restaurant on Flex Delivery | 0% on direct orders, flat subscription instead | Restaurants escaping commission entirely |
| Gopuff | $1.95-$2.95 | Not applicable, Gopuff owns its own inventory | Fast convenience and essentials, not restaurant meals |
| Postmates | Merged into Uber Eats | Same as Uber Eats | Legacy users, functionally now Uber Eats |
Marketplace alternatives to DoorDash, ranked
Uber Eats
Uber Eats is the closest true alternative to DoorDash in scale and reach, holding the second-largest share of the US delivery market after DoorDash itself. It operates in hundreds of cities globally and generated $13.7 billion in revenue in 2024.
Who it is genuinely best for: Customers in urban areas who want DoorDash-level restaurant selection and delivery speed, and who may already use Uber for rides and want the combined Uber One subscription benefits.
What it costs customers: Delivery fees range from $0 to $8 depending on distance and restaurant. A service fee of roughly 15% of the subtotal applies. Eats Pass at approximately $9.99 a month provides free delivery on eligible orders.
What it costs restaurants: Commission rates run 15% for restaurants handling their own delivery, rising to 20-30% for full marketplace service including Uber Eats' driver network. Rates increased again in March 2026, and for restaurants opted into Uber One, a meaningful share of repeat customer orders now effectively cost 30% rather than 25% once the membership surcharge is included.
Where it falls short: Coverage thins out considerably in rural and small-town markets compared to DoorDash. Fee structures have moved upward consistently year over year, narrowing the gap with DoorDash's own rates.
Grubhub
Grubhub is the original food delivery marketplace, though its national market share has fallen to roughly 7% after peaking near 70% in 2016. It remains genuinely competitive in a handful of dense metro markets, particularly New York City, Chicago, Boston, and Philadelphia.
Who it is genuinely best for: Customers in Grubhub's core metro markets who value the 10% Grubhub+ cashback on eligible orders, a perk no competitor on this list matches.
What it costs customers: Delivery and service fees vary by restaurant and market. Grubhub+ at $9.99 a month provides free delivery and cashback on eligible orders.
What it costs restaurants: Grubhub uses a marketing fee structure rather than a flat commission, typically running 5-15% for the marketing component plus a 10% delivery fee if using Grubhub's driver network. On phone orders routed through Grubhub's tracking number specifically, commission can run 15-25%, a cost structure many restaurant owners report being unaware they were paying until reviewing their statements closely.
Where it falls short: Outside its core metro markets, restaurant selection and delivery speed both decline noticeably. The ownership instability following its 2025 sale to Wonder Group for $650 million, down from a $7.3 billion acquisition price four years earlier, adds genuine uncertainty about the platform's long-term direction.
Caviar
Caviar (owned by DoorDash since its 2019 acquisition) operates as a more curated, upscale alternative within DoorDash's own portfolio, available in roughly 24 US cities concentrated on the East Coast, parts of California, the Pacific Northwest, and Dallas-Fort Worth.
Who it is genuinely best for: Customers in Caviar's covered cities who want a more selective restaurant marketplace featuring upscale and established local restaurants, including a curated "Staff Picks" feature.
What it costs customers: Delivery fees range from $0 to $10 depending on restaurant and distance.
What it costs restaurants: Caviar charges 30% commission on delivery orders, dropping to 12% if the customer chooses pickup instead. The selective partnership model means not every restaurant can join, Caviar curates which businesses appear on the platform.
Where it falls short: Coverage is the narrowest of any major alternative on this list, limited to roughly two dozen cities. Since it's owned by DoorDash, it isn't a structurally different option for restaurants already frustrated with DoorDash's broader commission model.
Regional and niche alternatives
Gopuff isn't a restaurant delivery alternative at all, it's a convenience delivery service with its own owned inventory, delivering everyday essentials, snacks, and household items in 15-30 minutes across 650+ US cities. Delivery fees run $1.95-$2.95. Since Gopuff owns its own products rather than partnering with restaurants, there's no restaurant commission structure to compare, it simply isn't the right alternative for someone wanting restaurant meals.
Postmates has been functionally absorbed into Uber Eats since its 2020 acquisition for $2.65 billion. Existing Postmates users in many markets now interact with the Uber Eats app directly, so for practical purposes it is the same option as Uber Eats above rather than a distinct alternative.
Instacart, while primarily a grocery delivery platform, has expanded into some restaurant and prepared food categories in select markets, and is worth considering for customers whose needs span both groceries and occasional meal delivery in a single app.
For restaurant owners: which DoorDash alternative actually lowers your cost
This is the section every other DoorDash alternatives article skips, and it's the one that matters most if commission is the actual reason you're looking for an alternative.
Every marketplace option above, Uber Eats, Grubhub, Caviar, charges a percentage of every order, just like DoorDash. Switching between them changes the number, not the structure. Uber Eats runs 15-30%. Grubhub's marketing-plus-delivery model effectively lands in a similar 15-30% range once both components are included. Caviar runs 12-30% depending on fulfilment method. None of these alternatives change the fundamental economics, you're still paying a third party a meaningful share of every transaction, indefinitely, on every order, forever.
ChowNow is the closest thing on this list to a genuinely different model, charging restaurants a flat monthly subscription instead of commission. But the category it represents goes further than ChowNow alone. A white label restaurant online ordering system removes the per-order percentage entirely and gives a restaurant a fully branded ordering experience it owns outright, not a third-party subscription with someone else's logo on the checkout screen. One restaurant owner who made a similar switch put it plainly: he had been making nearly 70% of his profit through Grubhub, while the app was taking 30% of it back as commission, simple math that pushed him toward a flat-fee, owned-channel model instead.
The trade-off is real and worth being honest about. Owning your ordering channel means you're responsible for driving your own traffic to it, it doesn't put you in front of new customers browsing a marketplace the way DoorDash, Uber Eats, or Grubhub do. The restaurants seeing the strongest results typically use the marketplace apps for new customer discovery and a restaurant delivery software platform they control for repeat customers who already know the business, rather than treating it as an either-or choice.
On a practical level: a restaurant doing $15,000 a month in online orders pays roughly $3,150-$4,500 a month in commission at a typical 21-30% marketplace rate. The same order volume through an owned, flat-fee model costs a fraction of that regardless of how much volume grows. As order volume increases, the gap between these two models widens dramatically, commission-based costs scale with revenue, owned-channel costs don't.
For drivers: alternatives to dashing
If you're driving for DoorDash and considering alternatives, the honest comparison depends on what you're optimising for.
Uber Eats pays competitively with DoorDash in most markets and shares the same underlying delivery mechanics, accept an order, pick up, deliver, get paid plus tips. Many drivers run both apps simultaneously rather than choosing one, accepting whichever order pays better in the moment, a practice known as multi-apping that is both legal and widely used among experienced gig drivers.
Instacart pays more per batch for grocery shopping work, typically $18-$26 an hour nationally, though it requires more physical effort, a personal vehicle, and longer per-order time than restaurant delivery. It suits drivers comfortable with in-store shopping rather than pure pickup-and-deliver work.
Shipt operates similarly to Instacart as a grocery shopping and delivery service, partnered primarily with Target, and is worth considering for drivers in markets with strong Shipt coverage who prefer its scheduling and communication tools.
Amazon Flex pays a flat block rate, typically $18-$25 an hour depending on market, for package and grocery delivery blocks booked in advance, offering more schedule predictability than DoorDash's purely on-demand model, at the cost of less flexibility to start dashing the moment you want to work.
The strategy that actually maximises earnings for most experienced drivers isn't picking one alternative over DoorDash, it's running two or three apps simultaneously and accepting only the orders that meet a minimum pay threshold on each.
The alternative that isn't a marketplace at all
Every option covered so far, Uber Eats, Grubhub, Caviar, even Postmates before its merger, is still a commission-based marketplace. Switching from DoorDash to any of them changes which company takes a cut of your restaurant's revenue, not whether a cut gets taken at all.
ChowNow's flat-fee model points toward a different category of answer entirely: a direct ordering channel a restaurant owns outright, rather than rents from a marketplace. A white label restaurant online ordering platform takes that idea further, a branded app and ordering site built specifically for one restaurant or one local delivery business, with full ownership of the customer relationship, the order data, and the economics, rather than a flat fee paid to a third-party subscription service.
Stop renting your customers. Start owning them.
OwnDeliv gives you a branded web ordering site, native iOS and Android apps, a rider dispatch system, and a merchant dashboard – all for a flat monthly fee, no per-order commission. You keep the customer data. You keep the margin. You keep your brand.
The honest way to think about this category: marketplace alternatives like Uber Eats or Grubhub are useful for the same reason DoorDash is, they put a restaurant in front of customers who haven't found it yet. A direct, owned ordering channel solves a different problem, what happens to the relationship with a customer after that first order. The restaurants getting this right generally aren't choosing one over the other, they're using a marketplace for discovery and an owned channel for everything that comes after.
FAQThe questions everyone asks
No. DoorDash does not own Grubhub. Grubhub was acquired by Just Eat Takeaway in 2021 for $7.3 billion, then sold to Wonder Group, a restaurant and food brand company, for approximately $650 million in early 2025. DoorDash does own Caviar, acquired in 2019, and gained access to the UK and several European and Middle Eastern markets through its own 2025 acquisition of Deliveroo, but Grubhub remains a separate, independently owned company.
ChowNow is the cheapest alternative for most restaurants once order volume is meaningful, since it charges a flat monthly subscription ($119-$399) plus standard payment processing rather than a percentage commission. For restaurants with lower order volume, the comparison is closer, since flat fees apply regardless of how many orders come through, while commission-based platforms only charge when an order happens.
Uber Eats is the closest direct alternative in pay and mechanics, and many drivers run it alongside DoorDash rather than switching entirely. Instacart and Shipt pay more per completed order for grocery shopping work but require more time and effort per job. Amazon Flex offers the most predictable scheduling through booked delivery blocks.
It depends on the order and restaurant. Both platforms charge comparable delivery and service fees, and both offer a subscription, Eats Pass and DashPass respectively, at similar price points around $9.99 a month. Neither is consistently cheaper across the board; the better deal varies by specific restaurant, location, and order size.
Yes, on direct orders placed through a restaurant's own website or branded app, ChowNow charges 0% commission. Revenue instead comes from a flat monthly subscription and standard payment processing fees. ChowNow does apply a separate "Support Local Fee" of 7.5% to orders placed specifically through ChowNow's own discovery app or marketplace listing, distinct from a restaurant's direct ordering channel, so the commission-free claim applies specifically to direct, branded ordering rather than every order type ChowNow facilitates.
A marketplace alternative, like Uber Eats, Grubhub, or Caviar, still charges a percentage commission on every order and controls the customer relationship and data. A direct ordering platform, whether a flat-fee subscription service or a fully white-label branded app, eliminates the per-order percentage and gives the restaurant or delivery business ownership of the customer relationship, at the cost of having to drive your own traffic rather than relying on marketplace discovery.