01 — The verdictThe 30-second answer
- For customers: DoorDash is the default alternative almost everywhere outside Grubhub's core cities, NYC, Chicago, Boston, and Philadelphia, where Grubhub itself is still genuinely competitive. Uber Eats is the strongest second option in most major metros.
- For restaurant owners: every marketplace alternative still charges 15-30% commission, just under a different name. ChowNow's flat-fee model is the one option on this list that changes the structure rather than the percentage.
- For drivers: Grubhub's shrinking order volume outside its core markets makes consistent earnings harder than on DoorDash or Uber Eats in most of the country. Many Grubhub drivers already run a second app alongside it for this reason.
- The real question isn't which app replaces Grubhub best. It's whether you're choosing based on where you actually live, since Grubhub's coverage has narrowed dramatically and the right alternative depends entirely on whether you're in one of the cities where it still works.
Where Grubhub actually still works, and where it doesn't
Before comparing alternatives, it's worth being honest about why people are searching for them in the first place.
Grubhub held roughly 70% of the US food delivery market in 2016. Today that figure sits at approximately 7%. The company was acquired by Just Eat Takeaway for $7.3 billion in 2020, then sold to Wonder Group, a delivery-focused restaurant company founded by former Walmart executive Marc Lore, for $650 million in November 2024, a steep drop in valuation that reflects just how much ground the platform has lost.
That decline hasn't been uniform. Grubhub remains genuinely competitive in a handful of dense East Coast metros, particularly New York City, Chicago, Boston, and Philadelphia, where its early-mover advantage and deep local restaurant relationships still translate into real order volume. Outside those markets, coverage and restaurant selection both thin out noticeably, and in many parts of the country DoorDash has effectively become the default by attrition rather than by any single decisive advantage.
This matters because the right Grubhub alternative depends heavily on where you live. Someone in Manhattan switching away from Grubhub is making a very different decision than someone in a mid-sized Midwestern city where Grubhub barely had a foothold to begin with.
Quick comparison: Grubhub alternatives at a glance
| Platform | Customer delivery fee | Restaurant commission | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| DoorDash | $0-$8 | 15% (Basic) to 30% (Premier) | Widest national coverage, the default outside Grubhub's core cities |
| Uber Eats | $0-$8 | 15% (self-delivery) to 30% (full marketplace) | Strong urban coverage, Uber One bundling |
| Caviar | $0-$10 | 12% (pickup) to 30% (delivery) | Curated, upscale restaurant selection in select cities |
| ChowNow | $3.99 split with restaurant on Flex Delivery | 0% on direct orders, flat subscription instead | Restaurants escaping commission entirely |
| Seamless | Same as Grubhub, it is Grubhub | Same as Grubhub | NYC customers specifically, not a true alternative |
Marketplace alternatives to Grubhub, ranked
DoorDash
DoorDash is the default replacement for Grubhub in most of the United States, simply because it's the platform that absorbed the market share Grubhub gave up over the past decade. It holds approximately 67% of US food delivery and operates in 7,000+ cities, a footprint many multiples wider than Grubhub's current coverage.
Who it is genuinely best for: Customers anywhere outside Grubhub's core East Coast metros, where DoorDash's restaurant selection and delivery speed are simply more reliable. It's also the strongest option for anyone who wants a single app that also covers groceries and convenience items through DashMart.
What it costs customers: Delivery fees range $0-$8 depending on distance. A 10-15% service fee applies. DashPass at $9.99 a month provides free delivery on eligible orders.
What it costs restaurants: A tiered structure of 15% (Basic), 25% (Plus), or 30% (Premier), with higher tiers buying better visibility and DashPass eligibility. This is comparable to or slightly above what Grubhub itself charges through its own marketing-fee-plus-delivery model.
Where it falls short: In Grubhub's strongest cities, particularly NYC, DoorDash's restaurant selection still doesn't fully match Grubhub's deep network of independent local kitchens.
Uber Eats
Uber Eats is the second-largest US delivery platform and the strongest alternative for customers in major cities who also use Uber for rides.
Who it is genuinely best for: Urban customers who want a combined transport and food delivery subscription through Uber One, and anyone in a city where Uber Eats has built strong restaurant density.
What it costs customers: Delivery fees of $0-$8, a roughly 15% service fee, and an Eats Pass/Uber One subscription at approximately $9.99 a month for free delivery on eligible orders.
What it costs restaurants: 15% for self-delivery, rising to 20-30% for full marketplace service, with rates having increased again in March 2026.
Where it falls short: Coverage thins considerably outside major metros, similar to Grubhub's own geographic limitations, just with a wider footprint overall.
Caviar
Caviar, owned by DoorDash since its 2019 acquisition, offers a more curated alternative to Grubhub's broader restaurant marketplace, available in roughly 24 US cities concentrated on the coasts.
Who it is genuinely best for: Customers in Caviar's covered cities who want a more selective, upscale restaurant marketplace rather than Grubhub's broader mix of independent and chain restaurants.
What it costs customers: Delivery fees of $0-$10.
What it costs restaurants: 30% commission on delivery orders, dropping to 12% for pickup, with a selective partnership model that means not every restaurant can join.
Where it falls short: The narrowest coverage of any alternative on this list, and since it's owned by DoorDash, it isn't a structurally independent option.
A quick note on Seamless
Seamless frequently appears in "Grubhub alternative" searches, but it isn't actually one. Seamless and Grubhub merged in 2013 and have operated as the same underlying company ever since, with Seamless functioning as Grubhub's New York City-specific brand. Switching from Grubhub to Seamless in NYC means switching to the same platform, the same restaurant network, and the same commission structure under a different name. For anyone genuinely looking for an alternative, Seamless doesn't qualify.
Does Grubhub deliver groceries, flowers, or same-day essentials?
This is one of the most commonly searched clusters around Grubhub, and the honest answer is that the platform has expanded well beyond restaurant meals in 2025 and 2026, more than most people realise.
Grocery delivery: Grubhub partnered with Instacart in late 2025 to bring grocery delivery directly into the Grubhub app. Customers can now order from Instacart's network of more than 1,800 national, regional, and local grocery retailers without leaving Grubhub, with the order hosted on Grubhub's platform but fulfilled by Instacart shoppers. This means Grubhub does deliver groceries, though the experience runs through Instacart's infrastructure rather than Grubhub's own delivery network, and availability depends on Instacart's retailer coverage in your area rather than Grubhub's own footprint. Grubhub does not currently offer a subscription-free grocery tier separate from its existing Grubhub+ membership benefits, and grocery delivery is not available 24/7 in every market, it depends on the operating hours of the specific grocery retailer fulfilling the order.
Flower delivery: Grubhub launched its first national floral partnership with FTD in 2025, giving customers access to nearly 3,000 local florists for same-day bouquet delivery directly through the app, often alongside a food order using Grubhub's multi-store ordering feature.
Alcohol and convenience essentials: Grubhub added alcohol delivery from 7-Eleven and local liquor stores in eligible markets, alongside a broader convenience and c-store expansion, with multi-store ordering allowing customers to combine, for example, sushi and a six-pack or chips and wine in a single order.
In short, Grubhub in 2026 covers considerably more than restaurant meals, but each of these categories runs through a specific partnership (Instacart for groceries, FTD for flowers, 7-Eleven and local retailers for alcohol) rather than Grubhub's own owned infrastructure, and availability varies by market depending on those partners' coverage.
For restaurant owners: which Grubhub alternative actually lowers your cost
This is the question that matters most if commission, not coverage, is the real reason you're looking elsewhere.
Grubhub's restaurant-facing cost structure is built around a marketing fee, typically 5-15%, plus an optional 10% delivery fee if you use Grubhub's own drivers rather than self-delivering. That stacking model can push the effective rate close to 25% on a typical delivery order. Switching to DoorDash, Uber Eats, or Caviar changes the exact number, not the underlying structure, every one of them still takes a meaningful percentage of every order, indefinitely.
ChowNow remains the clearest structural alternative among the marketplace options. Rather than commission, it charges a flat monthly subscription, roughly $119-$399 depending on tier, plus standard payment processing of about 2.95% plus $0.29 per transaction, with 0% commission on direct orders placed through a restaurant's own website or app. One restaurant owner who switched away from a similar commission model put it plainly: he had been making nearly 70% of his profit through the marketplace while the app was taking 30% of it back, simple math that pushed him toward a flat-fee model instead.
The honest trade-off is that a flat-fee or owned channel doesn't put a restaurant in front of new customers the way a marketplace does, you're responsible for driving your own traffic to it. The restaurants getting the best results from Grubhub's continued retreat aren't necessarily picking a single replacement marketplace. They're using whichever marketplace still has volume in their specific city for discovery, while building a white label restaurant online ordering channel they own outright for the regulars who already know exactly where to find them.
On a practical level, a restaurant doing $15,000 a month in online orders pays roughly $2,250-$4,500 a month in commission and marketing fees at a typical 15-30% effective rate across these platforms. The same order volume through an owned, flat-fee channel costs a small fraction of that regardless of how much volume grows, and as repeat order volume increases, that gap only widens.
For drivers: alternatives to delivering for Grubhub
If you're currently driving for Grubhub, the calculation for alternatives depends heavily on whether you're in one of its remaining strong markets.
In NYC, Chicago, Boston, or Philadelphia, Grubhub still generates meaningful order volume, and many experienced drivers continue working it alongside a second app rather than dropping it entirely.
Outside those core markets, Grubhub's shrinking order volume nationally makes consistent earnings harder than on a platform with broader coverage. DoorDash is the most direct alternative, sharing similar delivery mechanics, accept, pick up, deliver, with significantly more order density in most US cities. Uber Eats offers a comparable structure and similarly wide coverage.
Instacart is worth considering for drivers comfortable with grocery shopping work rather than pure restaurant delivery, particularly given Grubhub's own move into grocery through its Instacart partnership, an indirect sign of where order volume is heading across the industry.
Multi-apping, running two or more platforms simultaneously and accepting whichever order pays better, is both legal and the standard approach among drivers navigating Grubhub's uneven geographic strength.
The alternative that isn't a marketplace at all
Every option covered so far, DoorDash, Uber Eats, Caviar, Seamless under its real name, is still a commission-based marketplace. Switching from Grubhub to any of them changes which company takes a cut of a restaurant's revenue, not whether a cut gets taken at all.
A white label food delivery app built specifically for one restaurant or one local delivery business represents a genuinely different category of answer, full ownership of the customer relationship, the order data, and the branded ordering experience, rather than a flat fee paid to a subscription service or a percentage paid to a marketplace.
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 framing is the same one that applies across every platform in this category: marketplaces, Grubhub included, are useful for putting a restaurant in front of customers who haven't found it yet. An owned ordering channel solves a different problem entirely, what happens to that customer relationship after the first order. Given how much Grubhub's own market position has shifted in the past four years, that question is worth asking regardless of which marketplace a restaurant currently relies on.
FAQThe questions everyone asks
Not imminently, but the trajectory is genuinely concerning. Grubhub's US market share fell from roughly 70% in 2016 to approximately 7% today. It was sold by Just Eat Takeaway to Wonder Group for $650 million in November 2024, down sharply from its $7.3 billion acquisition price four years earlier. Wonder Group has since expanded Grubhub's grocery, alcohol, and flower offerings rather than scaling it back, suggesting active investment rather than wind-down, but the platform's national relevance outside its core East Coast cities continues to be limited.
There isn't a meaningful one. Seamless and Grubhub merged in 2013 and have operated under the same parent company ever since. Seamless functions as Grubhub's New York City-specific brand, using the same restaurant network and commission structure. Switching from Grubhub to Seamless is not switching to an alternative.
No. DoorDash does not own Grubhub. Grubhub is owned by Wonder Group, a restaurant and food brand company, following its $650 million acquisition in November 2024. DoorDash does own Caviar, acquired in 2019, and gained UK and European market access through its own 2025 acquisition of Deliveroo, but Grubhub remains an entirely separate, independently owned company.
ChowNow is the cheapest alternative for most restaurants doing meaningful order volume, since it charges a flat monthly subscription plus standard payment processing rather than a percentage commission. Among the marketplace alternatives, DoorDash's Basic tier at 15% is typically the lowest entry point, though it comes with reduced visibility and a limited delivery radius compared to higher tiers.
Yes, through a 2025 partnership with Instacart that lets customers order from more than 1,800 grocery retailers directly within the Grubhub app, fulfilled by Instacart shoppers. Grubhub also delivers flowers through a national partnership with FTD and alcohol through 7-Eleven and local liquor store partnerships in eligible markets, alongside its core restaurant delivery business.
It depends on the specific restaurant and order. Both platforms charge comparable delivery and service fees, and both offer roughly $9.99 a month subscriptions. In Grubhub's core cities, where restaurant density and competition are highest, prices are often competitive with or lower than DoorDash's. Outside those markets, DoorDash's broader restaurant selection generally makes it the more practical choice regardless of small price differences.