Home App Reviews Grubhub Review
April 9, 2024
Editorial GuidelinesErica is a freelance writer and proofreader. As the owner of Words with Erica, she helps indie fantasy authors polish their...
You’ve almost certainly heard of apps like Grubhub, and you may have also used them to get food delivered to your door. If you’re reading this article, it’s probably because you’re considering signing up as a driver for Grubhub and you’re wondering if it’s worth your time.
How much money can you make as a driver for this app? How much work is available on it in 2024, and what is the work actually like? Read our review to find out.
Grubhub is an app that allows users to order food for delivery. When you sign up as a driver, you’ll be paid to pick up orders from restaurants and bring them to customers (usually to their homes).
Most people use a car to deliver, although you can also drive a scooter or motorcycle. If you don’t have access to a vehicle, you can also deliver using a bicycle (at least if you live in a dense city—in the suburbs, this is less practical).
As a Grubhub driver, you can set your own schedule by choosing “blocks” you want to work in advance or by toggling your availability in real time.
During your shift, orders will show up in the app. You can view the details for each (including where you’ll have to go, how far you’ll have to drive, and how much you’ll earn) and accept or reject it. You’re under no obligation to accept any orders if none of them pay enough—it’s up to you.
When you accept an order, you’ll pick it up from the restaurant and drive to the delivery location. In some cases, you’ll hand the order directly to the customer. Grubhub also offers contact-free delivery, which means dropping the order at the customer’s door and taking a picture as proof of delivery.
Once you’ve dropped off the order, all you have to do is mark it complete in the app and you’ll be free to take on another one.
On average, Grubhub drivers earn about $15–20 per hour. However, that’s a rough estimate; drivers in large cities (where fares are higher) are sometimes able to earn more, whereas drivers in suburbs and small towns tend to earn less, both because Grubhub doesn’t pay as well and because there are fewer orders to pick up.
Moreover, if you happen to live in an area where Grubhub doesn’t have much of a presence, it might be a struggle to earn much on the app at all. Grubhub’s market share has declined since 2020, making this an increasingly common situation. We’ll go into this in more detail towards the bottom of this review.
Your earnings on Grubhub won’t actually be paid out on an hourly basis. Like most courier gig apps, Grubhub will pay you per order.
Three factors determine how much you’ll make on each Grubhub delivery:
The base pay for each order is determined by:
This is roughly in line with the system that Grubhub’s competitors all use as well. On virtually every delivery app, the farther you have to go and the longer an order will take to complete, the more it will pay.
Like most delivery apps, Grubhub sometimes offers promotions, which they call “missions” and “special offers.” These will boost your pay by a variable amount. They often pop up during particularly busy periods.
You can see how a promotion will affect the price of a delivery before accepting it.
Your customers can tip you (something that Grubhub encourages but doesn’t require). If you do receive a tip, you’ll keep 100% of what you’re given; Grubhub won’t take a cut.
As mentioned, Grubhub pays by the order. However, in contrast to some gig apps, Grubhub also guarantees a minimum hourly rate during your scheduled blocks. They’ll pay you the difference if you fall short, either because you weren’t able to get enough orders or because they paid too little.
This minimum rate varies depending on where you drive (known as your “market”), and unfortunately, Grubhub doesn’t specify on their website what it is in any given city or state.
Note: To be eligible for Grubhub’s guaranteed minimum pay, you must maintain a 90% order acceptance rate during your scheduled block. Moreover, if you take on orders outside of your block, Grubhub will subtract your earnings from the extra compensation they send you to reach your hourly minimum.
Getting paid with Grubhub is easy. When you sign up, the app will prompt you to link a bank account, which they’ll deposit your earnings into.
You can choose between two payment options:
| Option | Payment schedule | Associated fees |
|---|---|---|
| Direct deposit | Every Thursday | None |
| Instant Cash Out | At will; up to $500 per day | Free for Chase Bank customers; $0.50 per transaction for everyone else |
Grubhub is available in over 4,000 cities spread across all 50 US states.
You can find a list of the major cities Grubhub operates in on their website. Smaller cities may be excluded, so if you don’t see yours, don’t give up—you might be able to sign up as a driver anyway.
As with most gig apps, it’s pretty easy to get started working for Grubhub, but there are a few conditions. All workers need to meet the following requirements:
If you plan on delivering by bike (which is mainly an option if you live downtown in an urban area), that’s all you need. However, if, like most workers, you plan on driving a car or another motorized vehicle, then you’ll also be required to have:
Note that not all auto insurance plans cover commercial driving (which delivering for Grubhub is). Before you apply, check your policy or call your insurer to confirm that you’ll be adequately covered.
Most delivery gig apps, including Grubhub, will conduct a background check before allowing you to start working. This will be performed by a third-party company called Checkr.
When they conduct their background check, they’ll look to see if you have any:
Most people pass Grubhub’s background check with no trouble, although it will take several days to complete. If your application stalls out for longer than a week, contact Checkr’s support team and ask about the status of your background check.
You can sign up for Grubhub in one of two ways:
Once you’ve begun the application process, provide the requested information, along with a picture of your driver’s license (or state ID) and proof of car insurance (if you intend to drive).
You can check the status of your application using a link that Grubhub will send you via either text message or email. Once your application is accepted, you’ll be able to sign in to the app and access Grubhub’s onboarding procedures. You’ll learn how to use the app, set your schedule, and pick up orders.
After you complete your first delivery, Grubhub will send you an insulated delivery bag. It will take five to ten business days to arrive, so you’ll need to use your own until then.
In some markets, you’ll also be required to carry a Grubhub Driver Card—a company debit card that you’ll use to pay for orders at restaurants. You can start delivering without it, but be sure to activate it as soon as you receive it, and keep it with you when you drive. 1
In order to decide whether Grubhub is a worthwhile side hustle, you need to compare your earnings to your expenses, as well as evaluate what the work is actually like. We’ll look at both questions below.
As we’ve mentioned, you can reasonably expect to earn around $15–$20 per hour on Grubhub, assuming the app has enough of a presence in your market.
Unfortunately, you won’t actually get to keep all of that money. A lot of it will get eaten up by your expenses, which will be substantial.
Your three main expenses will be gas (which Grubhub won’t pay for), vehicle maintenance, and taxes. How much you’ll spend on each depends on several factors, including how fuel-efficient your vehicle is, but as a rule of thumb, plan on budgeting:
All told, you can expect your overhead to cut into your profits by around 35%, leaving you with just 65% of what you made. In other words, if you’re able to consistently make $20 per hour, you’ll take home just $13.
It’s up to you whether driving for a delivery service for $13 per hour is worth it or not. That’s comparable to what you’ll make at many entry-level retail jobs; depending on your perspective and expectations, that might be disappointing or perfectly fine.
For context, $13 per hour is considerably higher than the federal minimum wage of $7.25. However, it’s below the minimum wage in 14 states and the District of Columbia, as of February 2024. 2
When you evaluate whether or not you’re willing to deliver for Grubhub for an effective wage of $13 per hour, it’s important to have a clear idea of what the gig actually entails.
At Side Hustles, we’ve interviewed several delivery drivers for gig apps like Grubhub about what they like and dislike about their jobs. Here’s what they’ve told us:
The last point is a big deal, since the more downtime you have as a driver, the less you’ll earn. You can partially mitigate this by downloading multiple delivery apps and driving for them at the same time (i.e., taking orders from whichever one happens to be paying more at any given moment).
For obvious reasons, companies like Grubhub don’t encourage this, but it’s perfectly legal and doesn’t violate the app’s terms of service.
To give you a clearer picture of what delivering for Grubhub is like, here’s what a few actual gig workers think about the app.
One user on Reddit gives Grubhub a mixed review. They say that they drive for Grubhub because it’s one of the most profitable delivery apps in their area (along with Uber Eats). As you’ll see, this is something of a rarity; relatively few people say this about Grubhub in 2024.
The user goes on to note that Grubhub’s flexible schedule makes it a good side hustle for college students, and that you can do homework or study while waiting for offers.
However, they’re critical of the app itself, complaining about glitches and other usability issues. They also don’t think much of Grubhub’s support for drivers, calling it “horrible, not even worth the hassle.”
Several other users in that thread echo their sentiments and offer a few pieces of advice for new drivers:
Another user is much more negative about Grubhub, claiming that the app was once reasonably lucrative, but that in 2022, the flow of well-paying orders dried up.
This is a complaint that we’ve heard from several other Grubhub drivers. Many people seem to think that the app is on the decline, which is backed by a certain amount of hard data.
In January 2024, the consumer analytics company Bloomberg Second Measure reported that Grubhub’s market share in the US, which once had been roughly equal to its competitors’, had fallen to just 8%. In contrast, DoorDash has a 66% share of the market, and Uber Eats has 22%. 3
According to this Redditor, Grubhub is now a $5-an-hour gig. It’s hard to predict whether that’ll be the case in your area; if it is, delivering for Grubhub will be significantly less profitable than working any minimum-wage job.
In 2021, around the time when DoorDash and Uber Eats began eclipsing Grubhub, one Redditor wrote that it was “simply not worth doing anymore.”
In their thread, they briefly note that for some drivers in “unusual markets,” the picture might be different, but then go on to complain about poor offers and an overall lack of work.
These complaints are ubiquitous enough that we’re inclined to take them seriously, and we wouldn’t recommend relying on Grubhub for a reliable second income. If you use it, your best bet is to do so in tandem with another delivery app.
The good news, as pointed out by several people in the threads we’ve linked, is that you don’t have to make any long-term commitments when you sign up as a driver. If you find that there aren’t enough offers in your area or they’re too low-paid to be worth taking, you can simply stop using Grubhub.
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