A £20 order on a delivery app doesn't leave £20 in your till. Once commission, per-order fees and VAT come out, the real number is a lot lower — and most operators have never seen it laid out line by line. So here it is, with every assumption shown so you can check the maths against your own rate.
Quick answer
On a typical own-delivery aggregator deal (~28% commission + a ~50p admin fee), a £20 order leaves the restaurant roughly £12–14 before food, packaging and staff. The same £20 on your own commission-free site leaves about £19.50 — you pay only card processing.
Anatomy of a £20 order
Here's a £20 order on a platform's own-delivery model at a mid-range 28% commission, next to the same order on your own ordering site. Rates vary by deal and region — swap in your numbers.
| Line | Delivery app | Your own site |
|---|---|---|
| Order value | £20.00 | £20.00 |
| Platform commission (~28%) | −£5.60 | £0.00 |
| Per-order admin fee | −£0.50 | £0.00 |
| Card processing (~1.5% + 20p) | included in commission | −£0.50 |
| You keep (before costs) | ≈ £13.90 | ≈ £19.50 |
| If not VAT-registered: 20% VAT on fees | −£1.22 | — |
Assumptions: 28% commission (mid-point of the 25–30% most independents pay), 50p admin fee, UK card rate ~1.5% + 20p. Commission also carries 20% VAT — reclaimable if you're VAT-registered, a real cost (~£1.22 here) if you're under the £90k threshold.
Commission
Commission is the big one: at 28%, the platform takes £5.60 of your £20 before anything else. Self-delivery deals are lower (~14%), but then you're providing the drivers. See the per-platform ranges in our 2026 commission guide.
Per-order and admin fees
On top of commission, expect a small per-order admin fee (around 50p on some platforms). It looks trivial until you remember it lands on every order — and it's proportionally brutal on small baskets.
VAT on the fees
Aggregator commission is a service, so 20% VAT applies. If you're VAT-registered you can reclaim that as input VAT — but many smaller takeaways trade under the £90,000 threshold and can't, so the VAT on fees is a genuine extra cost (about £1.22 on our £20 example).
What the restaurant nets
So the £20 order nets roughly £12.68–£13.90 before you've paid for ingredients, packaging, gas, rent and the staff who cooked it. On thin-margin items, that can mean the order barely breaks even.
The same order on a commission-free platform
Run the £20 through your own commission-free ordering site and there's no marketplace cut — just card processing (~1.5% + 20p ≈ 50p on £20) and your flat monthly platform fee. You keep about £19.50 and you own the customer. Across a month of orders, that gap is the difference between a squeezed site and a healthy one. Run your own order volume through the calculator to see the monthly difference.
Sources
- Commission and fee ranges — our 2026 commission guide (official pricing pages, verified June 2026). The worked example uses a 28% mid-point; check your own contract.
- UK card-processing rates — typical published UK card rates of ~1.5% + 20p per transaction (e.g. Stripe / Revolut UK pricing); confirm with your processor.
- VAT registration threshold — £90,000 (UK, 2024 onwards), HMRC.
