Delivery App Commission in the UAE
Every restaurant owner in this country has had the same conversation. Someone quotes a percentage, someone else says theirs is lower, and nobody produces a contract.
The honest starting point is that there is no single published rate. Aggregators negotiate, and what you pay depends on your size, your category, your location and how badly they want you on the platform this quarter.
So this is not a page that will hand you one number for delivery app commission UAE restaurants pay. It is a page about how the cost is actually built, why the figures floating around online are older than they look, and how to work out your own.
Why Will Nobody Give You a Straight Number?
Because the rate is commercial, and because it is not one rate.
What you sign is usually a bundle. A percentage of the order value, sometimes a separate delivery fee, sometimes a payment-processing charge, sometimes a marketing or placement cost that is technically optional and practically not. Two restaurants on the same platform can be paying very different effective rates.
There is also a reporting problem. Most of the specific percentages you will find online come from companies selling software to restaurants, and a higher number makes their pitch stronger.
You will notice this page does not publish a table of current rates by platform. That is deliberate. We could not verify one from a source that was not either out of date or selling something, and putting a confident number on a page you might quote back to your account manager would not be doing you a favour.
What Do the Published Figures Actually Say?
Here is what has appeared in UAE news reporting, with the dates attached, because the dates are the important part.
- UAE press reporting in 2020 and 2021 put aggregator commissions at roughly 25 to 30 per cent, with figures of up to 35 per cent quoted by restaurant operators at the time
- Careem moved its food business to a zero-commission model with a fixed monthly fee in early 2021
- More recent reporting around SME programmes has described rates starting nearer 10 per cent and rising over several years, which is materially below the older range
Treat the 25 to 35 per cent range as history, not as your quote. It was real reporting when it was published. It has not been restated by a credible news source in years, and the newer figures point lower.
If you see a page confidently listing current commission rates for each platform by name, check where the numbers came from. Usually the answer is another page that also did not say.
The Costs That Are Not the Commission
The percentage gets the attention. It is rarely the whole bill.
Discounts and promotions. Visibility on most platforms is tied to running offers. A buy-one-get-one funded by you is a cost, even though it never appears on a commission line.
Packaging for delivery. Containers that survive forty minutes in a car are more expensive than the ones you use in the dining room.
Food cost on the wrong items. Delivery skews orders toward whatever travels well, which is not always what carries your best margin.
Staff time. Somebody is managing tablets, reconciling payouts and handling complaints about a driver you never employed.
The customer relationship. This is the one that never appears in any calculation. You do not get the phone number. You cannot tell them you opened on Sundays now.
How Do You Work Out Your Own Number?
Ignore the headline rate and do this instead. It takes twenty minutes with last month’s statements.
- Take your total aggregator sales for the month, gross
- Take the amount that actually landed in your bank from that platform
- Subtract the second from the first. That is what the channel cost you.
- Divide by the gross figure to get your real effective rate
- Now add the promotions you funded, and the packaging difference, and run it again
The second number is usually the one that changes the conversation. Most operators find their effective cost is higher than the percentage they thought they had agreed to.
Do it per platform rather than in aggregate if you are on more than one. The gap between them is often wider than people expect, and it gives you something concrete to take into a renewal.
What Does That Mean per Order?
Percentages are abstract. Dollars are not.
Take a $25 order. At an effective 25 per cent, the channel takes about $6. If your food cost on that order is $8, you are left with roughly $11 before rent, wages, packaging and utilities.
Now run the same order through a direct channel where the fee is fixed rather than per-order. That $6 stays with you. Fifty of those in a month is $300, which more than covers a whole year of a flat subscription.
That is the whole argument, and it only works if the orders are genuinely repeat business rather than orders the aggregator would have brought you anyway.
The Data You Never See
Commission is the cost you can measure. The customer list is the one you cannot.
On an aggregator, the person who ordered from you is the platform’s customer. You do not get the number. You cannot tell them the new branch opened, or that you are doing something for Ramadan, or that the dish they always order is back on.
That matters compounding over years. A restaurant that has served forty thousand delivery orders through a platform may have no way to contact a single one of those diners. A restaurant that took the same orders directly has a list.
With a direct channel you see where your orders come from, which items get opened and skipped, what devices people use, and which link brought them in. None of that is exotic analytics. It is just information about your own business, which the aggregator model quietly keeps.
Does a Direct Channel Actually Get Used?
It depends entirely on whether you give people a reason, and most restaurants do not.
Putting a QR code on a bag and hoping is not a plan. The codes that get scanned come with something attached: a small discount on the direct order, a free delivery threshold, an item that only exists on your own menu, or simply a note that ordering direct helps the kitchen.
The other thing that works is being faster. If the direct order reaches the kitchen the moment it is sent, rather than after a platform has queued it, customers notice within two or three orders.
Set the expectation properly. You are not going to move everyone, and you should not try. Moving the regulars is the whole win, because they were never the customers you needed to pay to find.
What Does a Direct Ordering Channel Cost?
One flat subscription per outlet, which does not move with your sales.
- $29 per month, or $290 for the year
- One outlet included, additional outlets at a fixed monthly rate each
- 0% commission on every order, permanently
- No payment gateway or merchant account required
- 30 days free, no credit card
The money never passes through the menu. Customers pay you by cash on delivery, card at the door, a payment link, or bank transfer, which is why there is nothing for anyone to take a percentage of.
You can see the current plan and everything included before deciding anything.
Prices are current at the time of writing and are billed in USD.
What Do You Give Up by Going Direct?
Something real, and any page that says otherwise is selling to you.
You give up discovery. Aggregators put you in front of people who have never heard of your restaurant, and that is worth paying for. You also give up their delivery fleet, so a direct order needs your own driver or a pickup option.
And you give up the convenience of a channel somebody else maintains. A direct channel means you answer the messages.
This is why almost nobody switches off aggregators entirely. The sensible version is to keep paying for discovery and stop paying for repeat business.
How Do Restaurants Usually Make the Shift?
Slowly, and through the bag.
Someone paid an aggregator to introduce a customer. That customer liked the food. The QR code on the delivery box, or a card in it, is how the second order arrives without a commission attached.
- A branded QR code on delivery bags and takeaway boxes
- A card in the bag with a small reason to order direct next time
- The menu link in your Instagram bio and on your Google listing
- A table tent for dine-in guests who will order delivery later
A realistic target is not moving everything. It is moving your regulars, which for most kitchens is a meaningful share of monthly orders and almost all of the profitable ones.
The QR side of this runs on QRHUB, which builds QR code solutions for restaurants across the region.
What Should You Actually Do This Week?
- Pull last month’s statements and calculate your real effective rate
- Separate orders from new customers and orders from people who have ordered before
- Ask your account manager for your current rate card in writing
- Set up a direct channel and put the code on the bag
- Measure the split again in three months
30-day free trial. No credit card. 0% commission.
Know the Number Before You Argue About It
The percentage on the contract is rarely what the channel costs you, and the figures circulating online are older than the pages quoting them admit.
Work out your own. Then decide, with an actual number in front of you, how much of your business should be paying discovery rates and how much should not.
Pay for new customers. Stop paying for the ones you already have.