What is the lowest amount you earn for a delivery?

Understanding delivery fees can be hard. Most platforms these days do not explain how fees are calculated or tell you when there is a change in the fees structure.

However, one aspect of fees is pretty straightforward - what is the minimum you can earn for an order?

Minimum order fees on all the major platforms have stayed the same or been decreased in the past few years. Here are the latest numbers (we think):

These are the minimum fees drivers are paid for a single order. Double or triple orders often have lower fees for the additional orders (there seems to be no minimum at all for those).

How many orders pay the minimum delivery fee?

Last week we ran a competition to guess what percentage of Uber single orders paid £3 or less in 2024.

🥁 And the answer was… 24%

Nearly 1 in every 4 Uber single orders pays £3 or less!

Has this changed over time?

Yes, and unfortunately these orders appear to be becoming more common.

In 2022 just 9.7% of single orders on Uber paid £2.80-£3. In 2023 this had increased to 16.1%. This year so far it is up again.

Looking at vehicle type, there are significant differences. For bicycles up to 41% orders pay between £2.80-£3. For Mopeds and Cars it’s about 20%.

Are low paying orders always bad?

No (but often they are). The fee is of course only one part of the equation. To decide whether an order is good or bad we also need to look at how long it took (duration) and how far it was (distance).

So far this year:

• The shortest £2.80 order on Uber for example was only 0.1 miles and took 1:30 minutes 🔥 (i’ll take that)

• The longest £2.80 order on the other hand, was 7.2 miles and took 61 minutes 😠

On average Uber single orders paying between £2.80 and £3.00 took 12 minutes, meaning that drivers earned £0.24 per minute for on-order time.

26% of these orders however, paid the driver less than £0.20 per minute (our estimate for the equivalent of minimum wage).

Do you avoid low paying orders?

Share your thoughts on the Rodeo Feed and tell us if there are other areas where you would like analysis and insights.