Restaurant Delivery Commission Calculator — What Third-Party Platforms Cost You Per €100

Most operators know the commission percentage they pay on each marketplace order. Far fewer know the actual margin impact once payment fees, packaging, lost upsell, and the long-term cost of not owning the customer relationship are added in. This post does the math out loud — and gives you a calculator to run the same math on your own numbers.

Use the calculator below before you read the breakdown. Enter your monthly order volume, average order value, and the commission rate you actually pay. The widget will show your monthly commission cost and a comparison vs running the same volume through your own direct channel.

What a €100 order actually costs you on a marketplace

Headline commission is the most visible line, but it is rarely the only one. A typical breakdown on a €100 order at 28% commission looks like this: €28 platform commission, €1.50 payment processing the platform passes through, €0.50–€2.00 in extra packaging the marketplace requires, and a real (if harder to quantify) cost of not being able to email or SMS that customer afterward.

Net of those four lines, the restaurant nets roughly €68–€70 on a €100 sale — before food cost and labour. On the same €100 sold through a direct ordering channel, the operator nets €96–€97 after payment processing only, with full customer data retained and the ability to bring that customer back without paying again.

When does own delivery start paying off?

The answer depends on three numbers: how many marketplace orders you currently take per month, the average order value, and what a part-time delivery driver costs in your market. The break-even is rarely where operators guess. Some venues recover the cost of a single dedicated driver at 8–10 deliveries per shift; others need 15+.

The most honest framing: own delivery doesn't have to replace third-party — it has to capture the orders where third-party economics are worst (small baskets, short distances, repeat customers). That subset alone usually swings the math.

What the calculator doesn't show (yet)

• •Discount erosion — many marketplaces require the restaurant to fund promotions on top of commission
• •Refund handling — chargebacks and customer-service refunds the marketplace processes against you without your sign-off
• •Menu mark-up tax — most operators raise marketplace prices 10–20% to absorb commission, which suppresses order volume vs the direct channel
• •Long-term customer value — a customer who reorders direct twice is worth more than a marketplace customer with no contact path

How to use this in a planning conversation

Run the calculator with three scenarios: today (100% marketplace), realistic (50/50 split after enabling direct channel), and aggressive (80% direct after 6 months of customer migration). The gap between scenario 1 and scenario 3 is the size of the annual margin improvement you're leaving on the table by not investing in a direct ordering channel.

See our deeper breakdown in the delivery-commission-true-cost post for the data behind these numbers, or read about how own delivery fleets work in practice on the Own Delivery feature page.