The Complete Guide to Delivery Aggregators for Canadian Restaurants

If you run an independent restaurant, cafe or takeout spot in Canada, the delivery apps probably take a bigger cut of those orders than your landlord takes in rent. Owners have a name for it: "the new rent." Every plate that leaves through SkipTheDishes, DoorDash or Uber Eats can shed a fifth to a third of its menu price before you have paid for the food, the labour or the packaging.

This is the complete, plain-English guide to those aggregators for a Canadian operator: what they are, what they genuinely cost using each platform's own published rates, what they can legally charge you (which depends on your province), how much of the market each one actually holds, and - the part the "best delivery app" affiliate lists skip - the concrete levers to cut the bill and keep more of the channel for yourself.

Key takeaways

• Entry-tier commission is 20% on delivery across DoorDash and Uber Eats. It climbs to 29% (DoorDash Premier) and 30% (Uber Eats Premium) on the top marketing plans - extra points that buy reach, not better economics.
• DoorDash and Uber Eats publish their exact Canadian merchant rates. SkipTheDishes publishes none - every Skip figure online is a third-party estimate, so you cannot truly compare it until you have seen your own contract.
• Pickup is far cheaper than delivery - 8–10% versus 20–30% - and is the single biggest lever most owners never pull.
• Only British Columbia kept a permanent fee cap (20% on core services), so the 29–30% top tiers cannot lawfully apply there; the other provinces' pandemic caps have all lapsed, and there is no federal cap.
• Uber Eats leads nationally on users; SkipTheDishes is often strongest regionally in the Prairies and smaller markets - so "the biggest app in Canada" depends entirely on where you are.
• The cheapest order is the one that skips the aggregator. Pickup, self-delivery tiers and your own ordering page all keep the commission in your till.

What is a delivery aggregator, and which ones matter in Canada?

A delivery aggregator is a marketplace app that lists your menu, takes the customer's order and payment, and - on most plans - dispatches a courier to deliver it. In exchange it charges you a commission: a percentage of each order. That is the core trade. You rent the platform's audience and logistics; the platform rents a slice of your revenue on every order.

Three players own the Canadian market. Uber Eats had the most monthly active users in Canada - about 5.3 million, ahead of DoorDash at 3.1 million and SkipTheDishes at 2.9 million, according to Sensor Tower's ranking of the leading food-delivery brands (Sensor Tower, 2025). But those national totals can hide where each app is strong. SkipTheDishes, founded in Winnipeg, has long been associated with the Prairies and smaller, non-metro markets, while Uber Eats and DoorDash tend to lead in the biggest cities. Treat that as a pattern to check locally, not a hard rule.

The practical takeaway for an owner: "the biggest app in Canada" is the wrong question. The app your customers already have open depends on your city - Skip may lead in one town while Uber Eats or DoorDash dominates the next. Ask three neighbouring operators which app drives their volume before you decide which contract matters most.

How much do delivery apps actually cost a Canadian restaurant?

Two of the three publish their exact Canadian merchant rates. Here is what they charge in 2026.

DoorDash Canada offers three marketplace plans, each a different mix of commission and marketing reach (DoorDash, 2026):

• Basic - 20% commission per delivery order, 10% on pickup (7-day free trial).
• Plus - 25% delivery, 8% pickup, including DashPass reach (30-day free trial).
• Premier - 29% delivery, 8% pickup, plus a C$50 marketing rebate when you spend C$100+ a month on marketing.
• A DoorDash tablet runs C$3 per week after the trial, point-of-sale integrations are free, and Drive On-Demand self-delivery is a flat C$6.99–10.99 per order with no commission.

Uber Eats Canada mirrors that structure closely (Uber Eats, 2026):

• Lite - 20% delivery, 10% pickup (with validated in-store pricing).
• Plus - 25% delivery, 10% pickup.
• Premium - 30% delivery, 10% pickup.
• Self-delivery - 15% if you supply your own driver; Uber Direct carries no commission and is priced by distance; and the Webshop (an ordering page on your own site) charges only a 2.9% order-processing fee.

Here is how the published rates line up side by side:

Sources: DoorDash (2026) and Uber Eats (2026) merchant pricing.

SkipTheDishes publishes no merchant pricing page at all. Every commission figure you see quoted for Skip - usually a range around 20–30% on delivery and 10–15% on pickup - is a third-party estimate, not an official rate. Treat those numbers as a rough guide only, and never plan against them until Skip has quoted your specific contract. For a deeper breakdown of the true net payout after all fees, taxes and adjustments, see our teardown of how much delivery apps really cost a Canadian restaurant, and for a platform-by-platform decision, our SkipTheDishes vs DoorDash vs Uber Eats comparison.

The pattern across both published platforms is the same, and it is worth sitting with. The jump from the entry tier to the top tier - 20% up to 29–30% - does not buy you a better delivery service. It buys you marketing placement inside the app. Whether those extra impressions return more than the extra nine or ten points of commission is something only your own numbers can answer, and most owners never test it.

What can the platforms legally charge you?

Here the answer depends on your province, and most owners get it wrong.

During the pandemic, several provinces temporarily capped delivery commissions to protect restaurants. Ontario, Saskatchewan, Quebec and Nova Scotia all brought in short-term limits - Nova Scotia's, for example, held delivery fees to 15% and pickup to 10%. Every one of those caps has since lapsed. There is also no federal cap in Canada; despite blog claims of a "proposed 2026 national cap," no such law exists.

Only British Columbia made its cap permanent. BC's Food Delivery Service Fee Act limits what a platform can charge a restaurant for core delivery services to 20% of the order value, and that limit excludes taxes and tips. It applies to platforms serving 500 or more restaurants in the province, and it has been in force since 1 January 2023 (Government of British Columbia, 2026). The direct consequence for a BC operator: DoorDash's 29% Premier tier and Uber Eats' 30% Premium tier cannot lawfully be charged to you for core services in BC.

One wrinkle BC owners should budget for: platforms added a separate regulatory response fee to offset the province's gig-worker minimum-wage rules. DoorDash, for instance, added a fee of C$0.99 on restaurant delivery orders (up to C$2.99 on other delivery), effective 1 October 2024 (DoorDash, 2024). It is small per order, but it is real, and it sits outside the 20% cap.

Everywhere else in Canada, the ceiling is whatever your contract says. That makes the plan you choose - and your willingness to push back on it - the only cap you actually have.

Why owners call it "the new rent"

The reason commissions sting is arithmetic, not attitude. Independent full-service restaurants in Canada run on a razor-thin average profit margin of about 10.4%, according to TouchBistro's survey of 600 operators (TouchBistro 2026 Canadian State of Restaurants Report, 2026). The same report found operators are spending 37% more on food amid tariff pressure, even as 79% saw customer visits rise - busier dining rooms, thinner plates.

Now layer a 25–30% commission on top of that. On a C$40 delivery order at a 30% commission, roughly C$12 goes to the platform before you have covered food cost, wages or the container it went out in. On a menu where your all-in profit is a dime on the dollar, delivery orders can quietly run at break-even or a small loss while looking like healthy top-line revenue. That is the trap: the app grows your sales and shrinks your profit at the same time.

None of this means delivery is a mistake. For many kitchens it fills slow shifts and reaches customers who would never walk in. But it should be a deliberate channel with a known cost per order, not a default you never audit.

How do you cut what you pay the aggregators?

You have more levers than "be on the app or not." In rough order of impact:

1. Push pickup. Pickup commission is 8–10% versus 20–30% on delivery - you keep 15 to 20 more points on every order a customer collects. Prompt for pickup in your app listing, on your receipts and on your own site. It is the biggest lever most owners never touch.

2. Right-size your plan. If you are on a Premier/Premium marketing tier, pull a month of data and check whether the extra reach actually returned more than the extra commission. If it did not, drop to the entry tier. You are paying 9–10 points for advertising you may not need.

3. Use the self-delivery and processing-only options. If you already have a driver or can hire one for peak windows, DoorDash Drive On-Demand and Uber Direct carry no commission, and Uber Eats' self-delivery tier is 15%. The platforms' webshop / storefront products - Uber's Webshop at a 2.9% processing fee, DoorDash Storefront which is commission-free (you pay only payment processing) - let you take orders through the platform's checkout while keeping almost the whole ticket.

4. Negotiate, especially with Skip. Because SkipTheDishes has no public rate card, its commission is more openly negotiable than most owners assume - volume, exclusivity and marketing spend are all bargaining chips. We cover the exact talking points in can you negotiate your SkipTheDishes commission.

5. Own the channel outright. The cheapest order is the one that never touches an aggregator. A regular who orders through your own website ordering page costs you card processing - a few percent - instead of 20–30%. Every order you move off the marketplace and onto your own page is close to pure margin recovered.

Should you build your own ordering channel?

For most independent Canadian restaurants, the answer is yes - not to replace the aggregators, but to stop them owning your best customers.

The apps are worth it for discovery: the diner who has never heard of you, scrolling the app on a Tuesday. But a loyal regular who orders your pad thai every fortnight should not cost you 30% forever. Once someone has found you, the job is to move them to a channel you control - your own website with an ordering or pickup page - where the only cost is payment processing.

That own channel used to mean an expensive custom build or a "commission-free" platform with its own lock-in. It no longer has to. A simple restaurant website with online ordering, kept up to date and easy to find, pays for itself the moment it saves you one delivery-app commission a week. Modern builders - DineHere among them - can turn a menu photo into a working, orderable site in an afternoon, so owning the channel is no longer a big-budget project. For the full landscape of options, weigh up the best online ordering systems for Canadian restaurants.

A simple framework for your delivery strategy

Pull this together into a plan you can act on this month:

1. Know your local leader. Find out which app your customers actually use in your area, and prioritize that contract.
2. Audit your plan. Confirm what tier you are on and whether the marketing reach earns its extra commission. Drop it if it does not.
3. Check your province. BC operators: hold platforms to the 20% cap on core services. Everyone else: your contract is your only ceiling - read it.
4. Shift the mix. Actively push pickup and your own ordering page, and use self-delivery or processing-only tiers where you can staff them.
5. Recover your regulars. Give repeat customers a reason to order direct next time - a card in the bag, a loyalty nudge, a better price on pickup.

Treated as a managed channel with a known cost, delivery earns its place. Left on autopilot at a top-tier commission, it is exactly the rent owners say it is.

Frequently asked questions

What is the average delivery-app commission in Canada?
On the two platforms that publish rates, delivery commission starts at 20% and rises to 29% (DoorDash Premier) or 30% (Uber Eats Premium). SkipTheDishes does not publish rates; third-party estimates put it in a similar 20–30% range.

Which delivery app is cheapest for a Canadian restaurant?
For pickup, DoorDash's Plus and Premier plans charge the lowest published rate at 8%. For delivery, all three start around 20% at entry tier. The genuinely cheapest option is a processing-only channel - Uber Webshop (2.9%) or your own site - that avoids marketplace commission entirely.

Does SkipTheDishes publish its commission rates?
No. SkipTheDishes has no public merchant pricing page, so any Skip percentage you find online is an estimate. You only learn your real rate when Skip quotes your contract, which is also why it is often negotiable.

Is there a legal cap on delivery-app fees in Canada?
Only in British Columbia, where the Food Delivery Service Fee Act permanently caps core delivery-service fees at 20% (excluding taxes and tips) for platforms serving 500+ restaurants. Other provinces' pandemic caps have lapsed, and there is no federal cap.

Why is delivery still 29–30% in some provinces but capped in BC?
Because only BC made its cap permanent. Ontario, Quebec, Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia had temporary pandemic caps that have since expired, so outside BC your commission is limited only by what your contract says.

How much do delivery commissions really cost my bottom line?
On a razor-thin ~10.4% average profit margin, a 30% commission can push delivery orders to break-even or a small loss even while total sales rise. That is why the channel needs a known cost per order, not blind volume.

Are pickup orders really cheaper than delivery?
Yes - meaningfully. Pickup runs 8–10% versus 20–30% on delivery, so every order a customer collects keeps 15–20 more points of the ticket in your business. Actively prompting for pickup is the highest-return, lowest-effort lever.

Can I run my own delivery through the apps?
Yes. Uber Eats' self-delivery tier is 15%, and DoorDash Drive On-Demand and Uber Direct carry no commission (flat or distance-based fees) if you provide the driver. These suit restaurants with spare labour at peak times.

Should I be on all three delivery apps or just one?
It depends on your market. Being on the local leader is usually essential; adding a second app widens reach but multiplies fees, menu upkeep and error handling. Start with your area's dominant platform and add others only if the incremental orders clear their cost.

How do I reduce my reliance on delivery aggregators?
Push pickup, right-size your plan, use processing-only or self-delivery tiers, negotiate where you can, and - most durably - build your own online ordering page so repeat customers order direct at card-processing cost instead of 20–30% commission.