How Much Do SkipTheDishes, DoorDash and Uber Eats Really Cost Canadian Restaurants? (2026)

If you run an independent restaurant, café or takeout spot in Canada, you already know the line that keeps growing: the cut the delivery apps take. Owners call it "the new rent" for a reason — it is now one of the largest controllable costs on the books, and it lands every single day whether the dining room is full or empty.

The pressure is real. As of November 2025, 44% of Canadian restaurants were operating at a loss or breaking even, up from 41% in June (Restaurants Canada survey, via Canadian Pizza Magazine, 2025). The Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University projects Canada will lose roughly 4,000 restaurants on a net basis in 2026 (Agri-Food Analytics Lab, 2026). When margins are this thin, a 20–30% commission is not a marketing expense — it is the difference between staying open and not.

This is a plain-numbers teardown of what each platform actually takes in 2026, what a real C$40 order nets you, and where you can claw some of it back.

Key takeaways

• DoorDash, Uber Eats and SkipTheDishes all top out around 29–30% commission on delivery orders for their highest-visibility plans, with entry plans near 20%.
• Pickup orders cost far less — roughly 8–15% depending on platform — because the courier is taken out of the equation.
• A C$40 order on a 29% plan returns about C$28.40 in commission terms before you have paid for any food, labour or packaging.
• British Columbia caps total delivery fees at 20% of an order — the only province with a permanent cap — so a BC restaurant on a 30% tier is legally protected from the full rate.
• SkipTheDishes rates are negotiated, not published — two restaurants in the same city can be on very different numbers.
• The single biggest lever is shifting orders you already own to pickup or to your own ordering page, where the platform's cut shrinks or disappears.

How much do SkipTheDishes, DoorDash and Uber Eats actually charge in 2026?

For delivery orders, expect to lose roughly 20% to 30% of the order value to commission on the major Canadian platforms in 2026. The exact number depends on which plan you are on, whether the order is delivery or pickup, and — in Skip's case — what you managed to negotiate.

Here is where the published rates sit today:

The pattern is the same across all three: you pay more commission to buy more visibility in the app. The higher tiers promise better placement, lower customer delivery fees and access to ads — but you are renting reach, and you are renting it at a permanent percentage of every sale.

DoorDash

DoorDash Canada publishes three partnership plans: Basic at 20% commission per delivery order, Plus at 25%, and Premier at 29% (DoorDash Canada pricing, 2026). Pickup orders are cheaper — 10% on Basic and 8% on Plus and Premier — because DoorDash is only handling the order, not the driver. The higher tiers add things like a broader delivery radius and the DashPass customer base, which is the trade-off you are paying the extra points for.

Uber Eats

Uber Eats Canada runs a near-identical ladder: Lite at 20%, Plus at 25%, and Premium at 30% on delivery (Uber Eats Canada pricing, 2026). Pickup is 10% across the plans — but with an important catch: that pickup rate depends on your in-app prices matching your in-store prices. If Uber can't validate that, the pickup fee rises to 15%. In other words, the cheap pickup rate is conditional, and the condition is that you don't mark up the menu to cover the commission.

SkipTheDishes

SkipTheDishes is the Canada-native leader, and it is also the most opaque. Unlike DoorDash and Uber Eats, Skip does not publish a rate card — its commission is negotiated per restaurant and reported to land in the 20–30% range on delivery, with pickup around 10–15% (Trudy's Table, 2026; Menuviel, 2026). Rates vary by location, order volume and cuisine category, and they can be negotiated — particularly for higher-volume restaurants (Menuviel, 2026).

That opacity is a problem worth naming. Two restaurants on the same street can be paying very different commissions, and most owners have no idea whether their number is fair. Skip also offers a flat-fee option, SkipGo, at roughly C$7–9 per order (Trudy's Table, 2026) — which on a larger ticket can beat a percentage commission outright (more on that below).

What does a C$40 delivery order really net you?

On a 29% plan, a C$40 order hands roughly C$11.60 to the platform in commission, leaving about C$28.40 — and that is before you have paid for a single ingredient, the cook, the packaging or the GST/HST you still have to remit.

Run the same C$40 order across the tiers and the spread is stark:

Now lay your food and labour costs over the top. If food cost runs 30% (C$12) and direct labour another 25% (C$10) on that C$40 order, a top-tier delivery order can leave you with only a few dollars of contribution — and a slow week of those is exactly how a profitable-looking restaurant quietly slides into the 44% that aren't making money. The commission isn't the only cost, but it is the one you can actually move.

Two practical reads from this table:

• Pickup is dramatically cheaper than delivery. The same order nets you C$36 on pickup versus C$28.40 on a top delivery tier. Every pickup order you can encourage is worth roughly C$7–8 more to you on a C$40 ticket.
• Flat fees beat percentages on bigger tickets. A C$8 SkipGo fee on a C$40 order is the same as 20%, but on a C$70 order it is only about 11%. The larger the average order, the more a flat fee works in your favour.

Does British Columbia's fee cap actually lower your commission?

Yes — if you operate in British Columbia, your total delivery fees are legally capped at 20% of the order value, made up of a 15% cap on the food-delivery service plus a 5% cap on other fees (Cassels, 2023). The cap came into force on January 1, 2023, and BC is the only province with a permanent cap on delivery-company fees.

Crucially, the legislation also prohibits delivery companies from reducing driver compensation to claw back the cap (Government of British Columbia, 2022) — so the platforms can't simply shift the cost onto couriers' pay.

The practical effect: a BC restaurant that would otherwise be on a 29% or 30% top tier is effectively capped at 20%. If you operate in BC and your statements show a higher all-in rate, that is worth a hard conversation with your account rep. Outside BC, there is no equivalent cap as of 2026 — Ontario, Alberta, Quebec and the rest leave commission entirely to the contract.

What other fees stack on top of commission?

The headline commission is rarely the whole story. A few other costs ride along with a delivery operation, and they compound:

• Card-processing on direct orders. When you move customers to your own ordering page to escape commission, you still pay card-processing fees — typically a few percent per transaction. It is far smaller than a 25–30% commission, but it is not zero, so build it into any "commission-free" comparison.
• Credit-card surcharging. Since October 6, 2022, Canadian merchants outside Quebec have been allowed to surcharge credit-card payments, capped at 2.4% of the transaction (or your actual cost of acceptance, whichever is less) (CFIB, 2022). It applies to credit cards only, not Interac debit, and Quebec is excepted under its consumer-protection laws. Surcharging won't touch your delivery commission, but it is one lever some owners use to offset rising payment costs on the orders they do own.
• GST/HST you still owe. The tax treatment of platform orders trips up a lot of operators — who collects and remits GST/HST on a Skip or DoorDash order isn't always obvious, and getting it wrong invites a CRA headache. Confirm with your platform statements and your bookkeeper exactly which party is remitting before you assume it's handled (our GST/HST compliance checklist for Canadian restaurants walks through how platform orders are taxed).

How do you cut what delivery apps cost you?

You will not get the commission to zero on the aggregators — that is the price of their reach. But most independents are leaving real money on the table in four places:

1. Push the orders you already own to pickup. A regular who would happily collect their order costs you ~10% instead of ~30%. Put a pickup option front-and-centre, and mention it on packaging and receipts so delivery customers know it exists.
2. Match your in-app and in-store prices. On Uber Eats, validated matching pricing keeps your pickup rate at 10% instead of 15%. Marking the menu up to cover commission can quietly cost you the cheaper rate — and annoy regulars who notice.
3. Use flat-fee options on big tickets. If your average order is high, SkipGo's flat C$7–9 can beat a percentage commission. Do the math on your average ticket, not a generic example.
4. Own a direct ordering channel. Every order that comes through your own website or ordering page keeps the 20–30% commission in your pocket (minus the few percent of card processing). You don't have to leave the apps — you just stop paying them for the customers who were already looking for you by name. A simple, fast restaurant website with its own ordering page is the cheapest commission cut available, and tools like DineHere exist to stand one up without a developer.

The goal isn't to quit the platforms. It's to know your real number on every channel, route each order to the cheapest one that still works for the customer, and stop treating a 30% cut as a fixed cost of doing business.

Frequently asked questions

How much commission do delivery apps charge restaurants in Canada in 2026?
Delivery commissions run roughly 20–30% on DoorDash, Uber Eats and SkipTheDishes. Entry plans sit near 20%; top-visibility plans reach 29–30%. Pickup orders are much cheaper, around 8–15%.

Which delivery app is cheapest for Canadian restaurants?
On published rates, DoorDash and Uber Eats are nearly identical (20% entry to ~29–30% top tier). SkipTheDishes is negotiated and unpublished, so the "cheapest" depends on the rate you secure and your order mix — flat-fee SkipGo can win on larger tickets.

Is SkipTheDishes commission negotiable?
Yes. Skip does not publish a fixed rate card; its commission is set per restaurant and can be negotiated based on location, order volume and cuisine category, particularly for higher-volume restaurants.

What is SkipGo and is it cheaper?
SkipGo is Skip's flat-fee option at roughly C$7–9 per order. Because it is a flat fee, it works out cheaper than a percentage commission on larger orders — the bigger your average ticket, the more you save.

How much does a restaurant actually keep on a C$40 delivery order?
On a 29–30% top tier, the platform takes about C$11.60–12.00, leaving roughly C$28 in commission terms — before food, labour, packaging and GST/HST.

Does British Columbia cap delivery app fees?
Yes. Since January 1, 2023, BC caps total delivery fees at 20% of an order (15% for delivery service plus 5% other fees) and bars platforms from cutting driver pay to offset it. It is the only province with a permanent cap.

Are pickup orders cheaper than delivery on the apps?
Significantly. Pickup commissions run about 8–15% versus 20–30% for delivery, because the platform isn't supplying a courier. Steering willing customers to pickup is one of the fastest ways to lower your average commission.

Can I add a fee to cover delivery commission?
You can raise menu prices, but on Uber Eats marking up in-app prices above in-store prices can push your pickup rate from 10% to 15%. Separately, you may surcharge credit-card payments outside Quebec, capped at 2.4% — but that applies to your own card transactions, not platform commission.

Who remits GST/HST on a delivery-app order?
It depends on the platform arrangement, and it is a common source of confusion. Check your platform's statements and confirm with your bookkeeper which party is collecting and remitting before assuming it's taken care of.

How can I reduce what delivery apps cost my restaurant?
Push regulars to pickup, keep in-app and in-store prices matched, use flat-fee options on large tickets, and build a direct ordering channel so the orders customers place by name don't carry a 20–30% commission.