Driver pay falls across all four major food delivery apps

Food delivery driver pay fell by up to 6% in 2022 compared to 2021, according to gig work management app Rodeo.

Using data for drivers working across the four major delivery services – Just Eat, Deliveroo, Uber Eats and Stuart – a white-label delivery subcontractor used in some cities by Just Eat – it found that Uber paid the lowest at £4.31 per order, a fall of 1.3%.

Just Eat, paid the highest at £6.13 per order although this was down from £6.53 in 2021, followed by Stuart at £5.32 (down from £5.45) and Deliveroo at £4.51 (down from £4.52).

When taking average 2022 inflation of 8.9% into account, all four platforms saw real-terms pay fall dramatically. Just Eat pay dropped almost 14%, while Deliveroo, Uber Eats and Stuart all saw driver earnings per order down about 10%.

Rodeo also used its data to track how many Deliveroo and Uber Eats workers are being paid less than 20p per minute while on orders – equal to £10 an hour if drivers spend 50 minutes of each hour working, as there is almost always some ‘dead time’ between orders.

The proportion of Uber Eats orders paying under this threshold rose from less than 10% in 2021 to more than 16% in 2022. For Deliveroo, however, this fell from 13% to 12%.

Alfie Pearce-Higgins, co-founder of Rodeo, said: “Millions of workers across the economy are seeing their pay eroded by the cost-of-living crisis and inflation, and delivery drivers are being hit the hardest.

“Gig work offers flexibility and independence, which many workers welcome. But this only works if drivers can make informed, independent decisions. Sadly this is often not the case: these platforms use opaque algorithms, change pricing without communicating this to drivers and rarely make it easy for drivers to access and compare their own data.

“Pay fell last year at all four of the major delivery apps even before inflation was taken into account. We believe that gig workers deserve a clear picture so they can choose who is offering the best work opportunities.”