Originally published: August 2026
This article explains exactly how the fee for each individual delivery which a rider elects to complete is worked out. It sets out the formula, the data used, how much each factor can change your fee, the precise definition of the times we pay for, and how to ask a person to review the fee for any specific delivery.
- You see the fee before you accept
- Minimum protections that always apply
- The formula
- The data we use
- How we estimate the time - and how estimates compare with real times
- How much each factor can change your fee
- Extra fees for waits at merchants
- Extra fees at busy times and during bad weather
- Bonuses
- You keep 100% of tips
- Checking the calculation for your delivery
- Examples
- Glossary
We want you to know how the fee you are offered in the app is worked out - before you decide whether to accept an order or not.
You see the fee before you accept
Every time you get an offer, the app shows you the full fee for the order itself upfront. If you complete the order as offered, that figure will never go down.
Some additional amounts are added afterwards on your invoice rather than shown in the app - extra pay for long merchant waits, night and public holiday allowances, and milestone bonuses. Each of those is explained in its own section below, so you can see what is in the app figure and what is not.
You are always free to accept or reject an order without any consequence for future offers.
Minimum protections that always apply
Two minimums always apply, whatever the algorithm calculates. The fee you are offered is the highest of the fee, the hourly minimum, and the absolute minimum:
- The absolute minimum fee of €3.77. No delivery fee will be below €3.77, however short the delivery. This figure is now the same in every Italian city and for every vehicle type.
- The hourly minimum of €14 per hour of estimated time. This is important to understand precisely, so we set it out in full:
- The €14 per hour applies to the estimated time required to complete the delivery. It does not apply to the time the delivery actually takes you, and it is not a guaranteed hourly wage for the time you are logged in or online.
- The estimate is produced by the algorithm before you accept, using the inputs listed in 'The data we use' below. We call it eRET, or 'estimated Rider Experience Time'.
- The minimum is calculated as estimated minutes multiplied by €14, divided by 60 - that is 23.33 cents for every estimated minute. So a delivery we estimate at 20 minutes carries a minimum of €4.67. We always work from the exact fraction €14/60 and round up at the end, so a figure you calculate from 23.33 cents may differ from ours by a cent.
- The minimum is applied to your estimated time, not to the time the delivery finally takes, which could of course be impacted if you chose to deliver with another platform at the same time. Extra pay for waits at merchants beyond the 3 minutes we pay on every order is handled separately, as set out below.
- In reality, the majority of orders are offered a fee that's higher than €14 per hour.
The formula
As standard, the fee for an order is calculated considering the following elements every time an order is offered to a rider.
1 - Calculate estimated Rider Experience Time.
The algorithm adds up the estimated minutes for each leg of the journey, measured from the moment you accept, based on where you were when the offer was made (eRET):
eRET = travel to merchant + merchant wait + delivery leg + any additional stacked legs
Where:
- travel to merchant is the estimated travel time from where you are when the offer is made to the first merchant. The road distance and time to travel from your starting point to the merchant is worked out using open-source mapping data, with the time adjusted based on real-world conditions over the last four weeks. This gives us an estimate of how long the journey will take you, on your vehicle at this time of day.
- merchant wait is a fixed allowance of 3 minutes per merchant, from the point at which you tap 'Arrived' to the point at which you tap 'Collected order'. It is a fixed allowance, not a prediction about the specific merchant.
- delivery leg is the estimated time from the last merchant to the first customer.
- additional stacked legs are, where the order is stacked, the estimated travel time from merchant to merchant and from customer to customer, plus a further 3 minute wait allowance for each additional merchant.
2 - Calculate the fee.
A model converts the estimated distance and the eRET into a fee, taking account of how many merchants and customers are on the trip, the likely popularity of the order, whether the order is running late or not, and calibrated to a target average delivery fee that Deliveroo sets in each area:
fee = f(estimated distance, eRET, area calibration) x (1 + popularity adjustment) x (1 + supply adjustment)
- popularity adjustment increases the fee for deliveries riders are less likely to accept - longer trips, orders with several collections and drop-offs, or merchants that tend to take longer to prepare. It is calculated from historic data about orders and merchants, not about you. It is never negative.
- supply adjustment responds to how the order is progressing and to rider delays in your zone. It usually increases the fee when an order is running late, so that the customer still gets their order on time. It can also reduce the fee slightly when conditions are running ahead of expectation - but never below the absolute minimum or hourly minimum.
In order to continue improving our proposition, we may test alternative fees on a very small number of deliveries. The same minimum protections always apply, and any material changes to our fee calculation will be updated here.
3 - Apply the minimums.
At this stage the calculation has produced three separate figures: the calculated fee, the hourly minimum for your estimated time, and the absolute minimum of €3.77. You are offered the highest of the three.
fee offered = MAX(fee, eRET x €14 / 60, €3.77)
4 - Add any surge.
Where surge is running in your area at that moment, the surge amount is added and shown to you in the offer before you decide. See Extra fees at busy times and during bad weather for more information on this.
fee shown in app = fee offered + surge
The data we use
About the delivery
- Your GPS location at the moment the offer is made, used to calculate the distance and time of your travel to the merchant.
- The merchant's location, and for stacked orders the second merchant's location.
- The customer's location, and for stacked orders each customer's location.
- The road distance between each of these points, from mapping data.
- The number of pickups and the number of drop-offs.
- Whether the order is currently running late, and the average delay of riders in your zone at that moment.
- Historic data about how quickly this merchant and similar merchants have prepared orders, and how readily riders have accepted similar orders in the past. This is data about orders and merchants, not about you.
- The time of day and the day of the week, used to select the road-speed assumptions.
- Your operating zone, which determines the area calibration.
About your vehicle
- Your registered vehicle type affects the calculation of your fee - the estimated travel times use road-speed assumptions for that vehicle type.
- The vehicle types we distinguish are bicycle, electric bicycle, scooter or motorcycle, and motor vehicle.
- Vehicle type does not affect the absolute minimum or hourly minimum, which are the same for everyone.
Data we do not use
None of the following affects the fee you are offered:
- How many orders you have accepted or declined in the past
- How long you have been riding with Deliveroo
- How long your previous deliveries actually took you
- Whether you have had any spilled or damaged orders before
- Whether you have had any notifications about your supplier agreement in the past
- Your age, nationality, or any other personal characteristic
Because the calculation depends on where you are, your vehicle type, and how the order is progressing, two riders offered the same order at different moments can see different fees. They may be at different distances from the merchant, on different vehicles, or the order may have become later.
How we estimate the time - and how estimates compare with real times
The travel times are calculated by routing each leg of the journey over road network map data and then applying a travel speed. The speed is specific to your vehicle type and the route it can take. On busy roads the same distance is estimated to take a bicycle noticeably longer than a scooter, whereas cycle paths mean bicycles can travel some routes quicker than scooters. It is recalibrated from the conditions actually observed in your area over the previous four weeks at that time of day. The merchant wait allowance is a fixed 3 minutes and is not a prediction. The minimum fee and any surge are applied after we have calculated the estimated rider experience time.
The figures below cover every delivery completed in Italy during 2025. Actual times are measured from the moment you accept an order to the moment you tap complete on the final drop-off, which is the same span the estimate covers.
- Measured delivery by delivery, the median difference between the estimate and the actual time was 0.7 seconds, with the actual time marginally under the estimate.
- The most common outcome is an order taking ~2 minutes less time than estimated
- Half of all deliveries - 50.1% - were completed quicker than their estimate.
- The median wait at the merchant was 1 minute 53 seconds, inside the 3 minutes already paid for in the fee.
How much each factor can change your fee
- The base fee accounts for ~90% of the value of the fee offered.
- The popularity adjustment is the second largest component, making up most of the remaining 10%.
- The other adjustments listed are much smaller and make up the remainder of the fee.
Extra fees for waits at merchants
The fee shown in the app includes a fixed 3 minutes of merchant wait time. If your wait is shorter than the 3 minutes already paid for in the fee - which it was for 64% of deliveries in 2025 - you keep the difference.
If you wait longer than 3 minutes, and you go on to deliver the order, we will now top up your fee.
- The wait we measure starts when you tap 'Arrived' at the merchant and ends when you tap 'Collected order'. It does not include your travel to the merchant, and it does not include time before you tap 'Arrived'.
- The threshold for a top-up is 3 minutes. The first 3 minutes are already paid for in the fee shown in the app.
- The rate for extra minutes is €14 per hour, which is 23.33 cents per minute, calculated as minutes multiplied by €14 and divided by 60. This rate is applied to real measured minutes, not to an estimate.
- The number of extra minutes we pay for is capped. The cap for your city is the average wait at a merchant recorded across all completed deliveries in that city over a reference period.
- The reference period currently in use is between 1 January 2026 and 30 June 2026. We will review the reference period from time to time.
- These extra fees are not shown in the rider app. They are added to your monthly invoice.
Extra fees at busy times and during bad weather
Where an area is unexpectedly busy, a surge amount may be added to the fee. This is calculated and shown to you in the offer before you decide whether to accept, so it is part of the figure you see in the app.
There are also extra fees available for work at night, public holidays and during bad weather. Each is defined precisely, so you can tell for yourself whether a delivery qualifies.
- Night work. The delivery is both accepted and completed between 00:00 and 07:00. A delivery that starts before midnight and finishes after it does not qualify.
- Public holidays. 1 January, 6 January, Easter Sunday, Easter Monday, 25 April, 1 May, 2 June, 15 August, 1 November, 7 December, 8 December, 25 December, and 26 December.
- Bad weather. Rainfall of at least 2 millimetres per hour, or snow, measured against an independent meteorological database.
This is one adjustment rather than three separate payments, and it does not add up condition by condition:
- 10% where one of the three conditions applies
- 15% where two apply to the same delivery
- 20% where all three apply to the same delivery
So a delivery accepted at 01:30 on 25 December, in rain of 3 millimetres an hour, meets all three conditions and carries the full 20%. A delivery at 02:00 on an ordinary dry night carries 10%.
The adjustment is calculated on the fee and is added to your monthly invoice rather than shown in the rider app upfront.
Bonuses
Riders who regularly work with Deliveroo can earn milestone bonuses in addition to delivery fees. These are added to your next invoice after you reach each milestone and are not shown in the rider app upfront.
The milestones, calculated from the 1 January to 31 December each year are:
- €600 at 2,000 orders delivered
- €600 at 4,000 orders delivered
- €400 at 5,000 orders delivered
- €300 at 6,000 orders delivered
- €300 at 1,500 orders delivered at weekends and on public holidays
Reaching every milestone in a single year would total €2,200 - that requires 6,000 orders delivered in the year of which 1,500 fall at weekends or on public holidays.
You keep 100% of tips
Customers can tip you when they place their order or after you have delivered it. You keep 100% of any tips you receive. Fiscal contributions may be applicable.
Checking the calculation for your delivery
If you think the fee for a delivery is wrong, you can ask for it to be reviewed by a person by contacting Rider Support through the website, where you can also ask any other questions about fees.
Examples
These examples show the full calculation, using the €3.77 absolute minimum that applies everywhere in Italy.