How to reduce Zomato and Swiggy commission

1What do Zomato and Swiggy actually take from an order?

The rate in your onboarding email is the base commission. It is never the whole deduction. A payout statement usually carries these lines:

Two lines are easy to misread. The 5% GST on the food itself is paid by the app under section 9(5), so it is not your cost (the GST guide has the detail). And the platform fee the guest pays per order never touches your payout, but it raises the price the guest sees for your food, which makes your menu look dearer than it is.

2How do you work out your effective take?

It takes ten minutes and one statement.

1. Take last month’s gross order value on one app, before any deduction.
2. Take the payout that reached your bank for the same orders.
3. Effective take = (gross order value − payout) ÷ gross order value × 100.

Do it for each app separately. Many owners find the result several points above the commission they had in mind.

Here is how the lines stack on an illustrative ₹500 order: commission at 24% (₹120), a 1.8% payment fee (₹9), 18% GST on those two (₹23.22), and a ₹20 discount you fund. The payout is about ₹328. The effective take is 34%, not the 24% on the contract.

The calculator below estimates it the same way: the commission, the ads you buy and a 1.8% payment fee, each with 18% GST on top, plus the discounts you fund, which carry no GST because a discount is a lower price, not a fee. Put in your own numbers:

Bring the effective figure, not the base rate, to every decision that follows.

3Can you negotiate the commission down?

Sometimes, with leverage. Leverage means order volume the app wants to keep, or an alternative the account manager believes you will use.

What helps:

• Your numbers, on paper. Orders a day, average order value, rating and cancellation rate for the last three months, from your own records as well as the app’s.
• A visible second channel. An active ONDC listing and a growing base of regulars who order from you directly change the conversation from dependence to choice.
• The other app’s offer. If one app quoted a better rate, open with it.
• Exclusivity, priced honestly. Apps sometimes offer a lower rate for listing with them alone. Weigh it against the orders you would give up on the other app.
• The anniversary. Put your contract date in the calendar and ask every year. A rate nobody questions tends to stay.

What negotiation can’t touch: GST on the app’s fees, the guest’s platform fee and the discounts you agree to co-fund. A few points off commission is real money (four points on ₹6 lakh of monthly app sales is ₹24,000 a month), but lasting relief comes from the other levers.

4Are you being charged for things you shouldn’t be?

Before you argue about the rate, check you are paying only what the contract says. Deductions are where money leaks quietly, and recovering a wrong one needs no negotiation at all.

Go through one month’s statement, line by line:

• Refunds and clawbacks. Each refund should match a real complaint, at the share your contract sets. Note the ones that arrive weeks after the order.
• Cancellation charges. An order cancelled because no rider came, or because the guest changed their mind, shouldn’t be charged to you as a kitchen failure. Check the reason the app gives.
• Campaign co-funding. Your share should apply only to orders inside campaigns you joined, on the dishes and days you agreed.
• Ad billing. The spend deducted should match the budget you set, and stop when the campaign ends.
• The commission base. Check what the percentage is applied to, the food alone or the food plus packaging and charges, against your contract’s wording.

Raise every gap inside the app’s dispute window, with the order number and your own record of the order attached. Small amounts add up when they recur every week.

5Should you raise delivery-menu prices?

Most restaurants should price the delivery menu for what the app takes. To net the same as a ₹200 dine-in dish at a 30% effective take, the delivery price is ₹200 ÷ 0.70 = ₹286. At 25% it is ₹267; at 35%, ₹308. Anything lower, and each app order is paid for out of your margin.

Three cautions before you reprice:

1. Read your contract for price-parity terms before opening a wide gap between channels. In 2022 the Competition Commission of India ordered an investigation into a complaint from the National Restaurant Association of India that raised, among other things, price-parity terms.
2. Watch conversion. Guests compare you with the listing next door. Gross up dish by dish and watch what volume does.
3. Know each dish’s cost first. Grossing up a dish that was mispriced to begin with only compounds the error. The food cost guide covers costing, and the menu price calculator does the gross-up for you.

6How do you make each app order worth more?

Some costs come with every order, whatever its size: the packaging, the time to pack and hand over, and any fixed per-order charges in your contract. A bigger order spreads them thinner, and this lever needs no one’s permission.

• A shorter delivery menu. Dishes that travel well, at prices that carry the deduction. Leave off the ones that arrive soggy or cold and earn complaints.
• Combos and add-ons. A main with a side and a drink lifts the order value, while the packaging barely changes.
• Packaging priced in. Packaging is a cost line of its own. Build it into the dish price, or charge it openly where your contract allows, but don’t let it vanish into the margin.

7How do you build orders nobody takes a cut of?

The apps are good at one thing: introducing new guests. That is worth paying for, once. Paying a third of the order again on a regular’s fifth order is not. The lasting fix is giving regulars an easy way to order from you.

None of it needs new technology:

• A number that answers. Print your phone number on every bill, every takeaway bag of your own and the menu card, and give someone the phone at peak hours.
• Collection, priced fairly. A guest who collects pays your counter price. A small reason to come in, a dish upgrade or a quicker pickup, often costs less than one order’s commission.
• Your dining room. Guests at your tables already know you. Tell them you take orders for collection.

The arithmetic, using the same example: if a ₹500 order costs you about ₹172 on an app (a 34% effective take), twenty such orders a day moved to collection keep ₹172 × 20 × 30 = ₹1,03,200 a month in the restaurant, less any payment charges your bank sets.

If you deliver phone orders yourself, count the rider honestly: wages, fuel and the phone, divided by the deliveries made. As an illustrative example, a rider who costs ₹18,000 a month in all and makes 15 deliveries a day over 26 days costs about ₹46 a delivery. That is well under the ₹172 an app takes on a ₹500 order, and close to what it takes on a ₹150 one. Own delivery pays on larger orders over short distances; small orders far away are where the apps earn their share.

Start with the guests who already deal with you directly. Your dining room and your walk-in takeaway guests are the easiest to turn into collection orders, because they know where you are. Anyone who calls to ask whether you deliver, or whether they can collect, is a direct order waiting to happen, so the phone needs an owner. And the homes and offices within a short walk or ride can collect; the further away a guest is, the more the apps genuinely add.

Where CountStand fits. CountStand bills dine-in and takeaway on one till. A phone order for collection is a takeaway bill, with the same kitchen ticket, the same GST bill and a dynamic UPI QR for the exact amount, paid straight into your own account. Customer records, kept with each guest’s consent, are in the Single plan at ₹2,999 a month per outlet, so you can see who your regulars are. Swiggy, Zomato and other delivery-app orders, and their payout reconciliation, are not open at launch; if you list on those apps, their orders run on the apps’ own tablets and dashboards.

8Is ONDC worth adding?

As a third channel with honest expectations, it can be. ONDC is a government-backed open network where buyer apps, seller apps and delivery providers share one protocol, and its fees are commonly reported in low single-digit percentages. Its volumes are a fraction of the big two, and they have moved with the discounts the network funds. Register through a seller app, keep the catalogue accurate, and judge it on your own orders. The ONDC guide has the steps.

9What should you not do?

• Don’t delist overnight. Your ratings and ranking history stay behind. Shrink dependence gradually, once your direct orders are real.
• Don’t market against an app inside its own orders. Notes in the app’s bags asking guests to skip the app can breach platform terms. Market to the guests who walk in, and read the app’s terms before you put anything in its bags.
• Don’t punish app guests with extreme prices. Gross up to cover the deduction. A very wide gap invites platform action and guest distrust.
• Don’t buy ads to outrun the margin. Ads have a place, such as a new outlet or spare capacity, but they are a cost of finding guests, not a margin strategy.

10A 90-day plan

• Days 1–15: measure. The effective take per app, from last month’s statements. The monthly cost in rupees. Your regulars, from your own billing records.
• Days 16–30: negotiate and diversify. Open the conversation with your numbers. Start an ONDC listing in parallel; it takes time to build.
• Days 31–60: build the direct habit. Your number on every bill, menu card and takeaway bag of your own. Someone owning the phone at peaks. A reason for the first collection orders.
• Days 61–90: reprice and re-measure. Gross up the delivery menu dish by dish, check ad spend against the orders it actually added, and recompute the effective take on every channel.

The honest verdict: you won’t get Zomato and Swiggy to zero, and you shouldn’t try. They are paid discovery, and discovery has value. The realistic outcome for a disciplined owner is a few points off commission, a delivery menu priced for the deduction, and a growing share of repeat orders that carry no commission at all.

11Questions owners ask