Zomato vs Swiggy for restaurants: how to choose

1How do the two apps compare, line by line?

Read the table the other way round: the structure is the same on both, and the numbers that decide the answer are the ones in your contract. Whichever app quoted the lower base rate, what reaches your bank is the order value minus commission, GST on fees, collection, ads and co-funded discounts. The commission guide shows how to work that out from a payout statement, and the commission calculator gives a quick estimate.

2What does each app need from you before you can list?

The paperwork is nearly the same on both, because most of it is law rather than app policy:

• your FSSAI registration or licence for the kitchen
• PAN, and GST details (or the declaration the app accepts if you are below the registration threshold)
• a bank account for payouts
• a menu, with photographs that pass the app’s checks

Either may charge an onboarding fee, so confirm the current figure when you sign up.

Two things owners report about onboarding. Menu and photo standards are enforced with different strictness at different times, so budget a round of corrections. And both apps will offer ads and promotions before your first order arrives. You can say no. It is easier to add paid visibility once you know how many orders arrive without it than to work out afterwards what the ads were buying.

3Where is each app stronger?

Neither publishes its share by city, so hold the received wisdom loosely. Both are present in every large city. In their recent quarterly results, Zomato’s food delivery business has been the larger of the two by order value. Both also run quick-commerce and dining-out businesses, which keep guests opening the app for other reasons.

What matters to you is narrower than any national figure: how many guests near your outlet use each app, how many riders each has around you at 9:00 pm, and how each ranks your kind of food. No report knows your pin code. Your own trial does.

4Where does ad and visibility money go?

On both apps, your ranking without ads rests on ratings, how often browsers become orders, and how reliably you deliver. Everything above that is sold: paid placement in search and listings, entry into discount campaigns, and bundles your account manager will offer without being asked.

The trap is the same on both. Ad spend is deducted from payouts, so it never feels like writing a cheque, and it creeps. The discipline that works: set a fixed monthly ad budget, measure the orders it added (not total orders, since you were getting the unpaid ones anyway), and decide again each month. Ads make sense for a new outlet buying its first ratings, or to fill capacity you already have. As a permanent charge for holding your rank against the restaurant next door, they don’t.

5How do payouts and disputes work?

Both apps pay out on a cycle set in your contract, after deducting commission, fees, GST on fees, TDS, ads, co-funded discounts, and adjustments for refunds and cancellations. The deductions are where disputes start:

• refund clawbacks that arrive weeks after the order
• charges for cancellations where the fault is disputed
• ad billing that doesn’t match what you agreed
• co-funding applied to orders that should have been left out of a campaign

None of it can be settled from memory. The defence is reconciling line by line: every order on the statement tied to your own record, every deduction checked, and every gap raised inside the app’s dispute window.

6Should your prices be the same on both apps?

Usually, yes. One price list for both apps is simpler to keep true, and a guest who checks both won’t find your dal makhani at two prices. Price it for the higher of the two effective takes, so neither app’s orders run at a loss.

There are reasons to differ. If one app’s effective take is clearly higher after a full quarter, its prices can carry that difference. If you join a campaign on one app, the discount lives there and nowhere else. Before you set different prices, read both contracts for any parity terms, and remember that your counter price is the one your regulars see.

7How do you weigh an exclusivity offer?

Either app may offer a lower commission if you list with it alone. Work the numbers before you answer.

An illustrative test, with round numbers: you sell 30 orders a day of ₹400 on each app, your food cost is 30%, and each app’s effective take is 30%. Each order leaves you ₹160 after food and the app (₹400 − ₹120 − ₹120), so the two apps together leave ₹9,600 a day. One app offers exclusivity at a 24% effective take, so each of its orders would leave ₹184 (₹400 − ₹120 − ₹96). To match ₹9,600 a day you would need 53 orders a day on that one app, against the 60 you take across both today. If enough of the other app’s guests will follow you, the offer can pay. If they won’t, it costs you.

Then read the terms: how long the exclusivity lasts, what counts as listing elsewhere (ONDC, your own phone orders), what happens if volume falls short, and how you leave.

8How do you run two apps from one kitchen?

Two apps mean two tablets or dashboards, two menus and two sets of acceptance timers.

• One place for both tablets, where whoever runs the pass can see and hear them. A missed order costs a rating.
• One master menu. Keep your dish list and prices in one sheet and update both apps from it, so the two menus don’t drift apart.
• Preparation times that are true at your peak, not at your quietest hour.
• Stock-outs on both at once. When a dish runs out, switch it off on both apps in the same minute.
• One packing standard. The same containers and seals for both, so complaints don’t depend on which app sent the order.

CountStand doesn’t take delivery-app orders or reconcile their payouts at launch (Swiggy and Zomato reconciliation says why). It covers dine-in and takeaway, and those bills, phone orders for collection included, run on one till and one kitchen display with one GST record. App orders stay on each app’s own tablet, so decide how they reach your cooks, and keep the apps’ statements next to your own order records when you reconcile.

9What moves your rating on each app?

Your rating is separate on each app, and it drives your ranking there. What moves it is mostly within the kitchen’s control:

• the right dishes, with nothing missing
• packaging that survives the ride
• preparation times you actually hit
• few cancellations from your side
• short, specific replies to reviews

If your rating is lower on one app, look at what is different about that app’s orders: a dish, a time of day, a packing step. Check those before you blame the app.

10Which app suits your format?

QSR: both. Quick service is a volume business, and turning down either app’s guests turns down volume you are built for. Your negotiating position also grows fastest here, because volume is what account managers respond to.

Casual dining: both for delivery, but delivery shouldn’t become the business. Your dining-room guests are the people most likely to order from you directly. Every bill is a chance to tell them you take orders for collection.

Cloud kitchen: both. There are no walk-in guests, so paid discovery is how guests find you. That makes commission your largest cost you can influence, so reconcile both apps every week, and test the ONDC network and a direct channel alongside.

11Both, plus orders you own

Join both, negotiate both as your volume grows, reconcile both every week and cap the ad spend on both. That is the unexciting, correct answer for most delivery restaurants.

Then build the part neither app can take a share of. Every app order is a guest the app introduced, and can introduce to a competitor tomorrow, sometimes with a discount you helped pay for. Every order a regular places with you directly, by phone or at your counter, is a relationship you keep. The commission guide has the gross-up arithmetic and a 90-day plan.

12Questions owners ask