Guide

What a food delivery app costs to build, and who should build one

$49,000 – $70,000 over 15–22 weeks, for an app where customers order and pay, couriers pick up and drop off, restaurants take the orders, and the customer watches the courier on a map. The courier side is about $11,500 of that. If you run one restaurant or a handful, you can buy your own ordering and somebody else’s couriers without building any of it.

$49,000 – $70,000: Customers, couriers, restaurants and live tracking, on iPhone and Android
$11,500: What the courier side adds, counting their screens, the map and the live updates
15–22 weeks: Calendar time for the whole build

Written by

WhatWillMyAppCost

We build the estimator this site runs on, and we design and build custom mobile and web software for a living. Every figure below is the estimator’s own output, except the published vendor prices, which are read off each company’s own page and dated.

You’re thinking about a delivery app of your own. Maybe you own a few restaurants and you’ve done the math on what each delivery order costs you. Maybe your town, or the thing you sell, isn’t covered well by the big apps and you want to run the service yourself. Either way you need a number, and you need to know how much of it is the courier.

The courier side is what separates a delivery app from an ordering app, so it gets priced on its own, after the whole build and each of its pieces. Then live tracking against a notification at each step, and whether a restaurant should build any of it. The commission and delivery fees are DoorDash’s own published prices.

How much does it cost to build a food delivery app?

$49,000 – $70,000, over 15–22 weeks, for a service starting out at a few hundred orders a week. It runs on iPhone and Android from one codebase, with three kinds of user and a web portal behind them. Here’s who does what.

Customers sign in, pick a restaurant, order off its menu and pay by card. They get a notification when the order’s confirmed and again when it’s on the way, and they can watch the courier come to them on a map.
Couriers use the same app on their own phones. On shift, they see new orders, accept one, get directions to the restaurant and then to the door, and mark it picked up and delivered. Their phone’s location is what the customer watches.
Restaurants work from the web portal. They see orders coming in, confirm them, mark them ready and keep their menus current.
You work from the same portal. You add restaurants and couriers, and you handle refunds.

Yours won’t match it exactly. A store with a long catalog, messaging between customer and courier, a tablet in every kitchen, and the number moves. Price your own version. The description comes filled in with this one, so you only change what’s different.

What is each part of a delivery app worth?

Between $1,500 and $11,000 each. The top of that is the web portal restaurants and your staff work from, the biggest piece on the field service build too. Next comes the courier, the third kind of user, at about $5,000.

Taken out one at a time:

About $11,000 for the web portal restaurants and your own staff work from.
About $5,000 for the courier’s own screens.
About $4,000 for taking payment by card.
About $4,000 for live updates, which keep the courier’s dot moving.
About $2,500 for sign-in.
About $2,500 for the map and the courier’s location.
About $1,500 for notifications.

The courier side isn’t one line on that list. It’s three of them: the courier’s screens, the map, and the live updates.

What does the courier side add on its own?

About $11,500, or 19% of the build. Take couriers out and you’ve got an app where customers order and pay and the restaurant does the rest. That app prices at $40,000 – $56,000.

Customers, couriers and restaurants: $49,000 – $70,000 over 15–22 weeks. The customer orders, a courier on shift accepts it, and the customer watches a dot cross town to their door.
Customers and restaurants: $40,000 – $56,000 over 14–21 weeks. The customer orders and pays, the restaurant confirms, and a notification says it’s ready. They pick it up, or the restaurant’s own staff drive it over.

Put together, those three pieces cost about what the portal does. The biggest of them is the courier’s screens at $5,000. A courier has to go on and off shift, see an order, get directions and mark it delivered, and none of that belongs on a customer’s phone, so the courier gets screens and permissions of their own.

What does live order tracking cost?

About $6,500 for the map and the live updates together. The live half costs more: $4,000, against $2,500 for the map.

Putting a dot on a map is ordinary work. Keeping it moving isn’t. The server holds a connection open to every phone watching an order, picks it back up when a phone drops it, and keeps every screen watching that order showing the courier in the same spot.

A courier’s dot moving on the map: $49,000 – $70,000. The customer can see the order two streets away.
A notification at each step: About 11% less. Confirmed, picked up, delivered. The courier taps the address and the phone’s own map app gives directions.

The estimator will suggest you may not need live updates, and for an order’s status that’s right. A courier’s position changes the whole way across town, so if you want the dot, you need them.

Should a restaurant build its own delivery app?

Not if you run one restaurant or a few. What you want is your own ordering and somebody else’s couriers, and you can buy both.

DoorDash is the example here because it lists its prices on its own pages. As of October 16, 2026, its Marketplace plans for US restaurants charge 15% to 30% on delivery orders, depending on the plan, and 6% on pickup. DoorDash says most new merchants start on Plus, at 25%. Its Online Ordering product charges no commission, though those orders carry a payment processing fee. Drive On-Demand sends a Dasher to orders you took on your own site or app, for a flat $6.99 to $10.99 per delivery.

15% to 30%: DoorDash Marketplace commission on delivery orders, by plan, October 16, 2026
$6.99 to $10.99: DoorDash Drive On-Demand, flat fee per delivery, October 16, 2026

Your own app removes the commission from each order and hands you everything the commission was paying for. DoorDash’s pricing page says its commission covers the listing and marketing, Dasher logistics, customer support and card processing. The build is $49,000 – $70,000, once. Couriers and customer support come due every week after it.

One restaurant, or a few: Delivery is how your food gets to people. Your own ordering plus couriers by the delivery covers it, and somebody else keeps it running. A branded ordering app with no couriers in it is the $40,000 – $56,000 version above, so price it against the ordering products before you build it.
A delivery service of your own: Delivery is the business. You’re starting a service in a town the big apps don’t cover well, or for something they don’t carry, with couriers you recruit and restaurants or stores that sign up with you. That’s the build this page prices.

The same decision for software in general, renting against building, is in build or buy.

A delivery app with customers, couriers, restaurants and live tracking costs $49,000 – $70,000 and takes 15–22 weeks. The courier side, meaning their screens, the map and the live updates, is about $11,500 of it.

Run one restaurant or a few and you can buy what you need: your own ordering, and couriers by the delivery. The $49,000 – $70,000 build is for a delivery service of your own.

FAQ

Questions about delivery apps

Can I create my own food delivery app?

Yes. With customers, couriers, restaurants and a map that tracks the courier, it’s $49,000 – $70,000 over 15–22 weeks on iPhone and Android. Without couriers, where customers order and the restaurant handles the rest, it’s $40,000 – $56,000. A restaurant may not need to build either one. DoorDash, for one, sells commission-free Online Ordering and flat-fee delivery on orders you take yourself.

Are food delivery apps profitable?

This site can’t tell you. It prices the software, and a delivery service makes or loses money on what happens after launch: how many orders come in, what each one pays, and what each delivery costs to make. The build is the part you can price today, at $49,000 – $70,000 for customers, couriers, restaurants and live tracking on iPhone and Android.

How much does it cost to build an app like DoorDash?

The version priced here, for one town and a few hundred orders a week, is $49,000 – $70,000. Priced for a large audience, the same app costs about $6,000 more. In both, each order goes to the couriers on shift and the first to accept takes it. Picking the best courier automatically is a separate piece of work the estimator has no line for, so nothing here prices it.

How long does it take to build a food delivery app?

15–22 weeks from kickoff to both app stores for a three-sided app with live tracking, and 14–21 weeks without couriers and tracking. Signing up restaurants and couriers before the first order comes on top, and the estimator’s weeks don’t include it.

Does a grocery delivery app cost the same as a restaurant one?

Close to it. A store takes the restaurant’s place and the three sides stay the same. A long catalog needs search, which the restaurant version skips, and that adds about $1,500, taking it to $50,000 – $72,000.

Does a delivery app need chat between the customer and the courier?

Not to launch. The estimator leaves messaging out of a first version of any app, and what an MVP should cost explains why. Add it to the description in the estimator and the range reprices with it.