Every restaurant owner knows the percentage on their delivery statement. Far fewer have turned it into a monthly figure, because the number that matters is not the percentage — it is what the percentage removes from a month of real orders, after the costs of the alternative are honestly subtracted.
This is the arithmetic. It is not complicated, and you do not need our help to run it. We have put it in a free calculator that does it live, but the useful part is understanding the shape, so here it is in full.
The arithmetic
Four lines, and the last two are the ones most comparisons skip:
- Monthly order revenue = orders a week × average order value × 4.33. (A month is 4.33 weeks, not 4 — using 4 understates your year by about seven percent.)
- What the marketplace keeps = monthly order revenue × your commission rate.
- Minus card processing you would still pay. Taking the order yourself does not make payments free. Stripe's published standard rate is “2.9% + 30¢ per successful transaction for domestic cards”, and that comes off the top of every order on your own site.
- Minus the cost of the site itself. A comparison that leaves out the tool doing the comparing is a sales pitch, not a calculation.
What is left is the honest figure: what stays with you each month by taking the same orders on a site you own.
Use your own rate, not a headline one
We are deliberately not printing a commission percentage here. Rates differ by platform, by plan, by market and by what was negotiated, and a number we quote today is a number that is wrong for somebody tomorrow. Open a statement and read the rate you are actually paying. That is the only figure that describes your business.
Then run it. Say your statements show thirty percent — plug that in. Say they show fifteen — plug that in instead, and watch how much of the case evaporates. A calculator worth using is one that can talk you out of the purchase.
What your own ordering page does not replace
It does not replace delivery. The marketplaces employ the drivers, dispatch them, and absorb the mess when something goes wrong on the road. That is real work and it is reasonable to pay for it.
What it replaces is the commission on the orders you would have had anyway: your regulars, your pickup orders, and the people who went looking for you by name and landed on an app instead. Most restaurants we talk to end up running both — the marketplace for discovery, their own site for the orders they already own.
There is a second thing you keep, and it does not show up in any of the four lines above: the customer. On a marketplace, the order history, the email address and the relationship stay with the platform. On your own site they are yours, which matters the day you want to tell four hundred regulars that you are opening on Sundays.
When the answer is no
At low order volume, or a low commission rate, running your own ordering costs more than it saves. The processing fee and the monthly cost of the site are fixed against a smaller base, and the arithmetic comes out negative. Our calculator says so plainly when it does — it will tell you the numbers do not favour hiring us, which is the only way a tool like this is worth anything.
If that is where you land, the right answer is to revisit it when volume grows, not to buy a site because a calculator on an agency's website suggested it.
Run it on your own numbers
The calculator is free, takes no sign-up, and asks for nothing but three numbers you already know: orders a week, average order value, and the rate on your statement. It subtracts card processing and the cost of the site before showing you what is left, because a figure that flatters us is not one you should trust.
If the arithmetic does favour it, we build online stores with a menu, a cart, card checkout and an admin panel you edit yourself — the pricing is on our packages page, and there is a live example you can click through before you speak to anyone.
Figures cited: Stripe's standard published rate, read at stripe.com/pricing on 13 September 2026. No delivery platform's commission rate is quoted in this article, deliberately — use the rate on your own statement.