How to reduce Just Eat commission (2026 guide)
Marketplace commission is the biggest single line most takeaways never see on a bill, because it comes off before the money lands. Here is what it is costing you, and the three things that actually move it.
- The monthly sum worked out on 300 orders
- Three levers, cheapest first
- Own ordering website with hosting free, 60p customer fee
Written by the Posso team in Leicester · Reviewed by Paul Robinson, Managing Director · Last reviewed
Short answer
You cannot negotiate marketplace commission down far; you reduce it by moving the orders you already have off the marketplace. Commission typically runs 14–30% of the order value, so a takeaway doing 300 marketplace orders a month at £22 is handing over somewhere between £924 and £1,980 every month, or £11,000 to £23,700 a year. The fix has three parts: an ordering website of your own with no commission, a steady routine of moving regulars across (bag stuffers, a QR code on the counter, a loyalty reward), and your own drivers once direct volume justifies them. Keep the marketplaces for the customers who do not know you yet. Posso hosts the ordering website free, with a 60p service fee paid by the customer.
Key takeaways
- Marketplace commission typically runs 14–30%, taken before the order value reaches you.
- 300 orders a month at £22 costs between £924 and £1,980 a month in commission.
- A commission-free ordering website only works if you actively move regulars onto it.
- Keep the marketplaces for new-customer discovery; move repeat orders direct.
Takeaway: Marketplaces are a customer-acquisition cost; the mistake is paying it again on every repeat order from the same household.
Why commission hurts more than it looks
A takeaway owner sees a £22 order on the marketplace tablet and mentally books £22. The payout statement two weeks later shows something nearer £17, and because it arrives as one lump for the fortnight, nobody traces the gap back to individual orders. That is how a shop can lose more to commission than it pays in rent without anyone noticing it as a line item.
Run the arithmetic once, properly. Take last month's marketplace orders and your average basket. At 300 orders a month and £22 a basket, that is £6,600 of sales through the apps. At the bottom of the typical 14–30% range you lose £924 a month, or £11,088 a year. At the top you lose £1,980 a month, or £23,760 a year. Most shops sit somewhere in the middle, which still means a full-time wage going out the door for the privilege of being listed.
The second mistake is treating this as a negotiation problem. Independent shops have very little leverage over platform rates. The lever you do control is where your repeat customers place their order. A household that has ordered from you eight times already does not need the marketplace to find you; you are paying discovery commission on a customer who has already been discovered. This guide is about moving that household, and the hundred others like it, onto a channel you own. For the wider set of problems a till can fix, see the EPOS problems hub.
The levers that reduce commission, cheapest first
None of these need you to leave the marketplaces. They change the ratio between orders that cost you commission and orders that do not.
Own the ordering website before you own anything else
A direct ordering site is the only channel where a £22 order is a £22 order. Elsewhere, a branded site typically costs £20–£60 a month or 0–15% commission; Posso hosts yours free and charges the customer a 60p service fee per web or app order, so the shop pays only card processing. On the same 300 orders, moving a third of them direct saves 100 × £22 × 14% = £308 a month at the low end and 100 × £22 × 30% = £660 at the high end. Put the link on your Google Business Profile, your Instagram bio and your shop window before you spend a penny on anything else. See online ordering for how the site, app and till connect.
Move regulars with the bag, not with an advert
Every marketplace order you hand over leaves your shop in a bag you control. A printed card inside it saying 'Order direct next time at yourshop.co.uk and get a free side' costs pence and reaches exactly the people worth converting. Do it on every order for eight weeks, not one. A Friday-night household that orders fortnightly needs to see the card three or four times before the habit changes. The marketplaces cannot stop you doing this, and nothing else you try will have a better cost per converted customer.
Put the QR code where the queue is standing
Walk-in and phone customers are already yours; the risk is that next time they are on the sofa and the app is the easy option. A QR code on the counter, on the menu board and on the receipt footer points them at your site while they are in front of you. Pair it with a reason: a first-order discount or a loyalty stamp earned only on direct orders. The aim is that when the household reaches for a phone next Friday, your site is a saved bookmark rather than a search.
Reward the direct order, not the order
Loyalty that pays out on every channel just discounts orders you were already getting. Make the reward direct-only: every fifth web order gets a free dessert, or ten points for ordering through the app and none through the marketplace. A free side costing you £1.20 in food to shift a £22 order away from a 14–30% commission is £3.08 to £6.60 saved on that order, and the household is now on a list you own. The marketing suite is where the follow-up emails go; with Posso it is included, with 2,000 emails a month.
Run your own drivers once direct volume pays for them
Delivery is the service the marketplace is really selling you. Once you have a steady 150 or more direct delivery orders a month, your own driver on a dispatch app becomes cheaper than paying delivery-inclusive commission on every one. The Posso Dispatch driver app is 30p per delivery, so 200 deliveries a month is 200 × 30p = £60, against hundreds in commission on the same orders. Start with one driver on Friday and Saturday nights and widen from there. Delivery management covers zones, dispatch and driver pay.
Keep the marketplaces for the job they are good at
New households find you on the apps; that is worth paying for. What is not worth paying for is the sixth order from the same house. Keep the listings live, keep the menu and photos sharp, and treat marketplace orders as the top of a funnel that ends on your own site. To stop the two channels fighting in the kitchen, integrate the marketplaces into the till so every order prints the same way; the delivery-platform integration is £45 a month for unlimited orders.
What each ordering channel costs on a £22 order
Typical UK figures, worked on the same 300-order month so you can compare like with like.
| Channel | Typical cost | On 300 orders at £22 a month | Who pays |
|---|---|---|---|
| Marketplace (Just Eat, Uber Eats, Deliveroo) | Typically 14–30% commission | £924–£1,980 | The shop, deducted from payout |
| Branded ordering site elsewhere (commission model) | Typically 0–15% commission | £0–£990 | The shop |
| Branded ordering site elsewhere (subscription model) | Typically £20–£60 a month | £20–£60 | The shop |
| Delivery-platform integration elsewhere | Typically £0–£60 a month per platform | £0–£180 across three platforms | The shop |
| Posso ordering website and app | Hosting free; 60p service fee per order | £0 to the shop; 300 × 60p = £180 paid by customers | The customer, plus card processing for the shop |
| Posso delivery-platform integration | £45 a month, unlimited orders, all platforms | £45 | The shop |
| Posso Dispatch driver app | 30p per delivery | 200 deliveries × 30p = £60 | The shop |
Ranges are typical UK figures at October 2026; Posso prices are published on EPOS pricing. Commission ranges are for the marketplace tier, not a specific operator.
What to ask a provider before you sign
Who pays the per-order fee, and does it show on the checkout?
Some ordering platforms quote 'no commission' and then take a percentage from the shop under another name. Ask for the exact flow of a £22 order: what the customer sees at checkout, what lands in your account, and when. With Posso the customer sees a 60p service fee, the shop sees the full order value less card processing, and card processing through Posso Pay is quoted from 1% + 10p on card turnover.
Do direct and marketplace orders land in the same kitchen queue?
If your own site prints on one printer and the marketplace tablet shouts from another, the kitchen will favour whichever is loudest and your direct customers wait longer, which is the opposite of what you want. Ask whether every channel prints the same ticket format and sits in the same queue, and whether the integration is per platform or one price for all. Posso's integration covers Just Eat, Uber Eats and Deliveroo together.
Do I keep the customer list if I leave?
The whole point of moving regulars direct is that they become your customers rather than the platform's. If the ordering provider holds the customer database and will not export it, you have swapped one landlord for another. Ask for a written answer. With Posso the customer database is yours and transfers with you when you switch systems, though historic sales data does not.
The Posso approach to marketplace commission
Posso treats the marketplaces as one channel among several rather than the channel. The till, the ordering website, the app, the kiosk and the phone line all feed one order queue, so a shop can move volume between channels without the kitchen noticing the difference.
The ordering website and app are hosted free. The customer pays a 60p service fee per web or app order and the shop pays only card processing, through Posso Pay from 1% + 10p quoted on card turnover, the same rate in store and online. There is no monthly ordering fee and no commission. The marketing suite is included with 2,000 emails a month, so the bag-stuffer and QR campaigns above have somewhere to send people and something to follow up with.
For the orders you keep on the marketplaces, the delivery-platform integration is £45 a month for unlimited orders across Just Eat, Uber Eats and Deliveroo, pulling them into the same screen and kitchen printer as direct orders so nothing is re-keyed. When direct delivery volume is there, the Posso Dispatch driver app runs your own drivers at 30p per delivery, and the AI phone ordering line takes phone orders at £1 per order so the counter is not the bottleneck on a Friday.
The till itself is £499 + VAT, bought outright, with software from £25 + VAT a month, a two-year warranty and UK support Monday to Friday, 9am–9:30pm. Setup (menu build + configuration) is free; on-site installation for larger sites is priced on application.
Where to look elsewhere
If the marketplaces are a small side channel for you, say twenty orders a week against a busy dine-in room, the commission is probably not your biggest problem and a full ordering stack is more than you need. A booking system and a good till will do more for the room than another ordering channel.
If you are a single-person operation doing collection only, with no delivery and no ambition to grow it, a standalone online-menu product and a card reader may be the right size. Posso earns its place where there are several channels to reconcile and a kitchen that needs them in one queue.
Related guides
Related guides
Online ordering system with no commission
What a commission-free ordering site really costs, and how the 60p customer fee works.
Read the guideDelivery integrations
Just Eat, Uber Eats and Deliveroo orders in one queue, one printer, one price.
Read the guideDelivery management POS
Zones, dispatch, driver pay and the point where your own drivers beat commission.
Read the guideMissed phone orders at a takeaway
The phone is the other channel you own; here is what unanswered calls cost.
Read the guideBest EPOS system for a takeaway
The till features that matter when most of your orders come in through a screen.
Read the guideThis is one part of the Posso EPOS system — the same till, kitchen display, ordering and card payments, set up for your type of venue. Every one-off and monthly cost is on the EPOS pricing page.
Reducing Just Eat commission — frequently asked questions
How much commission does Just Eat take from a takeaway?
Marketplace commission in the UK typically runs between 14% and 30% of the order value depending on the platform, the tier and whether the platform supplies the drivers. Check your own partner agreement and payout statement for your exact rate; the figure that matters is yours, not the headline. On a 300-order month at £22 a basket, the range is £924 to £1,980 a month.
Can I negotiate a lower Just Eat commission rate?
Independent shops rarely get far. Rates are set by tier and by whether you use the platform's delivery, and the platforms have little reason to discount a single site. The practical route is to change your mix rather than your rate: keep the marketplace for new customers and move repeat orders onto an ordering site you own, where commission is zero.
How much does a commission-free ordering website cost?
Elsewhere, typically £20–£60 a month or 0–15% commission. With Posso the ordering website and app are hosted free and the customer pays a 60p service fee per order, so the shop pays only card processing through Posso Pay, from 1% + 10p quoted on card turnover. The till that runs it is £499 + VAT, bought outright, with software from £25 + VAT a month.
How do I get customers to order direct instead of through the app?
Ask them, repeatedly, at the moment they are already ordering from you. A printed card in every marketplace bag with your web address and a direct-only offer, a QR code on the counter and receipt, and a loyalty reward that only pays on direct orders. Expect it to take eight weeks of doing it on every order before the Friday-night regulars change habit.
Is it cheaper to run my own delivery drivers?
Once direct delivery volume is steady, yes. The Posso Dispatch driver app is 30p per delivery, so 200 deliveries a month cost 200 × 30p = £60 in software, plus the driver's pay. Compare that with 14–30% commission on the same 200 orders at £22, which is £616 to £1,320. Start with one driver on Friday and Saturday and add shifts as direct orders grow.
Does integrating Just Eat with my till reduce commission?
No, integration does not change the rate. It removes the re-keying, the missed tablet alerts and the separate printer, so the orders you keep on the marketplaces cost you less in labour and mistakes. Posso's integration is £45 a month for unlimited orders across Just Eat, Uber Eats and Deliveroo, landing in the same kitchen queue as direct orders.
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