DoorDash vs Instacart

Instacart vs DoorDash

You've been looking for info about DoorDash vs Instacart because you want to get into the food delivery game but you don't quite know how to start.

Who actually wins in the battle of DoorDash vs Instacart when we look at the details of each?

Well, I'm here to give you all the facts so you can decide!

We'll talk about how you'll spend your time on each app, earnings and stats. I'll give you all the details from an insider perspective, having completed  3,000 orders between the two apps.

Maybe you'll even sign up for both!

Picture of bag ready for food delivery pickup

As we've established DoorDash is a food delivery app where you mostly deliver from restaurants with the occasional shopping order if you want.

You don't ever have to schedule your dash, just log on and see if it's busy and go out when it is, usually in the evenings. 

If you do schedule, you're not held to that schedule, you can pause or end at any point. I like that about DoorDash.

Once you see it's busy and hit "Dash Now", DoorDash will send you an order if your area is truly busy. You can decide to accept it or decline it.

Please don't accept just any order that comes your way. 

Make sure you take the allotted time DoorDash to look at how much the order pays, the restaurant and where the delivery ends up.

I'll show you a screenshot of this in the earnings section.

This is important so you don't waste any time or gas on a low paying order.

If you decide to accept an order, you drive to the restaurant, either pick up the order from a shelf or ask an employee.

You might have to wait a minute but once it's ready, you grab it, put it into an insulated bag in your car and deliver it to the customer's.

Some orders may have two customers and two restaurants but you'll see this before accepting.

Once you deliver to the customer(s), you wait for the next order and repeat that process until you're done for the day.

You can take breaks at any time and there's no set schedule so you can stop at any time.

You have to keep track of all your mileage because DoorDash does not pay for any of it. It's best to keep a mileage tracker when you're driving around looking for an order, delivering an order and driving to the next order.

I'll show you some screenshots of what that looks like in a minute.

Keeping track of all mileage reduces your tax burden come tax season. 

So on DoorDash, you'll spend a lot of time popping into restaurants to grab food and on the road to deliver said food. 

DoorDash no tip order example

I was close to the restaurant as indicated by the blue dot but it would not have been worth taking this order because it wouldn't even have covered gas.

Like I said before, that $2.75 is before gas AND taxes.

Orders like these are the norm. They're never worth it. DoorDash has different stats like acceptance rate, which we'll get to in a minute.

I personally don't worry acceptance rate since I have to make a living and cannot afford low paying orders like this.

You have about 40 seconds to accept an order and I highly recommend you take that time to make sure you understand the mileage you'll have to travel (that 4.3 miles is from where you currently are to the restaurant to the customer's).

During that time, you  can also zoom in on the customer location to get an idea of the area you'll end up in.

That's important because you generally make sure you end up in an area with restaurants so you can grab another order right away. 

In this case, I declined the order in the top right hand corner. It'll ask you to give a reason. It doesn't matter what you select, DoorDash doesn't care.

Oftentimes, DoorDash will group two customers at the same restaurant and sometimes at two different restaurants.

Again you have to make sure those orders are worth your while just like with single orders.

Instacart available batches screen with higher paying batches

Here's a refreshed screen with more batches.

Based on having shopped over 1,200 orders, I know the first two are not worth my while.

I like to see the $ equal the item count for regular 1-customer orders. 

Instacart often groups 2 or 3 customers into one order.

I often do double orders but stay away from triple orders because juggling cart space is a hassle and items can get mixed up at checkout for which you'll get dinged via ratings.

Instacart saves money on its shoppers by grouping customers together.

Instacart doesn't have to pay the $7-$9 base pay per order when grouping batches so sometimes you'll see a double order with the same base pay and a triple order with maybe an $11 base pay so that's huge savings for Instacart.

Instacart will often group a low tipping customer whose order otherwise wouldn't get picked up as quickly with a high tipping customer.

Instacart also groups two customer orders at different stores, which I never do because one customer's groceries would sit in a hot car (especially in summer) while I'm shopping another.

Yes you have to have insulated bags but I've only done one in the spring and I felt bad even though I put the first customer's order into insulated bags while shopping.

Instacart is run by AI bots (yes, really) so the routes and stores while often fine, are sometimes quite outrageous. 

It's always good to rely on your own intelligence when selecting orders and when shopping for items.

Example of Instacart pay

Here's one that had around 30 items with a 15% tip off the total.

It took 55 minutes from the time I left my house to the time I delivered.

It also had some deli items and I was communicating with the customer about replacements for out of stock items so that took a minute. 

I'm usually able to average 60 seconds per item.

It's part of Instacart's stats but not super relevant.

It's a fine total per hour but I usually aim a little higher. 

OK so you see that I'm able to make about $30 ish per hour.

I'd say I average about $35 an hour, which is slightly higher than on DoorDash and I don't do nearly as much driving on Instacart, although it's still relatively significant.

Just like DoorDash, Instacart allows you to cash out the batch earnings right after delivery and the full amount including tips 2 hours after delivery.

Customers have 2 hours to decrease tips and 1 day to increase them.

You can choose to cash out whenever at 50 cents per cash out or like on DoorDash wait until the automatic transfer on Mondays, which usually hits your bank account by Wednesday.

Example of Instacart ratings

While 5-star ratings are great on DoorDash and show that you're good at what you do, they're more important on Instacart.

Your overall rating will affect access to higher paying batches. Like on DoorDash, customers can rate you after delivery and leave feedback for 5-star reviews. 

They'll be able to select what exactly they liked from helpful chat to smart bagging and good replacements.

There are already thousands of low paying orders on Instacart so it's important to keep your rating up so you'll see the occasional high paying batch on Instacart.

When you first start out, you'll have an automatic 5-star rating but as you shop more, you'll obviously receive more ratings so make sure you communicate with the customer about replacements, etc. 

I know this page is about DoorDash vs Instacart but you can easily see it as DoorDash, UberEats and Grubhub vs. Instacart since the essence is the same.

If you know you don't want to be an Instacart shopper, check out my head-to-head comparison of DoorDash vs. Grubhub vs. UberEats to decide which food delivery app to deliver for.

Even if you decide to just deliver for one of those apps, I recommend signing up for two since the aforementioned app glitches are common and you want to make sure you have a backup at any time if you want to do this even part-time.

Here's how to get started with DoorDash.