Takeaway Spending Calculator: How Much Are You Really Spending on Deliveries Each Year?

At Savzz, we help people see where their money actually goes. This calculator looks at one of the most consistently underestimated household expenses in the UK, food delivery.

Most people think of their takeaway habit in terms of what a pizza or curry costs on the menu. The real figure, once you add up platform service charges, delivery fees, impulse sides ordered at checkout, and the small top-up you bought to hit the free delivery threshold, is almost always higher than what you intended to spend. And when you add it all up across a year, the total tends to surprise people.

This is the only calculator in the UK that breaks all of that down, cuisine by cuisine, platform by platform, fee by fee, and shows you the honest annual number.

Who Is This Calculator For?

This tool is for anyone who orders food delivery regularly and has never added it all up properly. It is particularly useful if you are:

• Someone who orders through Uber Eats, Just Eat, or Deliveroo regularly and wants to see the full annual cost including all platform charges rather than just the menu price
• A couple or household who order takeaways several times a week and have never sat down and calculated what that adds up to over twelve months
• Anyone trying to cut their food spending who wants to see where the biggest savings are, whether that is reducing how often they order, switching platforms, or ordering direct
• A student or young adult trying to understand why their food budget keeps running out before the end of the month
• Someone considering a delivery subscription like Uber One or Deliveroo Plus and wanting to see whether the monthly cost is worth it based on how often they actually order
• Anyone curious about how much the platform fees, tips, and add-ons actually add to each order beyond what the restaurant menu says

Who Is This Calculator Not Suitable For?

• Restaurant businesses or food industry professionals. The calculator is designed for individual consumers tracking personal household takeaway spending. Commercial food cost analysis needs different tools.
• Anyone needing a precise calorie or nutrition tracker. This is a financial awareness tool. The calculator focuses on money rather than nutrition. For calorie and nutrition tracking, dedicated apps are better suited.

How to Use the Takeaway Spending Calculator

Start by adding your typical orders using the plus button. For each order type, choose the cuisine, enter what you typically spend on the menu, how many people you are ordering for, and how often per week you order that type.

You can add multiple order types, a weekly Indian for two is different from a Friday night pizza habit, and both can be included at the same time.

Next, select the platform you use most often. The calculator loads the typical fees for that platform: delivery fee, service fee, and any small order charges, and applies them to your order total automatically.

Toggle on any hidden extras that apply to your orders. Impulse add-ons at checkout, tips, the items you added just to get above the free delivery minimum, these are the costs that nobody talks about but almost every regular takeaway customer pays.

If you want to see how much cooking the same meals at home would cost, toggle the cooking comparison on.

How Much Do UK Takeaway Platform Fees Actually Add to Each Order?

This is the question most people have never looked at properly and the part of takeaway spending that generates the biggest surprises.

When you order through a delivery app, the menu price is just the starting point. By the time you get to checkout, three or four separate charges have been added that have nothing to do with the food itself.

Uber Eats typically charges a delivery fee of around £2.49 to £3.99 per order depending on distance and time, plus a service fee of around 15% of the order total. On a £15 menu order, the service fee alone adds £2.25. Combined with the delivery fee, you are paying £4.74 to £6.24 on top of the food before you have tipped or added anything to the basket. If your order is below the minimum spend threshold, a small order fee of around £2 is added on top of that.

Just Eat charges a delivery fee and a fixed service fee of around £0.99 to £1.99 per order depending on the restaurant. The total platform cost per order is typically lower than Uber Eats but still adds £3 to £5 on top of every order.

Deliveroo charges a delivery fee starting from around £1.49, plus a service fee of around 10% of the order value. On a £20 basket that is £2 in service charges alone. The combined platform cost sits in a similar range to Uber Eats.

Put it all together on a typical takeaway order of £15 to £20 and the platform charges add £4 to £7 before you have clicked anything extra. On ten orders per month, that is £40 to £70 per month going on fees. Over a year that is £480 to £840 spent on charges rather than food.

The Hidden Costs Nobody Talks About

Beyond the published platform fees, several other costs regularly appear in takeaway orders that most people do not consciously track.

The impulse add-on. Extra garlic bread. A side of wings. A dessert you would not normally buy. A soft drink added because it seemed like a good idea. Research from consumer behaviour studies finds that customers spend 20% to 35% more than their intended basket when browsing a food delivery app compared to walking into a restaurant and choosing from a physical menu. The app interface is specifically designed to surface these additions at the point when your attention is highest.

The minimum spend top-up. Most platforms offer free delivery above a minimum order value, typically £15 to £20. When your natural order comes to £13 and you need £15 for free delivery, you add something. That something is not a need, it is a fee you are paying in the form of food you did not plan to buy. Over many orders, these small top-ups add up to a meaningful annual cost.

The driver tip. Most platforms prompt you to add a tip at checkout. The average UK tip on a food delivery is around £2 to £3. On twelve orders per month that is £24 to £36 per month, £288 to £432 per year, going on tips. Tips are a legitimate choice but one most people do not include when thinking about what takeaways cost them.

Weekend and late-night pricing. Delivery and service fees are higher on Friday and Saturday evenings and after 10pm. This is when most people order. The difference is typically £1 to £2 per order but it is consistent and predictable.

Are Delivery Subscriptions Worth It?

Both Uber Eats and Deliveroo offer subscription services that remove delivery fees in exchange for a monthly payment.

Uber One costs £4.99 per month and removes delivery fees on qualifying orders, as well as offering discounts on certain restaurants. If you order through Uber Eats twice a week, you would otherwise pay around £10 to £15 per month in delivery fees. Uber One saves you £5 to £10 per month net of its own cost, making it worth it when you order that often.

Deliveroo Plus costs £3.99 per month and removes delivery fees. When you order that often, the saving is similar, roughly £4 to £8 per month after the membership cost.

Neither subscription reduces service fees, which are the percentage-based charges that often cost more than the delivery fee on higher-value orders. And neither changes the fact that you are still paying service fees, add-ons, and tips on every order.

The calculator works out whether a subscription saves you money based on how often you actually order. If you order less than twice a week on average, the maths typically does not work in the subscription’s favour.

What Does Your Takeaway Habit Cost Compared to Cooking?

The comparison between takeaway and home cooking is not as simple as it sounds because it depends on what you are comparing. A ready meal from the supermarket is not the same as a proper home-cooked curry. But for most of the most popular UK takeaway cuisines, cooking a similar meal at home costs a fraction of the delivery price.

Here are realistic home-cooked cost estimates per person compared to typical takeaway prices through a delivery app:

Curry (Indian or Thai): A chicken tikka masala with rice for two made at home costs around £4 to £6 in ingredients. The same meal delivered through a platform typically costs £25 to £35 including fees. The ratio is roughly 5:1.

Pizza: A homemade pizza or a supermarket pizza baked at home costs £2 to £4 per person. A delivery pizza for two costs £20 to £28 with fees. Again, roughly 5:1.

Chinese: A stir-fry with noodles or rice at home costs £3 to £5 per person. Delivered Chinese for two sits at £22 to £30. Similar ratio.

Burgers: Homemade burgers cost £2 to £3 per person in ingredients. Delivered burgers run £12 to £18 per person after fees. Among the bigger gaps of any cuisine type.

None of this means cooking is always the right choice. Takeaway has genuine value: convenience, no washing up, no prep time, a treat feeling that sometimes matters for quality of life. The calculator’s cooking comparison section is not designed to tell you to stop ordering. It is designed to show you what the gap is per meal and per year so you can decide how often the trade-off feels right.

Why Uber Eats, Just Eat, and Deliveroo Spend Has Risen So Fast

UK food delivery has grown from a niche service to a mainstream habit in under a decade. Statista data shows that the UK online food delivery market reached around £14 billion in 2023 and continued growing through 2024 and 2025.

Several things explain the growth:

Pandemic habits that stuck. The COVID-19 lockdowns pushed millions of people towards food delivery apps for the first time. Many of those ordering habits became permanent even after restaurants reopened. The UK went from a country where home delivery was occasional and Chinese-takeaway-focused to one where platform delivery across dozens of cuisine types became a normal part of weekly life.

App design that reduces friction. Ordering food through a delivery app takes under three minutes from deciding you want something to confirming the order. The entire experience is designed to reduce the time between impulse and purchase. This is commercially brilliant for the platforms and expensive for consumers.

Dynamic pricing and promotion cycles. Platforms run constant offers: free delivery weekends, percentage discounts, first-order promos, that create new habits. You try a platform during a promotion and form a habit that continues long after the discount has gone.

The social normalisation of delivery culture. TikTok and Instagram food content, unboxing videos, and the general sharing of meal orders on social media have made food delivery feel like a normal leisure activity rather than an occasional convenience.

Five Ways to Spend Less on Takeaways Without Giving Them Up

• Order direct from the restaurant rather than through a platform. Most takeaway restaurants have their own website or phone line and will deliver directly, often with no service fee and a lower or zero delivery charge. The food is identical. You just need to find the restaurant’s own number or site rather than going through the app. Many restaurants offer loyalty discounts or free items for direct customers too.
• Check whether a subscription pays off based on how often you order. The calculator does this for you. If you order more than eight times per month through the same platform, a subscription almost certainly saves money. If you order less than six times per month, it probably does not.
• Set a clear basket limit before you open the app. Deciding in advance what you want and roughly what you plan to spend, before you start browsing, reduces the add-on spend. The app’s suggestions and upsells are most effective when you are browsing without a clear intention.
• Batch cook once a week to cover the convenience meals. The reason most people order on a weeknight is not that they want a takeaway specifically. it is that they are tired and do not want to cook. Making a large batch of something at the weekend that covers two or three weeknight meals removes that trigger without requiring daily cooking effort.
• Use Savzz to save on grocery shopping. One of the most effective ways to make cooking at home stack up better against takeaways is to reduce what ingredients cost. Our grocery discount codes and hot drinks vouchers cover online grocery retailers where a working code on your weekly order reduces the baseline cost of cooking at home.

The Smarter Way to Order: Know the Cost, Then Decide

Takeaways are a legitimate part of life and nobody is saying they should stop entirely. The point of this calculator is to put a real annual number on a habit that most people run on autopilot.

Once you know what your current spending looks like, it is much easier to decide whether how often you order feels right, whether a different platform or ordering approach would save meaningful money, and whether there are specific changes such as fewer add‑ons, ordering direct or cooking one more night a week that would make a real difference without changing how much you enjoy food delivery when you do order.

Browse our grocery deals and soft drinks offers at Savzz before your next online grocery order. Reducing what it costs to eat well at home is the other side of the takeaway spending equation.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does the average UK person spend on takeaways per year?

Research from Finder, Barclays, and various food industry reports puts the average UK adult takeaway spend at around £1,300 to £1,500 per year when including all orders across platforms and direct orders. For regular delivery app users, the figure is typically higher. Use the calculator above for your own figure based on your actual ordering habits.

How much do Uber Eats fees add to an order?

On a typical £15 to £20 Uber Eats order, platform fees including the delivery charge and 15% service fee add around £4.74 to £6.99 before any tip or extras. On a £25 order, the service fee alone is £3.75. These fees apply to almost every order and represent the gap between what the restaurant charges and what you actually pay.

Is Uber One or Deliveroo Plus worth it?

It depends on how often you order through the platform. Uber One costs £4.99 per month and removes delivery fees. If your orders are often enough that you would otherwise pay more than £4.99 in delivery fees per month, roughly two or more orders per week, the subscription typically saves money. Below that level of ordering, paying per order is usually cheaper. The calculator works this out based on your inputs.

Is it cheaper to order direct from a restaurant?

In most cases, yes. Ordering directly from a restaurant removes the platform service fee, which is often 10% to 15% of the order total, and sometimes removes the delivery fee too. The food is exactly the same. The main inconvenience is finding the restaurant’s own contact details or website rather than using the app. Many restaurants actively prefer direct orders and offer better prices or loyalty rewards for them.

What percentage of a takeaway order goes on fees?

On a typical delivery app order in the UK, platform fees including delivery and service charges represent around 20% to 35% of the total paid depending on the order value and platform. On smaller orders the percentage is higher because the fixed delivery fee makes up a larger share. On larger orders the percentage-based service fee dominates. The calculator shows the exact split for your specific orders.

How much could I save by cooking instead of ordering takeaways?

Cooking a similar meal at home to the most popular UK takeaway cuisines typically costs around £3 to £6 per person in ingredients, compared to £12 to £18 per person delivered through a platform. The gap narrows when you factor in your time and any premium ingredients, but for most regular takeaway cuisines, the home-cooked version costs roughly a fifth to a third of the delivered price. The cooking comparison section of the calculator shows your specific annual saving based on how often you actually order.

Who built this calculator?

The Savzz Takeaway Spending Calculator was built by the team at Savzz.co.uk, a UK discount code and money-saving site. We built it because most takeaway cost tools just multiply a weekly spend by 52 and stop there. This one breaks down platform fees by app, tracks hidden charges like impulse add-ons and minimum spend top-ups, compares delivery subscriptions against pay-per-order, and shows what cooking the same meals at home would cost. Nobody else has put all of that in one place. It is completely free to use with no sign-up needed.