As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases — including a fee if you start an Amazon Prime trial through a link here. DoorDash, Uber and Grubhub pay us nothing, and one of the conclusions below is that a large group of readers should not buy DashPass at all. See our methodology.
DashPass costs $9.99 a month, or $96 a year if you pay annually — $8 a month. Both figures were read from DoorDash’s own help centre on 5 September 2026.
DoorDash also publishes, on the same page, the number that decides the whole question: it says DashPass subscribers “save an average of $4-5 per eligible order.” That is DoorDash’s own marketing claim rather than an independent measurement — which makes it useful, because taking them at their word answers the question.
The arithmetic DoorDash won’t put next to the price
$96 a year, divided by DoorDash’s own claimed saving per order:
- At $5 saved per order: $96 ÷ 5 = 20 orders a year to break even
- At $4 saved per order: $96 ÷ 4 = 24 orders a year
So 20 to 24 delivery orders a year — one every two to three weeks — on the most flattering numbers DoorDash publishes about itself.
Now the test that actually matters. Is that more orders than you placed last year? Not more than you intend to place. Open your DoorDash order history, scroll back twelve months, and count. Most people land well under twenty and are surprised by it — the memory of ordering delivery is stronger than the frequency of it.
If you would rather use your own figures than DoorDash’s, the honest version is:
$96 ÷ (your delivery fee + the service-fee reduction) = orders per year to break even
You need a real receipt for that, because DoorDash does not publish its delivery or service fees anywhere. They vary by restaurant, distance and time of day, and you see them only at checkout. Any article quoting a precise DoorDash delivery fee invented it.
What DashPass actually covers — and what it doesn’t
From DoorDash’s own help pages, verified 5 September 2026:
- $0 delivery fees on eligible orders from DashPass merchants that meet a minimum subtotal
- Reduced service fees — reduced, not removed
- Benefits apply only at merchants marked with the green DashPass checkmark
- A $10 order minimum applies in a specific list of markets DoorDash names: Bakersfield, Charlotte, Cincinnati, Dallas, Denver/Boulder, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Orange County, Phoenix, Sacramento, Salt Lake City and Tulsa. Elsewhere the minimum is set per merchant.
- Available in the US and Canada, with some areas excluded
Three things it does not do, and each one can cost more than the delivery fee it saves. It does not remove the service fee — DoorDash’s own wording is “reduced,” and on a large order the service fee is the bigger line. It does not touch menu markups, which run higher on delivery apps than in-store and are invisible on your receipt. It does not tip your driver, so “free delivery” on a $30 order still arrives with a tip attached.
The membership shaves one line off a receipt with four or five lines on it. That is worth something. It is not worth what “free delivery” implies.
The students’ deal is genuinely the best thing here
DoorDash’s student page, read the same day, says the Student DashPass Plan costs $4.99 a month or $48 a year rather than $9.99 and $96 — and that between 17 August and 12 October, students can sign up for a full year at $0 a month.
At $48 a year the break-even halves to 10-12 orders, which a lot of students clear without trying. At $0 for twelve months it is free money, with one caveat: it enrols you, and something enrolled is something that renews. Verification runs through SheerID, and DoorDash says it may change eligibility at any time. If you are a student reading this before 12 October, take it — and set a reminder for eleven months out.
The plan you may already own without knowing
Here is the fact that changes the maths for a lot of households: Amazon Prime includes a free Grubhub+ membership.
Amazon’s figures have to be approximate. Amazon requires exact prices to come from its API, which we do not have access to, and amazon.com returns 503 to automated requests — so these come from Amazon’s newsroom rather than its checkout, and we could not confirm them at source. On those terms, Amazon Prime runs about $15 a month or about $140 a year.
An aboutamazon.com post says Prime members can activate an ongoing Grubhub+ membership at no extra cost, which Amazon describes as valued at around $120 a year, covering $0 delivery fees on eligible orders, lower service fees and 5% credit back on pickup orders. Two caveats: that $120 is Amazon’s stated value of someone else’s product, not a price we could confirm — grubhub.com renders only through JavaScript and served us no pricing at all — and newsroom posts are announcements rather than live pricing.
The practical point stands regardless of the number. If you pay for Prime and have not activated Grubhub+, you are being asked to pay $96 for a delivery membership while holding an unactivated one. Activate that Grubhub+ membership first and order from it for a month: if the restaurants you want are on Grubhub, DashPass is a second membership for the same job. Our full accounting of what Prime is worth covers the rest.
DashPass vs Uber One vs paying the fees
| DashPass | Uber One | Grubhub+ via Prime | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly | $9.99 (exact) | $9.99 (exact) | included with Prime |
| Annual | $96 (exact) | not published on Uber’s page | included with Prime |
| Student rate | $4.99/mo, $48/yr | not published on Uber’s page | n/a |
| Delivery fees | $0 on eligible orders | $0 over the store minimum | $0 on eligible orders |
| Service fees | reduced | reduced | lower |
| Extra | DashPass-only promos | 5% back on Uber rides | 5% credit back on pickup |
Uber One lists at $9.99 a month on Uber’s own membership page, read 5 September 2026. Uber does not publish an annual price there, so we will not guess one — an Uber One annual figure quoted elsewhere did not come from Uber. The real difference is the rides: Uber One returns 5% on Uber trips and DashPass has no equivalent. If you take Ubers regularly, that changes the comparison in a way food delivery alone doesn’t.
The option nobody sells you is the third: pay the fees on the handful of orders you actually place. At $8 in fees across four orders, that is $32 a year. It is very hard for a $96 membership to beat $32.
Annual vs monthly: a $23.88 question
$9.99 × 12 = $119.88. The annual plan is $96. Paying monthly costs $23.88 more a year — a 25% premium for the right to quit.
That is one of the steeper monthly premiums on this site, and it is worth paying exactly once: in year one, while you find out whether you order as often as you think. If you are still subscribed a year later, monthly billing has stopped buying flexibility and started charging you for indecision — a trade we worked through in annual vs monthly billing.
Two things in DoorDash’s cancellation terms matter before you commit. You must cancel at least 24 hours before your next scheduled payment to avoid the next period. And cancelling during a free trial ends your benefits immediately rather than at the trial’s end — so there is a real cost to cancelling early.
The verdict
Buy DashPass if you are a student — at $48 a year, or free before 12 October, the break-even is roughly ten orders. Buy the annual plan if your order history genuinely shows twenty-plus deliveries in the last twelve months from restaurants carrying the green DashPass checkmark.
Skip it if you order delivery once or twice a month. That is the large group, and it is most people. At ten orders a year you are paying $96 to save perhaps $45 — and the service fee, menu markup and tip carry on regardless.
Skip it too if you pay for Prime and have never activated Grubhub+. Go and activate it before you buy anything. Paying $96 for a second delivery membership while an included one sits unused is the exact pattern we catalogued in the subscriptions people forget they are paying for.
And if groceries rather than restaurants are what you want delivered, DashPass is the wrong membership entirely — that is a different comparison, and we ran it in our breakdown of Instacart+.
If you have decided it is for you, DashPass is sold direct at doordash.com.
DashPass pricing, the Student plan, order minimums, the “$4-5 per eligible order” claim, free-trial terms and cancellation rules verified at help.doordash.com on 5 September 2026. Uber One’s monthly price verified at uber.com the same day; Uber publishes no annual price there. Grubhub+ pricing could not be verified — grubhub.com serves no price to an automated fetch — and the ~$120 figure is Amazon’s stated value, not Grubhub’s. Amazon Prime figures are approximate, drawn from aboutamazon.com and not confirmable at amazon.com. We analyse published pricing and terms; we do not test services hands-on.