As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases — including a fee if you start an Amazon Prime trial or subscribe to a Prime Video Channel through a link here. Instacart and Peacock pay us nothing, and one of the conclusions below is that a lot of people should skip Instacart+ entirely. See our methodology.
Instacart+ costs $9.99 a month or $99 a year, read from Instacart’s own page on 1 September 2026. The strange part is what’s inside it: a Peacock Premium subscription that Peacock itself lists at $129.99 a year.
So the membership costs $30.99 less than one of the things it gives you. That’s the whole argument, and whether it holds depends entirely on a question that has nothing to do with groceries: were you going to pay for Peacock anyway?
The headline: it is cheaper than the streaming service inside it
On peacocktv.com today, Peacock Premium is $12.99 a month or $129.99 a year. Instacart’s help pages confirm that eligible U.S. Instacart+ members get Peacock Premium at no additional cost — Premium, not Premium Plus.
Run it as a straight subtraction. If you already pay Peacock $129.99 a year:
- Peacock direct: $129.99
- Instacart+ annual, Peacock included: $99.00
- You are $30.99 better off, and the grocery delivery benefit costs you nothing
That is a genuinely unusual piece of pricing, and it’s the only version of Instacart+ that requires no faith in your own future behaviour. Everything else here depends on how often you order.
If you would not watch Peacock, delete that $129.99 from your thinking entirely. A benefit you don’t use is worth zero, not its list price — that reasoning is how people end up defending bundles they never open. Our full breakdown of Peacock’s tiers covers whether the service stands up on its own.
Two things to know before you count on it. Peacock Premium is the ad-supported tier; the ad-free one is Premium Plus at $19.99 a month or $199.99 a year, and that is not what Instacart includes. And Instacart’s own terms say it “reserves the right to modify or terminate the benefit at any time.” It has run since November 2023, but it is a promotion, not a contract.
What $99 actually buys on the grocery side
From instacart.com’s product and help pages:
- $0 grocery delivery fees on eligible orders of $10 or more. Service fees still apply — Instacart says this repeatedly, in bold, on its own page.
- Costco orders need a $35 minimum, not $10.
- $0 restaurant delivery fees on eligible orders of $25 or more. Service fees still apply here too.
- A free year of New York Times Cooking, annual members only. Instacart describes this as a “$50 annual value” — that’s Instacart’s number, and we could not confirm NYT’s own list price, because nytimes.com is not fetchable for us.
- Family sharing, adding household members to the same benefits.
The load-bearing word is delivery. Instacart+ waives the delivery fee line on your receipt. It does not waive the service fee, it does not reduce item markups, and it does not tip your shopper.
The break-even Instacart won’t calculate for you
Here is the honest problem: Instacart does not publish its delivery fees. Its help centre says only that “the delivery fee varies based on the retailer, delivery window, and order total,” and that you see it at checkout. There is no table, no average, no range. Any article quoting you a precise Instacart delivery fee got it from somewhere that made it up.
So do it with your own number instead. Open your last Instacart receipt, find the delivery fee line — the delivery fee alone, not the service fee — and divide:
$99 ÷ (your delivery fee) = orders per year to break even
At a $4 delivery fee that’s 25 orders a year, about one every other week. At $8 it’s roughly 13, about one a month. At $2 it’s 50, which is essentially a weekly order plus extras.
Then apply the test that actually matters: is that more orders than you placed last year? Not more than you intend to place. Instacart+ is priced on the assumption that you’ll order more than you do, which is the same assumption behind every gym membership. If your honest answer is “about once a month,” the membership only pays off if your delivery fees run high or you want the Peacock.
Monthly versus annual: a $20.88 penalty
$9.99 × 12 = $119.88. The annual plan is $99. Paying monthly costs you $20.88 extra a year — a 17% premium for the right to quit.
That premium is worth paying exactly once: in your first year, while you find out whether you order as often as you think. After that, if you’re still subscribed, monthly billing is just a fee for indecision. The same trade-off shows up across almost every subscription, and we worked through when flexibility is worth its price in annual vs monthly billing.
One catch on the annual plan: Instacart’s terms state the membership auto-renews at $99 a year, with refunds available only within 5 days of purchase and only if no orders were placed. Order once, and you own the year.
The Amazon question, and why it’s the real competition
For a lot of households the alternative isn’t a different delivery membership — it’s the one they already have.
Amazon’s figures have to be approximate here. Amazon requires exact prices to come from its API, 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:
- Amazon Prime runs about $140 a year.
- An aboutamazon.com post updated 12 May 2026 says Prime members get free same-day delivery on orders over $25 in most areas, with a fee of about $3 below that minimum. Non-members pay about $13 a delivery.
- Amazon also sells a separate grocery delivery subscription at about $10 a month, or about $100 a year for Prime members, covering Whole Foods Market, Amazon Fresh and some local retailers.
Newsroom posts are announcements, not live pricing, and they go stale. Treat those as the right order of magnitude, not gospel. Our Prime breakdown has the fuller accounting.
The comparison that matters is not price, it’s which shops. Amazon delivers Amazon’s groceries. Instacart delivers your Kroger, your Publix, your Wegmans, your Costco. If the store you actually want is on Instacart and not on Amazon, Prime is not a substitute at any price. If you’re indifferent and already pay for Prime, Instacart+ is $99 for something you partly have.
| Instacart+ | Amazon Prime | Amazon grocery add-on | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Annual cost | $99 (exact) | about $140 | about $100 |
| Monthly cost | $9.99 (exact) | about $15 | about $10 |
| Free delivery over | $10 ($35 Costco) | about $25 | about $25 |
| Stores | Most major U.S. chains | Amazon Fresh, Whole Foods | Amazon Fresh, Whole Foods, some local |
| Streaming included | Peacock Premium | Prime Video | none |
| Service fees waived | No | n/a | n/a |
Instacart figures from instacart.com, 1 September 2026, exact. Amazon figures rounded and unconfirmed at source.
The verdict
Buy Instacart+ if you already pay for Peacock Premium — the membership is cheaper than the subscription it replaces, and the groceries are free upside. Buy it also if you order groceries at least fortnightly from a chain Amazon doesn’t carry, and your receipts show a delivery fee worth killing.
Skip it if you order once a month or less and won’t watch Peacock. At that rate you are paying $99 to save perhaps $50 in delivery fees, while the service fee — the bigger line on most receipts — carries on unchanged.
Skip it too if you shop Amazon Fresh or Whole Foods and already have Prime. You have free delivery over about $25 already. Adding Instacart+ buys you a second delivery membership and a streaming service, which is a strange way to buy a streaming service.
And if you take the annual plan, put a calendar reminder 11 months out. The 5-day refund window means an unwanted renewal is not recoverable — the exact failure mode in our guide to cancelling forgotten subscriptions.
If it’s only the ad-free Peacock you want, note that Premium Plus is also sold through Prime Video Channels, which keeps it on one bill with everything else you stream. To subscribe to Instacart+ directly, it’s at instacart.com; Peacock sells direct at peacocktv.com.
Instacart+ pricing, order minimums, benefit terms and the refund window verified at instacart.com on 1 September 2026. Peacock tier pricing verified at peacocktv.com the same day. Amazon 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.