Riding for Deliveroo: the full guide

Deliveroo is the simplest of the food apps to start on and one of the more generous to riders on paper: it publishes a pay floor, it insures you for accidents at no cost, and it pays weekly. None of that changes the basic shape of the job. You are self-employed, you are paid per order, and the tax is yours.

What you need to join

• To be over 18, with the right to work in the UK as a self-employed person.
• No unspent criminal convictions.
• A bicycle, e-bike, cargo bike, scooter or car. Stand-up e-scooters are not allowed, because they cannot legally be ridden on UK roads.
• A smartphone on iOS 17 or Android 8 or later, with NFC and front and rear cameras. NFC is how you check in at restaurants that have a rider tag.
• A UK bank account.
• For a car or scooter: a driving licence (a provisional licence and CBT is enough for a scooter), ordinary motor insurance, and food delivery or hire and reward cover.

The application asks for proof of right to work, proof of address, a bank statement, a document showing your National Insurance number and a photo of your delivery kit with your ID, unless you buy kit from Deliveroo. Kit does not have to be Deliveroo branded, but it does have to meet their minimum standard.

Every new rider completes a criminal record check with First Advantage, the company that used to be called Sterling. Approval is conditional until it clears, so you can take orders in the meantime, but an account whose check is not finished within 28 days can be paused.

How each fee is worked out

Every order offer shows the full fee, the collection point and the delivery address before you accept. There is no fixed pick-up, drop-off or per-mile rate. The fee is built mainly from the time and the road distance Deliveroo expects the order to take, adjusted for where you are, the time of day, how busy the restaurant is, any boost running, and your vehicle. Cars and scooters are paid slightly more than bikes because they cost more to run.

Deliveroo says the fee is not affected by how many orders you have rejected before, how long you have ridden, how fast you were last time, or whether you use a substitute. You can reject any order and it is not held against you.

You are paid only for completed orders. Cancel one after accepting, or break a policy such as delivering alcohol without checking ID, and that order pays nothing.

The GMB pay floor

Deliveroo has a voluntary agreement with the GMB union, renegotiated each year, that sets a minimum fee per hour of ESTIMATED order time, measured from the moment you accept to the moment you mark the order delivered. The rates from 1 April 2026 include vehicle costs:

So a car order estimated at 20 minutes pays at least £5.73. What the floor does not cover is the time between orders. An hour online with two short orders is paid for the forty minutes those orders were estimated to take, not for the hour. That is why your real hourly rate, logged over a whole shift, is the number that tells you whether an evening was worth it.

Stacked orders, returns and shopping

• Stacked orders put two or three orders on one trip, from one restaurant or several. Deliveroo now offers triple stacks. Each order counts separately for challenges.
• Return orders pay an extra fee to take a grocery order back to the shop when it could not be delivered. With alcohol, if the customer has no valid ID, is in a public place or appears drunk, you return the whole order, within 24 hours.
• Shop & Deliver orders, currently from Aldi, have you do the shopping and pay with a Deliveroo Rider Card in Apple or Google Wallet. They usually pay more than a plain delivery, and more items means a higher fee.

When the money arrives

Fees are paid every Tuesday for orders completed Monday to Sunday the week before, by midnight. If you want it sooner, tap your balance on the Earnings page to cash out. Before 17:30 on a weekday it arrives straight away; after that it lands the next working day. Each cash out knocks 50p off, shown on your invoice as a transaction fee.

Download your invoices from Earnings, then Previous payments. They are the best record you will have, and an account you can no longer open is an account whose invoices you can no longer download.

Tips go to you in full, whether left in the app before or after delivery or handed over in cash. On a large order shared between riders, the tip is split.

What Deliveroo insures, and what it does not

There is no excess on any of it. What it does not include is motor insurance. If you ride a scooter or drive, a crash damaging somebody else's car is a claim on your own policy, which is why that policy must cover food delivery. The cover also stops at Deliveroo: an accident during an Uber Eats order is not Deliveroo's to pay. See what each platform insures.

Substitutes and identity checks

You can let someone else deliver on your account, but only one person can be online on it at a time, and you remain responsible for the tax on everything the account earns. Deliveroo reports all of it under your name, so if you pay a substitute, that payment is a cost of your business and a record of it matters. Substitutes and account sharing covers the tax and the new right to work rules.

Deliveroo asks account holders to take a video selfie from time to time, matched against the photo from sign-up. The account holder has to do it, even if a substitute is doing the riding. Take off the helmet and sunglasses and find some light; a manual review is available if it keeps failing.

If your account is paused or closed

Deliveroo puts accounts on hold while it looks at suspicious activity, typically location data that looks manipulated or an order that was never going to be delivered. You cannot go online or cash out while it is on hold. If your supplier agreement is ended, you can ask Rider Support for a review, and if you are a GMB member the union can make the request for you. A rider terminated for a material breach cannot rejoin.

An account left unused for 12 months is closed until you ask for it to be reactivated.

Tax

You are self-employed. Nothing is deducted from your fees. Your turnover is everything Deliveroo paid you, including tips and challenge payments, and against it you claim your business miles, at 55p a mile in a car for the first 10,000 miles, 24p on a scooter or motorbike, or 20p on a bicycle, plus costs such as your phone and kit. You file a Self Assessment return and pay income tax and Class 4 National Insurance on the profit.

Deliveroo collects your date of birth and National Insurance number every year and reports your total fees to HMRC. It reports by calendar year, which is not the same as the tax year on your return. What the platforms tell HMRC explains how to square the two.