Delivering for Just Eat: the full guide

Deliveroo and Uber Eats let you open the app and go online whenever you like. Just Eat mostly does not. It plans how many couriers each zone needs, schedules you into runs inside the hours you said you were free, and then sends offers while you are on a run. That makes the week more predictable and the hours less flexible.

What you need

• To be 18 or over.
• A reliable vehicle, with a driving licence, vehicle insurance and registration details if it is a car. Bike couriers are accepted in some zones and need no vehicle insurance or registration.
• A background check covering criminal record and right to work, free, from Sterling. It normally takes three to five days and can take fourteen. A check you completed in the last 90 days elsewhere can be sent in instead.
• A smartphone with a data plan and your bank details.
• Commercial-grade thermal bags. If you use your own, you send a photo with ID so Just Eat can check them against its size rules.

Zones, availability and runs

1. Set your availability in the Courier App, by date or by weekday, by 11:59pm on Wednesday.
2. The schedule for the following week is published on Thursday. You are not guaranteed runs for every hour you offered.
3. Confirm each run in My Delivery Runs within 48 hours of its start.
4. Start the run inside your zone, with GPS on, Wi-Fi off and precise location allowed, or offers will not reach you.
5. Pick up open runs at any time, or set yourself to Available and wait to be told when a zone needs more couriers.

Missing a run has a cost beyond that run. Check in late, or not at all, and the system drops it and any other run you had in the next 24 hours. If you cannot make one, drop it in the app beforehand. Towards the end of a busy run you may be offered an extension, and you can end a run early whenever you like. Pausing offers for more than 30 minutes checks you out.

Stay inside your zone boundary. Offers go to couriers in the zone, and the app marks hotspots where more orders come from. A zone shown in grey already has all the couriers it needs.

How each order is paid

Each order pays Transit Pay, worked out from the estimated driving distance, the time to complete it, traffic and the route. The offer shows the total, the restaurant and customer locations, the estimated distance and your current acceptance rate. You have one minute to swipe accept. Every order is prepaid; couriers no longer handle cash.

• Restaurant delay reimbursement: extra pay when you are held at a restaurant longer than average. It is calculated automatically, but only if you swipe Parked at Restaurant once you are parked and Collected once the food is in your hands.
• Fee Boost runs: an extra payment for every delivery completed during a flagged run, whatever your acceptance rate.
• Multi-collect offers: two orders from one restaurant for two customers. Accept, then ask support in the chat to remove one if you only want one.
• Run incentives, announced by email, text and the courier blog.

When the money arrives

Direct deposits go out every Tuesday for the previous Monday to Sunday, covering Transit Pay, tips and reimbursements, and usually reach your bank by Friday. The weekly statement is in the Courier Portal on Tuesday, and your total for the year is there too. There is no instant cash out option described in Just Eat's courier help.

Alcohol and tobacco

Just Eat uses Challenge 100: every customer receiving alcohol or cigarettes shows ID, whatever age they look. You do not have to take age-restricted orders. To stop being offered them, contact support before offers are made, and it will not affect your acceptance rate.

If your access is revoked

Just Eat sends an email giving the reason and the dates. Its published reasons include holding more than one account, detours that delay orders, orders accepted and not delivered or marked delivered early, location spoofing, bots that grab runs, inflating hold time, falsely claiming to be VAT registered, abuse, and unsafe vehicle use, which includes driving uninsured, without business insurance, or on a different type of vehicle from the one on your account. Expired documents pause an account until you upload new ones.

To challenge a revocation, complete the reconsideration form within four weeks of it, fill in every section and attach evidence. Just Eat replies within two weeks, and the answer is final. You also have the right under data protection law to have an automated decision reviewed by a person. Deactivation and how to appeal it covers the evidence worth gathering.

Worker status and tax

More than 7,000 couriers asked an employment tribunal in 2026 to find they are workers rather than self-employed, and judgment is expected later in the year. See the tribunal news item. Whatever it decides, you are self-employed for tax today.

Just Eat pays gross and deducts nothing. All of it is turnover. Claim your business miles, at 55p a mile for the first 10,000 in a car, and your other costs, and file a Self Assessment return. You do not have to be VAT registered, but if you are, Just Eat needs to know, and must be told if that changes.