Increasing food delivery charges are causing financial strain for all.

Food from the restaurant of your choosing, delivered right to your door — at what cost?

Third-party food delivery is becoming the norm for American consumers, as delivery apps like Grubhub, DoorDash and Uber Eats take hold in day-to-day dining. It’s also presenting customers and restaurants with an increasingly complicated equation of service fees, delivery costs and worker tips.

Frustrations from both sides of the table have fallen on the services, which have worked to protect (or achieve) profits and prop up orders while cash-strapped Americans scrutinize the checkout screen — and order totals that often add up to more than expected.

Compared to orders made directly through restaurant sites, consumers reported higher yearly increases in their total checks on third-party apps between 2022 and 2024, according to Technomic. Though Uber Eats, DoorDash and Grubhub each promote paid memberships to reduce fees, consumers still claim to pay more on average for third-party orders, according to the food service industry research firm.

The rising costs come as more Americans watch their wallets during a period of persistent inflation.

San Francisco resident Zainab Batool, who said she orders delivery from either Uber Eats or DoorDash weekly, called the added fees “insane.”

“I feel like I remember a time when they used to not be as high, maybe four years ago, but it just seems like it keeps increasing,” Batool said.

The share of consumers choosing third-party delivery services over direct restaurant delivery is rising, up from 15% in 2020 to 21% in 2024, according to Technomic’s 2024 Delivery & Takeout Consumer Trend Report. The research firm found that superior order tracking, access to deals and promotions, and the ability to discover new restaurants has kept app customers coming back.

But the cost of added fees could be driving some of them away.

Among consumers who report ordering less delivery, 41% said it was because of high delivery fees, while 48% point to inflated menu prices, according to the report. The premium that restaurants were charging for third-party delivery service menus increased between 2022 and 2023 — and has nearly doubled since 2020, according to a study by Gordon Haskett Research Advisors.

Companies facilitating the delivery say they aim to keep fees down.

Grubhub said in a statement it aims to keep fees as low as possible, while maintaining its business: “As the costs associated with handling deliveries — including managing logistics and paying delivery partners — have risen, we’ve adjusted our fees accordingly,” a Grubhub spokesperson said.

The company is owned by Just Eat Takeaway, an online food ordering and delivery company based in Amsterdam, which has said it’s actively looking to sell some or all of Grubhub.

DoorDash said it’s lowered fees for consumers over the last two years of historic inflation, at the same time seeing an all-time high of active users and an increase in order frequency last year.

That company, which went public in 2020, has yet to post an annual profit. The delivery service reported a single quarter of profit — net income of $23 million — for the three months ended June 30, 2020, at the very beginning of Covid lockdowns in the U.S. Last quarter the company reported adjusted EBITDA of $371 million.

Mobility giant Uber, on the other hand, earned nearly $1.9 billion last year, driven in part by major gains in its delivery business. Uber’s delivery segment, which includes Uber Eats and Uber Direct, reported adjusted EBITDA of $1.51 billion for 2023, an improvement of more than $955 million from 2022.

A spokesperson for Uber said Uber Eats users are paying for a service that allows them to browse merchants and order efficiently with on-demand delivery.

“The fees for orders on Uber Eats help pay delivery people and cover platform costs — like safety programs, 24/7 support, background checks, product development, and more — so that orders can arrive reliably,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

For diners, doing the math across platforms is getting trickier.

On both Uber and DoorDash, order totals can vary by region because of additional fees applied to offset local laws and regulations, according to their respective websites. In California, for example, customers on Uber Eats pay a CA Driver Benefits fee, introduced to fund mandatory benefits for drivers following Prop 22, according to Uber.

Even before local variances, the add-ons can be daunting.

Uber collects a delivery fee, which varies depending on demand, location and driver availability, according to its website. DoorDash applies a similar delivery fee that it said is dependent on multiple factors. Both apps say this fee is…