When a restaurant decides whether a delivery app is worth it, it almost always looks at the percentage in the contract. That's the wrong number. The nominal rate — that 25%, 28%, or 30% on the agreement — is the starting point of the calculation, not the result.

What actually matters is your effective commission: how much of every dollar billed ends up with the platform once you add everything up. That number almost never matches the contract, because there are three or four more line items deducted underneath it.

This guide is for calculating it with your own numbers, not with averages from the internet.

What the Contract Says, and What Happens at Settlement

Published commissions from the major platforms in the region sit in a band of roughly 25% to 30% of the sale, plus VAT, and vary by plan: plans that include the app's own delivery fleet charge more than ones that only provide the storefront and leave delivery to the restaurant.

That range is the public reference point. Your actual percentage is in your contract and can sit above or below it depending on what you negotiated. But even with the exact number in hand, that only covers the first of four line items.

Line item 1: the commission. The agreed percentage on the value of the products.

Line item 2: VAT on the commission. In Ecuador that's 15%, applied to the commission amount, not the sale. A 28% commission becomes 32.2% effective with just this step — simple arithmetic many people skip: 28 × 1.15 = 32.2.

Line item 3: co-funded promotions. The "2-for-1," "free delivery," or welcome discount. These usually show up as campaigns the restaurant agrees to and that get deducted at settlement, in part or in full. They're not in the contract percentage, yet they come out of the same pocket.

Line item 4: in-app advertising. Paying to rank higher in the list. Optional in theory; in practice, when volume drops, it's the first thing restaurants buy.

How to Calculate Your Real Effective Commission

You need a full month of settlement statements. Not a good week, not a number from memory — a closed month, weekends and slow days included.

Add up gross sales for all orders on that platform for the month. This is what customers paid for the food, not counting the delivery fee the app charges them.
Add up everything deducted from you: commission, VAT on the commission, co-funded promotions, advertising, any incident or cancellation charges.
Divide total deductions by gross sales and multiply by 100.

That percentage is your effective commission. Most restaurants doing this exercise for the first time find the number comes out five to eight points above the contract percentage — not because of hidden charges, but because the contract only describes one of the four line items.

Do this per platform, separately. It's common to discover that the app that looked more expensive turned out cheaper in practice, because the other one ate the margin in promotions.

The Margin Left Over

The next step is the one that stings, and the one almost nobody does: crossing your effective commission against the real cost of the dish.

If your ingredient cost is 35% of the sale price and your effective commission is 32%, you're already at 67% before touching rent, payroll, utilities, delivery packaging, and gas. Packaging, in particular, is a cost that only exists on the delivery channel and is rarely tracked separately: containers, bags, seals, cutlery, and napkins per order.

With those numbers in hand, an uncomfortable conclusion usually appears: some menu items lose money when sold through an app and make money when sold in the dining room. It's almost always the lower-priced dishes, where the fixed packaging cost weighs more, and the labor-heavy ones.

That's a menu decision, not a technology one: not everything on your dine-in menu has to be on the app's menu.

Why the Problem Doesn't Get Solved by Leaving the Apps

This is where a lot of articles recommend closing the account and selling direct only. That's bad advice, for a specific reason: platforms don't charge for processing an order, they charge for bringing in a customer who didn't know you. That's the real service. Leaving abruptly doesn't save you the commission, it takes away the volume that commission was buying.

The right question isn't "do I stay or go" but "what share of my orders could come through a channel of my own?"

A customer who already found you, already ordered three times, and knows your restaurant's name doesn't need an app to introduce you again. That repeat order is the one that doesn't have to cost you the full commission. The app keeps working as a discovery channel; your own channel recovers the margin on repeat business.

The Calculation That Decides If It's Worth It

Run this with your own numbers:

Monthly effective commission, in dollars. That's line item 2 from the exercise above, in money, not percentage.
Share of repeat customers. How many of your orders this month came from someone who had already ordered before. If the app shows you this, use it; if not, a manual check of repeated addresses gives a good enough approximation.
Multiply. If 40% of your orders are from repeat customers, that 40% of your effective commission is what you're paying for customers who were already yours.

That number — commission paid on orders from people who already knew you — is the ceiling of what you could recover with a channel of your own. If it's a hundred dollars a month, it's not worth building anything. If it's twelve hundred, that's a different conversation.

What a Channel of Your Own Needs to Actually Work

Having an ordering page isn't enough. For a customer who already used an app to decide to order direct, your own channel has to solve the same problem with the same ease:

Order without installing anything. A link or QR code that opens the menu in the browser. Any extra friction sends the customer back to the app.
Meet the customer where they already are. In Ecuador that's WhatsApp. A direct channel that ignores WhatsApp is fighting the habit, not working with it.
Land everything on one kitchen screen. If orders from the website, WhatsApp, and the apps arrive in three different places, the commission you saved gets paid back in mistakes and lost orders during peak hours.
Give a reason to come back. Customers don't switch channels to help you out. They switch because it's better for them: a price without the app markup, an item only available direct, or a perk for ordering again.

None of this eliminates the apps. It coexists with them and takes away the expensive part: repeat business.

The Mistake of Comparing Only the Percentage Between Platforms

When a restaurant works with two or three apps at once, the temptation is to concentrate volume on the one with the lowest percentage. That's almost never the right call, because platforms don't compete only on commission: they compete on average ticket, coverage area, and customer type.

An app charging 30% commission with an $18 average ticket leaves you more margin per order than one at 25% with an $11 ticket, even though the percentage says otherwise. And a platform with better coverage in your area brings you orders the other simply can't deliver.

The comparison that matters is in dollars per order, not percentage: take each platform's gross sales, subtract the effective commission and packaging cost, and divide by the number of orders. That's the gross margin each channel leaves per order. It's the only figure that lets you compare like with like, and it often reshuffles the ranking you had in your head.

Repeat this exercise every quarter. Platforms change plans, commissions, and promotion rules often, and a decision made with last year's numbers can be propping up the wrong channel today.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much do delivery apps really charge in Ecuador? Published commissions in the region sit between 25% and 30% of the sale plus VAT, depending on the platform and plan. Your exact percentage is in your contract, and the effective commission — with VAT, promotions, and advertising included — usually lands several points higher.

Is VAT calculated on the sale or on the commission? On the commission. With 15% VAT, a nominal 28% commission equals 32.2% effective before adding promotions and advertising.

Is it worth raising app prices to offset the commission? It's a common and legitimate practice, but check your contract: some platforms require price parity with your own channel. If they require it and you break it, the risk is your listing getting deactivated.

What's the first step if I've never done this calculation? Download the last closed month's settlement statements from each platform and work out the effective commission separately for each one. Without that number, any decision about channels is a guess.

Delivery App Costs in Ecuador: How to Calculate What You're Really Paying