Brands
Swiggy raises platform fee to Rs 17.58
India’s two food delivery giants have quietly turned a nominal Rs 2 charge into a serious revenue machine, and neither shows any sign of stopping
BENGALURU:Â It took three years, multiple hikes and one quietly coordinated convergence. Swiggy has raised its platform fee to Rs 17.58 per order including GST, up from Rs 14.99, a jump of roughly 17 per cent. The timing is not coincidental. Rival Zomato arrived at exactly the same number days earlier, charging a base fee of Rs 14.90 plus Rs 2.68 in GST to reach the identical Rs 17.58. Two competitors, two different fee structures, one identical bill for the customer.
Swiggy has increased its platform fee several times in the last seven months. What began in 2023 as a nominal Rs 2 flat charge, the kind of line item most users barely noticed, has steadily evolved into one of the most reliable margin levers in Indian digital commerce.
The cadence of increases tells the story. In September 2025, Zomato raised its platform fee to Rs 12 while Swiggy moved to Rs 14 during the festive season rush. Zomato then pushed its base fee to Rs 14.90, a 19 per cent jump from Rs 12.50. Swiggy has now followed from Rs 14.99 to Rs 17.58. The back-to-back revisions, each landing within days of the other, underline how India’s two largest food delivery platforms are adjusting customer-facing fees in near lockstep, whatever the headline structures say.
The arithmetic of scale explains the enthusiasm. Swiggy and Zomato together process an estimated 4.3 to 4.5 million orders daily. Even marginal per-order increases translate into sizable absolute gains.
The relentless upward drift also reflects the limited room both companies have to move elsewhere. Restaurants have been pushing back hard on commissions. Competition is intensifying, with newer models experimenting with lower take rates to poach merchant relationships. Charging users directly, in small, incremental amounts that rarely trigger cancellations, has emerged as one of the more dependable ways to improve unit economics without triggering a revolt. Food delivery remains the primary cash-generating engine for both companies, even as each races to build out its quick commerce business under intensifying competitive pressure.
Across digital commerce more broadly, the platform fee has become as standard as a service charge at a restaurant: food delivery, e-commerce, fashion, ticketing, all now routinely add small per-order charges to offset costs and improve operating leverage. Customers, conditioned to seeing the number creep up, largely absorb it.
What began as a rounding error on your takeaway bill is now a cornerstone of two of India’s most closely watched consumer businesses. At Rs 17.58 and climbing, it is anything but small change.
