Delivery App Commissions in Saudi Arabia: What Restaurants Really Pay
Abdullah AlHawsawi
7 min read
Delivery App Commissions in Saudi Arabia: What Restaurants Really Pay?
Short answer: A restaurant’s effective commission on Saudi delivery apps is the sum of basic commission, payment-processing fees, delivery fees, marketing fees, compensations and other charges, divided by sales. According to Ballurh, it typically lands between 30% and 35% — versus the 13–21% written in most contracts — and becomes a profitability risk above 38–40%.
Ask a restaurant operator in Saudi Arabia what commission they pay to delivery apps, and most will quote the rate in their contract. The monthly statement tells a different story. Between the contract rate and what actually leaves the restaurant’s revenue sits a gap of 10–20 percentage points — and it is the single most common reason a brand can post strong sales on HungerStation, Jahez and Keeta while showing thin profits at month-end.
A quick primer for readers outside the market: Saudi Arabia’s food delivery sector is dominated by four platforms — HungerStation (owned by Delivery Hero), Jahez (publicly listed on Tadawul), Keeta (Meituan’s international brand, which entered the Kingdom in 2024), and The Chefz. Multi-branch restaurants typically operate on two to four of them simultaneously, each with its own contract, fee structure and invoice format.
Commission is not one number — it’s up to six
A single platform contract can carry up to six separate charges against your sales:
*Ranges reflect actual contracts observed across Ballurh’s network of multi-branch restaurant clients, not published platform pricing. Your contract may differ.
The sum of all six, divided by sales, is the effective commission rate (total commission). That is the only number worth negotiating and monitoring monthly — not the basic rate alone.
What’s a normal effective rate in Saudi Arabia?
From the contracts and invoices we see, the market average sits between 30% and 35% of sales, with three clear zones:
- Below 30% while actively marketing and growing: excellent.
- 30–35%: the market norm.
- Above 38–40%: danger zone — covering the commission requires outsized price increases, and some of your orders are likely selling at a loss.
The relationship between commission and pricing is non-linear, which is what makes the danger zone so costly:
Each additional commission point costs multiples of itself in pricing. Negotiating the effective rate down by two or three points often does more for profit than any marketing campaign. (See our guide to negotiating with your account manager.)
How to calculate your effective rate (4 steps)
Platform invoices arrive late and are reviewed manually — errors happen. The operator who knows the number in advance is the one who catches them.
- Download the orders report from each platform’s dashboard for the same period (in Jahez: Portal → Management → Financial Report → set the date range).
- Add up every deduction: basic commission + bank fees and their VAT + delivery fees + marketing + compensations and refunds + any other items. Note: Jahez displays commissions inclusive of VAT, and some invoices fold compensations into catch-all lines such as “seller fees.”
- Divide total deductions by total sales for the same period. That is your effective commission.
- Repeat per platform and per branch. Averages hide problems: your Riyadh branch may run at 31% while Jeddah sits at 42% because of one underperforming campaign.
There is also a seventh deduction that never appears under commissions at all: discounts and offers. A 40% discount doesn’t show in the platform’s fee lines — it shows up in your food cost. Judging your health on delivery apps requires both numbers together; see Food cost + commission: when delivery sales turn into losses.
A real example: a rounding mistake worth over SAR 1 million
When Ballurh reviews menu pricing with its restaurant clients, we put one question to the accountant and the delivery-apps manager:
“You sell an item for SAR 24 in-store. Your effective commission is 30%. What price do you set on the app so that SAR 24 remains after commission?”
The most common answer is SAR 31.20 (24 + 30%). It’s wrong: 31.20 minus 30% leaves only SAR 21.84 — a silent loss of SAR 2.16 per order. At multi-branch volume, thousands of orders a month, this single formula error can exceed SAR 1 million a year.
The correct formula:
App price = required net price ÷ (1 − effective commission rate)
24 ÷ 0.70 = SAR 34.29
Run your own menu through the delivery price calculator, or read the full menu pricing guide for delivery apps.
4 common mistakes that inflate your commission unnoticed
- Negotiating only the basic rate. A contract with a low headline rate and open-ended delivery and marketing clauses often costs more than a “pricier” contract with capped totals.
- Ignoring order timeouts. The order prints, no one accepts it in time, it times out — and you’re charged full commission on a sale you never made. Monitor device uptime daily, especially without a POS integration.
- Not reconciling invoices against order reports. Discrepancies happen, and compensations get buried in aggregate lines. Step-by-step reconciliation is covered in reading a HungerStation invoice, and Keeta’s calculation — the most complex of the four — in how Keeta commission is calculated.
- Letting flat delivery fees eat small orders. A fixed SAR 9 delivery fee is 15% of a SAR 60 order, but drops below 10.8% once your average order value passes SAR 75. Raise AOV with add-ons and combos, and the delivery-fee ratio falls automatically.
How Ballurh helps
Ballurh is the operating system for restaurant revenue on delivery apps. Instead of compiling commissions manually from five dashboards, Ballurh consolidates your data from HungerStation, Keeta, Jahez, The Chefz and Ninja, shows your effective commission per platform and per branch, and surfaces the compensations and deductions that get lost between invoice lines. Built on analysis of 17M+ transactions and SAR 1B+ in order value, restaurants using Ballurh recover around 80% of their eligible compensation claims.
How much did your restaurant lose this month? Calculate your free loss estimate or book a demo.
Frequently asked questions
What commission do delivery apps charge restaurants in Saudi Arabia?
Contract basic rates typically range from 13% to 21%, but the effective rate — after bank fees, delivery fees, marketing and compensations — usually lands at 30–35% of sales. Rates are contract-specific, not published list prices.
What’s the difference between basic and effective commission?
Basic commission is the headline rate in the contract. Effective commission is everything actually deducted from your sales — basic, bank, delivery, marketing and compensations — divided by sales. The gap between the two can exceed 15 percentage points.
When is my commission dangerously high?
Above 38–40% effective commission you’re in the danger zone, since covering it requires raising prices 66–81%. The broader gauge: food cost plus effective commission above 80% of sales is critical; below 60% is excellent.
Do bank fees go to the delivery platform?
No. Payment-processing fees (typically 1.5–3%) go to payment networks and banks; the platform only passes them through. They’re still deducted from your payout, so they belong in your effective-rate calculation.
How do I reduce my effective commission without leaving the apps?
Four levers: negotiate the total commission rather than the basic rate alone, cap marketing fees at 4% or less, dispute unjustified compensations instead of absorbing them, and push average order value above SAR 75 so flat delivery fees shrink as a percentage.