You've probably done the maths in your head a hundred times during a quiet Tuesday afternoon. £18 average order × 14% commission = £2.52 to Just Eat per order. Multiply by 800 monthly orders and you're handing over £2,000 a month — £24,000 a year — for what is increasingly a smaller share of your delivery revenue than it was three years ago.
So the question keeps coming back: should you leave?
The answer most agencies give you is "yes, leave, build a direct site, save the commission." That's a salesperson's answer, not an owner's answer. The honest answer is: it depends on your specific volume, your customer mix, and how you transition — and "leaving" is almost always the wrong word. The right word is rebalancing.
This guide is the financial reality check we walk through with every takeaway owner who asks. By the end you'll know whether to stay, leave, or split — and what each path actually costs.
What Just Eat actually charges
Most owners know the headline commission. Fewer have added up the full picture. As of 2026, a typical UK takeaway listing on Just Eat pays:
- Order commission: 14% (Order & Pay) or 18% (Delivery service) of the order value
- Card processing: ~1.4% (often bundled into the commission, but worth noting)
- Promotional spend: 5–25% additional discount when running promotions (which Just Eat encourages frequently)
- Sponsored placement: £50–£300+ a week if you're using paid visibility
- Refunds and disputes: when a customer complains, the refund usually comes out of your pocket, not Just Eat's
For a takeaway doing £15,000 monthly through Just Eat at 14% commission, with one ongoing 15% promo and £80/week in sponsored placement, the all-in cost is roughly:
- Commission: £2,100
- Promo discount cost: £2,250
- Sponsored placement: £320
- Total monthly cost: ~£4,670 — about 31% of gross delivery revenue
That's the real number to compare against, not the 14% headline.
What "going direct" actually costs
The other side of the maths gets glossed over. A direct ordering site is not free — it just shifts costs.
One-off costs
- Website with direct ordering: £2,500–£5,000 from a good UK studio (or £15–£30/month forever from Wix; we covered the trade-offs in our restaurant website cost guide)
- Direct ordering platform setup (if separate): £200–£500 for systems like Flipdish, Slerp, or Toast TakeOut
- Photography: £400–£800 for a half-day food shoot (worth it; phone photos undermine the whole site)
Monthly costs
- Hosting + maintenance: £20–£100/month depending on tier
- Direct ordering platform fee: 1–4% of orders (much lower than Just Eat)
- Card processing: 1.4–1.9% (Stripe, Square, GoCardless)
- SMS marketing: £15–£40/month (used for review chasing AND direct-order promotion)
- Local SEO + Google Ads: £200–£800/month if you want to drive new customers to the direct site instead of relying on Just Eat for discovery
That last line is where most "go direct" plans collapse. Just Eat's headline value isn't the platform — it's that they spend tens of millions of pounds annually on TV ads and Google Ads driving "food near me" searchers to their app. Leaving Just Eat means you become responsible for that customer acquisition.
The customer mix question
Before any maths, the question that decides everything: what proportion of your Just Eat customers are new vs repeat?
Open your Just Eat dashboard and look at "Repeat customer rate" or equivalent. Most takeaways fall into one of three patterns:
Pattern 1: High repeat rate (>40%)
Most of your Just Eat customers come back regularly. They know your shop, they're loyal — they're using Just Eat because it's easy, not because they're discovering you. You can move most of these to direct. Send them a flyer in their next bag, give them a 10% loyalty code for their first direct order, and over 6–12 months you can shift 50–70% of repeat orders off the platform.
Pattern 2: Mixed (20–40% repeat)
A meaningful share are repeat, but Just Eat is also driving real new-customer acquisition for you. Don't leave — split. Build a direct site for repeats, keep Just Eat for new customers. This is where most independent takeaways should sit.
Pattern 3: Low repeat rate (under 20%)
Most of your Just Eat orders are first-timers who never come back. Leaving is risky. Without Just Eat's discovery engine, your order volume could collapse before your direct site builds enough customers to fill the gap. Stay on, but invest in food, packaging and review systems to lift that repeat rate first — leaving with a 12% repeat rate is a recipe for closure.
The 12-month split scenario (most takeaways)
For most UK takeaways, the realistic right answer isn't "leave Just Eat." It's "rebalance over 12 months toward 50/50." Here's what the maths look like for a typical £15,000/month takeaway:
Starting point (Month 0)
- £15,000/month all through Just Eat
- All-in cost: £4,670/month (~31%)
- Effective margin lost: ~£4,670/month
Target (Month 12)
- £8,000/month through Just Eat (still useful for new-customer discovery)
- £7,000/month through direct site
- Just Eat cost: £8,000 × 31% = £2,480
- Direct site cost: ~£600/month (hosting, ordering platform, card processing, SMS, local SEO retainer)
- Total monthly cost: £3,080 vs £4,670 starting
- Monthly saving: £1,590 (£19,080/year)
That's after the upfront site investment of £3,000–£5,000 — recouped in 2–4 months on those numbers.
The longer-term advantage is bigger than the monthly saving: you own the customer. When Just Eat raises commission again (they have, repeatedly) — your direct customers are unaffected. When Deliveroo deprioritises your listing — your direct customers don't notice. When you want to send a Christmas offer to your top 200 customers — you can. On Just Eat, you can't even see who they are.
What actually goes wrong when takeaways leave
We've seen takeaways leave Just Eat overnight three times in two years. None of them are still trading the way they were. Here's what happens — and what to avoid:
Mistake 1: Leaving before the direct site is ready
The day you delist from Just Eat, your daily order volume drops 60–90%. If your direct site isn't already running with at least 100–200 returning customers using it, you can't recover before cash flow becomes critical. Always build and launch direct alongside Just Eat for at least 6 months before considering reducing Just Eat.
Mistake 2: Underestimating customer acquisition cost
Just Eat spent ~£260m on UK marketing in 2023.[2] That's how new customers find you. Replacing that with your own marketing budget — Google Ads, local SEO, social media — is doable, but typically costs £200–£800/month for a small takeaway. Build that into your budget before you reduce Just Eat exposure.
Mistake 3: Treating direct ordering as a side project
If your direct site is buried in your website footer with a tiny "Order online" link, customers will never use it. Successful direct-order takeaways treat the direct ordering page as the primary call-to-action — at the top of every page, in every social post, on every receipt, on the bag every customer takes home.
Mistake 4: Underpricing on direct to "compete"
A new owner often discounts direct orders by 10–20% to entice customers off Just Eat. This is a mistake. The customer doesn't see your commission cost — they just see "I save £2." Instead, price the same on direct as Just Eat, and use the saved commission for genuinely valuable rewards — free side after 5 orders, free dessert on first direct order, etc. Loyalty mechanics retain customers; raw discounting just attracts price-sensitive ones.
The signals you're ready to start moving
Concrete checklist before you start the transition:
- You have at least 12 months of consistent Just Eat order volume (so you can spot which customers are repeat)
- Your repeat customer rate is above 25%
- You're collecting customer phone numbers (not just delivery addresses) at order time
- You have at least 50 Google reviews and a 4.4+ rating
- You're willing to invest £3,000–£5,000 once and £400–£700/month for 6 months
- You can dedicate one staff member 30 minutes a day to the transition for the first 3 months
If you can tick most of these, the maths work and the timing is right. If you can't, fix those first — leaving Just Eat without them is moving onto thinner ice, not safer ground.
A realistic month-by-month plan
For a typical takeaway running 700–900 monthly Just Eat orders, the 12-month split looks like this:
Months 1–3 — build phase
- Direct site goes live with full menu and ordering
- Start Google Business Profile work (reviews, posts, photos)
- Print direct-order flyers in every Just Eat bag with a one-time 10% off code
- Goal: 5% of monthly orders direct (~40/month)
Months 4–6 — early shift
- SMS-based loyalty programme starts (after 5 direct orders, free dessert)
- £200–£400/month into Google Local Ads targeting your postcode
- Reduce Just Eat sponsored placement spend
- Goal: 15–20% of monthly orders direct (~120–160/month)
Months 7–9 — momentum
- Direct ordering exceeds 25% of total volume
- Just Eat promotional spend reduced further
- Customer database approaches 500 named, contactable customers
- Goal: 30% direct (~250/month)
Months 10–12 — equilibrium
- 40–50% of orders direct
- Just Eat used as new-customer acquisition channel only
- Annualised commission savings approaching £15,000–£20,000
- Goal: stable, profitable two-channel mix
The takeaways we've worked through this with don't end up "off Just Eat." They end up using Just Eat strategically, instead of being used by it.
We've run this same playbook with kitchens in London, Birmingham, Glasgow and Manchester — different postcodes, same maths.
The bottom line
Leaving Just Eat completely is the wrong question. Reducing your dependence on it from 100% to 50% over 12 months is the right one — and the maths almost always work out.
The takeaways that get this wrong either leave too early (and lose their order volume before direct picks up) or never start (and pay £20–30k per year in commissions for a decade).
The takeaways that get it right treat Just Eat for what it is: a new-customer acquisition channel that costs 31% all-in. Useful, when used in moderation. Ruinous, when it's 95% of your delivery revenue.
If your kitchen does the hard part, the platform strategy is the easy part — but only if you actually have one.
Sources & further reading
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