With the rise of delivery apps, the takeaway food industry has entered a new era. Once, there were only a select few restaurants that would deliver to your door, but now, apps have opened up a wide range of choices and cuisines that will bring your dinner of choice in just a free download and a few clicks.
Food delivery apps are perfect for lazy days, hangovers, or when you just don’t fancy the hassle of dining out. We’ve researched the top apps in the UK, comparing their usability, selection, prices, and deliveries to bring you this ultimate guide to shopping for a food delivery app. Read on for our advice on how to pick, then head on to the recommendations!
Quick List - Top Food Delivery Apps
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It might not be the best thing to eat every day, but fast food is perfect on a hangover, or to satisfy those not-so-healthy cravings. Some apps have a large focus on fast food, with the majority of their options fitting into this category.
Fast food options will include meals like burgers, tacos, kebabs, pizzas or fish and chips. Generally, there will be a mixture of small businesses-like local fried chicken shops and big brands such as McDonald's or Pizza Hut.
Craving some healthy vegan pizza or veggie burger?
If you’re looking for food that feels a bit more like a treat rather than a guilt-trip, go for an app which has lots of restaurant options. Many restaurants now only offer deliveries through a food delivery app, so take advantage of that!
These often include popular chains like Franco Manca, Leon or Wagamamas, and will serve dishes like poke bowls, pizzas, salads, ramen and anything the cooks are dishing up on a regular basis. But if you're lucky, you'll find more obscure, one-off restaurants like Muriel's Kitchen, Alberts Delhi or The Richmond Hill Bakery.
Along with entire meals, warm and ready to devour, food delivery apps are also branching out into groceries. This is perfect for those times when you’ve just run out of milk, you need another bottle of wine at a gathering, or a recipe you’re making needs more butter than you have.
These options usually aim to deliver your goods in under 30 minutes, by means of bicycle. Using supermarkets and small, corner shops, depending on the app in question, there’s the opportunity for quite a wide range of products available. You can also find wine merchants and alcohol shops listed on some!
It’s great when an app promotes that it has over 30,000 restaurant partners, but for us indecisive folk, 30,000 choices sounds like an absolute nightmare! If your food delivery app contains lots of filters, you can easily narrow down your search.
If you have a favourite cuisine, such as Indian, Chinese or Italian, choose an app with cuisine filters – this is quite common amongst food delivery apps, so you shouldn’t have a problem.
For the more obscure filters, you'll usually need to look a bit deeper. Other categories you might want to filter could include healthy eating, vegetarian or vegan food, or gluten-free options.
Here are the best Indian, Chinese and Italian cookbooks to help you create your favourite cuisine at home.
Card payments are the go-to for ordering online. They provide you with contactless delivery, it becomes easy to pay the correct amount, and it’s much less hassle than sifting through your wallet, counting out change. But if you prefer to pay in cash, make sure the app offers this option.
As for tips, if you don’t have a few coins left to give your super-speedy delivery person their hard-earned cash, see if they offer an option to tip by card along with your order.
In most cases, you will need to foot the bill for the delivery. These fees are usually not made apparent until you reach the basket to complete your order. At just one or two pounds in most instances, it shouldn’t break the bank, but it is something to be aware of.
If you’re keen to save some pennies, you can download an app which offers free delivery over a certain amount – this is more likely if there's more than one of you eating, as your total will almost always go over the minimum.
If you find an app which advertises free delivery, be aware that the company might have upped the cost per meal to cover this loss, which, depending on how much you have ordered, can cost significantly more than a flat-rate delivery fee.
Delivery apps either use cars, motorcycles, or bikes to deliver their goods, and each has its pitfalls and benefits. Food delivery companies like UberEats use their own cars, meaning that more often than not your food will arrive promptly so that it’s good to eat straight away!
The same cannot be said of companies that use bicycles. Of course, depending on how far away your chosen restaurant is, the GPS that the deliverers use, and the speed of their little legs, the food might arrive still hot, but we wouldn’t depend on it! The timings of these companies vary from between 30 minutes to occasionally over an hour.
Products | Image | Click to purchase | Key features | |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Just-Eat.com Just Eat | ![]() | The Most Popular Food Delivery App in the World | |
2 | Deliveroo Deliveroo | ![]() | Food Deliveries by Bikes in and Around London | |
3 | Uber Technologies, Inc. UberEats | ![]() | Offers 24/7 Ordering and Delivery Tracking | |
4 | Zomato Media Pvt. Ltd. Zomato | ![]() | Restaurant Reviews, Area Guides and Food Delivery, All in One App! | |
5 | One Delivery One Delivery Ltd | ![]() | Fast Food and Restaurant Cuisine Delivered in Major UK Cities | |
6 | Food Hub Limited Foodhub | ![]() | The Discount Delivery App With the Cheapest Fees | |
7 | Scoffable Scoffable | ![]() | Designed for Users Around Scotland and Northern England | |
8 | Domino's Pizza Group Domino's | ![]() | Pizza Delivery for Small Towns and Big Cities Alike |
With many food delivery apps focusing on the larger cities, Just Eat is particularly good at including a wide range of regions. Starting out as a simple restaurant discovery app, Just Eat has now expanded its services to become one of the most popular food delivery apps in the world.
Just Eat not only has a huge array of fast food options, but they also have a great selection of 244,000+ restaurants with over 100 cuisines to choose from. The interface is user friendly and easy to navigate and there are some great filters, which will have you browsing, deciding, and ordering in just a few clicks.
Deliveroo is another company that is taking over the UK’s food delivery industry, especially in London. They currently work with 140,000 restaurants but are constantly expanding their range of restaurants, meaning that every month, there could be some exciting new options for you to try. The app is nicely laid out with easy to search categories.
Being particularly good for variety, Deliveroo even has options for brunch, breakfast, and coffee shops, as well as the standard fast food and restaurant chains. They only use bikes to deliver, but they also have excellent GPS that uses machine-learning algorithms to avoid traffic – which means less chance of cold food!
Having already conquered delivering people to their destinations, Uber has now expanded its services into delivering food and supports 500,000 restaurants. They have an excellent GPS for their taxi app, so for them, these two industries go hand in hand!
You can track your delivery to see where your food is at any point, and can even schedule your order to arrive at a time that suits you – this makes it the perfect option for planned parties or meetings. Plus, unlike other apps, UberEats allows you to order from some restaurants that are open 24/7!
Zomato may not be one of the biggest brand names on the block, but they have proved their worth for a spot on our list. The app has a particularly attractive interface with a clean-cut design that makes searching for your next tasty eat a delight.
Zomato is a restaurant review, area guide and food delivery app all rolled into one. We will say though, that the main focus here seems to be on discovering new places to dine at, rather than the delivery service itself. That said, you can choose from 1.5 million listed restaurants that do deliver via searching in the top bar.
Whilst the bigger brands tend to focus on London as their leading market, One Delivery has gone a little wider. They are one of the top choices for food deliveries in multiple areas of the UK such as Leeds, Cardiff, Aberdeen, Nottingham and Brighton to name a few.
One Delivery began with curating all the fast food joints in town. They’ve now branched out a bit, but the majority of their offerings still lie within fast food. That said, they have got all the big brands on board like Burger King, KFC, McDonalds and 500+ other restaurants. If you’re a Londoner though, their choice is pretty minimal.
Food Hub stands out from the rest due to its business model. These are one of only a handful of food delivery apps that don’t charge any commission to their restaurant partners. As such, they offer competitive prices and a huge range of discounts!
Another bonus is that they also don’t charge any customer fees, so it's a win-win! With a few filters to choose from such as discounts, cuisines, and ratings, it’s easy to find what you’re looking for. Unfortunately, if you have a problem with your order, their customer service leaves much to be desired.
Sometimes it seems that all of the best apps around only serve London, and the rest of the country often lies forgotten. But now, we have Scoffable! The Scoffable food delivery app only focuses on regions in Scotland and Northern England.
Concentrating on just a few areas has meant that Scoffable has been able to do an excellent job of running the delivery service in those areas and have an incredible selection of takeaway options to choose from. Reviews often rave about the selection of local options rather than being only filled with big high-street chains.
Domino's is undoubtedly one of our nation’s most-loved pizza chains. Yes, this is an app purely for one restaurant, but it deserves a spot on our list out of sheer popularity. Their range of pizza runs from the classics like Pepperoni to more obscure options like the tempting Tandoori Hot.
One of the best things about Domino's is their coverage. Where most food delivery apps focus in and around the major towns and cities, Domino's also cover suburb areas and small towns all across the country. The app is easy to navigate and they have a dedicated section for offers and deals if you’re looking to bag a bargain!
No. 1: Just-Eat.com|Just Eat
No. 2: Deliveroo|Deliveroo
No. 3: Uber Technologies, Inc.|UberEats
No. 4: Zomato Media Pvt. Ltd.|Zomato
No. 5: One Delivery |One Delivery Ltd
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