Grubhub schedule block pay: about $15 an hour net in Seattle

During a scheduled block, Grubhub pays you per delivery: base pay, any bonuses, and 100% of your tips. If you are toggled on for the block and meet its Offer Commitment Rate criteria, Grubhub also adds a “contribution” that tops you up to a minimum guaranteed rate for your market. Grubhub does not publish that rate. The only published pay floors come from city laws in New York City and Seattle. Seattle’s is the only one that pays for both time and miles, so it is the base for the numbers below.

The numbers

Assumptions: Seattle’s 2026 floor of $0.47 per engaged minute plus $0.80 per engaged mile (Seattle Office of Labor Standards). 42 engaged minutes, 10 engaged miles and 3 unpaid miles per hour. Car cost at the IRS rate of 76 cents a mile (from July 1, 2026). 15.3% self-employment tax (IRS). No tips, no income tax. Rounded to the cent.

What a block actually pays

Block pay has three layers, and only the third one comes with a public number.

1. Delivery pay. According to Grubhub’s driver pay page, each delivery pays “base pay and any applicable bonuses.” Base pay depends on mileage, delivery type, time spent delivering and your local market. The time and mileage estimates are fixed when you get the offer. Tips go on top, and you keep all of them on completed deliveries. Orders placed through Amazon’s Grubhub store pay drivers the same as app orders (the Prime side is covered in Grubhub Amazon Prime perk: $120 for diners, $0 extra for drivers).
2. The Grubhub contribution. This is what a block adds on top of ordinary driving. Grubhub says it tops up your pay so “you earn a minimum guaranteed rate for your local market” when you toggle on for a scheduled block and meet Offer Commitment Rate (OCR) criteria. All contributions are “subject to specific markets and time periods.” Grubhub publishes no dollar amount and no OCR threshold.
3. City minimum pay laws. New York City and Seattle set legal minimums for app-based delivery work. These apply separately from Grubhub’s contribution.

A block also reserves your slot. Grubhub describes scheduling as a way to make sure “there aren’t too many drivers on the road and that you’ll get deliveries.” Blocks are optional: in many markets you can switch on “Taking offers” and deliver without one, though the driver FAQ says this depends on the market. New York City is the exception. There, drivers without a block can only switch on when there are enough offers, so a block is how you make sure you get time on the road.

Assumptions

All of these are ours, not Grubhub’s. Swap in your own:

1. You are logged in for a 3-hour block.
2. 70% of logged-in time is engaged (on an accepted offer). That is 42 minutes in every hour. The other 18 minutes are waiting, which is unpaid.
3. You drive 13 miles per logged-in hour: 10 engaged miles and 3 unpaid repositioning miles.
4. Car costs follow the IRS business standard mileage rate of 76 cents a mile, which applies to miles driven from July 1, 2026. Your real cost per mile may be higher or lower.
5. Self-employment tax is 15.3% of the full net. This is a simplification, and a tax preparer can work out your exact figure.
6. Income tax is left out because it depends on your bracket and your state.
7. Phone, data plan and any extra insurance are not included. If you deliver by bike or e-bike, the car mileage rate does not describe your costs.

Worked example: a 3-hour block in Seattle

Seattle’s Office of Labor Standards sets the 2026 minimum at $0.47 per minute plus $0.80 per mile of engaged time and miles, or $5.34 per offer, whichever is greater.

Engaged minutes:    3 h x 42 min          = 126 min
Time pay:           126 x $0.47           = $59.22
Engaged miles:      3 h x 10 mi           = 30 mi
Mileage pay:        30 x $0.80            = $24.00
Gross floor:        $59.22 + $24.00       = $83.22

Total miles:        3 h x 13 mi           = 39 mi
Car cost:           39 x $0.76            = $29.64
Net before tax:     $83.22 - $29.64       = $53.58

SE tax:             $53.58 x 15.3%        = $8.20
Net after SE tax:   $53.58 - $8.20        = $45.38
Per logged-in hour: $45.38 / 3            = $15.13

Now check the per-offer floor. Say those 126 engaged minutes are split across 6 offers of 21 minutes and 5 miles each:

Per offer:  (21 x $0.47) + (5 x $0.80) = $9.87 + $4.00 = $13.87
Floor:      $5.34
Greater:    $13.87, so the per-minute and per-mile formula applies

On short hops the $5.34 floor kicks in. An offer of 8 minutes and 1.5 miles works out to $3.76 + $1.20 = $4.96, so the $5.34 minimum applies instead.

One warning: Grubhub’s own Seattle page still shows older figures ($5 per offer, $0.44 a minute, $0.74 a mile). The city’s 2026 numbers are the official source and the more recent one.

Worked example: the same block in New York City

The NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection set the minimum for app-based restaurant delivery workers at $22.13, starting with the first pay period on or after April 1, 2026. Grubhub applies it per active hour, works it out before tips, counts active time “from accepting an offer to delivering an order,” and pays a weekly top-up to anyone who earned less.

Same 3-hour block, same assumptions, by car:

Active hours:       126 min / 60          = 2.1 h
Gross floor:        2.1 x $22.13          = $46.47
Car cost:           39 mi x $0.76         = $29.64
Net before tax:     $46.47 - $29.64       = $16.83
SE tax:             $16.83 x 15.3%        = $2.57
Net after SE tax:   $16.83 - $2.57        = $14.26
Per logged-in hour: $14.26 / 3            = $4.75

The NYC floor counts active time only and has no separate mileage pay, so for a car driver on these assumptions, car costs take $29.64 of the $46.47. A bike or e-bike changes the cost line a lot, and these numbers do not model that. In both cities, tips and any pay above the floor come on top.

Everywhere else: the break-even for the contribution

Outside these two cities, your floor is whatever rate Grubhub sets for your market and time period. Grubhub does not publish how the top-up is calculated. The usual shape of a top-up is below. It is our illustration, not Grubhub’s formula:

Contribution = guaranteed rate for the block - your delivery pay (if positive)

If your market’s rate is quoted per hour of block time (call it G), our cost assumptions give:

Net after SE tax per hour = (G - $9.88) x 0.847

The $9.88 is 13 miles at 76 cents. A guaranteed rate at or below that covers the car and nothing else. The sample values for G below are made up for illustration and are not Grubhub figures:

The contribution only applies if you meet the OCR criteria. Declining offers during a block lowers your OCR, so it can cost you the whole top-up and not just the order you turned down. Check the rate and criteria your market shows in the app before you book.

Getting a block, and keeping access to good ones

To book, open the Grubhub for Drivers app, tap Scheduling, then Update Schedule, then pick a time slot. When you can book depends on your level in Grubhub’s Driver Recognition Program:

• New drivers get a level after 20 deliveries.
• Levels update every Monday, based on the last 14 days.
• Your schedule commitment rate depends on how many blocks you complete versus how many you remove from your own schedule. Every dropped block pulls it down.
• OCR updates in real time over a rolling 14 days, and you can see it on the stats screen under Account in the app. In NYC, Grubhub tells drivers directly what OCR they need to book blocks.
• Grubhub’s page does not say what happens if a stat lands exactly on a threshold.

If the busy dinner blocks are gone by Saturday, a Partner-level driver gets the slow ones. Slow hours lower your engaged share, and every figure above depends on the engaged share.

If an order is cancelled after pickup, you get the full offer amount. If it is cancelled before pickup, you may get part of it. Orders you ask to have reassigned are not paid.

What changes the answer

Seattle floor, per logged-in hour, before tips, using the same method:

The money is in engaged minutes. Seattle’s $0.80 per mile barely clears the 76-cent cost, so each paid mile nets about 4 cents before tax, while each unpaid mile costs the full 76 cents. That is why the long-distance row is the only one where gross goes up and take-home goes down.

The mileage rate split makes a smaller difference. Miles driven January 1 to June 30, 2026 use 72.5 cents. Miles from July 1 use 76 cents, under IRS Announcement 2026-11, as reported by the Journal of Accountancy.

Compared with

When you compare with an hourly job, use your own state and city minimum wage, and set it against the net-after-costs column, not the gross one. For other apps worked through the same way, see Uber vs DoorDash driver pay after costs and DoorDash pays about $3.50 a delivery before tips.

Getting paid, and the $0.50 question

Direct deposit arrives on Thursdays. Anything not cashed out by 11:59 pm Central time on Monday goes into that week’s payment. Instant Cash Out allows up to $500 a day. It is free for Chase customers and costs $0.50 per cash-out at other banks. It is switched off for 72 hours after you change your bank details.

Cash out after every shift, 5 shifts a week:  5 x $0.50       = $2.50/week
Over a year:                                  $2.50 x 52       = $130.00
One cash-out against the Seattle block net:   $0.50 / $45.38   = 1.1%

That $130 a year is about 8.6 hours of Seattle base-case pay after tax ($130 / $15.13). The Thursday deposit is free.

Tax: the part the block guarantee ignores

Grubhub drivers are independent contractors. None of the floors above are after tax, and nothing is withheld. This is general information, not tax advice. For your own situation, ask a tax professional.

• Self-employment tax is 15.3%: 12.4% for Social Security and 2.9% for Medicare, according to the IRS. You owe it, and must file Schedule SE, once your net self-employment earnings reach $400.
• In 2026 the Social Security part applies to the first $184,500 of combined wages and self-employment earnings. The Medicare part has no cap.
• Mileage is the biggest cost in every example here, so log every business mile, including unpaid repositioning miles, and split 2026 at July 1 for the two rates.
• For payments made in 2026, the 1099-NEC reporting threshold rises from $600 to $2,000 under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Income below the threshold is still taxable, whether or not you get a form.
• Income tax comes on top of everything here and depends on your bracket and your state.

Verdict in one number

$15.13 an hour. That is one logged-in hour of a Seattle block at the legal floor, after car costs and self-employment tax but before tips and income tax. Outside Seattle and NYC, your market’s guaranteed rate has to clear about $9.88 an hour before the block pays you anything beyond your car costs.

Sources

• Grubhub Driver Pay
• Grubhub Driver FAQ
• Grubhub Recognition & Rewards
• Grubhub NYC Guaranteed Pay
• Seattle Office of Labor Standards, App-Based Worker Minimum Payment Ordinance
• NYC DCWP, Delivery Worker Minimum Pay Rate
• IRS, 2026 business standard mileage rate
• Journal of Accountancy, IRS raises standard mileage rates for remainder of 2026
• IRS, Self-Employment Tax