Wegmans and Instacart pay: $4.61 an hour after car costs

Wegmans uses Instacart for online delivery. Wegmans’ own employees shop pickup orders, and Instacart contractors usually shop and deliver the delivery orders. For a shopper, a Wegmans batch is priced on the same formula as any other Instacart batch (driving distance, number of items, weight, expected shopping time), and no Wegmans-specific rate is published anywhere. On the national median and our car-cost assumption, that comes to about $4.61 an hour before tax.

The numbers

Gross is Gridwise’s 2025 national median (batch pay plus tips, before expenses). Costs are 10 miles an hour (our assumption) at the IRS rate of 76¢ a mile for July to December 2026. Tax is 15.3% self-employment tax only, with no income tax because of the tips deduction. All figures are rounded to the nearest cent.

Who shops Wegmans orders

The Wegmans online ordering FAQ says Wegmans “has partnered with Instacart to provide online ordering, shopping, and delivery of groceries.” The partnership started in 2017 with same-day delivery and later added pickup, EBT SNAP and loyalty-card integration. What it means for a shopper:

• Only delivery orders are Instacart work. Wegmans employees shop pickup orders, so a busy pickup counter doesn’t produce batches for you. (This is our reading of the FAQ; Wegmans doesn’t say it in those words.)
• Orders can be small. The minimum is $10 for both delivery and pickup.
• Drives can be long. Instacart charges customers a long-distance fee for delivery addresses 30 to 60 minutes from a store. Batch pay counts driving distance, but under our assumptions every one of those miles costs you 76¢. Run the per-batch check below before accepting.
• Alcohol rules depend on the state. In New Jersey, Wegmans alcohol is pickup only, so you won’t be delivering it there. Massachusetts, Virginia and North Carolina allow pickup and delivery. New York allows beer only, for pickup and delivery. The customer must be 21 or older and show ID.
• Substitutions are mostly settled before you shop. Customers choose replacements after placing the order, and a replacement is shopped only if the original item is unavailable.
• Prescription delivery from Wegmans is only available through Instacart’s app or website.
• Online prices are higher. Wegmans says online prices “remain about 15% above in-store prices,” and Instacart’s storefront labels Wegmans “Higher than in-store prices.” The customer pays that markup. Basket value isn’t on Instacart’s list of pay criteria.

Why there is no Wegmans rate

Instacart’s shopper earnings page says batch pay “varies by market and reflects the total expected effort it takes to complete a batch,” and is “based solely on job-related criteria, such as driving distance, number of items, and expected shopping time.” The page names no retailers and gives no rate for any chain.

The store does show up in the batch details you see before accepting, and Instacart doesn’t penalize you for declining. Some batches cover more than one store, and then pay is based on the whole batch. Third-party blogs claim some chains pay more, but none of them shows data that can be checked, and nobody publishes tip data by store. Under the numbers, a Wegmans batch is just a batch.

What sets a batch’s price

The pay shown up front “will never decrease as long as the batch is completed as accepted,” and shoppers offered the same batch at the same time see the same pay. Tips can still change. Customers can raise a tip for up to 14 days after delivery but can’t lower it after 2 hours. If a customer removes a tip without reporting a problem with the order, Instacart covers it up to $10.

Heavy pay against the car-cost assumption:

$2.00 heavy pay / $0.76 per mile = about 2.6 miles of driving covered

Assumptions

Swap in your own on any line.

1. Gross is $12.21 an hour. Gridwise tracked 20,538 Instacart shoppers in 2025. The medians were $12.21 an hour in batch pay plus tips, $12.51 including bonuses, $12.79 per batch and $5.39 in tips per batch, all before gas and other expenses. This is a national figure, and no Wegmans version exists.
2. Miles are 10 for every hour you work. That covers the drives to the store and the customer, plus repositioning for the next offer. This is our assumption; Instacart publishes no mileage figure.
3. Car cost is the IRS standard mileage rate, which we use as a stand-in for fuel, wear, insurance and depreciation. The 2026 IRS rate is 72.5¢ a mile for January 1 to June 30 and 76¢ for July 1 to December 31. We use 76¢.
4. Phone and data are $0, on the assumption that you already pay for them. If you upgraded your phone or plan for this work, add that cost.
5. You’re paid by the free weekly direct deposit, not Instant Cashout.
6. Tax is 15.3% self-employment tax on the whole profit, as a simple estimate. We assume no income tax, for the reason given in the tax section. That needs a valid SSN and income below the phase-out for the tips deduction.
7. Everything is rounded to the nearest cent.

The tax step needs tips per hour, which comes from combining two of Gridwise’s medians. That is only rough, because medians don’t divide neatly:

$12.21 per hour / $12.79 per batch   = about 0.955 batches per hour
0.955 batches x $5.39 tip per batch  = about $5.15 in tips per hour

Worked example: 40 hours in a fall month

Ten hours a week over four weekends, all after July 1, so the 76¢ rate applies. (For other weekend options on the same basis, see weekend side hustles ranked by net pay.)

Gross:               40 hours x $12.21     = $488.40
Miles:               40 hours x 10 miles   = 400 miles
Car cost:            400 miles x $0.76     = $304.00
Profit:              $488.40 - $304.00     = $184.40
Tips within gross:   40 hours x $5.15      = $206.00  (more than profit)
Self-employment tax: $184.40 x 15.3%       = $28.21
After tax:           $184.40 - $28.21      = $156.19
Per hour:            $156.19 / 40          = $3.90

The same month in the first half of the year:

Car cost:  400 miles x $0.725   = $290.00
Profit:    $488.40 - $290.00    = $198.40
Per hour:  $198.40 / 40         = $4.96 before tax

Two things the example doesn’t show. First, part of the IRS rate (wear, depreciation) doesn’t leave your bank account this month. Your balance will look better than $4.61 an hour, and the car is covering the gap. Second, waiting is unpaid. Time spent logged in between offers pushes your own gross per hour below any per-hour median.

A per-batch check before you accept

(batch pay + tip - round-trip miles x $0.76) / (estimated minutes / 60) = net per hour

A hypothetical offer: $15 total, 9 miles round trip, 45 minutes.

Car cost:   9 x $0.76         = $6.84
Left over:  $15.00 - $6.84    = $8.16
Per hour:   $8.16 / 0.75      = $10.88

Compare the result with the lowest hourly figure you’ll accept. Instacart says you aren’t penalized for declining (New York City now has an acceptance-rate metric, covered below). Cart Star gives higher-tier shoppers priority access to batches, and the tiers count completed orders, but Instacart doesn’t publish the cutoffs. So a part-time shopper who declines a lot may see fewer early offers. That’s our inference, not an Instacart statement.

Instacart has three order types: Shop Only, Delivery Only and Full Service. It doesn’t say whether pay differs between them. Shop Only has no delivery leg, so it cuts your miles.

What changes the answer

Miles per hour is the biggest lever. Gross stays at $12.21, at the 76¢ rate:

At 5 miles an hour, profit ($8.41) is higher than tips ($5.15), so income tax may apply to the $3.26 an hour difference at your own rate.

Other inputs, one at a time:

• Bonuses: Gridwise’s median including bonuses is $12.51, which adds $0.30 an hour.
• Instant Cashout: in June 2025, Instacart put the fee for cashing out to an outside bank account at $1.50 and said it would change once its Shopper Rewards Card arrived. Its current page only says “a small fee.” At $1.50 per cash-out and one cash-out per 5-hour shift, that’s $0.30 an hour. Weekly direct deposit is free.
• New York City: grocery delivery apps have been covered by the city’s delivery-worker minimum since January 26, 2026. The NYC rate is $22.13 an hour before tips from April 1, 2026. Instacart responded by limiting how many shoppers can be online at once, sending one offer at a time with a time limit, and adding an acceptance-rate metric.
• California: under Prop 22, app delivery workers are guaranteed 120% of the local minimum wage for active time plus $0.37 a mile in 2026, and tips don’t count toward that floor. Instacart’s own California page still shows an outdated 30¢ a mile from 2021.
• Insurance: Instacart’s page says Shopper Injury Protection covers a US full-service shopper’s own injuries, up to $1 million in medical costs. Ask your insurer whether your personal auto policy covers delivery driving. If you need extra coverage, add it to your cost per hour.

Taxes on the profit in 2026

This is arithmetic on published IRS rules, not tax advice. A tax professional can check it against your full return.

• Gig income has to be reported even without a 1099. For tax years starting after 2025, Form 1099-NEC is required only once payments reach $2,000.
• Self-employment tax is 15.3%, owed once net self-employment earnings reach $400 for the year. The example month’s $184.40 alone wouldn’t reach that, but three such months would. Students claimed as dependents also have to file once they reach $400.
• If you expect to owe $1,000 or more, estimated tax is generally due April 15, June 15, September 15 and January 15. At $184.40 a month in profit, a full year of self-employment tax is about $338.56, below that line if this is your only self-employment income.
• The no-tax-on-tips deduction allows up to $25,000 of qualified tips a year for 2025 through 2028, whether or not you itemize. It phases out above $150,000 of modified AGI ($300,000 for joint filers). Final rules published April 13, 2026 list app-based delivery people under occupation code 804, and tips paid through an app count.

Why income tax is zero in the example: a self-employed person can’t deduct more than their net income from the work that earned the tips. Here tips ($5.15 an hour) are larger than profit ($4.61 an hour), so the deduction can cover all of the profit. The deduction doesn’t reduce self-employment tax, so the 15.3% stays.

Compared with

Wegmans staff shop the pickup orders. If you’d rather shop than drive, the alternative is a store job, so compare its posted wage with the net figures above, not with $12.21. For other options on the same after-cost basis, see Uber vs DoorDash driver pay after costs, the DoorDash per-delivery math and the best-paying part-time jobs that need no experience.

Sources

• Instacart: shopper earnings
• Gridwise: Instacart shopper earnings, 2025 data
• Wegmans: online grocery ordering FAQ
• Grocery Dive: Wegmans and Instacart, July 2025
• IRS: standard mileage rates
• IRS: no tax on tips deduction
• NYC DCWP: delivery workers

Verdict in one number

$4.61 an hour

That is what the median Instacart hour leaves after 10 miles of car costs, at Wegmans or anywhere else, and cutting miles raises it faster than anything else on the list.