The Ultimate Guide To Multi-Apping With DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub

Multi-apping is one of the most important strategies you can use if you want to maximize your earnings on DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub, or any other gig economy app. The concept of multi-apping is fairly simple – rather than signing up and working for one app at a time, you sign up for all of them and utilize them all at once.  

While the concept of multi-apping is generally simple, actually implementing it can be difficult. With practice though, it can become second nature. I’ve been multi-apping for years and it’s how I’ve been able to maximize my DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub earnings. I’m now at a point where I can do it without even thinking about it much.

With that being said, in this post, we’ll go over how multi-apping works and discuss the best tips and strategies you can use to make it work for you. 

What Is Multi-Apping? 

To begin, let’s talk about what multi-apping is. Multi-apping is when you sign up for multiple apps and work on all of them at the same time. For example, in the food delivery context, multi-apping means you would sign up for DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub, and any other food delivery apps in your city. You might also utilize other types of delivery apps, such as grocery delivery apps like Instacart and Shipt. When you work, you would turn on all of the food delivery apps and accept orders from all of them. That way, you can maximize the number of delivery requests you receive.

In my market, whenever I do deliveries, I always turn on DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub. By doing this, I’m able to receive delivery requests from all of the major food delivery apps. If one app is slow, another one may be busier, which helps keep me busy.

If you’re a beginner, it can make sense to only accept one order at a time but to maximize your earnings, you’ll want to accept orders from multiple delivery apps at the same time. The goal is to string together multiple deliveries all going in similar directions. 

For example, when I’m multi-apping, I might receive an order from DoorDash going in one direction. At the same time, I might also receive similar orders from Uber Eats and/or Grubhub going in similar directions. By combining these orders, I can essentially double or triple my earnings, getting paid for two or three orders instead of one. 

If you want to see multi-apping in action, be sure to check out the Financial Panther YouTube channel, where I film videos of me doing deliveries and multi-apping. It can give you a good idea of how it’s done. 

The Math Behind Multi-Apping 

You can see how important multi-apping is when you look at the math behind it. DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub are all apps where you’re paid for the tasks you complete, not for the time you work. This is very different from a regular job, where you’re likely paid for the time you work, rather than the work you actually complete (for more info about the difference between time-for-money and tasks-for-money, check out my post, The Difference Between Trading Time For Money And Trading Tasks For Money). 

The fact that DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub are tasks-for-money gigs means that quantity is what matters. The more deliveries we can complete in the fastest amount of time possible, the more we’ll earn.

Consider this. If you average $5 per delivery and complete 5 deliveries in an hour, you would earn $25 per hour. Meanwhile, if you could increase your deliveries to 6 completed deliveries per hour, you’d earn $30 per hour. But if you averaged just 4 deliveries per hour, you’d only earn $20 per hour. As you can see, the number of deliveries you complete per hour matters quite a bit. 

Of course, it’s even better if you can increase what you earn per delivery. Average $6 per delivery and complete 5 deliveries per hour and you’d be looking at an hourly rate of $30 per hour. If you can somehow average $7 or $8 per delivery, you’d earn $35 and $40 per hour if you can complete 5 deliveries per hour.

Completing 4 or 5 deliveries per hour might seem difficult, but if you multi-app, it becomes far easier. To average 5 deliveries per hour, for example, all you have to do is average 2 deliveries per hour on DoorDash and Uber Eats, and 1 delivery per hour with Grubhub. That is not that difficult to do when you really think about it – almost anyone should be able to get 2 deliveries per hour from each delivery app during peak hours.

Below is a table that shows you what you can earn per hour depending on the average payment per order and the number of orders you complete per hour. You can play with the numbers however you want. The main takeaway here is that the more deliveries you can complete, the more you’ll earn. If you multi-app, specifically aiming to complete multiple deliveries at the same time with different apps, you give yourself the best chance to maximize the number of deliveries you complete.  

	Avg. Payment Per Delivery	$3	$4	$5	$6	$7	$8
Deliveries/Hr
3		$9/hr	$12/hr	$15/hr	$18/hr	$21/hr	$24/hr
4		$12/hr	$16/hr	$20/hr	$24/hr	$28/hr	$32/hr
5		$15/hr	$20/hr	$25/hr	$30/hr	$35/hr	$40/hr
6		$18/hr	$24/hr	$30/hr	$36/hr	$42/hr	$48/hr

Tips And Strategies To Multi-Apping 

Multi-apping is definitely an advanced tactic and while it’s not necessarily difficult to do, it’s not easy to do either. Juggling multiple apps and deliveries at the same time takes practice. With time, though, you’ll figure out what works and what doesn’t.

If you’re a beginner, it can make sense to avoid doing multiple deliveries at the same time. Instead, you’ll accept one delivery at a time, regardless of which app it comes from, then ignore other delivery requests until you complete the delivery you have. You’ll limit what you can make if you do this, but you’ll be less likely to mess up a delivery.

But to truly maximize your earnings, you’ll need to multi-app and accept multiple delivery requests at the same time. Here are some of the most important tips and strategies that can help you with “advanced” multi-apping. 

1. Get Deliveries Going In The Same Direction 

The most important part of multi-apping is only accepting orders going in the correct direction. This is the only way to properly multi-app. If you accept orders going in opposite directions, you’ll anger customers and potentially risk deactivation if you take too long to complete or pick up orders.  

If you’re patient and strategic, you can almost always string together multiple orders going in similar directions. By doing this, you can essentially double your earnings on a single order, turning one order into 2 or more orders at once. I can’t tell you how often I’ll get orders with delivery addresses within blocks of each other. 

Unfortunately, there’s not much that can be said here besides being strategic. It takes practice to understand how to string multiple deliveries together, but over time, you’ll get a better sense of your market and intuitively know when orders are going in the same direction. 

2. Be Aware Of How Long Each Order Will Take To Complete

When you’re multi-apping and completing multiple deliveries at the same time, it’s important that you stick to orders that can be completed quickly.

Ideally, I aim to do orders that are traveling shorter distances. This might mean that the orders are lower-paying, but you’ll earn more in the long run by completing more orders and completing them faster. 

Orders going long distances might seem appealing, especially if they’re offering a high payout. The problem is that if the order is going too far away or will take a long time to complete, it might be harder to string together other orders from the other delivery apps.

3. Know Your Restaurants 

As previously mentioned, when you’re multi-apping, you don’t want to get stuck waiting at restaurants for extended periods. Waiting for a few minutes is generally fine, but if you get stuck waiting for longer than that, you’re going to have angry customers who are wondering why you’re not moving. 

With experience, you’ll start to understand which restaurants are reliable and which ones tend to fall behind. In my market, many Chipotles, for example, tend to be way behind. Meanwhile, restaurants like Noodles and Company always have my food ready when I arrive. 

You can use this information to your benefit as well. If you know a certain restaurant is slow, it can make sense to complete other deliveries that you have first before making your way to the slow restaurant. I do this sometimes when Chipotle is way behind, where I’ll arrive, see they’re way behind then leave and complete other deliveries. By the time I return, the order I would have been waiting for is ready.

4. Don’t Be Afraid To Cancel Orders If You Run Into Issues

When multi-apping, you have to understand that sometimes you might need to cancel orders. Sometimes, you might accept an order, then find that it’s not going to work out because you have more profitable orders going in different directions. In that situation, you may want to cancel the less profitable order and string together a new series of orders.

The impact of canceling orders varies depending on the app. With DoorDash, the cancellation rate does matter, so you need to be strategic about when you cancel orders. With Uber Eats and Grubhub, your cancellation rate does not matter so long as you cancel the order before you pick it up.

5. Understand The Big Differences Between DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub

While all of the major delivery apps are similar, they have some slight differences that will impact how you use them. The differences between all of these apps are too numerous for the scope of this blog post, but here’s what I think is most important to remember:

• DoorDash will give you a contract violation if you arrive too late to the restaurant or deliver the order too late. That means you might need to prioritize completing DoorDash orders first depending on the timeline they give you. Uber Eats and Grubhub, meanwhile, don’t have set timelines you need to meet. You still should deliver your Uber Eats and Grubhub orders in a timely fashion, but the pressure isn’t as high as with DoorDash.
• DoorDash and Uber Eats both allow customers to rate you, whereas Grubhub does not have a driver rating system. That means DoorDash or Uber Eats could deactivate you if your customer rating falls too low. When multi-apping, it would make sense to prioritize DoorDash and Uber Eats orders compared to Grubhub orders, where you won’t get rated by the customer.
• Uber Eats customers can remove tips after the order is delivered, whereas DoorDash and Grubhub customers can’t change their tips. If you’re worried about customer satisfaction, it’s worth considering who can leave you negative reviews and who can change their tip.

As I stated, there are more differences between the apps, but these are some of the main ones I can think of. These differences are important to understand so you can understand which apps to prioritize if you’re multi-apping.

Final Thoughts 

I’ve been multi-apping for years now. Doing so has allowed me to maximize my earnings whenever I work. And through all the years of multi-apping, I’ve still maintained a high rating. On DoorDash, my customer rating is typically 4.9 and above. With Uber Eats, I typically maintain a 97% or higher customer rating. Even while juggling multiple deliveries, I’m still able to complete my orders quickly and efficiently because I’m strategic about the orders I accept. 

It takes practice to get good at multi-apping, and the only way you’ll get better at it is to do it. Start slowly at first. You don’t need to juggle a million deliveries at once. Start with 1 or 2 at a time and see how you do. As you complete more deliveries, you’ll get more comfortable and will be able to do more of it. 

I hope this information was helpful. Writing about multi-apping is great, but perhaps an even better way is seeing it in action. I have a YouTube channel where I upload videos of myself on my delivery runs juggling multiple apps at the same time. Watching some of these videos can give you a good sense of how I do it.