DoorDash runs three delivery marketplaces: DoorDash in the United States, Wolt across Europe and beyond, and Deliveroo in the United Kingdom. When a consumer opens the app and orders food, groceries, or other goods, DoorDash charges the merchant a commission based on the size of the order and charges the consumer a delivery fee plus a service fee. Dashers, the independent couriers who fulfill those orders, get paid per task. On top of those per-order fees, DoorDash earns money from subscription memberships called DashPass, Wolt+, and Deliveroo Plus, and from advertising products that let merchants and consumer packaged goods companies pay to appear more prominently in the app. The diagram below traces where the money goes.
How DoorDash Makes Money
flowchart LR
A["Merchants"] -->|"List restaurants
and products"| B["Marketplaces
56M monthly users"]
C["Consumers"] -->|"Browse and order"| B
B -->|"Transaction fees
from orders"| D["Revenue
$13.7B"]
B -->|"Advertising fees"| D
E["Dashers
9M in 2025"| -->|"Complete deliveries"| B
D -->|"Earnings paid out
$20B total"| E
D -->|"Operating investment"| F["Platform enhancement
and expansion"]
F -->|"Better selection,
speed, affordability"| B
D -->|"Cash flow
$2.2B free"| F
G["Membership
35M members"| -->|"Lower friction,
retention"| B
B -->|"Drive and
Commerce Platform"| H["Merchant Services
White-label fulfillment"]
H -->|"Additional
revenue"| D
Five years of financials tell a clear story: a business that has grown fast and is steadily learning to keep more of what it earns. Revenue climbed from $4.9 billion in 2021 to $13.7 billion in 2025. That is nearly three times as much revenue in four years.
DoorDash Annual Revenue ($B)
Revenue has grown every year, reaching $13.7B in 2025, a 28% increase over 2024.
The growth story is not just about getting bigger. The business is also becoming more efficient. In 2023, total costs and expenses were 107% of revenue, meaning DoorDash spent more than it earned on an operating basis. By 2025, that figure had dropped to 95%, and the company posted $723 million in operating income. Net income attributable to DoorDash stockholders was $935 million in 2025, compared to a loss of $558 million just two years earlier in 2023. Free cash flow followed the same direction, rising from $0.2 billion in 2022 to $2.0 billion in 2024, before landing at approximately $1.8 billion in 2025 as the company increased spending on property, equipment, and software development. The picture is one of a business that has moved from heavy losses toward genuine profitability, while still spending aggressively to grow.
$102B
Total value of orders placed on DoorDash Marketplaces in 2025 (Marketplace GOV)
What is Marketplace GOV?
GOV stands for Gross Order Value. It is the total dollar amount consumers spent on DoorDash Marketplaces, including the price of goods, taxes, tips, and fees. It is a measure of how much economic activity flows through the platform, not how much DoorDash keeps. DoorDash kept about 13.4 cents of every dollar of GOV as revenue in 2025.
The $102 billion in Marketplace GOV processed in 2025 is the engine underneath the revenue line. Orders grew 23% to 3.2 billion in 2025, and the company served over 56 million monthly active users as of December 2025. Over 35 million people held paid memberships across DashPass, Wolt+, and Deliveroo Plus. Those subscribers are important because they place orders more frequently, which makes each member more valuable to the platform over time.
2025
milestone
DoorDash becomes a global delivery company
DoorDash acquired Deliveroo, a UK delivery service, for $3.9 billion and SevenRooms, a restaurant booking and management platform, for $1.2 billion. Combined with the earlier $8.1 billion purchase of Wolt in 2021, DoorDash now operates in over 40 countries. SevenRooms adds restaurant reservation and table management tools, pushing DoorDash beyond pure delivery into broader restaurant technology.
International expansion and acquisitions cost real money, and they have added complexity. The company carries net debt positions that reflect significant cash spent on deals. The Wolt acquisition alone cost over $8.1 billion. Deliveroo added another $3.9 billion. Each new geography brings its own regulators, competitors, and consumer habits. DoorDash acknowledges it may not succeed in all these markets, and managing that complexity draws on management time and capital that could otherwise be deployed at home.
What does worker classification mean for DoorDash?
Dashers are currently treated as independent contractors, not employees. That means DoorDash does not pay them benefits like health insurance or overtime. If governments reclassify Dashers as employees, DoorDash would face significantly higher costs. California's Proposition 22 currently allows the independent contractor model there, but legal battles continue in other places.
The biggest documented threat to the business model is worker classification. Governments in the United States and other countries are still debating whether Dashers should be treated as employees rather than independent contractors. A reclassification would force DoorDash to pay benefits, change how it manages Dashers, and likely pass higher costs on to consumers and merchants. The company has already incurred legal costs related to this issue, which it excludes from its adjusted earnings figures. Competition is the other constant pressure. Amazon, Uber Eats, Delivery Hero, and local incumbents in each country all compete for the same consumers, merchants, and couriers. These rivals have large balance sheets and can afford to offer lower prices or better incentives to win customers away. Cybersecurity is a third named risk. DoorDash holds personal and financial data on tens of millions of users, and has experienced past security breaches. A serious attack could shut down the platform, expose customer data, trigger lawsuits, and damage the brand.
$20B+
Total earnings paid to Dashers in 2025, across more than 9 million active couriers
That $20 billion paid to Dashers in 2025 illustrates the scale of the obligation DoorDash carries. It also shows why worker classification is not just a legal footnote. The Dasher workforce is enormous, and the economics of the entire platform depend on Dashers remaining independent contractors.
DoorDash also tracks Adjusted EBITDA, which strips out stock-based compensation, legal settlements, and acquisition costs. That figure reached $2.8 billion in 2025. Stock-based compensation alone was $1.1 billion in 2025, so the gap between Adjusted EBITDA and reported net income is worth keeping in mind when reading the headline profitability numbers.
The Bet
DoorDash can turn its three global marketplaces into a durable, high-frequency habit for consumers across more than 40 countries, and that the revenue and profit generated from those orders will grow fast enough to justify the billions spent acquiring Wolt, Deliveroo, and SevenRooms before those markets require further heavy investment to stay competitive. If international markets prove harder to win than the United States, or if competitors with deeper pockets cut prices aggressively enough to erode order volumes, the acquisitions become expensive liabilities rather than growth platforms.
Open question
DoorDash is now profitable on a reported basis, growing fast in both orders and revenue, and operating in over 40 countries. But it has spent more than $13 billion on acquisitions in the last four years, faces ongoing legal battles over how it classifies its couriers, and competes against Amazon and Uber Eats who have resources to match or exceed its spending. Can DoorDash turn its global marketplace network into a self-reinforcing business that generates enough cash to win internationally without needing to keep spending at the pace it has set, or will the cost of staying competitive abroad consume the profits it has worked to build at home?
[1]
DoorDash 10-K, Item 1 (Business Description), fiscal year ended December 31, 2025
[2]
DoorDash 10-K, Item 7 (Management Discussion and Analysis), fiscal year ended December 31, 2025
[3]
XBRL financial data, fiscal years 2021 through 2025
[4]
DoorDash 10-K, Risk Factors, fiscal year ended December 31, 2025
Compiled · 10-K · FY2025
