Swiggy vs Zomato: City-Wise Menu Price & Fee Analysis 2026

 

Introduction

TL;DR: Actowiz compared 25,000+ identical menu items from 1,200 restaurants listed on both Swiggy and Zomato across 10 Indian cities. Findings: the same dish is priced differently on the two apps for 38% of items, platform fees and delivery charges — not menu prices — create the biggest checkout gap, and surge patterns differ sharply by city and meal slot.

The Question Every Restaurant & Brand Asks

India's food delivery duopoly means most restaurants list on both apps — but the checkout price a customer sees is rarely identical. Menu markups, packaging charges, delivery fees, platform fees, and surge multipliers all stack differently. We scraped both platforms to quantify exactly where the gap comes from.

Methodology

• Platforms Covered: Swiggy and Zomato.

• Cities Covered: Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, Chennai, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, and Lucknow.

• Restaurants Matched Across Both Apps: 1,200.

• Identical Menu Items Compared: 25,000+.

• Data Capture Windows: Lunch (12 PM–2 PM), Evening (6 PM–8 PM), and Late Night (10 PM–12 AM) over a 45-day period.

• Data Fields Captured: Item price, packaging charge, delivery fee, platform fee, discounts, estimated delivery time (ETA), and customer ratings.

Items were matched by restaurant + normalized item name + portion size; mismatches were excluded after validation.

Finding 1: Same Dish, Different Price

For 38% of matched items, the listed menu price differed between apps — typically by ₹5–20. Patterns we observed:

• Differences cluster in chains and cloud kitchens, which run platform-specific pricing strategies.

• Zomato/Swiggy listed the higher menu price slightly more often (X% vs Y% of differing items).

• Identical pricing dominated in independent restaurants, which usually upload one menu to both.

Finding 2: Fees Decide the Real Winner

Menu price tells half the story. On a standardized ₹400 order, the full checkout stack compared as:

• Delivery Fee: Swiggy (Average) – ₹XX | Zomato (Average) – ₹XX

• Platform Fee: Swiggy (Average) – ₹X | Zomato (Average) – ₹X

• Packaging Charges: Swiggy (Average) – ₹XX | Zomato (Average) – ₹XX

• Effective Checkout Price Gap: Swiggy vs. Zomato – ±₹XX (X%)

Key insight: platform fees changed 12 times during our 45-day window — fee experimentation is continuous, and only ongoing monitoring catches it.

Finding 3: Surge & ETA Patterns by City

• Delivery-fee surges peaked during weekend dinners and rain events, with Bengaluru and Mumbai showing the highest surge frequency.

• Quoted ETAs averaged 8 minutes on Swiggy vs Y on Zomato for the same restaurants; gaps widened in traffic-dense zones.

• Late-night slots showed higher fees but faster ETAs, reflecting thinner order volume.

What You Can Do With This Data

• Restaurants & cloud kitchens: detect where your own items are mispriced between apps; benchmark fees passed to your customers.

• F&B brands & aggregators: track competitor menu pricing and discount depth city by city.

• Analysts: model take-rates and fee experiments from observed checkout stacks — weeks before they appear in earnings commentary.