Amazon has ended its restaurant delivery arrangement with Grubhub and made Uber Eats the official partner for U.S. Prime members. Orders of more than $25 placed through Amazon.com or the Amazon Shopping app carry no delivery fee, and members do not need an Uber account to place them.
Tech news in one quick read: Get the most interesting stories in startups, tech and programming, each with a short TLDR, in one daily email from TLDR.
We may earn a commission if you sign up.
The switch was announced on Thursday, Nov. 5, the same day the Grubhub agreement ended. A Grubhub spokesperson confirmed the agreement is ending, and an Amazon spokesperson said the company continuously evaluates its third-party offers and saw a chance to deliver a better restaurant delivery experience for Prime members.
Uber Eats inside the Amazon app: fee, threshold and launch offer
TechCrunch transportation editor Kirsten Korosec reported the switch on Nov. 5. Prime members order from Uber Eats restaurants through the same Amazon surfaces they used for Grubhub, and the fee waiver applies to orders above $25. To launch, Amazon and Uber are offering $20 off each of a member’s first two orders of $25 or more during the first two weeks.
The $25 line is the detail worth reading closely. TechCrunch says members will not pay a delivery fee on orders of more than $25, and it does not describe what smaller orders cost. Members who mostly order a single entree will want to check the cart total before assuming the perk applies, since a lunch for one can land on either side of the line.
Grubhub+ stays alive for members who activated it
Prime members can no longer order from Grubhub through Amazon.com or the shopping app. Those who had already activated Grubhub+ keep that membership through Dec. 31, 2027, according to the report. That detail matters because the perk was never automatic: Amazon’s May 2024 announcement had members activate it once at amazon.com/grubhub, and it described a free Grubhub+ membership valued at $120 a year.
The older offer was also pitched on a lower bar. Grubhub+ waived delivery fees on eligible orders over $12, offered lower service fees and gave 5% credit back on pickup. Jamil Ghani, Amazon Prime’s vice president, said at the time that Prime members value savings on food delivery, and Grubhub chief executive Howard Migdal said more consumers could now experience the value of Grubhub+. Against that history, a $25 threshold is a higher bar than the $12 one Grubhub+ used in 2024, though the new launch offer of $20 off two orders softens the first weeks.
The 2024 announcement also changed how the perk worked. Before it, Prime members received a one-year Grubhub+ trial that converted into a paid membership; the ongoing version did not convert automatically. The Amazon spokesperson’s statement in the Nov. 5 report is brief, and neither the report nor the statement says how members with an activated Grubhub+ account will place orders now that the Amazon route is closed.
Three years of Amazon and Grubhub, 2022 to 2024
TechCrunch traces the arc. In 2022, Amazon began giving Prime members a free Grubhub+ subscription. In 2024 it expanded that into an ongoing benefit and reached a performance-based agreement with then-owner Just Eat Takeaway.com that could lift its equity stake in Grubhub to as much as 18%. After Just Eat Takeaway announced a plan to sell Grubhub to Wonder, Amazon elected in December 2024 to cash out its exercisable warrants, according to the company’s annual report, and the commercial partnership then continued until this announcement.
Grubhub’s ownership explains some of the backdrop. According to the report, Just Eat Takeaway.com, the owner Amazon dealt with in 2024, announced plans to sell Grubhub to Wonder, and Amazon’s warrant cash-out followed. The partnership that survived that change of control for most of a year ended only now, which makes the Uber Eats announcement less a sudden reversal than the end of an arrangement whose original counterparty was already leaving the picture.
Existing Amazon and Uber ties: Zoox, cloud and Alexa
The two companies are not strangers. TechCrunch notes existing agreements covering cloud computing, Zoox robotaxis and Uber Eats inside Amazon’s Alexa+ assistant. Zoox also appears among the autonomous partners InsideEVs listed in its coverage of Uber’s robotaxi plans.
The Alexa link goes back further. In a May 2023 press release, Uber product manager Ethan Hollinshead said order tracking on Alexa made managing Uber Eats orders easier than ever, and Amazon’s Mark Yoshitake, a general manager for Alexa Skills, described ambient experiences that let customers be more present with family and friends. Amazon became Uber’s third voice-assistant partner, after Google Assistant and Siri.
For Uber, the win lands in its largest growth line: its Q3 results showed Delivery gross bookings up 22%. The reporting does not break out Prime-driven orders, and neither company has disclosed how many Prime members have tried the new route or whether the $25 floor will stay in place after the launch promotion ends.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
Tech news in one quick read: Subscribe to TLDR →
We may earn a commission if you sign up.
More from Morning Overview
- Lake Powell sank to a record 3,517 feet, nearing the level that stops Glen Canyon Dam’s turbines
- Seven of Earth’s nine planetary boundaries are breached, and all seven are worsening
- The NSA says three phone features should be off whenever you aren’t using them
- Hurricane Hunter radar shows four warning signs that a tropical cyclone is about to strengthen, a University of Miami study found