Last updated: August 2026
Grocery delivery promises to save you a trip. What it doesn’t advertise is that the same cart can cost $20 to $40 more than it would in the store — before the tip. This guide breaks down what the best grocery delivery apps actually cost families, when a membership pays for itself, and when the honest answer is to skip delivery entirely. If you’re working on your grocery budget more broadly, our guide to saving money on groceries each week pairs well with this one, and our complete guide to saving money on groceries helps you work out how far off your spending actually is.
Quick answer: Walmart+ ($98/year) is often the lowest-cost option for families who already shop at Walmart, because Walmart doesn’t add item markups to online grocery prices. Instacart+ ($99/year) covers the most stores but adds markups at many retailers. Kroger Boost Essential ($69/year) is the cheapest membership. Free or low-cost curbside pickup, offered by many major chains, avoids delivery costs entirely.
Prices and fees were verified against each company’s official website during our latest review but change frequently. Confirm current pricing before subscribing.
The Real Cost of Grocery Delivery
Most comparison guides list delivery fees and stop there. That’s the smallest of four costs stacked on a delivery order, and it’s usually not the one that hurts.
- Delivery fee — typically $4 to $10 per order, waived with most memberships
- Service fee — a percentage of your subtotal, separate from delivery. On Instacart, service fees apply even with a paid membership
- Item markup — the difference between the shelf price and the app price. This varies enormously by service and retailer, and it’s the cost most people never notice
- Tip — customary and expected on shopper-based services, commonly 10 to 15%
Here’s an illustration of how those layers stack on a $150 family grocery order — comparing a service that marks up items against one that charges shelf prices. Your actual markup will depend on the retailer and the specific items in your cart:
| Cost layer | Service with markup | Shelf-price service |
|---|---|---|
| Cart at shelf prices | $150 | $150 |
| Item markup | Varies — often meaningful | $0 |
| Delivery fee | $0 (member) | $0 (member) |
| Service fee | $7–$9 | $0 |
| Tip (12%) | $18 | $18 |
| Total added cost | $25+ | $18 |
The gap between those two columns comes almost entirely from markup and service fees — not the delivery fee everyone focuses on. Over a year of weekly orders, that difference can run into the hundreds of dollars.
How to check your own: pick five items you buy regularly, note the shelf price on your next in-store trip, then look up the same items in the app. That five-minute comparison tells you more about what a service actually costs you than any published fee schedule.
Is Grocery Delivery Worth It for Your Family?
For a lot of families, the honest answer is that delivery isn’t the right tool — but pickup is.
Many major chains offer free or low-cost curbside pickup, including Walmart, Kroger, and Target, usually with an order minimum and no fee at all above it. You still skip the aisles, still avoid impulse buys, and still have someone else do the shopping. You just drive to the store instead of paying $25 to $40 in stacked fees to avoid the drive.
Delivery genuinely earns its cost when you have a newborn, a mobility limitation, no reliable transportation, a sick household, or a schedule where the drive itself is the constraint. It’s a worse deal when you’re ordering small carts, ordering infrequently, or shopping a service that marks up items.
One genuine upside worth counting on the other side of the ledger: online carts tend to reduce impulse purchases. If a store trip regularly turns into $40 of unplanned spending, some of the delivery cost pays for itself in what you don’t buy. Our guide to reducing your grocery bill covers other ways to keep that number down.
Best Grocery Delivery Apps for Families Compared
| Service | Membership | Item markup | Stores | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Walmart+ | $98/yr or $12.95/mo | None | Walmart only | Lowest total cost |
| Instacart+ | $99/yr or $9.99/mo | Varies by retailer | 1,500+ banners | Store selection |
| Amazon (Prime) | Prime membership | Varies | Amazon, Whole Foods | Existing Prime members |
| Kroger Boost | $69 or $99/yr | Usually none | Kroger family | Cheapest membership |
| Shipt | $99/yr or $10.99/mo | Varies | Target, partners | Target households |
1. Walmart+ — the lowest total cost for Walmart shoppers.
Cost: $98/year or $12.95/month. Walmart+ Assist cuts that to $49/year for households on government assistance and for college students. 30-day free trial.
Free option: Curbside pickup is free on orders of $35 or more without any membership.
Fees: Free delivery on $35+ orders for members. Non-members pay $7.95 to $9.95. Orders under $35 carry a $6.99 fee whether you’re a member or not.
Item markup: None. Walmart states that items are priced the same as on the shelf — the single biggest cost advantage on this list.
Family features: Membership can be shared with one other adult in your household.
Also included: Free shipping with no minimum, fuel discounts, and a Paramount+ or Peacock subscription.
Pros: No item markup means the total is genuinely predictable. Assist pricing makes it accessible for lower-income households. The included streaming subscription offsets a meaningful chunk of the annual cost if you’d pay for it anyway.
Cons: Walmart only. If your household prefers a different chain or needs specialty items, the savings don’t matter.
Who should avoid it: Families who don’t already shop at Walmart, or who live where the nearest store is far enough that pickup isn’t practical either.
2. Instacart+ — the widest store selection.
Cost: $99/year or $9.99/month, with a two-week free trial.
Free option: None meaningful — pay-per-order only.
Fees: Members get $0 delivery on grocery orders of $10+ and Costco orders of $35+. Service fees still apply even with membership, which surprises a lot of people.
Item markup: Varies significantly by retailer. Some stores display in-store pricing; many others set higher prices in the app. This is the number to check before committing.
Family features: Instacart+ Family Accounts let you share the membership with another household member at no cost, and Family Carts let multiple people add to one shared order — genuinely useful for households where more than one person shops.
Stores: Over 1,500 retail banners, including Costco without a Costco membership.
Pros: Unmatched store coverage, real-time shopper communication for substitutions, and the shared family cart feature is the best of any service here.
Cons: Markups plus service fees on top of membership means the total premium over in-store shopping is typically the highest on this list.
Who should avoid it: Budget-focused families with a Walmart or Kroger nearby — you’re paying a real premium for selection you may not need.
3. Kroger Boost — the lowest-cost membership.
Cost: Boost Essential is $69/year for next-day delivery; full Boost is $99/year for same-day. Free trial available.
Free option: Free pickup on qualifying orders without membership.
Fees: Free delivery on $35+ for members. Non-members pay roughly $6.95 for next-day and $9.95 to $14.95 for same-day.
Item markup: Prices typically match in-store, since Kroger fulfills its own orders rather than routing through a third-party marketplace.
Also included: 2x fuel points and a streaming subscription for annual members.
Pros: Cheapest entry point at $69. Digital coupons and fuel points stack with delivery, which no third-party app can match.
Cons: Only useful if a Kroger-family store operates in your area — that includes Ralphs, Fred Meyer, King Soopers, Fry’s, and several others, so check before ruling it out.
Who should avoid it: Anyone outside Kroger’s footprint, and anyone who only needs next-day delivery occasionally, since per-order fees are reasonable.
4. Amazon and Shipt — best if you’re already paying.
Amazon: Prime members in eligible areas get free same-day grocery delivery above an order minimum, with a small fee on smaller orders. Non-members can order without a membership for a flat per-delivery fee. If you already have Prime for other reasons, grocery delivery is effectively free — that’s the whole argument. Buying Prime specifically for groceries rarely makes sense against cheaper options. Check current Prime pricing and grocery availability for your area, since coverage is still expanding.
Shipt: $99/year or $10.99/month, with $35 minimums and a $7 fee below that. Students and SNAP EBT recipients qualify for reduced monthly pricing. It’s the natural pick for households that shop Target regularly, and it has a 14-day free trial.
The Membership Break-Even Math
Here’s the calculation nobody puts in these comparisons. Take the annual membership price and divide it by what you’d pay per order without it. That’s how many orders you need before the membership starts saving you money.
| Membership | Annual cost | Typical fee avoided | Break-even |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kroger Boost Essential | $69 | ~$6.95 | ~10 orders/year |
| Walmart+ | $98 | ~$8 | ~12 orders/year |
| Kroger Boost (same-day) | $99 | ~$9.95 | ~10 orders/year |
| Shipt | $99 | ~$7 | ~14 orders/year |
| Instacart+ | $99 | ~$6 | ~17 orders/year |
Translated to real life: most of these memberships pay off at roughly one order per month. If you order less than that, pay per order. If you order weekly, every membership on this list is worth it — and the deciding factor becomes markup, not the membership fee.
One caution on annual plans. These memberships auto-renew, and the Federal Trade Commission has repeatedly flagged auto-renewing subscriptions as a common source of unwanted charges. Set a calendar reminder a week before renewal so the decision stays yours. If forgotten subscriptions are a recurring problem in your household, our guide to cutting subscription costs covers how to catch them.
The delivery fee is not one number, and that changes the math
Every service above will deliver to you without a subscription. You pay per order instead of per year, and for a household ordering once or twice a month that is usually the cheaper side of the trade. What almost nobody checks first is that the per-order fee is not a fixed price.
Kroger says so in its own documentation: delivery fees “vary based on the day and time slot selected.” Its published standard delivery fee is $9.95, with a further $4.95 for an express window — so the same cart, on the same day, can cost $9.95 or $14.90 depending on which slot you tap. Most services price this way even when they advertise a single headline number, which is why a fee quoted in any article, including this one, should be treated as a starting point and confirmed at checkout. You can read Kroger’s own delivery terms for how it words that.
1. Check the fee after you pick the slot, not before.
The number on a service’s marketing page is a floor, not a price. The real fee is calculated at checkout once a delivery window is chosen — which is the screen most people skim on the way to the confirm button. Backing up one step and trying a slot two hours later, or a weekday instead of Sunday afternoon, can change it. Looking costs nothing.
2. Count your deliveries before you count the fee.
A membership pays off on frequency, not on price. Divide the annual membership cost by the fee you actually pay per order and you get the number of deliveries a year it takes to break even. Below that number, paying per order wins. Above it, the membership does. Families tend to guess high on how often they order, so it is worth counting the real deliveries from the last three months rather than estimating.
3. The order minimum can cost more than the delivery fee.
This is where going membership-free quietly gets expensive, and it is not the fee’s fault. Faced with a $35 minimum on a $27 cart, most people add something to clear it. Add $12 of items you did not need to avoid a $6.99 fee and you are down about five dollars, not up. Paying the fee on a small order is often the cheaper answer, and a subscription that waives minimums is worth more to a household that shops in small, frequent trips than the delivery fee alone suggests.
The Cheapest Grocery Delivery Strategy
Most families get the best result from mixing methods rather than committing to one:
- Weekly big shop: free curbside pickup. No fees, no markup, no tip — this should be your default.
- The week everything falls apart: delivery from your membership service. This is what you’re paying the annual fee for.
- Small emergency runs: pay per order rather than forcing a cart to $35 to dodge a fee. Adding $20 of groceries to avoid a $7 fee isn’t saving money.
- Specialty items: Instacart for the store selection, accepting the markup as the cost of access.
Two habits that cut costs regardless of which service you use: order large and infrequently rather than small and often, since every order carries its own fees and tip. And clip the store’s digital coupons before checkout — they apply to delivery orders on store-direct services like Walmart and Kroger, and most people forget.
More Worth Knowing
Discounted memberships most families never check.
Several services offer reduced pricing that goes largely unadvertised. Walmart+ Assist is $49/year for households receiving government assistance and for college students. Shipt offers reduced monthly pricing for students and SNAP EBT recipients. If your household qualifies, these cut the break-even math roughly in half.
Stack free trials before you commit.
Walmart+ offers 30 days, Instacart+ two weeks, Shipt 14 days, and Kroger Boost runs trials as well. Running two services on trial in the same month, ordering the same cart from each, tells you exactly what your family pays at each one. Just set the cancellation reminders when you sign up, not later.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is grocery delivery actually cheaper than shopping in person?
On the receipt, almost never — fees, markups, and tips add real cost. It can come out closer than expected if delivery meaningfully reduces impulse purchases, since online carts tend to stick to the list. For pure cost, free curbside pickup beats both delivery and in-store shopping for most families.
Which grocery delivery app has the lowest fees?
Kroger Boost Essential has the lowest membership at $69/year. But the lowest total cost often goes to Walmart+, because it doesn’t add item markups — and markup, not the delivery fee, is where most of the extra money goes on a large order.
Do I have to tip on grocery delivery?
Tipping is technically optional but genuinely expected on shopper-based services like Instacart and Shipt, where the shopper is an independent contractor doing your shopping and driving. Ten to fifteen percent is customary. Budget for it as part of the cost rather than treating it as an afterthought.
Are grocery delivery apps safe to use with a credit card?
The major services covered here are established companies with standard payment security. The more common problem isn’t fraud — it’s forgotten auto-renewals and unexpected fees at checkout. Review the fee breakdown before confirming any order, and check your renewal date when you sign up for any annual plan.
Can I use EBT or SNAP for grocery delivery?
Yes, at most major services including Walmart, Instacart, Amazon, and Kroger, though availability varies by state and store. SNAP covers eligible food items only — delivery fees, service fees, and tips must be paid separately. Several services also offer discounted memberships to EBT recipients.
The Bottom Line
The best grocery delivery apps for families come down to a simpler question than most comparisons admit: does the service mark up your items, and do you order often enough for a membership to pay for itself? Walmart+ tends to win on total cost because it charges shelf prices. Kroger Boost Essential wins on membership price. Instacart wins on selection, at a real premium. And free curbside pickup beats all of them if you can make the drive — which is worth remembering before paying for anything.
Run the five-item price check on your own cart before subscribing to anything. Five minutes of comparison tells you more than any guide can.
Which grocery delivery service does your family actually use, and has it saved you money? Let us know in the comments — real numbers help other readers more than any pricing page.
Want to know whether you’re actually overspending? Our free grocery budget worksheet takes you from your household benchmark through three months of spending to a realistic weekly target. Sign up below — it’s free, and you’ll get it straight away.
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