Technologies

Best Food Delivery Services of 2023

Use your phone to order delivery from nearby restaurants with these apps.

We’re past the days when pizza was the primary food delivery option. You can now get almost any food imaginable delivered to your door without getting out of your pajamas.

Food delivery services, such as Postmates, GrubHub and DoorDash, can bring you meals from your favorite chain restaurant or the local diner. With so many food delivery service apps, figuring out the best one can be hard. We’ve evaluated how easy it is to use these apps, how many restaurants each app works with, how steep the delivery and service fees are and how long the estimated delivery time is for each.

We selected restaurants near each other and about 5 miles from a suburban location. We also examined how delivery to an urban area influenced time and costs. We ordered similarly priced items from all locations in each app to help determine additional fees, and we looked at these services around midday during the week in February.

Here’s a roundup of our favorite food delivery service apps that you can download from the Apple App Store or the Google Play store.

Note: Your experience will likely vary depending on your location, dietary restrictions, the time of day you order and any available promotions.

Angela Lang/CNET

Uber Eats/Postmates

Most restaurant options

Uber Eats and Postmates are great options for people who want the most food options and the fastest delivery and don’t mind paying for it. Uber bought Postmates in 2020, so both apps are very similar. The main difference is that you can order an Uber in Uber Eats, not Postmates. But you can order food, groceries and even pharmacy items through both apps. Each app also has over 80 food categories you can choose from, including halal and gluten-free.

Uber Eats and Postmates make navigating and ordering from your restaurant easy. When you open the app, there’s a search bar near the top of the home screen. You can search for a type of food or a specific restaurant. Menus are also searchable, so you don’t have to scroll through the menu, potentially miss what you want and have to scroll through the menu again.

The restaurant cards also show you information, like delivery fees and estimated delivery times, before you checkout, making it easy to see which restaurants will get your food quickly without breaking the bank. Both apps work with over 825,000 restaurants across, according to Business of Apps, which is the most number of restaurants a food delivery service on this list works with.

When we ordered from a suburban area, our expected delivery time for both apps was faster than any of the other apps on this list, at 25 to 40 minutes. However, the apps also charged a combined $9.49 for delivery and service fees for my order, the highest of any other apps on this list.

When we ordered from an urban area, our expected delivery time was between 10 to 15 minutes for a restaurant nearby or 35 to 50 minutes for a restaurant about 25 minutes away. The service fees were $3.75 across the board, making these orders cheaper than orders to our suburban location.

With Uber Eats/Postmates you’ll have a wider array of food options that will likely be delivered quicker, but you might have to pay more if you live in a suburban area.

See at Uber Eats

GrubHub

Grubhub

Best to find deals and promotions

Out of all the food delivery service apps on this list, Grubhub is the easiest to find restaurants that offer deals and rewards. Other apps might display a deal over a restaurant’s title card, but Grubhub has a tab near the bottom of your screen called Rewards. This tab shows you all the nearby and national restaurant deals, and it shows you rewards for certain restaurants, like if you order three times from a specific restaurant, you can earn a $15 credit.

The app is easy to navigate and order with, and there’s a search bar over each restaurant’s menu if you’re searching for something in particular. There’s also a helpful «Orders» tab at the bottom of your screen that shows you your past orders. If you really liked your last order from a restaurant, but you forget what exactly it was, you can quickly navigate back to your old orders and have it delivered again. The app says it partners with over 365,000 restaurants.

Delivery and service fees for our order to a suburban area totalled $6.99. Grubhub’s estimated delivery window was between 35 and 45 minutes — only a few minutes longer than Uber Eats/Postmates.

When using this app in an urban area, our service fees were between $5.39 and $6.99, and our estimated delivery time was between 25 to 35 minutes for a restaurant 15 minutes away and 35 to 45 minutes for a restaurant 25 minutes away. Grubhub’s service fees for delivery to an urban location are noticeably higher than service fees for the same order on Uber Eats/Postmates.

Overall, Grubhub makes it easy to find deals on orders to help save you money. You might have to wait a few minutes longer for your delivery in suburban areas, though.

See at Grubhub

CNET

DoorDash

Best for ordering everything plus food

DoorDash lets you order things like beauty products, pet supplies and alcohol, in addition to food and groceries, through the app. There’s also a Shipping option on the home screen that lets you order food from partnered restaurants nationwide. So if you live in California and crave Chicago-style pizza, you can order an actual pizza from Chicago — just don’t expect your pizza for a few days.

DoorDash is easy to use and navigate, thanks to home screen carousels, like Wallet Friendly and Try Something New, that make it easy to find what you want to eat. DoorDash also has an Orders tab on the home screen that shows your past orders, just like GrubHub. DoorDash partners with over 390,000 restaurants, according to Business of Apps.

Delivery and service fees for our order from a suburban location were $8.99, which puts it just below Uber Eats/Postmates. Our order’s estimated delivery time was 40 minutes, which isn’t bad, but there are quicker options.

In urban areas, service fees were between $3 for restaurants across the street and $3.99 for restaurants 25 minutes away, sometimes without any delivery fees. Estimated delivery times were between 16 minutes for restaurants nearby and 36 minutes for further out restaurants, which means if you live in an urban area, you would save more money with DoorDash than with Grubhub.

With DoorDash, you can order more from the service, like laundry detergent and makeup, but some orders might take a few minutes longer to reach you.

See at DoorDash

Toast Takeout

Best for supporting local restaurants

Toast Takeout can help you support the local restaurants you know and love. Food delivery services usually charge commission fees that some restaurant owners have said hurt their businesses. Toast Takeout, however, doesn’t charge these commission fees. That means if you order food from a local restaurant featured on the app, more of your money goes towards supporting the restaurant.

Toast Takeout isn’t as robust as other apps on this list. The home screen, for example, doesn’t have carousels or sections to dive into quickly, but rather shows you restaurants the app partners with. The app is also automatically set to Pickup instead of Delivery, which might influence which restaurant you order from. And some restaurants on the app only allow Pickup, which means you may need to filter through results to find what you’re looking for. Toast Takeout partners with about 74,000 restaurants, which means you might have limited delivery options depending on where you are.

In a suburban location, our order’s delivery fee was $7 despite having no commission fees. Our order’s estimated delivery time was 44 minutes, which was higher than the average for other services on this list.

However, Toast Takeout didn’t have many ASAP delivery options available in our urban location. One option also had a $7 delivery fee, and the estimated delivery time was 55 minutes, longer than using this app in a suburban area and longer than any other in-city delivery times.

You might have fewer options to choose from with Toast Takeout — and some delivery options might not be available at all — but if you use this app, you know more of your money will support families and businesses in your community.

See at Toast Takeout

Food delivery tips

Mix and match delivery apps

These might be our favorite food delivery services, but that doesn’t mean you have to pick just one. Unless you sign up for a rewards program, these services are free, so you can download and use each of these apps. You can check which service is cheapest and fastest for you in your area by downloading each. You can also download apps that compare these food delivery services for you so you aren’t switching back and forth between apps.

Order straight from the restaurant to save on fees

Many restaurants also have their own apps or websites you can order from directly, which could save you money on service fees. If you choose to pick up your food from these restaurants, that could save you money on delivery fees, too, but that also applies to each of the above food delivery apps. You could also get your food quicker if you choose pickup rather than delivery, as pickup times are usually about 15 minutes.

For more, check out the best meal kit delivery services, the best cheap meal delivery services and the best healthy meal delivery services.

Technologies

Google races to put Gemini at the center of Android before Apple’s AI reboot

Google is using its latest Android rollout to position Gemini as the AI layer across phones, Chrome, laptops and cars.

Google is using its latest Android rollout to make Gemini less of a chatbot and more of an operating layer across the phone, browser, car and laptop, just weeks before Apple is expected to show its own Gemini-powered Apple Intelligence reboot at WWDC.
Ahead of its Google I/O developer conference next week, the company previewed a number of Android updates, including AI-powered app automation, a smarter version of Chrome on Android, new tools for creators, a redesigned Android Auto experience, and a sweeping set of new security features.
Alphabet is counting on Gemini to help Google compete directly with OpenAI and Anthropic in the market for artificial intelligence models and services, while also serving as the AI backbone across its expansive portfolio of products, including Android. Meanwhile, Gemini is powering part of Apple’s new AI strategy, giving Google a role in the iPhone maker’s reset even as it races to prove its own version of personal AI on the phone is further along.
Sameer Samat, who oversees Google’s Android ecosystem, told CNBC that Google is rebuilding parts of Android around Gemini Intelligence to help users complete everyday tasks more easily.
“We’re transitioning from an operating system to an intelligence system,” he said.
As part of Tuesday’s announcements. Google said Gemini Intelligence will be able to move across apps, understand what’s on the screen and complete tasks that would normally require a user to jump between multiple services. That means Android is moving beyond the traditional assistant model, where users ask a question and get an answer, and acting more like an agent.
For instance, Google says Gemini can pull relevant information from Gmail, build shopping carts and book reservations. Samat gave the example of asking Gemini to look at the guest list for a barbecue, build a menu, add ingredients to an Instacart list and return for approval before checkout.
A big concern surrounding agentic AI involves software taking action on a user’s behalf without permissions. Samat said Gemini will come back to the user before completing a transaction, adding, “the human is always in the loop.”
Four months after announcing its Gemini deal with Google, Apple is under pressure to show a more capable version of Apple Intelligence, which has been a relative laggard on the market. Apple has long framed privacy, hardware integration and control of the user experience as its advantages.
Google’s Android push is designed to show it can bring AI deeper into the device experience while still giving users control over what Gemini can see, where it can act and when it needs confirmation.
The app automation features will roll out in waves, starting with the latest Samsung Galaxy and Google Pixel phones this summer, before expanding across more Android devices, including watches, cars, glasses and laptops later this year.
The company is also redesigning Android Auto around Gemini, turning the car into another major surface for its assistant. Android Auto is in more than 250 million cars, and Google says the new release includes its biggest maps update in a decade and Gemini-powered help with tasks like ordering dinner while driving.
Alphabet’s AI strategy has been embraced by Wall Street, which has pushed the company’s stock price up more than 140% in the past year, compared to Apple’s roughly 40% gain. Investors now want to see how Gemini can become more central to the products people use every day.
WATCH: Alphabet briefly tops Nvidia after report of $200 billion Anthropic cloud deal

Technologies

Waymo recalls 3,800 robotaxis after glitch allowed some vehicles to ‘drive into standing water’

Waymo issued a voluntary recall of about 3,800 of its robotaxis to fix software issues that could allow them to drive into flooded roadways.

Waymo is recalling about 3,800 robotaxis in the U.S. to fix software issues that could allow them to “drive onto a flooded roadway,” according to a letter on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s website.
The voluntary recall is for Waymo vehicles that use the company’s fifth and sixth generation automated driving systems (or ADS), the U.S. auto safety regulator said in the letter posted Tuesday.
Waymo autonomous vehicles in Austin, Texas, were seen on camera driving onto a flooded street and stalling, requiring other drivers to navigate around them. It’s the latest example of a safety-related issue for the Alphabet-owned AV unit that’s rapidly bolstering its fleet of vehicles and entering new U.S. markets.
Waymo has drawn criticism for its vehicles failing to yield to school buses in Austin, and for the performance of its vehicles during widespread power outages in San Francisco in December, when robotaxis halted in traffic, causing gridlock.
The company said in a statement on Tuesday that it’s “identified an area of improvement regarding untraversable flooded lanes specific to higher-speed roadways,” and opted to file a “voluntary software recall” with the NHTSA.
“Waymo provides over half a million trips every week in some of the most challenging driving environments across the U.S., and safety is our primary priority,” the company said.
Waymo added that it’s working on “additional software safeguards” and has put “mitigations” in place, limiting where its robotaxis operate during extreme weather, so that they avoid “areas where flash flooding might occur” in periods of intense rain.
WATCH: Waymo launches new autonomous system in Chinese-made vehicle

Technologies

Qualcomm tumbles 13% as semiconductor stocks retreat from historic AI-fueled surge

Semiconductor equities reversed sharply after a broad AI-driven advance, with Qualcomm suffering its worst day since 2020 amid inflation concerns and rising oil prices.

Semiconductor stocks fell sharply on Tuesday, reversing course after an extensive rally that had expanded the artificial intelligence investment theme well past Nvidia and driven the industry to unprecedented levels.

Qualcomm plunged 13% and was on track for its steepest single-day decline since 2020. Intel shed 8%, while On Semiconductor and Skyworks Solutions each lost more than 6%. The iShares Semiconductor ETF, which benchmarks the overall sector, fell 5%.

The sell-off came after a key gauge of consumer prices came in above forecasts, and as conflict in Iran pushed crude oil higher—prompting investors to shift away from riskier assets.

The preceding advance had widened the AI opportunity set beyond longtime industry leader Nvidia, which for much of the past several years had largely carried the market to new peaks on its own.

Explosive appetite for central processing units, along with the graphics processing units that power large language models, has sent chipmakers to all-time highs.

Market participants are wagering that the shift from AI model training to autonomous agents will lift demand for additional AI hardware. Among the beneficiaries are memory chip producers, which are raising prices as supply remains tight.

Micron Technology slid 6%, and Sandisk cratered 8%. Sandisk’s stock has surged more than six times over since January.