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

Today’s NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for May 18, #707

Hints and answers for Connections for May 18, #707.

Looking for the most recent Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Today’s Connections puzzle is a mix of difficult and easy. The purple category does what most purple categories do, and makes you really break down how you think about the words. Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers.

The Times now has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and to have the program analyze your answers. Players who are registered with the Times Games section can now nerd out by following their progress, including number of puzzles completed, win rate, number of times they nabbed a perfect score and their win streak.

Read more: Hints, Tips and Strategies to Help You Win at NYT Connections Every Time

Hints for today’s Connections groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group, to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: School days.

Green group hint: About there!

Blue group hint: Sure, let’s go.

Purple group hint: The Scarlett Letter.

Answers for today’s Connections groups

Yellow group: Tasks for a student.

Green group: Encouraging responses in a guessing game.

Blue group: Up for anything.

Purple group: What «A» might mean.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is tasks for a student. The four answers are assignment, drill, exercise and lesson.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is encouraging responses in a guessing game. The four answers are almost, close, not quite and warm.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is up for anything. The four answers are easy, flexible, game and open.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is what «A» might mean. The four answers are area, athletic, excellent and one.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Strands Hints, Answers and Help for May 18, #441

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle No. 441 for May 18.

Looking for the most recent Strands answer? Click here for our daily Strands hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Today’s NYT Strands will probably be easier if you have some basic knowledge about a certain type of vessel. You don’t really need to have ever been on one, since the answers show up in books and movies all the time. If you need hints and answers, read on.

I go into depth about the rules for Strands in this story.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections and Mini Crossword answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: NYT Connections Turns 1: These Are the 5 Toughest Puzzles So Far

Hint for today’s Strands puzzle

Today’s Strands theme is: Riding the wind.

If that doesn’t help you, here’s a clue: famed song by Christopher Cross.

Clue words to unlock in-game hints

Your goal is to find hidden words that fit the puzzle’s theme. If you’re stuck, find any words you can. Every time you find three words of four letters or more, Strands will reveal one of the theme words. These are the words I used to get those hints, but any words of four or more letters that you find will work:

DULL, TILE, TILER, SEER, GALE, GALES, HAIL, SAIL, LEEK, GLUE, HALL, TALL, HEAT

Answers for today’s Strands puzzle

These are the answers that tie into the theme. The goal of the puzzle is to find them all, including the spangram, a theme word that reaches from one side of the puzzle to the other. When you’ve got all of them (I originally thought there were always eight but learned that the number can vary), every letter on the board will be used. Here are the nonspangram answers:

HELM, HULL, KEEL, MAST, STERN, RIGGING, RUDDER, TILLER

Today’s Strands spangram

Today’s Strands spangram is SAILBOAT. To find it, start with the S that’s four letters down on the farthest row to the left, then wind across, up and down.

Technologies

Google I/O 2025: How to Watch and What to Expect

With Android 16 out of the way, Google I/O will certainly be all about AI.

Google I/O 2025 takes place on May 20 and 21 with Google’s big keynote happening on day 1. We expect Big G to talk about its myriad innovations across its ever-expanding portfolio of products — almost certainly with a huge focus on AI every step of the way. If we collectively cross our fingers, promise to be good and eat all our vegetables then we may even be treated to a sneak peek at upcoming hardware.

Read more: Android 16: Everything Google Announced at the Android Show

Google also hosted a totally separate event that focused solely on Android. The Android Show: I/O Edition saw the wrappers come off Android 16, with insights into the new Material 3 Expressive interface, updates to security and a focus on Gemini and how it’ll work on a variety of other devices.

By breaking out Android news into its own virtual event, Google frees itself to spend more time during the I/O keynote to talk about Gemini, Deep Mind, Android XR and Project Astra. It’s going to be a jam-packed event, so here’s how you can watch I/O 2025 as it happens and what you can look forward to.

Google I/O: Where to watch

Google I/O proper kicks off with a keynote taking place on May 20, 10 a.m. PDT (1 p.m. EDT, 6 p.m. BST). It’ll almost certainly be available to stream online on Google’s own YouTube channel, although a holding video is yet to be available. There’s no live link on the I/O website yet, either, though you can use the handy links to add the event to your calendar of choice. Expect links to a livestream to be available closer to the day.

What to expect from Google I/O 2025

Little chat about Android 16: As Google gave Android 16 its own outing already, it’s likely that it won’t be mentioned all that much during I/O. In fact at last year’s event, Android was barely mentioned, while uses of the term «AI» went well over a hundred.

Android XR: Google didn’t talk much about Android XR during the Android show, focusing instead on the purely phone-based updates to the platform. We expected to hear more about the company’s latest foray into mixed-reality headsets in partnership with Samsung and its Project Moohan headset, so it’s possible that this is being saved for I/O proper.

Gemini: With Android being spun out into its own separate event, Google is evidently clearing the way for I/O to focus on everything else the company does. AI will continue to dominate the conversation at I/O, just as it did last year (though hopefully Google can make it more understandable) with updates to many of its AI platforms expected to be announced.

Gemini is expected to receive a variety of update announcements, including more information on its latest 2.5 Pro update which boasts various improvements to its reasoning abilities, and in particular to its helpfulness for coding applications. Expect lots of mentions of Google’s other AI-based products, too, including DeepMind, LearnLM and Project Astra. Let’s just hope Google has figured out how to make this information make any kind of sense.

Beyond AI, Google may talk about updates to its other products including GMail, Chrome and the Play Store, although whether these updates are big enough to be discussed during the keynote rather than as part of the developer-focused sessions following I/O’s opening remains to be seen.