How we source: figures on this page come from the company’s own filings (SEC 10-K, 10-Q and earnings releases, or its annual report), with the period stated next to each number. Last refreshed October 2026. Our methodology.
In short
Instacart takes a cut of the groceries it helps sell, then sells ads to the brands on its shelves. In fiscal 2025 customers ordered $37.2 billion of goods through it. Instacart kept $2,677 million of that as transaction revenue (7.2% of GTV) and earned $1,065 million from advertising and other services.
How Maplebear Inc. (dba Instacart) makes money, FY2025: the income statement as a flow, to scale. Fees on $37.2B of groceries, plus ads sold to brands. Source: Maplebear Inc. (dba Instacart) Form 10-K for fiscal 2025 (filed 2026-02-26). Gross profit, margins and shares calculated.
Transaction revenue made up 72% of fiscal 2025 revenue. It comes from three payers: customers, who pay service and delivery fees and Instacart+ membership fees; retailers, who pay to reach customers on Instacart Marketplace and for fulfilment of orders on their own Instacart-powered storefronts; and card issuers, through revenue-share deals on the payment cards shoppers use in stores. It is booked net of the goods’ value, shopper pay, coupons, incentives and refunds.
Instacart revenue by fiscal year, FY2021 to FY2025, from the company's filings. Chart: The Business Engineer.
The other 28%, $1,065 million, is advertising and other revenue. The company’s auditor notes that substantially all of it is advertising. Instacart says more than 9,000 active brands advertised in 2025, and that ad revenue rose on higher ad volume, more platform activity and strength from emerging brands.
How Instacart compares
Against its own history, the revenue mix has barely moved. Advertising and other revenue was 28.5% of the total in fiscal 2025, compared with 28.4% in fiscal 2024. Both lines grew 11%.
Revenue has roughly doubled since fiscal 2021, from $1,834 million to $3,742 million. Growth has slowed each year, from 39% in fiscal 2022 to 11% in fiscal 2025. Instacart reports a single operating segment, so it does not disclose profit by line.
Orders grew 15% to 338.8 million, faster than GTV at 11%, because the average basket got smaller. Instacart says average order value held at about $110. Divided out, GTV per order fell from about $114 in fiscal 2024 to about $110.
Instacart revenue by line, prior year against FY2025, as reported. Chart: The Business Engineer.
Net income fell 2% to $447 million while revenue grew 11%. General and administrative costs rose $119 million, driven by $131 million in accruals for legal matters and sales and indirect taxes. These included a $60 million settlement with the FTC over Instacart+ and marketing practices. Gross margin slipped to 74% from 75% as card processing fees and payments to publishers rose. Chris Rogers replaced Fidji Simo as chief executive on 15 August 2025.
What to watch
Concentration: Instacart’s top three retailers accounted for about 43% of GTV in fiscal 2025. Customer B alone contributed 17% of revenue.
The take rate: Instacart says spending on affordability offsets part of the gains from fulfilment efficiency, and it books incentives and refunds as reductions to transaction revenue. It also names Amazon, Walmart, Target, DoorDash and Uber Eats among its competitors.
Frequently asked questions
How does Instacart make money?
From fees on orders and from advertising. In fiscal 2025, transaction revenue (customer, membership and retailer fees) was $2,677 million and advertising and other revenue was $1,065 million, out of $3,742 million in total.
What is Instacart's take rate?
Transaction revenue was 7.2% of GTV in fiscal 2025, the same as in fiscal 2024. Including advertising, total revenue was 10.1% of the $37.2 billion GTV.
Is Instacart profitable?
Yes. Net income was $447 million in fiscal 2025, down from $457 million in fiscal 2024. Adjusted EBITDA, a non-GAAP measure, rose 23% to $1,087 million, a 29% margin.
How big is Instacart's ad business?
Advertising and other revenue was $1,065 million in fiscal 2025, up 11%, or 2.9% of GTV. Instacart says it serves over 9,000 active brands.
Instacart’s business model enables an easy setup for grocery stores, the comfort for customers to get their shopping delivered at home, and an additional income stream for personal shoppers. Instacart makes money by charging service fees via memberships and running performance advertising on its platform.
The Amazon of grocery: an old idea that burned almost a billion at the apex of the dot-com bubble, become commercially viable
It was June 2001, right at the burst of the dot-com bubble. A company that seemed positioned to conquer the world had filed for bankruptcy.
To gain a bit of context, at the apex of its operations Webvan had reached over 3500 employees.
It was extremely well funded, with over eight hundred million dollars in capital to kick off its operations.
To be sure, Webvan’s fundamental idea was brilliant. Become a grocery shop online, that is also why it got backed by smart money.
It IPOed in 1999, just to blow up by 2001 when the dot-com bubble burst.
It didn’t help either that by 2000 Webvan had accumulated a net loss of over $453 million and an accumulated deficit of $617 million.
Indeed, Webvan’s overall idea was great.
How so?
By 2007, Amazon started AmazonFresh; in 2017, Jeff Bezos’ would further complete the acquisition of Whole Foods.
Today the integration between AmazonFresh and Whole Foods is proving viable.
But was it just a matter of timing? Indeed, timing mattered, and yet Webvan did have a customer base. Yet it was burning cash at incredible speed.
During the dot-com bubble, many companies bet on the advent of the Internet. Yet they followed the old playbook (sketch an ambitious business plan, get funding, and expand at all costs).
Webvan’s business plan was brilliant, and its venture funds looked incredibly solid (over eight hundred million dollars from major investors). And yet, Webvan failed miserably.
Bad timing, bad execution framework (money spent upfront without validating the market from time to time) did the trick.
Startups, by nature, have a low chance of success. And a key to increasing those chances is to stay alive, long enough.
That calls for a gradual market validation, where a company needs to start from where the market already exists.
Many successful startups that survived bad timing, had started with a market-entry and go-to-market strategy where they validated a smaller market first, then expanded on it slowly, as a new ecosystem would form.
Business platforms take years to build up, and the businessplatform that would have helped Webvan to reach its vision would come only in 2007, when on a Cupertino stage, Steve Jobs announced:
“What we want to do is to make a leapfrog product, that is way smarter that any mobile device has ever been, and super easy to use, this is what iPhone is.”
The lessons learned through the web era would become the business playbook for startups for decades to come.
The execution of this playbook brought the development of platform business models. Platforms are initially asset-light, as all they care about is mastering a core interaction and growing from there.
This lean playbook would help Instacart slowly validate a market, that was ready, by 2012, for the concept of grocery online.
And while Instacart could have spent its resources on building massive warehouses, it instead started from the simplest possible way: build an App that connected customers with established retailers.
Instacart would make a slight markup by charging a delivery fee. As the story goes, its founder, Mehta, had the idea from Instacart when he was a kid in Canada, where he had to take the bus in the cold Canadian winter to pick up groceries.
Mehta would later move to Seattle, where he worked for several companies until 2008-2010 he worked in Fulfillment Optimization for Amazon, where he delivered packages quickly and efficiently to customers.
As he got bored by the experience, he resigned after two years in the job and set out to build his own company.
Yet, in those two years when he had moved to San Francisco, Mehta claimed he had started 20 companies, none of which succeeded.
At a certain point, he also tried to build an ad network for social gaming companies.
He spent a year developing a social network for lawyers, which eventually left him behind, as he lost interest in the project.
By 2012, Mehta had developed this app to connect customers to popular established retailers as the web had become fully viable. It was time to push on growth.
In June 2012, Apoorva Mehta was two months late in the application deadline for the Y-Combinator acceleration program. So he needed a plan to get in, even though the deadline was well passed.
To hack his way through the program, Mehta started to reach out to Y-Combinator (YC) partners to see if any of them would be interested in his idea and perhaps let him in late. Yet, as the story goes, none let him in.
And one of the YC partners, Garry Tan, told him:
“You could submit a late application, but it will be nearly impossible to get you in now.”
What to do? Mehta had an idea. Rather than pitch Instacart, he sent a six-pack of beers to Garry Tan, which unbeknownst to him, was trying the app built by Mehta.
When he received it, Garry Tan set up a meeting with Mehta to understand how Instacart worked.
As Mehta presented Instacart to YC partners, he would finally be accepted into the program. It was the only case ever accepted, even though application deadlines had passed. That is how Instacart started its growth journey.
Amazon takes over Whole Foods and goes all in with Amazon Fresh
The future took an interesting turn when Mehta’s Instacart, at the height of its expansion, would find the toughest competitor, his once employer, Amazon.
To gain a bit of context, Instacart’s most important customer and partner were Whole Foods. Indeed, in 2016, Whole Foods announced a multi-year delivery deal with Instacart, and the effect of the deal, made:
“Instacart the exclusive delivery partner for Whole Foods’ perishables business.”
However, by 2017, Amazon would make a big move, as it bought Whole Foods for almost $14 billion.
As Amazon sneaked in, it also slowly removed Instacart from the Whole Foods partnership.
The paradox is that as Amazon took over the grocery market, it also created a sense of urgency for executives in the industry, thus prompting many of them to jump on Instacart’s boat.
Among those, players like Costco and Walmart jumped on board.
Instacart’s mission, key players, and value propositions
Instacart’s mission “is to create a world where everyone has access to the food they love and more time to enjoy it together.”
In Instacart’s businessmodel, various grocery stores are enrolled in the platform, giving customers access to a variety of perishable products.
At the same time, Instacart leverages personal shoppers who pick and deliver items for customers.
Instacart key players and value propositions
To understand Instacart’s set of value propositions, we need to look. at each of the players that make its business model viable:
Customers
Customers shopping via Instacart primarily love the comfort of having groceries delivered to their homes.
As a user reviewing the app put it:
“I love ordering from my phone. The cost of delivery and tip is worth me not having to leave house and put miles on my vehicle or deal with aggravation of crowded stores.”
At the same time, as Instacart makes money also via service charges is not always more convenient to shop on Instacart as prices might be higher for what you actually pay in the retail stores.
Grocery stores, retailers
Grocery stores and retailers might use Instacart as they can get more exposure for their products, and if they don’t have a dedicated last-mile delivery service organized internally, with Instacart, they can set it up cheaply and quickly.
Understanding the role of Shoppers
Instacart has two main categories of shoppers for which the value proposition is that of earning some extra bucks while working flexibly.
Just as platforms like Uber enable anyone to become a driver.
Instacart incentivizes people to become personal shoppers as an opportunity to work flexibly to earn extra income.
In-Store Shoppers
In short, in-store shoppers receive Instacart customers’ orders through an app on their smartphone and then shop and stage the groceries in-store.
Full-Service Shopper
Full-service shoppers receive orders from Instacart through an app on their smartphone, then shop and deliver groceries to the customer’s door.
How does Instacart make money?
The customers’ workflow is straightforward:
They can shop at their favorite local grocery store.
Schedule a delivery.
Get groceries delivered.
As Instacart closes deals and partnerships with retail partners, those partners price their products on the Instacart marketplace. Instacart will make money in a few ways.
Fees
In terms of fees, Instacart has a few kinds of fees.
Delivery Fee
Dynamic pricing is the practice of having multiple price points based on several factors, such as customer segments, peak times of service, and time-based consumption, allowing the company to apply dynamic pricing to expand its revenue generation.
Delivery fees will change based on the time the order needs to be delivered and how large the order is. Delivery fees are higher during busy times. Delivery fees start at $3.99. Instacart Express members get free delivery on orders over $35.
Heavy fee
The heavy order fee applies when certain heavy items (like cases of beverages and pet food) are applied.
Service fee
A 5% (or $2 minimum) service fee applies to non-alcohol items for non-Express customers.
Alcohol service fee
The fee covers the additional cost associated with ensuring compliant delivery of alcohol products and ID verification application.
Instacart Express Membership
Instacart Express is a membership option for customers who want to use Instacart regularly. With a flat annual cost or a low monthly fee, customers have unlimited free deliveries for all orders over $35.
Instacart Express benefits comprise:
$0 delivery fees on orders of $35 or more (typically $3.99-$7.99 for non-Express).
Reduced service fees (typically 5% for non-Express).
Shop at a variety of stores with free delivery on the entire order.
The annual membership is $99.
Advertising
As the story goes, once a partner asked what it would cost to be featured on the platform, and from there, they realized Mehta realized Instacart could make an extra revenue stream with advertising on the platform.
With a new funding round in June 2020, Instacart got valued at about $14 billion, making it a decacorn.
Price markup
As specified by Instacart, the prices that you find in its marketplace might not be the same compared to what you find in the stores.
Indeed, Instacart might apply markups, so generating revenues from that, which is used to bear the cost of personal shoppers.
Value Proposition
Convenience: Instacart offers a convenient solution for busy individuals and families by enabling them to order groceries online and have them delivered or ready for pickup at their preferred time and location, saving time and effort on trips to the store.
Selection: Instacart provides access to a vast selection of grocery items, household essentials, and specialty products from local supermarkets, national chains, and specialty stores, giving customers the flexibility to choose from a wide range of options based on their preferences and dietary needs.
Personalized Service: Instacart connects customers with personal shoppers who handpick and pack their orders, ensuring quality and freshness while accommodating special requests and preferences, such as ripe produce or specific brands, to deliver a personalized shopping experience.
Speed: Instacart offers fast and reliable delivery options, including same-day delivery and express delivery, allowing customers to receive their orders in as little as an hour, providing flexibility and convenience for last-minute shopping needs or urgent deliveries.
Flexibility: Instacart gives customers the flexibility to schedule deliveries or pickups based on their availability and preferences, offering convenient time slots and multiple delivery options to accommodate different schedules and lifestyles.
Revenue Streams
Delivery Fees: Instacart generates revenue through delivery fees charged to customers for each order, with fees varying based on factors such as order size, delivery distance, and delivery speed, providing a source of income for the company for fulfilling and delivering orders.
Service Fees: Instacart may charge service fees or surcharges on orders to cover operational costs and expenses associated with order processing, fulfillment, and customer support, providing an additional source of revenue beyond delivery fees.
Markup on Products: Instacart may apply a markup or service fee on products sold through its platform, allowing the company to generate revenue from the sale of groceries and household items while providing customers with access to a wide selection of products from local stores and retailers.
Subscription Services: Instacart offers subscription services, such as Instacart Express, which provides customers with benefits such as free delivery on eligible orders, reduced service fees, and exclusive deals, generating subscription-based revenue from membership fees and renewals.
Partnerships and Advertising: Instacart may enter into partnerships with brands, retailers, and manufacturers to promote products, offer exclusive deals, and sponsor advertising campaigns on its platform, earning revenue through promotional fees, advertising placements, and sponsored content.
Marketing Strategy
Digital Advertising: Instacart invests in digital advertising campaigns across various online channels, including social media platforms, search engines, and display networks, to promote its services, engage with potential customers, and drive app downloads and sign-ups.
Email Marketing: Instacart utilizes email marketing campaigns and newsletters to communicate with its user base, sending personalized recommendations, promotional offers, and updates on new features or partnerships to encourage repeat purchases, increase user engagement, and drive sales.
Referral Programs: Instacart incentivizes existing customers to refer friends and family to its platform through referral programs, offering rewards, discounts, or credits for successful referrals, leveraging word-of-mouth marketing and social sharing to acquire new customers and expand its user base.
Partnerships and Co-Branding: Instacart partners with retailers, brands, and influencers to co-create content, host events, and collaborate on marketing initiatives, leveraging the reach and credibility of partners to reach new audiences, drive brand awareness, and promote its services.
In-App Promotions: Instacart promotes special deals, discounts, and promotions within its mobile app and website, featuring limited-time offers, bundle deals, and exclusive discounts on popular products to incentivize purchases, increase average order value, and drive customer loyalty.
Distribution Channels
Mobile App: Instacart operates a mobile app available for iOS and Android devices, allowing customers to browse products, place orders, and track deliveries in real-time, providing a convenient and seamless shopping experience on mobile devices.
Website: Instacart also offers a website where customers can access its services, browse products, and place orders through their web browsers, providing an alternative channel for online shopping and access to Instacart’s platform and features.
Retail Partnerships: Instacart partners with leading retailers, supermarkets, and grocery chains to offer its services and fulfill orders from their stores, leveraging existing infrastructure and inventory to provide customers with access to a wide selection of products and brands.
Delivery Network: Instacart operates a network of personal shoppers and delivery drivers who fulfill and deliver orders to customers’ homes or allow for pickup at designated locations, providing a reliable and efficient delivery service for customers across thousands of cities and neighborhoods.
Customer Support: Instacart offers customer support services through various channels, including live chat, email, phone support, and help center resources, providing assistance, resolving issues, and addressing inquiries related to orders, deliveries, payments, and account management.
Compare with other last-mile delivery business model s
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
DoorDash Business Model →DoorDash is a platform business model that enables restaurants to set up at-no-cost delivery operations.Glovo Business Model →Glovo is a Spanish on-demand courier service that purchases and delivers products ordered through a mobile app.GrubHub Business Model →Grubhub is an online and mobile platform for restaurant pick-up and delivery orders.
Lyft Business Model →Lyft is a transportation-as-a-service marketplace allowing riders to find a driver for a ride.OpenTable Business Model →OpenTable is an American online restaurant reservation system founded by Chuck Templeton.Postmates Business Model →Postmates is a food delivery service built as a last-mile delivery service platform connecting locals with shops.Uber Eats Business Model →Uber Eats is a three-sided marketplace connecting a driver, a restaurant owner, and a customer with Uber Eats platform at the center.
