Uber Eats replaces Grubhub in Amazon Prime, Amazon’s third try at restaurant delivery

Amazon has now tried three different ways to put restaurant dinners on Prime members’ doorsteps. It built its own delivery service and closed it. It bought into Grubhub and then cashed out. Its new answer, announced with Uber this week, is to stop trying to own the business at all and rent the network of a company that once named Amazon as a competitor.

Most of the coverage reads the deal as a fresh Prime perk: free delivery, no Uber account, a couple of launch discounts. That is the consumer story. The corporate one is about who pays for Amazon’s change of mind. Grubhub lost its place inside Amazon on the same day Uber Eats arrived, and neither company has said what Uber pays Amazon for the traffic.

What the Uber Eats deal gives Prime members

U.S. Prime members can now order from Uber Eats restaurants directly on Amazon.com and in the Amazon Shopping app, using their existing Amazon login and payment details. Delivery is free on restaurant orders of $25 or more. According to the joint announcement, the network covers hundreds of thousands of restaurants in nearly 10,000 cities and towns, from Boston and Los Angeles to Boardman, Oregon. Members on the half-price Prime for Young Adults and Prime Access plans are included, and the benefit can be shared with one adult in the household through Amazon Family.

“Together with Amazon, we built an experience for Prime members designed to make restaurant delivery feel as natural, convenient, and affordable as ordering anything else on Uber Eats,” said Andrew Macdonald, Uber’s president and chief operating officer. Jamil Ghani, Amazon’s worldwide vice president of Prime, called it “what Prime is all about.”

Grubhub absorbs the cost

Amazon’s agreement with Grubhub, which gave Prime members a free Grubhub+ membership, ended on the day of the announcement, an Amazon spokesperson told TechCrunch, adding that the company “continuously evaluates its third-party offers.” A Grubhub spokesperson confirmed the split. Prime members can no longer order Grubhub through Amazon. Those who had already activated Grubhub+ keep it until the end of 2027.

This was more than a perk. Amazon first offered Grubhub+ to Prime members in 2022 and made it an ongoing benefit two years later. As part of that expansion it agreed with Grubhub’s then-owner, Just Eat Takeaway.com, on performance-based warrants that could lift its equity stake to as much as 18%. Months later Just Eat Takeaway announced it would sell Grubhub to Wonder, and in December 2024 Amazon chose to cash out its exercisable warrants, TechCrunch reports, citing Just Eat Takeaway’s annual report. The equity tie went first. The commercial one has now followed, and Grubhub, owned by Wonder, has lost the Amazon storefront.

Amazon’s own record in restaurant delivery

Amazon Restaurants launched in Seattle in 2015 and spread to more than 20 U.S. cities before Amazon shut it in 2019, GeekWire recalls. The company had cut jobs on the team in early 2018, closed its London service later that year and also shut Daily Dish, a workplace lunch delivery service. In its IPO filing in 2019, Uber listed Amazon as an Uber Eats competitor. Seven years on, that competitor is selling Uber Eats orders inside its own app.

So “getting back into restaurant delivery” needs a qualifier. The restaurants and the delivery network belong to Uber. What Amazon brings is the customer: the Prime account, the saved card, the app already on the phone. The strategy has moved from owning the meal to owning the moment someone decides to order it.

What the companies have not disclosed

An Uber spokesperson would not discuss the financial terms, including whether Uber owes Amazon a referral fee for orders placed through the site, Bloomberg reported, as cited by Quartz. The headline savings figure needs the same care. Amazon and Uber say members could save more than $175 a year, more than the $139 annual Prime fee. That estimate assumes a typical number of orders, annualized from August 2026 data, and compares prices with ordering on Uber Eats without an Uber One membership. Service fees still apply, Amazon confirmed to GeekWire. Uber One subscribers keep their benefits, but the two memberships run independently, and the Prime perk only covers Uber Eats orders placed through Amazon. Uber One costs $9.99 a month or $96 a year.

New users get $20 off their first two Uber Eats orders of $25 or more within 14 days, and Prime Visa cardholders earn 5% back on Uber Eats orders through December 5. The two companies were already linked through cloud computing, Zoox robotaxis and Uber Eats inside the Alexa+ assistant, TechCrunch notes.

The deal also lands in a crowded fight. Yahoo Finance points out that the partnership comes shortly after DoorDash agreed to buy Instacart in a $17 billion deal, while Walmart sells a Walmart+ and Sam’s Club Plus bundle for $120 a year. Uber shares were up about 2.6% and Amazon’s about 1.7% in pre-market trading, according to Yahoo Finance data.

Grubhub’s time inside Prime now runs out on December 31, 2027, when the last activated memberships expire. Uber’s runs on terms neither company will show.

Tags: amazon, Amazon Prime, food delivery apps, Grubhub, Uber Eats