In-House Delivery Break-Even Calculator
The question this page answers: at what order volume does running your own drivers beat paying marketplace commissions? Enter your volume, ticket size, wages, mileage, reimbursement rate, and an insurance estimate, and the model computes both monthly costs, the savings, and the break-even order count where in-house wins. The full reasoning behind the model, including what hired and non-owned auto (HNOA) insurance is and why the reimbursement rate is the piece that gets litigated, is in the companion article: What In-House Delivery Actually Costs.
All outputs are illustrative and modeled. Tips are excluded on both sides since the customer pays them either way. The HNOA default is a planning placeholder, not a quote; get a broker quote for the real number.
How to read the result
The model treats your HNOA premium as the fixed monthly cost of being in the delivery business, while wages and mileage scale with every order. Third-party commissions also scale with every order, at a higher per-order cost for typical pizza economics, which is why a break-even exists at all: once volume covers the fixed insurance line, every additional order is cheaper on your own drivers. Three of the inputs move the answer far more than the others: the commission rate (enter the true all-in rate including required marketing spend, typically 25 to 30 percent), deliveries per driver-hour (route density is the in-house superpower; 2.5 is typical, 3+ is strong), and the reimbursement rate, which deserves its own paragraph.
The reimbursement input is the swing vote
The default is $0.76 per mile, the IRS standard rate since its July 1, 2026 mid-year update, because that is what most operators reflexively enter. But the IRS figure is a national tax ceiling, not your market's cost, and courts have held that paying it is not automatically a legal defense. A documented, ZIP-level rate built from real filed insurance data, fuel, and vehicle costs typically runs well below it, and the calculator shows you what that does: at typical inputs, moving from the IRS default to an illustrative documented rate multiplies the monthly savings several times and cuts the break-even volume by roughly two-thirds. That documented rate, defensible under the case law and refreshed monthly, is exactly what RatesReady maintains for each store's ZIP and vehicle class, from $49 per location per month.
Comparing the other direction? If you are currently in-house and wondering what the apps would cost you, our third-party delivery app cost calculator runs the same economics from the marketplace side, including the costs that never show on the statement: cannibalized regulars, lost customer data, and the reorder screen.
This calculator is an illustrative economic model for general planning, not legal, tax, insurance, or financial advice. All outputs are modeled from your inputs; the HNOA default is a planning placeholder and only a broker quote for your operation is real. Commission structures vary by platform and contract; wage and reimbursement obligations vary by state. Consult qualified counsel and a licensed insurance broker about your specific situation.