An Instacart shopper does it all.
They use their personal vehicle to drive to the grocery store, pick out and check out the requested items, and deliver those items to a customer.
And shoppers recently took a pay cut.
Last month, Instacart slashed its shopper base pay rate from $7 down to $4. Shoppers have always relied on tips to make a living, but now they’re relying on them more than ever.
What is it really like being an Instacart shopper?
To get a better understanding of what the Instacart shopper experience is like, you need to know about orders, batches, items, and units.
An order is what a single customer is requesting. A batch is a group of either one, two, or three orders. Instacart shoppers use the Shopper app to watch for batches in their area. The shopper has no control over how many batches they see or for how long those batches are available.
Have you ever ordered just a few things from Instacart and it took the shopper a lot longer than you expected? This might be because your order has been lumped into a batch with two other, larger, orders.
In most cases, a shopper only has seconds to decide if they want to accept a batch -- because if they aren’t fast enough, another shopper might take it first. This can be frustrating and adds another element of stress to the process.
When a batch pops up on a shopper’s screen, it lists the number of orders, batch pay, tip amount, number of items, number of units, and how far the shopper will have to drive from the store.
The next thing you need to know is the difference between items and units. Items are the number of products in the store the shopper will have to find. Units are the actual number of products they will have to place in their cart. For example, if a customer orders six apples, 21 pears, and 36 watermelons. If that order is the only one in the batch, the batch would have three items and 63 units.
There are a few other things you should be aware of:
- Customer rating matters. Instacart shoppers with a rating of 4.7+ out of 5 stars will see batches a few minutes before shoppers who have a rating of less than 4.7.
- Orders with alcohol require ID. If a customer orders alcohol, the shopper is required to confirm their identification when delivering and scan their identification into the app.
- The more often you shop, the better batches you see. Instacart has a cart star program. There are three Cart Star tiers (Gold, Platinum, and Diamond Carts). A shopper with Diamond Cart rewards gets priority access to batches. A shopper earns points based on the number of orders they shop within a three-month period.
What does Instacart pay shoppers per order?
Have you ever wondered how much your shopper actually gets paid for completing your order? It’s complicated.
Unless you skimmed to this point of the article, you now know what a batch is. If you did skim -- or took a snack break and forgot -- here’s a reminder: A batch is a grouping of either one, two, or three orders. Until now, batch base pay started at $7. That means a shopper was guaranteed to earn at least $7 for completing a batch.
So, how much would an Instacart shopper make from doing a batch with three orders? Well, before this change they were guaranteed $7. You’re probably thinking, $7 per order, right? Right? So $21? Wrong. They were only promised a minimum of $7.
A shopper could be handling three separate orders, communicating with three separate customers, and still only get $7. Shoppers rely on tips to make a batch worth their time.
So, if a customer tipped a substantial amount their order might get lumped in with two orders involving people who did not tip at all. That means more work for a shopper, but not more money.
Here is a quote from Instacart’s latest update regarding the pay cut: “The smallest, quickest batches like delivering a bag of chips or a pint of ice cream will pay at least $4, which is 2x higher than the minimum of other major delivery platforms, in addition to customer tips. More complex batches like a larger business delivery, for example, may pay $10 or more, also in addition to tips. Instacart may pay more for batches based on the size and complexity of each order.”
That “smallest, quickest” batch would have had a base pay of at least $7 under the previous model. Now it will only guarantee $4.
Batch pay can climb based on if there is a boost, a heavy pay bonus, and how much the tip was worth.
A boost is usually added if a batch is not accepted right away. It’s usually added to undesirable batches (no tip, lots of units, or a long distance to drive) and only worth a couple of dollars. The boost will continue to climb until a shopper accepts the batch, or until that order is combined with an order that tips better.
As for heavy batch pay, that pay bump starts at $2. The batch has to include items that weigh at least 8 pounds or more and the weight of those items combined is equal to 50 pounds or more.
Instacart also promises to pay more on batches when a shopper has to drive a long distance to deliver the order. In the update, Instacart said it will “take into account the expected distance the shopper has to drive to the store once they accept a batch.”
Deliveries could include going to businesses or apartments that require navigating stairs.
Okay, but, how much does an Instacart shopper actually get paid?
Instacart shoppers are independent contractors, not employees.
They use their personal vehicle, so they’re paying for gas, oil changes, wear and tear, etc. On top of the vehicle expenses, shoppers also have to make sure to pay taxes on that income.
In the Instacart world, time is money. The faster you are, the more you can make. The time it takes to complete a batch varies on the experience of the shopper, how busy the store is, how stocked the store is, and the responsiveness of the customer.
An experienced former shopper who worked in Macomb County said on average, each batch took between 40 minutes to an hour and a half to complete. The shopper said the amount they made per week varied and depended on several factors. Overall, the pay was unreliable.
They said most stores open at 6 a.m., so they often wake up at 5:30 a.m. to get ready for the day. Bigger stores, like Costco, opened at 10 a.m. Costco customers seemed to tip better, so that was a good place to watch out for batches. The downside was that Costco orders tended to include lots of bottles of water or other heavy orders.
The shopper said they would spend nearly the entire day watching their phone for batches. They would only choose batches that they determined to be worth their time. At the time, they were a highly ranked shopper on the app and did get priority access to batches.
In January 2023 they earned $726 and clocked a total 32 “active” hours. That time only includes hours spent shopping and delivering. It does not count the time they spent watching their phone for batches. After taxes and expenses, the total earned that month is likely closer to $500.
The most they made in a single day was $150 and included five “active” hours. That was a rare day. They estimate most days they earned anywhere between $10 to $100. Remember, these earnings were before Instacart dropped their base pay rate down to $4.
Michigan’s minimum wage is $10.10 per hour. Since Instacart shoppers are contractors, not employees, they are not guaranteed minimum wage. Meanwhile, Instacart’s full-year revenue increased 39% in 2022 to about $2.5 billion, according to several reports.
Here are examples of Instacart orders that came through the app to a 5-star shopper (who does not have Diamond Cart status) around 12 p.m. on Aug. 3, 2023, in Macomb County.
- A batch that paid a total of $9.83. Included two orders, 52 items (76 units), and an 8.4-mile drive from the store to both delivery points. Neither of the customers tipped.
- A batch that paid a total of $9.61. Included two orders, 43 items (46 units), and a 3.5-mile drive from the store to both delivery points. The batch earnings were $6.95. The tip for this batch was $2.66.
The $9.61 batch was 7.2 miles from the shopper’s location and would have taken them 11 minutes just to get to the store. The additional miles were not included in the Instacart app’s calculations.
- A batch that paid a total of $7.93. Included one order, 3 items (3 units), and an 8-mile drive from the store to the delivery point. A boost was included. The customer did not tip.
- A batch that paid a total of $8.92. Included one order, 37 items (36 units), and a 1.4-mile drive from the store to the delivery point. A boost was included. The customer did not tip.
- A batch that paid a total of $10.59. Included one order, 21 items (24 units), and a 3.7-mile drive from the store to the delivery point. The batch earnings were worth $5.74 and the tip was worth $4.85.
- A batch that paid a total of $6.90. Included one order, 2 items (2 units), and a .8-mile drive from the store to the delivery point. The batch pay was $4.90 and the tip was $2.
- A batch that paid a total of $20.87. Included two orders, 12 items (24 units), and a 20.3-mile drive from the store to the delivery points. The pay included a heavy pay bump, a boost, but there was not a tip. The mileage calculated in the app did not include the 12-mile (18-minute) drive from the shopper’s location to the store.
- A batch that paid a total of $12.33. Included two orders, 40 items (51 units), a 4.5-mile drive from one store, to a second store, then to the delivery points. The batch earnings were $9.29 and the tip was worth $3.04.
It is rare to see a batch that pays more than $70. So rare, in fact, that people in the Instacart community refer to a batch worth that much or more as a “unicorn.”