ONDC for restaurants in 2026: is it worth listing?

ONDC is worth listing on in 2026 for most Indian restaurants, but as a low-cost extra channel, not a replacement for Swiggy or Zomato. Fees are lower and set by the apps you choose. Order volumes are small, depend on which buyer apps are active in your city, and fell after the network cut its subsidies.

What is ONDC, in plain terms?

ONDC is an open network, not an app. The government describes it as "an open protocol on which platforms/marketplace can be built", set up as a Section 8 company under DPIIT (PIB, July 2025). A restaurant joins through one seller app, and its menu then becomes visible on every ONDC buyer app, such as Paytm or magicpin, that serves its area.

That split is the whole idea. On Swiggy or Zomato, one company owns the customer, the listing, the delivery fleet and the commission. On ONDC those jobs are unbundled: a seller app manages your catalogue and orders, a buyer app brings the customer, and a logistics partner does the delivery. Each one charges for its own part.

How does a restaurant get listed?

You sign up with a seller app, not with ONDC. The seller app handles your menu, order routing, payouts and, usually, delivery booking. The PIB release says a seller onboarded "through any ONDC-compliant seller application becomes discoverable to all ONDC-compliant buyer applications" (PIB, July 2025).

A practical order of work:

1. Pick a seller app. Options for restaurants include magicpin, POS-linked seller apps and standalone ones such as uEngage and Vikra. If your POS already offers ONDC, start there, because orders then land where your kitchen already works.
2. Keep your documents ready. Expect to be asked for FSSAI registration or licence, GSTIN if you have one, PAN, bank details and a menu with prices and photos.
3. Build a delivery menu. List items that travel well. Use the same prices as your own channel, so you can compare margins honestly.
4. Set delivery terms. Decide who books the rider and who pays for it: the seller app, a logistics partner, or your own staff.
5. Test before going live. Place a few orders yourself through two different buyer apps and check the payout statement against each bill.

What does ONDC cost a restaurant?

There is no single ONDC commission. The government says "the exact margin varies based on the network participants and their commercial terms" (PIB, July 2025). What you pay is the sum of up to four parts.

The reports disagree on when the network fee started. MediaNama reported it would apply from 1 January 2025 (MediaNama). Business Standard, citing The Economic Times, later said April 2025 (Business Standard). We could not find ONDC's own circular, so ask your seller app whether it passes this fee on to you.

For comparison, MediaNama reported in March 2026 that Zomato charges restaurants about 30% in commission (MediaNama). Your actual aggregator rate depends on your contract, city and whether you pay for ads, so use your own invoice, not the headline number.

How many orders does ONDC actually send?

Fewer than the aggregators, and the recent public numbers are thin. ONDC does not publish a regular food-order count that we could find, so the figures below come from company statements and press reports, some of them old.

• March 2024: ONDC's chief business officer said monthly food orders had crossed 5 lakh, up from about 4,000 a year earlier (KNN India).
• September 2024: magicpin said it handled 1.5 lakh daily orders on ONDC, a figure that covers food delivery and logistics together, and that about 90% of ONDC food orders from Paytm, Tata Neu and Ola were fulfilled by it (Business Standard).
• October 2024 to February 2025: retail orders on the network, which include food, fell from 6.5 million to 4.6 million a month (Business Standard).
• January to August 2025: total retail orders fell by more than 5% (MediaNama).
• December 2025: 1.16 lakh+ retail sellers were live across 630+ cities, across all retail categories, not restaurants only (PIB, March 2026).

For scale, Swiggy alone averaged 275.4 thousand monthly transacting restaurant partners in the January–March 2026 quarter (Swiggy Q4 FY2026). The magicpin and ONDC figures above are not measured the same way, so do not add or compare them directly.

What changed in 2025 and 2026?

The subsidy era ended, some buyer apps left, and new zero-commission players arrived next to the network.

• Incentives cut. ONDC's monthly cap on incentives fell from ₹3 crore in July 2024 to around ₹30 lakh by March 2025. PhonePe's Pincode had already exited, and Paytm removed ONDC from its home screen (Business Standard).
• Ola paused. Ola stopped food delivery on its own app and on ONDC in December 2025, with no restart date (MediaNama).
• Rapido's Ownly. In November 2025 Rapido partnered with magicpin to reach its 80,000-plus restaurants, then charging restaurants a flat ₹25 per order plus GST (MediaNama). By its Bengaluru launch in March 2026, Ownly said it charged restaurants nothing and customers ₹30 per delivery (MediaNama).

Ownly is a separate app, not ONDC itself. But because it draws on magicpin's restaurant base, listing through magicpin may put you in front of both.

ONDC or aggregators: what are the honest trade-offs?

ONDC wins on cost and control. Aggregators win on demand and reliability.

The weakest point is service. When Ola paused, users reported delayed refunds and stuck delivery statuses, which are the buyer app's job under ONDC's design (MediaNama). Your restaurant's name is still on the order, so bad support from the buyer app can hurt your reviews.

Worked example: one ₹500 order, two channels

These numbers are illustrative, not quotes. Use your own contracts.

• Aggregator: ₹500 order at an assumed 25% commission leaves ₹375 before packaging and GST treatment.
• ONDC: ₹500 order with an assumed 2% seller-app fee (₹10), an assumed 3% buyer-app fee (₹15) and the ₹1.5 network fee leaves ₹473.50, with delivery billed to the customer.

The ONDC order nets you about ₹98 more. But if ONDC brings 5 orders a day and the aggregator brings 50, the aggregator still pays most of your delivery bills. The case for ONDC is the extra margin on orders you would not otherwise get, not a switch.

So should you list?

List if you already have a POS or seller app that offers ONDC at low setup cost, you can keep delivery prices equal to your own channel, and you are in a city where buyer apps are active. Skip it for now if listing needs a new tablet, a second menu to maintain and staff time you do not have. Either way, review after 60 to 90 days on one measure: net margin per ONDC order, multiplied by the orders it actually brought.