DoorDash, the largest U.S. food-delivery platform by market share, announced Tuesday that it reached a $131.5 million settlement over compliance concerns regarding compensation of delivery workers in the nation’s most populous city.
In a September 22 release regarding the nine-figure settlement with New York City’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, DoorDash stated: “Simply put, we screwed up. Our mistakes meant some Dashers were underpaid or paid late.”
The settlement includes $12.3 million for Dashers—DoorDash’s delivery gig workers—impacted by missing or late payments; $16.7 million in fines to the NYC DCWP; and more than $83 million to resolve a disagreement over how to calculate pay for time Dashers spend online between deliveries.
As a result of the settlement, about 264,000 Dashers will receive payments, including 209,000 for missing or late compensation. DoorDash said less than 1 percent of all payments to NYC Dashers were affected; still, around $6.6 million worth of payments never reached couriers, and another $5.7 million arrived days or weeks late.
“When a worker earns a wage, they deserve to be paid that wage — not tomorrow, not after a lawsuit, but on time and in full,” NYC Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani said in a September 22 DCWP press release. “DoorDash underpaid more than 260,000 workers, and today we are getting that money back. This is what it looks like when City government stands with working people: We find the violations, we enforce the law and we make sure workers get what they’re owed. No corporation is above the law, and this administration will keep fighting until every worker gets the pay and protections they deserve.”
Missing payments owed to Dashers averaged $7.70, and 65 percent of impacted delivery workers were underpaid by $1 or less. Dashers will be paid at least $10, even if they were underpaid by less than that, according to DoorDash. The median payment to eligible Dashers will be about $48.
In Tuesday’s release, DoorDash described New York City’s rules as “the most complex earning standard for delivery workers in the country.” The company said the payment errors occurred “despite our best efforts to comply with the new rules,” which took effect in 2023. Still, DoorDash acknowledged that the unintentional nature of the errors “doesn’t make them okay.”
DoorDash said it has corrected the technical issues that caused the payment errors. The company said it improved validation of banking information and strengthened its compliance program.
The lion’s share of the settlement related to how bonuses were calculated for Dashers who were online or on call but not completing active deliveries. The City and DoorDash calculated on-call time differently. The 3PD platform maintained it believed “our approach was fair, practical, and legal,” but added: “Rather than spend years fighting over whose method was right, we chose to pay Dashers sooner and use the City’s method going forward.”
According to data from Gridwise’s 2026 Gig Mobility Report, the share of couriers’ time spent between deliveries decreased slightly late last year, countering a trend of declining utilization that began in 2020.
The settlement comes less than a year after DCWP accused Uber Eats and DoorDash of using “design tricks” in their interfaces that contributed to a reduction of more than $550 million in delivery workers’ tip income after NYC began enforcing its minimum-pay rate for contracted delivery workers in 2023.
