Shopper/Independant Contractor - Anonymous employee Instacart Employee Review

1.0
Dec 10, 2018
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

None. Not anymore. They have restructured their pay scale.

Cons

Hard to get hours unless you can work at least 30 hours a week from the start and never, ever go on vacation or else you’ll lose early access to hours in which case you will have to fight to tooth and nail to get them. The pay used to be pretty good but now they are paying out extremely low compensations per delivery. It’s a race to the bottom for anyone who continues to work with instacart.

Explore other reviews about Instacart

5.0
Apr 27, 2026
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Focused direction. Good WLB. Decent pay. Fully remote.

Cons

A bit slow growth on business and career

1
2.0
Jun 21, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Fun going out and talking to people. You will interact with people everyday. You control how much you get paid. Lots of flexibility in the time between accepting an order and traveling to the store and beginning to shop. It isn't pedal to the metal to get to the store like DoorDash is. You can also cancel batches after accepting as long as you keep your rate under 15%. This is different from DoorDash where your rankings will suffer if g.t. 2% cancellation rate.

Cons

There's a learning curve and it takes a while to learn each chain of stores' items. Once you become proficient at one store, the algorithm will lowball your offers relative to other less-experienced Instacart shoppers. Overall, Instacart shoppers likely get paid similar or less than the store's regular employees.

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