Delhi
MEDIUM · sourced, not yet live-verified
Pending live-verification. The source URLs have not yet been fetched and archived in this round; the city will return to a HIGH classification once that is done. Original rationale: Fairwork India 2024 Ratings (worker interviews conducted in Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram per cxotoday.com Oct 2024) + TeamLease Services (major Indian staffing firm) data + CollegeSearch India compilation of Zomato/Swiggy 2025 monthly earnings. ₹110/hr × $0.0120 = $1.32 USD.
Only HIGH-confidence cities carry a full verification audit. See the methodology for what each tier means.
Earnings (USD per hour)
Source: CollegeSearch India delivery worker monthly pay analysis
What would you take home in Delhi?
Take-home, weekly
$23
Take-home, monthly
$99
Gross, weekly
$40
Gross, monthly
$172
With a 1BR apartment outside the city centre at $181/mo, rent costs more than your monthly take-home (183% of monthly net).
Take-home is gross hourly minus an estimated tax/expense rate per country. See the methodology page for the derivation. This widget assumes you actually work the hours you set. For app-based delivery, a portion of logged-in time is unpaid waiting; the headline rate reflects engaged time only where regulators have defined it.
Cost of living vs. earnings
That works out to roughly 55 hours per week. Rent at $181 per month is 79 percent of gross monthly earnings, which puts a Delhi delivery driver in HUD's “severely cost-burdened” band by the federal definition (over 30 percent of gross income on housing). Measured against net take-home pay, which is what a worker actually has available to spend, the same rent is 138 percent. Affordable rent at this earnings rate, defined by HUD as no more than 30 percent of gross income, would be around $70 per month. Across the 46 cities in the dataset, Delhi ranks 37th for hours needed to cover rent, where lower is better.
Pay vs. local labour market
Gross hourly is 67% of local minimum wage, 51% of local median.
Notes
Delhi minimum wage INR 18,000/month (skilled). Swiggy and Zomato dominate; Zepto and Blinkit add 10-15 minute grocery vertical. Long hours common (12-14/day).
View Delhi on the interactive map
See full source citations for this city on the sources page. Read about how each metric is computed in the methodology.
Primary earnings source: www.collegesearch.in/articles/zomato-delivery-boy-salary-vs-swiggy-delivery-boy-salary-inhand-earnings-per-month · archived