Shipt Membership: Benefits & Cost

Shipt’s help center lists the plans plainly: unlimited deliveries for $10.99 a month or $99 a year, with delivery free on orders over $35. Twelve monthly payments add up to $131.88, which is $32.88 more than the yearly plan. In our review we found no benefit that belongs to one standard plan and not the other, so the monthly plan is a test drive. If you change from monthly to yearly, Shipt’s help pages say the difference is charged to your card immediately.

Without a membership you can still use Shipt through what its terms call Pay Per Order. The help center puts the one-time delivery fee at $10 and says it varies by market, and Shipt may change it. Non-members may also see a service fee on top. That is the number the membership replaces, and it is the number every break-even claim online quietly depends on.

The trial deserves care. Shipt offers 14 days free to new members, and its help center says that at the end of the trial your account converts to the membership plan of your choice. Its terms say you can cancel before the trial ends to avoid the fee, through your Manage Membership page. Nothing in what we read suggests a reminder email will arrive for you, so the end date is yours to track.

Free delivery over $35 is real, and it is the whole financial case for a plan. Shipt’s help center states it three times in slightly different words, always with the same footnote: orders under $35 carry a $7 fee for members, alcohol orders may carry another $7 where offered, and fees vary by market. In our review the footnote did the heavy lifting. The sticker price tells you what the plan costs; the footnote tells you what it does not cover.

One fee deserves its own paragraph. Shipt’s help center says that customers who place delivery orders in California see a $3.99 CA Shopper Benefits fee at checkout, tied to Proposition 22, which sets guaranteed earnings for California shoppers. Older versions of Shipt’s help text listed the fee at $2.99, so it has changed. A proposed class action filed against Target and Shipt in California argued that the fee works like a delivery fee even for members who were promised free delivery. That is an allegation, and Target’s terms, as tracked by a terms-monitoring service, added a disclosure in April that the fee is charged on all same-day deliveries in California.

Anyone who has received the wrong brand of yogurt knows the real friction in grocery delivery is not the fee; it is the substitution. Shipt lets members build a list of favorite shoppers and match with them. Its terms are blunt about the flip side: if you tell the shopper to use discretion on substitutions, or ask them to contact you and then do not respond, you consent to their reasonable judgment. Substitute items may differ in brand, quality or price.

That makes two habits worth building. Set dietary preferences and substitution rules before the order, and reply quickly when your shopper messages you. A shopper who knows you wanted the low-sodium version is a better refund policy than any help-center article.

Shipt’s terms explain something that startles first-time users. When you place an order, Shipt immediately charges the card on your account for an amount that exceeds your order total, to cover substitutions, special requests and add-ons made while shopping. The terms say the pre-authorization will never exceed $50 over your checkout total, and that any excess is refunded automatically, though it can take a day or more to clear.

For anyone on a tight budget or a nearly full debit card, that matters. If your balance is thin, a $50 hold can bounce a transaction or trigger an overdraft. If you use a debit card, remember that Shipt’s terms also treat your card as authorization for recurring membership charges, which is another reason to keep the balance healthy.

Shipt’s membership does not include streaming, free shipping or a loyalty-card discount. Older coverage from 2023 mentioned a SiriusXM trial and free shipping from a flower-gift brand; we found no current listing of either in Shipt’s help center. If a perk is not named in the app, do not count it. Shipt also says it may change features and benefits through updates without any obligation to keep a particular one, so treat every extra as temporary.

One more limit: Shipt’s terms say orders are subject to each retailer’s own policies, and Shipt does not guarantee that members accrue store loyalty points. If you rely on a store’s rewards program, check whether it applies to delivery orders before you shift your weekly shop.

Shipt’s help center says that if you are not a Target Circle 360 member, Shipt prices vary slightly from in-store prices to cover the costs of picking, packing and processing. Its own example is a loaf of Wonder Bread that costs $2.29 in the store and $2.59 through Shipt. The same page says that, without Circle 360, you can expect to pay about $5 more using Shipt than on a $35 order purchased in the store yourself, excluding delivery fees. Shipt’s terms add that displayed prices may exceed the in-store price.

Take those numbers at face value. $5 on a $35 order is about 14%, and 30 cents on a $2.29 loaf is about 13%. If that rate held on a larger basket, which it may not because markups vary by item and store, the cost scales with your shopping, while the delivery fee does not. In our markup modeling, we used Shipt’s own ratio as a scenario rather than a forecast.

Read that table carefully. It compares only the delivery fee a membership saves with the markup a non-Circle 360 member pays, and it says nothing about the value of your time. A membership can still be worth it for convenience. What it cannot do is make Shipt a way to spend less on groceries than the store. For big weekly baskets, the economics point toward either Target Circle 360, where Shipt’s help center says markups are removed, or a store pickup.

A word of caution on that Circle 360 promise. The footnote on Shipt’s pricing page says the offer is valid for Target Circle 360 members and runs through December. It also says that no markups means prices are generally the same as in-store, with exceptions for alcohol and items from retailers where alcohol is predominantly sold. And in-store deals may not apply. If you are choosing Circle 360 for the no-markup benefit, check what happens to the offer after that date before you renew.

In our break-even testing we divided each price by the delivery fee it replaces. The $99 yearly plan needs 10 deliveries at $10 and 15 at $7. The monthly plan costs $131.88 a year, so it needs 14 and 19. The $4.99 SNAP and student plans cost $59.88 a year, so they need only 6 and 9. Target Circle 360 at the Circle Card price of $49 needs 5 and 7, although Target’s free delivery applies to same-day orders over $35, not every order.

Two notes on that list. Tips are separate and, according to Shipt’s help center, shoppers receive 100% of what you tip; Shipt credits and gift cards cannot be used for tips. And alcohol has its own rules, including a $7 fee in some places, a requirement to be 21 or older, ID checks at the door, and a promise from Shipt that it will not deliver alcohol to someone who appears intoxicated.

Start with the refund policy as written. Shipt’s terms say it may provide membership fee refunds at its sole discretion, with three pieces of guidance. If you have a yearly plan, you are eligible for a full refund if you cancel during the first month. After the first month, you are not eligible for a refund, absent extenuating circumstances determined at Shipt’s discretion. If you have a monthly plan, you are not eligible for a refund. And the terms add that anyone who has previously been a Shipt member is not eligible for a membership fee refund.

Two more rules matter. If you cancel and receive a refund, your benefits end at cancellation, so you do not keep the plan for the paid period. And Shipt’s terms say that if your payment for a renewal cannot be processed, the membership will not renew and will simply expire, so an expired card does not create a charge. We also found third-party articles claiming Shipt issues prorated refunds on yearly plans at any time; we could not find that in Shipt’s current terms, so do not plan around it.