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How we know

Last changed 24 October 2026

Every figure on this site comes from one of seven places. Each is described here in plain words, with what it can and cannot tell you. If something is wrong where you live, tell us.

1. Which apps are in which city

The store counts come from QuickCommerceMap, made by the same team: a count of every quick commerce store we can find, for each app, redone every month. In October 2026 it had 11,844 stores on 14 apps, 7,388 of them dark stores of Blinkit, Zepto, Swiggy Instamart, Flipkart Minutes and BigBasket.

  • An app is "in" a city when it has at least one store there. A city page lists every such app.
  • Blinkit, Zepto, Swiggy Instamart and BigBasket are counted exactly in each city. Flipkart Minutes, Amazon Now, JioMart and the food, fashion, beauty and pet apps are rounded in each city (for example ~110, or "under 5"), as on QuickCommerceMap, whose paid data has the exact figures. An app in a single city is shown exactly there, because its India total gives it away.
  • Totals for India are exact, except Zepto Cafe's, which is a minimum (at least 281 cafes).
  • JioMart delivers from Reliance's own stores, and Amazon Now partly from partner supermarkets: we call them stores, not dark stores.

Type a city and you go to its page. Type a pincode and we look it up: you go to the page of the city it belongs to, with one line saying which apps have a store within about 3 km of that pincode, and which apps list the pincode as one they deliver to (Amazon Now, JioMart and DMart Ready publish such lists). "Near me" finds the nearest pincode to your phone and does the same. We never send back a store's position or a distance, and we do not keep your pincode or your location.

An app delivers a few kilometres around each store and can serve one street and not the next, so the app itself is the final word for your address.

3. Delivery time and night delivery

Delivery time is the typical number of minutes an app showed for homes across a city. We ask each app at a fixed set of places where people live (the busiest square kilometre in every block of about 2.7 km across India, the same places every month) and note the minutes shown by the store that serves each place. A city's figure is the middle value. It needs three or more of the app's stores in the city, five places and three different serving stores. In October 2026 we have it for Flipkart Minutes; the other apps follow from the next monthly check, and a city page ranks the apps only where two or more have the figure.

We do not use the minutes an app shows right next to its own store: there every app shows its minimum (Blinkit shows 8 at nine stores in 10), and further away the order between apps changes.

Night delivery: in early October 2026 we checked every store of Blinkit, Zepto, Swiggy Instamart, Flipkart Minutes and BigBasket at its own address between 2:15 and 4:45 am, to see whether the app was still taking orders there, from that store or another. A city figure needs three or more of the app's stores there.

Opening hours, where we show them, are the hours each store lists in the app. They can differ from the night check: an app can send night orders to a store that stays open, and a store listed as open 24 hours can still pause orders.

4. Prices

We compare 24 everyday products (milk, butter, atta, rice, dal, oil, tea, biscuits, soap and so on), plus six pet foods and seven beauty products for the pet and beauty pages. Each is the same brand, name and pack, at the same MRP, on every app compared. The prices come from our own check of what the apps listed between 6 and 11 October 2026 (Supertails and Nykaa Now to 14 October 2026).

  • A product's price in a city is its typical (middle) price across the app's stores there that sold it, with five stores at least; across India, with 100 stores at least. GST included. Delivery fees, coupons and member discounts are not included.
  • Zepto lists several pack sizes under one product, so for Zepto we use only the stores selling the pack at the product's MRP.
  • An app selling a product at another MRP is left out of that product until we check it in the app. An app at the product's MRP always stays in. Any other app whose price sits more than a quarter away from the other apps' is left out of that product, because that usually means a different pack under the same name.
  • A city's total adds up the products every app compared there sold, so it can cover fewer than 24.

The city totals compare Blinkit, Zepto, Swiggy Instamart, Flipkart Minutes, BigBasket, Amazon Now and JioMart. We publish typical prices by city and across India for these products only; nothing more detailed.

5. Charges, memberships, growth and facts about each app

Owners, launch dates, promises, charges, memberships and features come from the apps' own pages, their stock-exchange filings and reliable news, researched in October 2026. Every one carries its source and date, listed at the foot of each app's page. Charges change often and differ by area, time and person, so each one shows the month it was reported. We print nothing we could not source.

On the research pages, growth comes from the companies' own reports (for example the dark stores Blinkit's owner reports every quarter), and market sizes from the research firms that made them, each named with its date. Those are their figures, not ours, and they differ from firm to firm. Apps we do not count store by store are listed from company announcements and news, with the month of each figure. Our own store counts changed method until September 2026, so we do not draw them month to month as growth.

6. Products and brands

The product and brand pages come from Shelf, made by the same team for brands: in October 2026 it read, store by store, what Blinkit, Zepto, Swiggy Instamart, BigBasket, Flipkart Minutes and JioMart listed. From that read we publish, for 3,09,631 products of 17,600 brands, which apps listed each one, in how many stores and cities, and which cities.

  • A store counts when it listed the product as we looked. Stock changes through the day, so a store near you can be out of it, or have it when our count says otherwise.
  • One product page covers all its pack sizes. The packs and MRPs shown are the ones printed in the apps.
  • For Blinkit, Zepto, Swiggy Instamart and BigBasket we also show the pincodes of the stores that listed a product: in every city for a product in 400 of their stores or fewer, and otherwise in cities with six such pincodes or fewer. The place name beside a pincode is its post office's.
  • A product's map marks the squares around those stores, for the same products.
  • Flipkart Minutes and JioMart counts are rounded, as on QuickCommerceMap. Amazon Now is not on these pages yet: its listings do not name brands the same way.
  • A product needs three stores to have a page. Medicines, tobacco, and loose fruit and vegetables have none.
  • We never show a product's price in a store, its stock, its rank in search or its ads. Those are what Shelf sells to brands.

7. The map

The map is QuickCommerceMap's free map, with the same stores, counted in October 2026. Each square is a map tile about a kilometre across with at least one store in it, never a store's own spot; zoomed in, a dot marks each store of Blinkit, Zepto, Swiggy Instamart and BigBasket in its square. Flipkart Minutes' squares carry a padlock, and Amazon Now's are dashed squares about two kilometres across: QuickCommerceMap's paid data has their exact spots. JioMart is counted by city, so it is not drawn. India's borders follow the Survey of India; if they cannot be drawn, no map is shown.

What we never do

  • Show a store's position, address or the distance to it. Those are part of QuickCommerceMap's data.
  • Take money from an app to be listed, ranked or placed. No app pays us.
  • Call a price "live" or "today's". Prices carry the month we checked them.