Food Photo Specs for Delivery Apps: Swiggy, Zomato, DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub (2026 Reference)

Every delivery platform renders your dish photos differently, and each one rejects images for different reasons. Upload a tall portrait shot to a platform that crops to 16:9 and your biryani loses its garnish. Send a 600px file where 1400px is expected and your thumbnail looks soft next to a crisp competitor. This is a working reference for the actual specs each major platform asks for, with a clear line between what official docs confirm and what is safe general guidance.

A note on how to read this: platform requirements change, and many "spec sheets" online are third-party guesses. Where we confirmed a number against a platform's own merchant or developer documentation, we say so. Where we couldn't, we give you a safe range that satisfies every platform rather than inventing a precise figure.

The one master file that works everywhere

If you shoot or restyle a single high-quality master per dish, you avoid most rejections. Here is a safe master spec that comfortably clears every platform minimum we found:

• Dimensions: at least 1400x1400 px; 2000x2000 px is an ideal upload target so the platform can downscale cleanly on retina screens.
• Format: JPG (smaller files, great for food) or PNG. Avoid GIF unless a platform specifically allows it.
• File size: keep under 5 MB. This clears the tightest common ceiling while staying high quality.
• Framing: one dish, centered, filling roughly 75-85% of the frame, no text, no people (hands are usually fine), no price or promo overlays.

From that master you crop to each platform's preferred aspect ratio. The sections below tell you what to crop to.

Swiggy (India)

Guidance circulating for Swiggy partners points to square uploads of at least 1024x1024 px in JPG or PNG, with a 5 MB ceiling. We could not verify a single canonical number across all of Swiggy's official surfaces, so treat 1024x1024 as a floor and shoot larger.

• Use square (1:1) framing; Swiggy's item cards lean square, so the dish displays without surprise cropping.
• Keep the dish centered and dominant.
• No promotional text or banners baked into the image; these are a common rejection cause.
• When in doubt, upload the larger master rather than a pre-shrunk version.

Zomato (India)

Zomato distinguishes between menu-item photos, cover/restaurant photos, and photographed menu pages, and each behaves differently.

• Menu-item / dish photos: aim for 1200x800 px or larger in JPEG or PNG. Horizontal framing tends to fit Zomato's layouts.
• Restaurant / cover photos: historically 1200x800 px or larger, horizontal preferred.
• Menu pages (photographed menu cards): commonly cited around 650x700 px max.

These reflect Zomato's partner guidance, but numbers shift between app versions, so verify in your current Partner app before a big upload. Zomato also enforces no-people and no-copyright rules strictly: only upload original photography of your own dishes.

DoorDash (US)

DoorDash is where aspect ratio matters most: it shows your photo in two shapes, a square thumbnail in lists and a wide header on the item detail page.

• Aspect ratio: 16:9, landscape only. DoorDash's own glossary confirms photos display as a 1:1 thumbnail and a 16:9 detail header, so center the dish to survive both crops.
• Dimensions: DoorDash documents a 1400x800 px minimum.
• Format: JPG, JPEG, or PNG.
• File size: portal uploads allow large files, but integrated/API images cap at 2 MB for auto-approval, so compress accordingly.

DoorDash explicitly rejects photos where the dish is cut off or only partially shown, so keep the full dish centered.

Uber Eats (US and international)

Uber Eats publishes some of the clearest specs of any platform, and we verified these directly against its merchant help pages.

• Item photos, aspect ratio: between 5:4 and 6:4 (recommended); thumbnails crop to 1:1, so center the dish.
• Item photos, dimensions: width 550-10,000 px, height 440-10,000 px; recommended minimum 1200x800 px.
• Item photos, formats: jpg, png, gif.
• Item photos, file size: max 10 MB.
• Cover photos: 2880x2304 px at a 5:4 ratio.

Uber Eats reviews every photo manually (allow up to about three business days) and rejects stock images, multi-item frames, people (hands excepted), text or logos, and poorly lit or shadow-heavy shots.

Grubhub (US)

Grubhub's customer app displays menu items as square cards (1:1), so frame for a square crop. Grubhub's developer documentation points to a 1024x1024 px floor, below which items can be hidden from photo-led ordering surfaces; shoot for 1400x1400 px or larger to look premium. JPEG is preferred, PNG accepted, one dish per frame, no text overlays. Default to the under-5 MB master and you'll be safe.

How to operate this in practice

You do not want five separate photo libraries. Build one premium master per dish, then export platform-specific crops:

• Square (1:1): Swiggy, Grubhub, and DoorDash thumbnails.
• Wide (16:9): DoorDash detail headers.
• Slightly wide (5:4 to 6:4): Uber Eats, and a comfortable fit for Zomato's horizontal preference.

[PLENY DATA - insert your real figure here before publishing: average lift in tap-through or conversion when restaurants switch from phone snapshots to menu-ready photos]

This is exactly the problem Pleny is built to remove. Upload a phone photo, get back a clean, premium, correctly-sized image per platform, with the dish centered and the crops handled for you, so a spec change on one app doesn't mean reshooting your whole menu. Spend your time on the food, not on pixel math.