Split your quick commerce ad budget by where your products sell and convert, not by how big each platform is: start from your own sales mix across Blinkit, Zepto and Instamart, then move money each week toward the platform that brings orders at the lowest cost. Platform size tells you where demand is, but your category, your cities and your stock decide what each rupee earns.
How big is each quick commerce platform?
Blinkit is the largest by orders. Mint, citing Datum Intelligence, reported that “Blinkit led quick-commerce order volumes in September with a 40.2% share, followed by Zepto at 23% and Instamart at 13.6%”. The same report puts Flipkart Minutes at 11%, Amazon Now at 7.4% and BigBasket at 4.6%.
Those are shares of orders, not of your sales. They tell you how many shoppers each platform reaches, which is a fair starting point if you’re new to quick commerce. They don’t tell you where your products are listed, which cities you’re stocked in, or how your category performs on each app.
Ad money is growing fast. In April 2026, Datum Intelligence expected quick commerce platforms to clock ₹4,900 crore in ad revenue this year, up from ₹3,000 crore, and brands told Mint they now put up to half of their digital ad spends into quick commerce apps.
How do ads work on each platform?
The mechanics are similar, with sponsored listings at the centre, but the controls and the way you pay differ:
| Platform | What you buy | How you pay |
|---|---|---|
| Blinkit | Sponsored placements in search, category pages, recommendations and brand stores through Brand Central, across eight ad formats | A daily budget and bids, paying for clicks or impressions depending on the format |
| Zepto | Mostly search ads: Zepto’s engineering team says “A large portion of ad budgets flows into search ads” | A single composite bid optimised for RoAS, or bids by keyword |
| Swiggy Instamart | Targeted search ads through its advertising portal | Swiggy’s annual report recognises sponsored listing revenue based on the number of clicks |
| Flipkart Minutes | We found no ads page specific to Minutes; Flipkart’s seller ads page lists cost per click and Smart ROI campaigns | Check in your Flipkart Ads account |
Because the rules differ, compare platforms on results, not on settings. A bid that holds rank on Blinkit says nothing about the bid you need on Zepto.
Why shouldn’t you split by market share?
Because a rupee only earns where your product can be bought. Three things break the link between a platform’s size and what it can do for you:
- Where you’re listed. Brands launch city by city: on Blinkit, sellers launch listings in their preferred city, and on Instamart, expansion into new cities or SKUs is evaluated based on the performance of existing products. If you’re live in five cities on one platform and fifteen on another, the smaller platform can be the bigger opportunity for you.
- Your category. Your category may sell differently on each app, and your own orders by platform show that better than any market report.
- Your stock. An ad in a dark store where you’re out of stock can’t turn into an order. Dark-store availability decides how much of a platform’s demand you can serve.
How do you set a starting split?
Use the last four weeks of your own data and build the split in four steps:
- Map where you can sell. For each platform, list the cities and stores where your SKUs are live and in stock. Leave the rest out of the plan for now.
- Start from your sales mix. Set each platform’s opening share of budget close to its share of your quick commerce sales. If you’re new, weight it toward the platforms with the most orders in your cities.
- Fund search first. Search ads catch shoppers who already intend to buy, so they are usually the right first spend on every platform.
- Keep a test slice. Hold back around a tenth of the budget to try a new platform, city or format, so the split can learn rather than repeat last month.
How do you move budget between platforms?
Weekly, in small steps, on settled numbers.
Each week, compare platforms on the same measures: ROAS and cost per order, read on D+3 attribution so late-credited orders are counted. Move budget from the platform with the weakest return to the one with the strongest, a step at a time, and watch whether the gain holds at the higher spend: a platform that looks best at a small budget may not stay best at a large one.
Don’t move money blindly. Before you cut a platform, check whether the drop came from demand or from an empty shelf. If stock ran out, more budget elsewhere won’t fix it, and cutting the platform will cost you rank when stock returns. Our guide to share of shelf in quick commerce covers reading visibility by platform, and our ROAS guide covers reading return.
Keep brand searches funded on every platform you sell on. A shopper typing your brand name is close to buying, and an uncovered brand search leaves the first screen open to other brands’ ads.
How does ShelfRadar split budget across platforms?
ShelfRadar works with Blinkit, Zepto, Swiggy Instamart and Flipkart Minutes. It normalises data across platforms into one model, then reads your own sales against availability and visibility, which tells you whether a drop came from demand or from an empty shelf. Its agents run bid-budget experiments on your campaigns and turn the results into an optimization plan, and every ad change is approved by a person before it goes live.
Frequently asked questions
Which quick commerce platform has the most orders?
Blinkit. Mint, citing Datum Intelligence, reported that Blinkit had a 40.2% share of quick commerce order volumes in September 2026, followed by Zepto at 23%, Instamart at 13.6% and Flipkart Minutes at 11%.
How much of my ad budget should go to Blinkit?
There’s no fixed share. Start close to Blinkit’s share of your own quick commerce sales, then move budget weekly toward whichever platform brings orders at the lowest cost, read on settled D+3 numbers.
Do quick commerce platforms charge per click?
Often. Blinkit charges for clicks or impressions depending on the ad format. Swiggy’s annual report says Instamart’s sponsored listing revenue is recognised based on the number of clicks.
How often should I rebalance my quick commerce ad budget?
Weekly, in small steps, comparing ROAS and cost per order on D+3 numbers. Check stock before cutting a platform, because a drop caused by an empty shelf won’t be fixed by moving budget.