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DoorDash credit expires six months from the day it was issued, and it will never pay your tip.

Which document governs your credit

This trips people up, because the expiry is not written in the referral terms. The Consumer Referral Program Terms and Conditions, which carry the line "Last updated: May 1, 2023", hand the question over in a single sentence: "Referral Credits are subject to the DoorDash Terms and Conditions for Promotional Offers and Credits, as applicable." That is the bridge. Everything about the life and death of your balance lives in the second document.

That second document carries no last-updated line anywhere; its General Terms paragraph closes with "©2018 DoorDash, Inc. All Rights Reserved.", so the rules deciding when your credit dies may well be the same rules that were written eight years ago, and DoorDash gives you no way to tell. It is a stack of separately headed blocks covering promo codes, free delivery offers, DashPass trials, discounted subtotals and, at the very bottom, credits. Only the last block applies to a referral balance, and it is four sentences long.

Two clocks, and they are not the same clock

A credit is a balance attached to your account. A code is a string you enter. They run on different clocks. Here is what each document says, quoted.

A code you found on a website starts dying from the day it was last displayed, a date you cannot see and cannot check. The six-month credit clock is the one that applies to a referral balance.

What the balance will not cover

Everything in this table is a direct quotation from the two documents, not our summary of them.

"Credits may not be applied with any other Offer" is stricter than it sounds, because the document defines "Offer(s)" at the top as "any promotion and/or credit". On the face of the text, that rules out combining a credit with a promo code, and it rules out putting two credits on one order. The promo-code block carries its own alcohol bar: "Promo codes cannot be applied to the purchase of alcohol."

One dinner, worked all the way through

First, a warning about the numbers. We are not telling you DoorDash gives you $15. Neither document publishes any referral amount, we take that apart in how much the DoorDash referral is worth, and we will not invent a figure. The $15, the fees and the tax below are all placeholders; substitute your own numbers and the conclusion does not move.

Order one: dinner for two, credit applied

A real saving, but the credit touched exactly one of the five lines. Delivery fee, service fee and tip were all untouched, and the credit terms are silent on whether the tax recalculates against the reduced subtotal, so we have written "about".

Order two: the free-dinner test

You have $15 of credit, so you order $15 of food, and dinner is free. Here is what the exclusions do to that plan.

Ten dollars and change of your own money, for a meal the credit covered entirely. The ratio gets worse on small orders, because delivery fees are close to fixed while the food line shrinks.

Order three: someone adds a six-pack

Put $12 of beer into either cart above and the credit cannot go near it: "Credits cannot be applied towards alcohol purchases". Whether that carves the alcohol line out of an otherwise eligible subtotal, or does something more drastic to the whole order, the terms do not say.

What the terms simply do not say

On every question below, both documents are silent. We are not going to fill the gaps with guesses.

• What "date of issue" means, exactly. Is the clock started when the friend's qualifying order completes, when DoorDash decides it qualified, or when the balance appears in your account? The document says only "the date of issue".
• Whether a partly spent credit keeps its original date. Nothing states whether the remainder inherits the original six-month deadline or gets a new one.
• Whether a balance can be spent across several orders at all. Neither document describes partial redemption, and neither prohibits it.
• Whether expired credit can ever be reinstated. No grace period, no extension and no restoration process appears anywhere.
• Whether a credit reaches taxes and fees. For promo codes the document is explicit: they "cannot be applied towards taxes or fees other than delivery fees (including but not limited to service fees, small order fees, and surge fees)". For credits it says only that they are "applied toward order subtotals".
• Whether the six months is even guaranteed. The General Terms reserve the right to "modify or cancel an Offer at any time" and state that "Terms are subject to change by DoorDash at any time".

Do this, in this order

1. Find out which instrument you are actually holding. A balance in the account is credit and lives six months. A code you have to type is a promo code and may already be most of the way through a thirty-day fuse you never saw start.
2. Write the expiry date down the day the credit lands. Put it in a calendar with a two-week warning. DoorDash is under no obligation to remind you, and "DoorDash's computer is the official date/time keeping device for all Offers".
3. Budget the tip as your own money, always. If you were planning to let a credit cover a whole dinner, add the tip back into your mental total before you decide whether the offer changes anything.
4. Spend it on the largest food order you would have placed anyway. The credit reaches only the subtotal and the fees barely move, so the proportion of the bill it covers rises with the size of the food line.
5. Keep alcohol out of the credit order. The exclusion is written twice for credits and again for promo codes, and the interaction between an alcohol line and an otherwise eligible subtotal is not documented. Keep them in separate orders.
6. Do not save a code to use alongside the credit. Plan to use one per order, and use the more valuable one first, since the other keeps its own clock running while it waits.
7. If the credit never showed up in the first place, this page is the wrong one. We work through the documented reasons in DoorDash referral credit not received.

Is six months actually generous?

By the standards of this category, yes. Uber Eats gives a referral reward sixty days from the moment the other person activates the offer, a clock that starts on somebody else's action. Grubhub runs on a fortnight. Against those, half a year to spend a food credit is one of the few places where DoorDash's terms are friendlier than the neighbours'.

• DoorDash credit, from the date of issue6 months
• Uber Eats reward, from the moment the other person activates the offerSixty days
• Grubhub, on the codeA fortnight

Three clocks in the same category, drawn to the same scale. The two guides beside this one are linked above.

The catch is not the clock, it is the coverage. A long expiry on a narrow credit is a cheaper promise than a short expiry on a broad one, and DoorDash has chosen the first. Read the headline value as the food-only value and you will price the offer correctly.

Frequently asked

How long does DoorDash credit last?

Six months: "Credit expires 6 months from the date of issue". Referral credit is governed by that block.

Can I use DoorDash credit for the tip?

No. Credits exclude gratuity, so the driver's money is always yours.

Can I buy alcohol with DoorDash credit?

No, and the credit block says so twice over. Promo codes carry the identical bar in their own block.

Does DoorDash warn me before the credit expires?

Nothing in either document promises a warning. Diary it yourself.

My promo code says nothing about a date. When does it die?

Thirty days, from the day it was sent to you or the day it was last displayed online. The second date is invisible to you, which is why codes lifted from coupon sites so often fail.

Can I combine a credit with a promo code?

The text says no: credits cannot be applied with any other offer, and an offer is defined as any promotion or credit.

Can I get expired credit back, or cash it out?

Neither document provides for either. No grace period is described anywhere.

Second opinions

DoorDashDoorDash, the full guideEvery trap, both sides of the programme, and the eligibility test that is settled at checkoutVaries How much is the DoorDash referral?Why neither document publishes a figure, and where the numbers quoted elsewhere come fromRead Credit not received?What to check when no balance ever arrived, in the order to check itRead Uber EatsSixty days rather than six months, and the clock starts on somebody else's actionVaries GrubhubA two-week fuse on the code, and terms untouched since 2018Varies InstacartThe rare delivery app that publishes a ceiling, split across your first two ordersUp to $40

Other things that did not arrive

Every one of these is read from the company’s own document and dated. See all 59 questions we have answered.