Top 100 Services on Demand Companies in the UK | 2026

UK services on demand companies raised £702m across 56 deals in 2020 — the sector’s all-time peak, driven by the COVID-era surge in food delivery, grocery, and home services. Annual investment has since been volatile: £645m in 2022, £77m in 2024, £195m in 2025, with the first quarter of 2026 delivering £48.6m across 14 deals. Across all time, UK services on demand companies have raised £3.35b in equity funding tracked by Beauhurst, with 66% of that total arriving since the start of 2020.

We’ve ranked the top 100 services on demand companies by total equity raised (all data sourced from the Beauhurst platform).

An overview of the services on demand sector

Services on demand covers companies delivering goods, labour, and professional services via apps and online platforms — typically with same-day or rapid fulfilment. UK services on demand companies span food and grocery delivery, ride-hailing and short-distance transport, on-demand healthcare and pharmacy, home cleaning and laundry, beauty treatments at home, on-demand workforce platforms for hospitality and retail, last-mile courier services, flexible workspace and storage, and AI-driven matching of consumers to local tradespeople.

Beauhurst tracks 223 active services on demand companies in the UK, up from 82 in the final quarter of 2015 — a 172% increase over the decade. Together, these companies generated £5.96b in turnover according to latest financials and support an estimated 24,146 employees across the UK. Across all time, services on demand companies have raised £3.35b in equity funding tracked on the platform. The 2020 peak (£702m) was driven by the COVID-era acceleration of food delivery, grocery, and home services; annual investment has since been highly variable, swinging between £77m in 2024 and £195m in 2025 as the sector consolidates around its category leaders.

Key findings

• Deliveroo tops the ranking with £1.27b raised. The London-based food delivery platform accounts for 38% of all UK services on demand equity raised to date — the second-largest single-company sector concentration we’ve measured, behind only DICE in EventTech.
• Cera (£480m, London) in on-demand homecare and telehealth takes second, followed by Gousto (£321m, London) in meal kit delivery, Zapp (£194m, North West) in rapid grocery delivery, and HungryPanda (£169m, London) in specialist food delivery. The top five account for 73% of all UK services on demand equity raised — tied with EventTech as the most concentrated top five we’ve measured in any sector.
• London dominates with 69 of the top 100, followed by the South East (10), the East of England (six), the South West (four), and the North West (three). The top 100 spans 10 UK regions, with Tayside, the East of Scotland, and the North East all making single-entry appearances. Notably, neither Wales nor Northern Ireland features in the top 100.
• Venture-stage businesses lead the top 100 with 45 entries, followed by seed (21), growth (18), and established (six), with five exited and five dead. The 10 inactive companies in the top 100 — plus 23 dead businesses across the wider sector — give services on demand the highest mortality rate of any sector we’ve covered, reflecting how many on-demand business models have struggled to reach sustainable economics.

Top 100 services on demand companies in the UK

The future of services on demand in the UK

UK services on demand investment has settled into a pattern of volatility well below the 2020 peak (£702m), with annual funding swinging between £77m and £645m over the past four years. Company formations have collapsed even more sharply — from 24 new businesses in 2017 to just one in 2025 — and 23 of the 195 staged companies in the sector are now dead, the highest mortality rate we’ve measured in any sector. The picture is one of consolidation around a handful of category leaders rather than ongoing expansion, with Deliveroo (£1.27b) alone accounting for 38% of all sector equity and the top five representing 73%.

Food and delivery remain the largest sub-cluster, with Deliveroo (£1.27b) anchoring the category alongside Gousto (£321m), Zapp (£194m), HungryPanda (£169m), Snappy Shopper (£27.8m), Beelivery (£4.60m), and Slerp (£9.74m) building around rapid grocery, meal kits, specialist cuisines, and white-label delivery infrastructure. On-demand healthcare and wellness form the second pillar, with Cera (£480m), Oxford Online Pharmacy (£11.1m), Toothfairy (£11.1m), GPDQ (£5.53m), Apian (£5.00m), Inflow (£11.5m), Spill (£2.76m), Self Space (£3.39m), and Nolea (£1.00m) extending the on-demand model into homecare, dental, mental health, and drone-delivered medical logistics. A third cluster spans mobility, beauty, cleaning, and trade services — Wheely (£25.3m), Sherbet London (£46.0m), beryl (£22.2m), Urban (£24.2m), Laundryheap (£19.1m), Housekeep (£1.01m), Stint (£35.0m), Shift (£29.0m), and UENI (£28.8m) — applying the on-demand interface to legacy service categories.

With this in mind, it’s possible that — depending on broader economic conditions, gig-economy regulation, and the cost of customer acquisition — UK services on demand enters a phase defined by AI agents and consolidation rather than headcount growth and new entrants. The sector has accumulated £5.96b in turnover and 24,146 employees, suggesting the operating businesses are real, but the funnel of new investment and formations has narrowed sharply; whether AI-driven cost reduction reignites growth around the existing leaders, or whether the sector simply matures around Deliveroo and a small number of vertical specialists, will define how much further capital the sector can attract.