82,000 couriers stay self-employed: what the Wolt settlement sets for platform work
On 6 September 2026 a settlement between Wolt and its couriers was filed for labour court approval. It closes a class action opened in 2020 that asked the court to recognise app couriers as salaried employees of the company. The regional labour court certified the class action in August 2022, and a long mediation followed, running to 26 sessions before retired judges Yoram Danziger and Michael Spitzer. The outcome: couriers stay independent service providers, and Wolt pays NIS 34.3 million to roughly 82,000 couriers who worked through the app since November 2018. That averages about NIS 420 per courier.
The settlement is not in force yet. The court has to approve it, and until then no money is distributed and none of the commitments apply.
How the money is split
The one-off payment is set by how many deliveries each courier completed. The per-delivery rate runs from 5 agorot to 20 agorot and rises with volume. A courier with 200 deliveries gets about NIS 13. A courier with 12,000 deliveries gets NIS 2,094. That spread is why the headline sum sounds large and the individual sum usually does not.
What the company commits to going forward
Wolt undertakes that average pay per hour of activity will not fall below the minimum wage. The calculation runs monthly, and the company tops up any shortfall. An external accountant audits performance twice a year against a random sample of 100 couriers.
Alongside that come a 50% match on a courier's own pension contributions, company-funded personal accident insurance of up to EUR 50,000 for death and up to EUR 75,000 where there are dependent children, a right to a hearing before the engagement is terminated, and safety training.
The clause that fixes the meaning of everything else is the one stating plainly that the agreement is no admission by Wolt of the claims and no recognition that an employment relationship existed. Minimum wage, pension and insurance enter here as contract terms with an independent contractor, not as rights flowing from employee status.
What stays on the self-employed person
Anyone earning through a platform keeps their own file with the authorities. Registering with VAT and Income Tax, filing, paying bituach leumi at self-employed rates rather than by deduction from a salary, and income tax advances all sit with them. There is no automatic pension contribution, no severance pay, no paid holiday or sick leave, and no unemployment benefit. The settlement adds a floor to the pay and leaves that structure where it is.
This reaches well past delivery work. The same contractual shape recurs with ride and shuttle drivers, private tutors marketed through a platform, therapists taking bookings from an app, and digital freelancers working through an online marketplace. A class action that ran six years and ended in a settlement preserving the engagement model is a strong signal for how other platforms operating in Israel will draft their own contracts.
What to do with it
Anyone taking income from a platform should know three things about their own position. First, which registration they hold, osek patur or osek murshe, and whether annual turnover has crept towards the threshold that forces the switch. Second, whether that income is actually being reported, including when payment arrives as a transfer from the app rather than against an invoice they issued by hand. Third, which expenses they record. Fuel, running a car or a scooter, insurance, phone and equipment are the difference between tax on turnover and tax on profit, and they are where platform-based self-employed people quietly lose the most money. A reasonable starting point is the guide to deductible expenses for couriers.
Anyone who worked through Wolt from November 2018 onward is inside the group the settlement covers and does not need to file anything right now. The next step belongs to the court, which decides whether to approve the agreement.