Restaurant POS systems compared on what they cost a month

On a café taking £5,000 a month by card, the cheapest restaurant POS with published prices is Zonal's akru at £59.50 a month in card fees and no POS fee, and the cheapest fully priced setup with a till is Square for Restaurants Free at £106.92 a month. Lightspeed, Toast and Epos Now publish their software price but not their card rate, so their real total stays unknown until you get a written quote.

That second sentence is the point of this page. Card fees on £5,000 are £87.50 at Square's published 1.75%, more than the software on most plans, so an EPOS that hides its rate is hiding the biggest line on your bill.

Prices read from each vendor's own UK pricing page on 1 November 2026. No comparison sites used.

Restaurant EPOS prices, side by side

Square and SumUp state their prices exclude VAT; Lightspeed, Toast and Epos Now do not say either way, so their figures are shown exactly as published. Square Register: Square’s own pages also showed £599 + VAT and a £329 + VAT offer price on the day we checked; we use the £699 list price. Epos Now's bundle is a promotional price. Sources: Square, Zonal akru, SumUp POS, Lightspeed, Toast, Epos Now, Tevalis, Zonal EPoS.

What a restaurant POS system costs on a £5,000 a month café

The house example: one till, £5,000 a month in card takings, all on UK consumer cards. One-off hardware is spread over 36 months. Where a vendor charges pence per transaction we use a £10 average sale, which is 500 transactions a month.

The arithmetic

• Zonal akru: £5,000 × 0.89% = £44.50, plus 500 transactions × 3p = £15.00, total £59.50. Every £500 of Amex or corporate cards adds £10.50 (2.99% instead of 0.89%).
• Square Free: Register £699 ÷ 36 = £19.42, plus £5,000 × 1.75% = £87.50, total £106.92. Plus adds the £69 fee: £175.92.
• SumUp POS Pro: £49 + Solo £79 ÷ 36 (£2.19) + £5,000 × 1.69% (£84.50) = £135.69. Add the Hospitality module and it is £154.69. The iPad is yours to supply.
• Epos Now: bundle £299 ÷ 36 = £8.31, plus the from £25 a month subscription = £33.31 before card fees, at a rate Epos Now does not publish.

The rate a hidden-price EPOS has to beat

We can still say what those quotes need to come in under. To match Square Free's £106.92 on the same café, Lightspeed Basic would need a card rate below (£106.92 − £79.00) ÷ £5,000 = 0.56%, and Toast Starter below 0.54%, both before their hardware. Epos Now has more room: below 1.47%. A quote above those rates means the system is dearer on this café than Square's free plan, whatever the feature list says.

The stay-put test runs the same way. Add your current EPOS fee to last month's card fees from your statement. If that comes to less than £106.92 on £5,000 of takings, no system on this page saves you money on published prices, so don't switch for cost alone. Our free statement review does that sum for you.

Who should pick what, by venue

Cafe POS and coffee shop till systems

A coffee shop sells a lot of small tickets, which is where per-transaction pence bite. At akru's 3p a sale, 500 sales a month cost £15.00 on top of the percentage. At a £5 average the total card bill rises to £74.50, which still undercuts Square's flat 1.75% (£87.50) on £5,000, but the gap narrows as tickets shrink. Square Free needs nothing beyond the hardware, and its free plan covers open bills, which is all most counters use. If you take card payments only and need no kitchen tickets, a plain card reader may be enough: see card machines for cafés and coffee shops.

Pub EPOS and bar POS systems

Zonal built akru for independent pubs and restaurants, with no multi-site fee, and a bigger average round works in its favour: at £20 a sale the card bill on £5,000 is £52.00. Managed and tenanted estates usually run Zonal's main EPoS or Tevalis, neither of which publishes a price, so a group should collect at least two written quotes and test each against Square Plus at £175.92 per site. For the card machine side, see card machines for pubs and bars.

EPOS systems for full-service restaurants

Table service changes the answer. On Square, split bills, reopening closed bills, seat and course management, floor plan customisation, Scan to Pay, close-of-day reports are Plus features, so a sit-down restaurant is really comparing Square Plus at £69.00 with Lightspeed Core at £149.00 (which adds QR ordering and payment, inventory management, gift cards and loyalty) and Toast Essentials at £150.00 (which includes the kitchen display system and the all-in-one handheld POS). Square's free plan also charges £15 a month per kitchen display, which Plus includes. For the payment terminal itself, see card machines for restaurants and restaurant card machines compared.

Takeaway, quick service and food truck POS

Counter and van trade wants no monthly fee and payments that survive a dropped signal. Square includes offline payments on every plan, with two catches stated on its own restaurant page: offline payments on Terminal and Register are declined if the device does not reconnect within 24 hours, and contactless cards do not work offline, so customers have to insert their card. For a van, Square's Handheld at £169 + VAT spreads to £4.69 a month over 36 months. Street food traders who only need to take cards should read card machines for market stalls and street food first.

Our EPOS reviews

• Square POS review
• Lightspeed review
• Toast POS review
• Epos Now review
• Tevalis review
• Zonal EPOS review
• Retail POS systems with stock control

How we priced this

• Every figure was read from the vendor's own UK pricing page on 1 November 2026. Where a vendor publishes nothing we say "Not published" and never borrow a figure from a comparison site.
• Totals use £5,000 a month of UK consumer card takings, one till, hardware over 36 months and a £10 average sale for pence charges. Keyed, online, Amex and non-UK card payments cost more on every system.
• We have not used these systems in a venue. The comparison is on published price and listed features only.

Frequently asked questions