How much does a restaurant POS actually cost in 2026?

Ask a POS vendor what their system costs and you’ll get a number. Ask an owner who’s been running it for a year and you’ll get a different, bigger number. This is the full math, so you can compare any system, including ours, honestly.

The five costs that stack up

1. The monthly software fee. The advertised number. For mainstream restaurant POS systems this typically runs $70 to $400 a month per location depending on tier, often per terminal.

2. The per-order cut. The quiet one. Many platforms take a percentage of every order placed through their online ordering or marketplace, commonly 2 to 15 percent. On $30,000 a month of online sales, a 5 percent cut is $1,500. Every month. That is usually more than the software fee.

3. Hardware. Proprietary terminals, stands, card readers and kitchen screens are often leased. A two-terminal setup with a kitchen display can add $50 to $150 a month, or a four-figure upfront bill.

4. Add-ons. Loyalty, gift cards, reservations, advanced reporting and marketing tools are frequently separate line items at $20 to $100 each per month. The advertised price rarely includes the features you actually wanted.

5. Exit costs. Termination fees, non-returnable hardware and data you can’t export. The cost you only learn about when you try to leave.

A realistic annual total

For a single-location independent on a mainstream system: roughly $1,200 to $4,800 a year in software, plus hardware, plus add-ons, plus whatever percentage of sales flows through online ordering. For many restaurants the true annual cost lands between $3,000 and $15,000. That’s a lot of covers just to pay for the till.

The line that hides the real cost

The subscription is rarely the expensive part. The commission is. A system at $69 a month that takes 3% of online orders costs a restaurant doing $20,000 a month online about $669 a month, and the invoice still says $69.

Dinify is priced the other way round: one subscription per location, and no percentage of your sales on any channel. Take a single focused product or run everything on Dinify Suite, quoted per location on a walkthrough. Card processing is billed by Stripe at their rates, straight to you, and payments settle into your own account rather than ours.

The comparison checklist

Whatever system you’re evaluating, ask these seven questions:

1. What is the real monthly total with the features I need?
2. Do you take a percentage of my orders? Which ones?
3. Do I need your hardware, or does it run on mine?
4. Is the kitchen display included?
5. What does loyalty cost? Gift cards? Reporting?
6. What happens to my data if I leave?
7. Is there a contract or termination fee?

If a vendor is vague on any of these, that vagueness is the price.

See what the platform includes, or what we do. If you want the numbers run against your own volumes, book a walkthrough and we will do it with you.