Buying guides
How much does a POS system cost for a restaurant?
A plain breakdown of restaurant POS pricing in 2026: software subscriptions, hardware, payment processing, install and the costs quotes usually hide.
7 min read
The short answer
Most independent restaurants spend roughly $50 to $300 per month per location on POS and management software, plus $0 to $2,000 up front for hardware, plus card processing of about 2.3% to 3.5% per transaction. A single-site café at the lean end lands near $70 a month all-in on software; a multi-terminal full-service restaurant with a kitchen display, reservations and reporting is more often $150 to $400 a month per location.
Payment processing is usually the largest line by a wide margin. A restaurant doing $80,000 a month in card sales pays roughly $2,000 to $2,600 in processing fees — ten times the software cost. That is why comparing software prices alone is misleading.
The five cost lines to price separately
- Software subscription — billed per location, per month. Ask whether the kitchen display, reservations and reporting are included or paid add-ons.
- Terminal or per-seat fees — some vendors charge per till or per staff login on top of the base subscription.
- Hardware — tablets, card readers, cash drawers, receipt and kitchen printers. Expect $300 to $1,200 per station if you buy outright, or a monthly lease.
- Payment processing — a percentage plus a fixed fee per transaction. Locked-in processing is the single biggest long-term cost decision.
- Setup, menu build, training and support — sometimes free, sometimes a four-figure onboarding fee.
Costs that hide in the quote
Before signing anything, ask for the total 36-month cost of ownership including hardware and processing, not the headline monthly price.
- Multi-year contracts with early-termination fees
- Proprietary hardware you cannot reuse if you switch vendors
- Add-on pricing for the kitchen display, online ordering or loyalty
- Per-location minimums that punish a small second site
- Charges to export your own sales history when you leave
Worked example: a 40-cover neighbourhood restaurant
The lesson from the arithmetic: negotiate processing hard, and pick software on whether it removes work during service rather than on a $30 monthly difference.
- Software: $99/month for one location including floor plan, KDS and reservations
- Hardware: two tablets, one card reader, one kitchen printer — about $1,400 once
- Processing: $75,000 monthly card volume at 2.6% + $0.10 — roughly $2,000/month
- Year one total: about $26,500, of which roughly $1,200 is software
What TenantVolt costs
TenantVolt is priced per location: $49 per month on Starter (up to 3 locations, 10 seats), $99 on Growth (up to 25 locations, unlimited seats) and $299 on Scale. Yearly billing is ten months for twelve. The floor plan, kitchen display system, tickets, reservations and inventory are included in every plan — they are never add-ons — and there are no per-terminal fees or hardware lock-in.
You keep your own payment processor relationship, so the largest cost line stays negotiable. Every plan starts with a free 14-day trial and no card.
Still stuck?
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