Square for Restaurants scores highest for coffee shops and cafés when total monthly cost including processing is the thing you care about most. The default answer for anyone who wants to be selling this afternoon.
This page is the cheapest to run cut of our full pos and payments comparison for coffee shops and cafés. Same data, weighted differently. Change the weighting below and it re-scores in front of you.
Step 3
Pick one or two. Everything below re-scores instantly, and we show you the maths.
Winner on cheapest to run
The default answer for anyone who wants to be selling this afternoon.
The trade-off
Offline mode takes the card without knowing if it will clear, so a declined payment surfaces after the customer has gone.
| # | Product | From | Contract | Card rate | Score | Price checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Square for Restaurants The default answer for anyone who wants to be selling this afternoon. | Free, then $49 | none | 2.6% + 10¢ in person on the free plan, 2.5% + 15¢ on Plus | 0 | Pricing checked 10 Aug 2026 |
| 02 | SpotOn The one people actually praise for picking up the phone. | Free, then $55 | 2-year minimum on the $0 plan, month to month on Essentials | 2.79% + 20¢ on the $0 plan, 2.45% + 15¢ on Essentials | 0 | Pricing checked 10 Aug 2026 |
| 03 | Lightspeed Restaurant Strong reporting and stock control, priced for somewhere above the small independent. | From $69 | month to month available | 2.6% + 10¢ on Starter, negotiable on higher tiers | 0 | Pricing checked 10 Aug 2026 |
| 04 | TouchBistro iPad-based, runs on a local network, keeps working when the internet does not. | From $69 | annual | through TouchBistro Payments, required for new customers | 0 | Pricing checked 10 Aug 2026 |
| 05 | Clover Sold through resellers, which is the single most important thing to know about it. | From $59.95 | 36 months is common when hardware is bundled | roughly 2.3% to 2.6% + 10¢ in person, varies by who sold it to you | 0 | Pricing checked 10 Aug 2026 |
A coffee shop's transaction pattern is the opposite of a dining room's: many small tickets rather than few large ones, which flips which number in the pricing actually matters. A fixed per-transaction fee, the flat 10¢ or 15¢ component, hits a $6 coffee far harder proportionally than it hits a $60 dinner, and it is easy to miss in a sales pitch that leads with the percentage.
The maths is worth doing on your own numbers rather than trusting a headline rate: on $300,000 a year of card sales, the gap between a 2.5% and a 2.9% processing rate is $1,200, which on its own can be more than a year of subscription on several of the plans compared here. Square's free and Plus tiers are competitive on this without negotiation; Lightspeed and SpotOn's rates are more negotiable at real volume but need you to ask.
Modifier speed matters almost as much: a flat white with an oat swap and an extra shot needs to enter in one smooth flow, not three separate screens, because that friction repeats on every single order all day. TouchBistro and Clover both handle this well; Square's is fast too and has the advantage of running on hardware you likely already own.