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Software for Restaurants SoftwareforRestaurants

Square

Square for Restaurants

The default answer for anyone who wants to be selling this afternoon.

Free, then $49 none

What it costs

Entry price
Free, then $49 per location per month
Pricing model
subscription
Card processing
2.6% + 10¢ in person on the free plan, 2.5% + 15¢ on Plus
Contract
none
Detail
Free, Plus at $49 and Premium at $149 per location per month. Hardware is separate.

Pricing checked 10 Aug 2026. Vendor's own pricing page

Where it annoys people

  • 01 Offline mode takes the card without knowing if it will clear, so a declined payment surfaces after the customer has gone.
  • 02 Processing rates are fixed until you are doing serious volume, and there is no negotiating below that.
  • 03 Inventory is shallow. Recipe-level food costing means bolting something else on.

Our take

Hard to argue with as a first POS. You can be taking cards within an hour of opening the box, the free tier is genuinely usable rather than a demo, and the app runs on a phone you already own. It stops being the obvious pick once you need real food costing or you have enough volume that a negotiated processing rate would save you more than the whole subscription costs.