How Much Does A Restaurant POS System Cost & How To Choose One

Square handheld POS system, Square Register, and Square iPad stand.

Front of house equipment includes everything your customers can see: payment devices, registers, receipt printers, customer-facing displays, self-serve kiosks, menu displays, etc. Here’s a rough estimate of the overall cost of front of house restaurant POS hardware:

• Handheld POS System: $200-$650 depending on which of these best handheld POS systems for restaurants you choose
• Countertop Register Bundle: $600-$1,700 for a register, chip/tap card reader, and receipt printer
• Cash Drawer: $130-$300
• Card Reader: $49-$600 depending on your payment processor
• Receipt Printer: $100-$500
• Barcode Scanner: $100-$300
• Self-Serve Kiosk: $200-$850 depending on whether you use an iPad or proprietary kiosk hardware
• Customer-Facing Display: $130-$200 depending on whether you use proprietary hardware or add a dedicated iPad customer-facing display to your setup

Some handheld restaurant POS hardware, such as the proprietary Clover Flex, Square Terminal, and Toast Go 2, are built so that you can take orders, accept payments, and print receipts from one device. Proprietary handheld POS hardware costs more towards $650, while general hardware like a refurbished older iPad model costs at least $200 and newer iPad models being more expensive.

Restaurant POS pricing for card readers costs between $49 and $600. Pricing depends on whether you have to purchase your card reader from a provider like Square or Clover POS, or if you get to choose from a list of card readers from a compatible payment processor, which you can do with POS software like Revel Systems and talech POS.

Register bundles such as the Square Register, which include a register screen (usually an iPad), receipt printer, cash drawer, and card reader, usually cost around $700. You can pay to add other hardware, such as a customer-facing display, to your register package, or get a register bundle like the $1,800 Clover Station Duo that includes all register parts.

To offer self-serve kiosks, you can either purchase designated kiosks or add self-serve software to an iPad. Some POS providers, such as Square and talech, allow you to convert iPads to kiosks, while Toast, which offers one of the best self-serve kiosks, costs $809.

Clover kitchen display screens.

Back of house equipment includes everything your customers don’t see. Here’s a rough estimate of your back of house restaurant POS hardware pricing:

• Kitchen Display System: $200-$800 depending on whether you use an iPad or proprietary kitchen display hardware
• Kitchen Ticket Printer: $200-$349
• Weight Scale: $500

We highly recommend these best kitchen display systems to help you minimize the recurring cost of kitchen ticket paper, minimize mistakes, and integrate orders from all ordering platforms (DoorDash, online orders from your own website, phone orders, etc.) to one unified place in the kitchen.

Are you planning to expand in any way? Are you thinking about more staff, more locations, or building out a catering or retail component of your business? Think about the changes you plan to make in the next year or two and make sure the POS you want can accommodate your vision.

Budget accordingly if those changes will mean upgrading to a higher plan tier. It’s generally much easier to upgrade to a more feature-rich plan than to switch POS systems entirely; if you know you’ll need more features down the line, plan to accommodate that now.

Consider the following when deciding what hardware (and accompanying software) you want to include in your POS ecosystem:

• How reliable is your internet connection?
• Do you need a POS that can take payments offline?
• Do you want a backup local server?
• Would you like handhelds for ordering at the table? 
• Would your restaurant benefit from kiosk-style self-ordering?
• Are your employees very tech-savvy?
• Do you want a system that works with the POS hardware you already have?

Your hardware needs will depend on your restaurant type and size.

For example, food trucks and catering businesses will benefit from a POS with a strong offline mode, but will not need much physical hardware.

Upscale sit-down restaurants won’t need self-serve kiosks, but quick-serve restaurants could use them as a line-busting tactic.

Small establishments can probably get by with one or two countertop terminals, but large restaurants will benefit from mobile POS systems that servers can carry with them.

Search online blogs, forums, and other social channels for user reviews of POS systems. See what others say. What are the pain points and most common complaints? What’s not mentioned? What do happy customers say is the best thing about that POS system? Is updating the system a pain? Are there complaints or kudos about customer support?

Also, see if customer complaints have been addressed by the company. If the company is actively working to improve its software offering and customer relationship, that’s a really good sign.

Most restaurant POS system providers offer a free trial. Take advantage of that opportunity to see how easy the software is to set up and edit. Try out all of the features and run every alternative scenario you can imagine.

Include employees who will be using the software in the trial run, too. Ask them what the learning experience and real-world usage are like. This will help you estimate how long it will take to train someone on the new system and whether it’s effective during a rush.

Make no long-term commitments until you can get a feel for how easy the software is to use and whether it can adapt to fit your growing business’s needs.

There are restaurant POS system providers, such as Square and Clover, that require you to use an in-house payment processor. Revel Systems and TouchBistro, on the other hand, do not require you to use their own in-house payment processors but may charge you a monthly premium if you decide to use a third-party payment processor.

Some providers, such as Revel and Toast, require you to sign a long-term contract and pay annually for the best prices.

Make sure to negotiate a good merchant agreement so you understand what to expect with your software subscription and exactly how much you can expect to pay per month (or year).

A restaurant POS system costs between $0 and $399+/month for software and between $450 and $1,000 for POS hardware.

The exact cost of your restaurant POS system will vary depending on the number and type of restaurant POS hardware you want to add to your business as well as added features like online ordering and a loyalty program.

Square KDS costs $20/device/month if you’re on the Square free plan. If you’re on the $60/month/location Square Plus plan, you get an unlimited number of KDS device licenses for no extra cost.

The Toast Go 2 handheld POS system costs $627, but Toast offers discounts if you purchase more than one at a time.

Square For Restaurants costs $0-$60/location/month for software and card readers start at $49.

The cheapest restaurant POS system is the Square POS app. It costs $0 per month and you can take payments with just an iPhone or tablet paired with the Square contactless card reader.

Square, Lightspeed Restaurant, Toast, TouchBistro, and Clover are some of the best restaurant POS systems. Read our post on the best restaurant POS systems to help you decide which one to choose for your business.