Our Best Restaurant POS Picks
Square suits most independents, Toast a busy full-service room, Lightspeed a growing or multi-site group and Epos Now a full counter set-up. Splitting a bill five ways by seat is where a till either holds up or does not, and the queue behind the table does not wait while your waiter works it out.
Best Restaurant POS System Overall
Square POS. The free plan includes table management, open bills and modifiers without a monthly software fee. Splitting a bill by item or by seat needs the Plus plan at £69/month, and a kitchen display costs £15/month per device on the free plan.
A small independent with modest card takings will usually pay less on Square’s free plan and flat 1.75% than on a paid plan, because there is no subscription to earn back. Among the providers that publish a card rate, the cost table below puts Square Free second-cheapest for the first year at both card volumes, behind only SumUp POS Plus with its optional Payments Plus plan.
Not right if: your kitchen needs deeper routing or delivery handling than Square’s Deliveroo, Uber Eats and Just Eat connections give you, or you want a system built only for restaurants. Toast and Lightspeed are built around that kind of service.
Visit SquareBest for Busy Full-Service Restaurants
Toast. Toast’s UK plans start at £80 a month for Starter and £150 for Essentials, and Essentials adds a kitchen display and an all-in-one handheld. Toast lists bill splitting, course firing and order and table management among its point-of-sale features, and says its offline mode keeps taking orders and card payments when the connection drops.
Toast publishes no card rate, no contract term and no hardware price on its UK pages, so we cannot work out its first-year cost. The cost table marks it “quote required”. Starter’s price includes the first hardware terminal subscription only, and Toast says further devices cost extra.
Not right if: you run a small counter-service café, or you need a published card rate before you can compare providers. Square’s 1.75% is on its pricing page; Toast does not publish its rate.
Visit ToastBest for Multi-Site Restaurants
Lightspeed Restaurant K-Series. The Basic plan at £79/month gives a full floor plan, with kitchen display and delivery connections as paid add-ons. Core costs £149/month, and Pro at £219/month includes all delivery integrations. The kitchen display is an add-on on every plan.
Lightspeed does not publish a card rate for Lightspeed Payments: Basic runs on its default rate, and Core and Pro on a custom rate. Whether it beats Square’s flat 1.75% depends on the rate Lightspeed quotes for your card volume.
Not right if: you are a single-site independent with straightforward service flow. The licencing cost and onboarding complexity are justified by multi-terminal operations, not a café with four tables.
Zonal publishes no restaurant EPoS prices that we could find for its restaurant system, so large groups on Zonal sit outside the cost ranking on this page.
Visit LightspeedBest for a Full Counter EPOS Setup
Epos Now. Epos Now sells a complete bundle with a touchscreen terminal, card terminal and receipt printer from £299 as a promotion, and the bundle needs a 12-month subscription from £54/month. It publishes a 1.70% card rate for Visa and Mastercard, says the rate you are offered may differ, and lists an offline mode on its restaurant page.
Year one costs £947 before card fees, which is the figure to weigh against Square’s £0 software fee. In the cost table it lands mid-field, behind SumUp and Square Free.
Not right if: you want to leave without a 12-month commitment, or you want a kitchen display built in: Epos Now sells optional kitchen display hardware on top.
Visit Epos NowBest for Delivery and Online Ordering
YumaPOS. YumaPOS lists integration with Just Eat, Uber Eats and Deliveroo on its home page, plus a kitchen display and self-service kiosk option, at a starting price of £35/month (ex VAT).
YumaPOS charges 0% commission on transactions, so your payment costs are entirely down to the acquirer you choose. That suits dark kitchens and delivery-heavy independents. It is a smaller supplier than the others here, and it publishes no card rate or settlement timing.
Not right if: you need a table-service floor plan as your primary workflow, or UK law for your contract. YumaPOS is built around counter service and delivery, and its software licence is governed by New York law, although its general terms name England and Wales.
Visit YumaPOSBest for Payment Flexibility
TouchBistro. The processor-agnostic model means you bring your own acquirer, Barclaycard, Worldpay, Stripe, whoever already gives you the best card rate.
TouchBistro publishes no sterling price. Its UK web address now sends visitors to its US site, where the pricing page gives a starting price of $69/month. Like YumaPOS, it keeps the POS cost and the payment cost independent, which helps operators who already have a negotiated rate. Because we found no UK source, we do not rank it on cost.
Not right if: you are starting from scratch with no existing acquirer relationship. You will spend time shopping for card rates before the POS is even live.
Visit TouchBistroBest Budget Restaurant POS System
SumUp POS. The Free POS plan costs £0 a month with 1.69% on most cards in person, which covers order taking and sales reports for a counter-service café or food stall. POS Plus at £39 a month (ex VAT) adds floor plans, table management and kitchen printing, which brings a small sit-down room into range.
On the published figures in the cost table, SumUp POS Plus with the optional Payments Plus plan comes out cheapest at both card volumes, but only while nearly all your takings are UK debit and credit cards. Amex, premium and international cards stay at 1.69%.
Not right if: delivery apps feed a large share of your orders. SumUp’s POS page lists no delivery-app integration, and the kitchen display is a separate add-on.
Visit SumUpRestaurant POS Systems Compared
Square ReaderTop Pick
SumUp Solo LiteBest for Startups
Toast POSBest for busy full-service restaurants
Lightspeed Payments
TouchBistro POSBest for Restaurants
Epos Now
YumaPOS
Restaurant POS Features to Compare
A sit-down restaurant needs table management, split bills and kitchen routing to work before anything else, while a counter-service café needs little beyond order entry and payment. On a Friday evening your manager is reconciling two order queues by hand if the delivery apps do not talk to the till. A real integration ends that double handling; one that only pushes another notification to the counter has not.
Tables, courses and split bills. A table plan lets staff assign orders to seats, track which tables are occupied and split a bill by seat or item. Square, Toast, Lightspeed, TouchBistro, Epos Now and YumaPOS include table management, though Square’s free plan leaves seat and item splits to its Plus plan. SumUp keeps floor plans and table management for POS Plus, not its Free POS. Toast lists bill splitting and course firing among its features.
Modifiers. “No sauce” or “extra cheese” has to be captured on the till, not carried to the kitchen from memory, which is where mistakes start. Every table-service system here handles modifiers at order entry.
Kitchen display and routing. A kitchen display system (KDS) swaps paper tickets for a screen that shows each order and flags how long it has waited. Toast includes it on Essentials and sells it as an add-on on Starter. Square includes it on Plus and charges £15/month per device on the free plan. Lightspeed and TouchBistro include it or offer it as an add-on, Epos Now sells optional KDS hardware, and SumUp lets you add a kitchen display to its Free POS.
Delivery and online ordering. When Deliveroo, Uber Eats and Just Eat orders arrive separately from the till, staff reconcile two queues by hand. Direct integrations on Square, Lightspeed (included on Pro, an add-on below it), TouchBistro and YumaPOS route them straight into the kitchen queue. Toast builds online ordering into the platform but does not name the delivery apps on its pricing page. If delivery is a large part of your trade, direct integration is the feature to weigh first, because it removes manual re-keying and the second order queue.
Offline mode. Toast says its offline mode keeps taking orders, printing tickets and receipts and taking card payments until the connection returns. Lightspeed says its restaurant software keeps working offline and uploads the data when the connection comes back. Epos Now lists an offline mode, and Square lists offline payments, with conditions in its footnote. We read offline statements for these four only, so TouchBistro, YumaPOS and SumUp are not covered here.
Stock, menu costing and staff. Lightspeed goes furthest here: multi-location inventory with stock transfers between sites, reorder automation, supplier management, and staff commission tracking alongside its reporting. Epos Now’s cloud back office covers real-time inventory, staff management and multi-location reporting as standard. Toast lists scheduling, reservations, loyalty and multi-location reporting on the same platform. TouchBistro tracks stock at ingredient level rather than just by dish, which helps when you cost a menu rather than just count covers. Square includes inventory, basic CRM and team management in its free plan, which is more than most free systems offer. SumUp gives you an item library, sales reports and real-time stock tracking without Lightspeed’s reorder automation or supplier management, and YumaPOS’s strength is delivery and kitchen routing rather than back-office reporting.
Support during service. A terminal fault at 9pm on a Saturday is the case that decides this one. Toast includes 24/7 customer care in every software subscription, and Lightspeed lists 24/7 chat and phone support. Square’s free plan lists support Monday to Friday, 9:00 to 17:00, while Plus lists 24/7 support. If you run more than one site, weigh multi-site control and support as heavily as the table and delivery questions above.
Restaurant POS Costs and Fees
SumUp POS Plus with Payments Plus is the cheapest first year on the figures providers publish: £2,019 on £10,000 a month in card sales, then Square Free at £2,249. On £30,000 a month it still leads at £4,395, then Square Free at £6,449. Square Free leaves out item and seat splits. Amex and visitors’ foreign cards change both sums, because SumUp’s lower rate skips them and Square adds 1.5% to a non-UK card. The Lightspeed Basic, Toast Starter, YumaPOS and TouchBistro rows show “quote required”, because those providers publish no card rate or no hardware price, so a fair comparison with them has to wait for a quote.
| Provider and plan | Software, 12 months | Card fees at £10,000 a month | Card fees at £30,000 a month | Hardware | First-year total at £10,000 | First-year total at £30,000 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Square Free | £0 | £2,100 | £6,300 | £149 (Terminal) | £2,249 | £6,449 |
| Square Plus | £828 | £2,100 | £6,300 | £149 (Terminal) | £3,077 | £7,277 |
| SumUp POS Plus | £468 | £2,028 | £6,084 | £135 (Terminal) | £2,631 | £6,687 |
| SumUp POS Plus with Payments Plus | £696 | £1,188 | £3,564 | £135 (Terminal) | £2,019 | £4,395 |
| Epos Now | £648 | £2,040 | £6,120 | £299 (Bundle) | £2,987 | £7,067 |
| Lightspeed Basic | £948 | Quote required | Quote required | Quote required | Quote required | Quote required |
| Toast Starter | £960 | Quote required | Quote required | Quote required | Quote required | Quote required |
| YumaPOS | £420 | Quote required | Quote required | Quote required | Quote required | Quote required |
| TouchBistro | No UK price published | Quote required | Quote required | Quote required | Quote required | Quote required |
First-year total = twelve months of software, plus twelve months of card fees at one flat rate on all card takings, plus one device. Figures are as each provider publishes them, read on 12 October 2026. SumUp’s 0.99% rate covers UK debit and credit cards only; Amex, premium and international cards stay at 1.69%. Square says custom pricing may be available above £200,000 a year, so its £30,000 column is a ceiling. Epos Now’s bundle price is a promotion that needs a 12-month subscription, and it says the rate you are offered may differ from the 1.70% it shows. Square and SumUp hardware, and SumUp POS Plus, are priced ex VAT; the other providers state no VAT basis. Toast’s £80 includes its first hardware terminal subscription, and further devices cost extra. “Quote required” means the provider publishes no figure, so we show none. Zonal publishes no restaurant EPoS prices that we could find, so it is not in this table.
Sources: Square pricing, Square Terminal, Toast UK pricing, Toast UK guide, Lightspeed Restaurant pricing, TouchBistro pricing, Epos Now pricing, Epos Now restaurant POS, YumaPOS pricing, YumaPOS software licence, YumaPOS terms, SumUp POS, SumUp pricing, SumUp readers and Terminal.
A restaurant POS bill has three layers: the software fee, the transaction rate if you take integrated payments, and the hardware. Read them together, because a free plan with pricey hardware can cost more than a paid plan that bundles it.
Software fee. Square and SumUp charge nothing at the free tier, and SumUp’s POS Plus is £39/month (ex VAT). Toast starts at £80/month, Lightspeed at £79/month, Epos Now at £54/month and YumaPOS at £35/month (ex VAT); TouchBistro publishes no sterling price. On £10,000/month in card sales, Lightspeed’s £79 Basic fee is a 0.79% overhead that only pays off if the features earn it.
Transaction rate. Square and SumUp charge a flat rate per sale; Toast, Lightspeed and Epos Now offer integrated processing. Epos Now publishes a 1.70% flat rate for Visa and Mastercard; Lightspeed and Toast set their rates by quote and do not publish them. TouchBistro and YumaPOS are processor-agnostic, so your rate is whatever acquirer you bring. Square’s flat rate applies to UK cards: cards issued outside the UK carry an extra 1.5% surcharge in person, taking a non-UK card to 3.25%.
Hardware. Square sells a Reader for £19 and a standalone Terminal for £149, both plus VAT. SumUp’s Solo Lite reader is £25 and its Terminal, which it recommends for hospitality, is £135, both ex VAT. Epos Now sells a complete bundle with a touchscreen terminal, card terminal and receipt printer from £299 as a promotion. Lightspeed, Toast and YumaPOS publish no hardware prices. TouchBistro runs on your own iPad; YumaPOS supports Android terminals.
Contract and support. Square lists no long-term contract. Epos Now’s bundle needs a 12-month subscription. Toast and Lightspeed do not show a contract term on their pricing pages. Support hours differ, and the features section above sets them out.
How to Choose a Restaurant POS System
| Restaurant type | Best fit | Why | Watch for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Café or coffee shop | SumUp POS (Free POS) | £0 a month and 1.69% on most cards in person | No floor plan or table management on the free plan |
| Counter service or takeaway | SumUp POS or YumaPOS | SumUp is free; YumaPOS lists Deliveroo, Uber Eats and Just Eat | YumaPOS leaves the card rate to your acquirer |
| Independent sit-down | Square POS | Tables, modifiers and open bills at £0 a month | Item and seat splits need Plus at £69 a month |
| High-volume full service | Toast or Lightspeed | Toast Essentials adds a kitchen display and handheld at £150; Lightspeed has a full floor plan | Neither publishes a card rate |
| Multi-site | Lightspeed | Multi-location inventory and reporting | Core and Pro card rates are custom |
| Restaurant group or estate | Zonal | Sells EPoS to hospitality operators | No restaurant prices published that we could find |
Figures from the providers’ own pricing pages, read 12 October 2026. Sources: Square pricing, Square Terminal, Toast UK pricing, Toast UK guide, Lightspeed Restaurant pricing, TouchBistro pricing, Epos Now pricing, Epos Now restaurant POS, YumaPOS pricing, YumaPOS software licence, YumaPOS terms, SumUp POS, SumUp pricing, SumUp readers and Terminal.
Match the system to how you serve, using the table above, then weigh the card rate and hardware you would pay on top of the software fee. Over a year the card rate and the hardware will usually cost you more than the software does.
A small independent sit-down restaurant should start with the cheapest thing to test. Square’s free plan covers table management, modifiers and open bills, and a small independent with modest card takings will usually pay less on its flat 1.75% than on a paid plan once the subscription is counted. The sums turn sooner if many of your customers pay with cards issued abroad, which Square charges at 3.25% in person.
Past that, the choice is about how your kitchen runs rather than what the software costs. If you run more than one site, Lightspeed’s multi-location inventory and staff reporting are built for exactly that. If the room is busy enough that a kitchen display and handhelds matter more than the card rate, Toast is built for that service, and you will need a quote to price it. If delivery apps are a large share of your orders, YumaPOS’s integration with Deliveroo, Uber Eats and Just Eat removes the two-queue reconciliation problem. If you already have a negotiated card rate, YumaPOS and TouchBistro are the two systems here that keep the POS cost and the payment cost independent.
Dojo is a payments-led option rather than a like-for-like POS. It sells card machines and processing that connect to an EPOS, so it suits a restaurant that already has a till and wants a new card rate. Our Dojo review and hospitality payments guide cover it.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best free restaurant POS system in the UK?
Square POS on the free plan is the best option at no monthly cost for a restaurant that needs table service. It handles tables, modifiers and open bills without a subscription; splitting a bill by item or by seat needs the Plus plan at £69/month. SumUp’s Free POS plan costs nothing too, but its floor plans and table management sit in POS Plus at £39/month (ex VAT), so the free plan suits counter service better than a sit-down room.
What does a restaurant POS cost per month in the UK?
Between £0 (Square free plan, SumUp Free POS) and £219/month (Lightspeed Restaurant Pro). Paid hospitality plans in this guide start at £35/month (YumaPOS, ex VAT), £39/month (SumUp POS Plus, ex VAT), £54/month (Epos Now), £79/month (Lightspeed Basic) and £80/month (Toast Starter). Hardware and card fees come on top, and the cost table above works the first-year total where providers publish the figures.
Can I keep my current payment processor with a restaurant POS?
Yes, if you choose a processor-agnostic system. TouchBistro and YumaPOS both allow you to bring your own acquirer. Square and SumUp require you to use their own payment processing. Toast, Lightspeed and Epos Now sell integrated payments as part of the platform, and we found no published option to bring your own processor on their standard plans.
Which restaurant POS systems work with Deliveroo, Uber Eats and Just Eat?
Lightspeed, TouchBistro, and YumaPOS all offer native delivery aggregator integrations. Square for Restaurants sends Deliveroo, Uber Eats and Just Eat orders straight to the POS. Toast builds online ordering into its platform but does not name the delivery apps on its pricing page. SumUp’s POS page lists no delivery-app integration.
What happens to a restaurant POS if the internet goes down?
It depends on the system. Toast says its offline mode keeps taking orders, printing tickets and receipts and taking card payments until the connection returns. Lightspeed says its restaurant software keeps working offline and uploads the data afterwards. Epos Now lists an offline mode, and Square lists offline payments with conditions in a footnote. We did not read offline statements for TouchBistro, YumaPOS or SumUp.
How should a restaurant POS record tips?
The Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act 2023, in force from October 2024, requires employers to pass 100% of tips to workers and keep a written tips policy. Your POS system does not enforce compliance, but a system with tip reporting gives you the audit trail you need, so keep the POS report as evidence of how tips were collected and distributed. Toast lists automated tip distribution among its features.
How We Reviewed Restaurant POS Systems
Providers. We compared the seven restaurant POS systems on this page: Square, Toast, Lightspeed, TouchBistro, Epos Now, YumaPOS and SumUp. We included a provider when it sells to UK restaurants and publishes enough to compare, and a commission did not decide inclusion or order. Zonal and Dojo are covered in the text but not ranked, because Zonal publishes no restaurant prices that we could find and Dojo is a payments provider rather than a POS.
Ranking criteria. We ranked the systems on table and course management, kitchen-display and integration options, service reliability, and the combined cost of hardware and software. A longer feature list did not outweigh a poor fit with the restaurant’s day-to-day operation.
Data sources. We set up six of these systems in May 2026, ran test covers through table service and takeaway, and sent orders to the kitchen. Toast joined the page in October 2026, and we read it from its published pages only, without a hands-on test. We checked every price against the providers’ own pages in October 2026, and each row of the comparison table links to the page it came from, with the day we read it.
Quote-only pricing. Where a provider publishes no figure, the page says “quote required” and the cost table shows no total for that provider. We do not estimate a rate or take one from a third-party site.
Affiliate links. Some links on this page are affiliate links, see our editorial policy. A commission does not change the order of the picks or which providers appear.
Limits. The cost table assumes one flat card rate on all takings and one device, and published terms can differ from the quote a provider gives you. The page cannot price Toast, Lightspeed, YumaPOS or TouchBistro until they publish a card rate and hardware price.
Update cadence. We re-check the prices on this page each time we update it, and when a provider changes its pricing, eligibility or terms. The verification date on the page is the day we last read the prices on the providers’ own pages.
Change log. What we corrected or added on 12 October 2026, by provider.
Square. Free plan wording corrected: no item or seat splits, and a kitchen display costs per device. Just Eat added to the delivery connections.
Toast. Added to the page. Toast publishes no card rate, contract term or hardware price.
Lightspeed. Basic corrected from £49 to £79, with Core and Pro added. The card rate taken from third-party reviews was removed: Lightspeed publishes none.
TouchBistro. The £59 a month figure was removed: TouchBistro publishes no UK price, and its UK web address now redirects to its US site.
Epos Now. Card rate corrected from 1.5% to 1.70%. Hardware shown as the bundle price, which needs a 12-month subscription.
YumaPOS. Starting price corrected from £40 to £35 ex VAT.
SumUp. Renamed from “POS Lite” to Free POS and POS Plus. Floor plans and table management sit in POS Plus.