EPOS system UK: costs, types and how to choose

This guide is about choosing an EPOS system in the UK: what the term covers, traditional hardware tills versus cloud EPOS, and the all-in costs venues actually pay. For café and coffee shop counter workflows, see the coffee shop and café EPOS page. For restaurant floor workflows (coursing, splits, QR at the table), see our restaurant POS system page. For how cloud architecture works day to day, see the cloud POS guide. For the arithmetic behind our comparisons, see the cost methodology.

EPOS, POS and till: what's the difference?

None, in practice. EPOS (electronic point of sale) is the standard British term, POS is the international one, and "the till" is what your staff will call it regardless. What matters is the split within EPOS: traditional systems put the software on proprietary hardware you buy, install and maintain; cloud EPOS runs in the browser on tablets and phones you already own, with your menu, orders and reports living on secure servers. That one architectural difference drives almost everything else: the cost model, the setup time, what happens when a device breaks, and whether you can check takings from your sofa. Our cloud POS guide covers the architecture in depth.

What an EPOS system really costs in the UK

Every EPOS quote breaks into the same four lines, and providers lead with the smallest one. Software: £0 app tiers to £219+/month for a full hospitality platform. Add-ons: QR ordering, kitchen displays and inventory are paid extras on most systems. Square needs MarketMan at £79 plus Loyalty at £25; SumUp stacks POS Plus, kitchen screens and stock as separate modules. Hardware: £0 on your own devices, £1,100+ for a proprietary till stack. Card fees: the biggest line at volume. Published UK rates run roughly 1.4%-1.75% in person and 1.4% + 25p to 2.50% on QR and online, and on £40,000 of monthly card sales a 0.4-point difference is £160 a month. The full worked example across Square, Zettle, SumUp and Servio is in our POS cost guide, and the 2026 system comparison ranks the main providers honestly, our own product included.

The right EPOS by venue type

Traditional EPOS or cloud EPOS?

Almost every UK buying decision comes down to this one choice, and the sales conversations rarely frame it honestly. A traditional system runs on hardware the provider sells you, usually on a multi-year agreement, often with an engineer visit to install it. A cloud system runs in a browser on devices you already own and is billed monthly.

What traditional EPOS is genuinely better at

Purpose-built hardware survives a kitchen. A sealed terminal shrugs off heat, grease and being knocked off a counter in a way a consumer tablet does not, and a cash drawer wired to a till beats one hanging off a hub. If you run high volume at a fixed counter and want one supplier accountable for every part of it, that has real value.

What it costs you

The bill arrives in three parts rather than one: the hardware up front, the software each month, and the contract that keeps you there while both age. A typical counter-plus-floor setup passes £1,100 one-off before software. The tie-in is the part that bites - a 36-month agreement signed on this year’s menu still applies when you change format, add delivery or close for a refit.

What cloud EPOS changes

Upfront hardware can genuinely be £0, because the tablets and phones behind your counter already do the job. Updates arrive without an engineer. An owner can see live takings from home, which sounds like a small thing until the first time you check a Saturday from somewhere else. A dropped device costs you a screen, not your sales data, because nothing important lives on it.

The honest trade is that a cloud system needs a working internet connection and a plan for when it drops. Ask any provider what happens during an outage, and treat a vague answer as an answer. Servio keeps working through short drops and re-syncs when the line returns, and a phone hotspot will run a browser-based till through a longer one.

How UK EPOS contracts actually work

The contract, not the software, is what most venues end up regretting. Four things are worth reading before you sign anything.

The term and what renews it. Three years is common, and many agreements roll into a further term unless you cancel inside a notice window. Ask for the notice period in writing and put the date in a calendar the day you sign.

Whether the hardware is sold, leased or financed. Leased hardware is frequently a separate agreement with a separate finance company, which means cancelling the software does not cancel the payments. If a quote mentions a monthly hardware figure, ask which company you would actually owe it to.

What the card rate is tied to. Some EPOS providers bundle payment processing and price the software attractively on the basis they earn on every transaction. That can be fine, but you should know it and be able to compare the rate against a standalone processor. If you cannot switch processor without leaving the POS, that is a lock-in worth pricing.

What happens to your data if you leave. Menus, sales history and customer records are yours. Ask whether you can export them yourself, in a usable format, without asking permission. A provider that cannot answer that quickly is telling you something.

Servio is monthly with no minimum term, and every price is on the pricing page rather than behind a quote form. We would rather earn the next month than hold you to the next three years.

Switching without losing a service

Most venues put off changing EPOS because they picture a disastrous Friday. It does not have to look like that.

Start with the menu, because it is the only genuinely fiddly part. A modern system should rebuild your categories, items and modifiers from a file or a URL rather than making you retype three hundred lines. Then walk the menu once on a phone, as a guest would - a modifier that reads fine in a spreadsheet often reads as nonsense on a table.

Run one quiet midweek service on the new system alongside the old one before you commit. Two systems for one evening is mild inconvenience; discovering a routing problem during a Saturday rush is not. Set up staff accounts before the shift rather than during it, and print a couple of QR codes to test table numbering before ordering a hundred of them.

Time the switch against your existing notice period, not your enthusiasm. If you are 14 months into a 36-month agreement, the sensible move is often to trial the new system on a free tier or trial, decide properly, and switch when the term allows.

Cash to open, then all-in

Software is the line every brochure leads with. Two other numbers decide the buy. Cash to open is the till and kitchen kit you pay before the first cover. We count first-party kits only and do not add iPads to the rivals: Square £1,687, Zettle £895, SumUp £549, Servio £0. All-in is software plus those extras plus hardware spread over twelve months plus card fees at your volume.

On the default Growth venue we use everywhere (£40,000 of monthly card sales, £25 ticket, 70% in person / 30% QR, all ex VAT, verified 23 August 2026) the monthly totals are SumUp about £1,002, Zettle about £1,015, Servio Growth £999, Square about £1,092. SumUp wins that monthly total below about a £24 average order; at the £25 ticket modelled here Servio is lowest. Servio is also £0 to open, with QR, kitchen, inventory, loyalty and staff in one plan. Square’s inventory add-on in that stack is MarketMan at £79. We do not double-count SumUp loyalty. The live calculator is on Pricing; the working is on the methodology page; the 23 August write-up is cash to open versus all-in.

Twelve months of hardware amortisation is the window that most flatters Servio, because our hardware line is £0. A shorter window makes the kit-selling rivals look cheaper still on the monthly figure. Stripe’s 10p per in-person tap also loses at café tickets: below about £24 average order, some published in-person rates beat Servio’s blend. Put your own ticket in the calculator. The verdict should name the cheapest rival at your numbers, not always Square.

How to read a POS quote

Ask for four lines in writing: software, paid extras required to match a full hospitality stack, hardware you must buy from them, and the card rate at your mix of in-person and QR. If loyalty, kitchen screens or inventory sit on a second invoice, they belong in the monthly total. If the card rate is bundled into a cheap software price, ask whether you can leave the processor without leaving the POS.

Then ask what happens if you cancel, and what you can export. Servio’s answers are public: month-to-month, export on request, Stripe at Stripe’s published rates, no proprietary till. We would rather lose a quote than win it with a missing line.

Five checks before you sign for any EPOS

1. The all-in monthly figure. Software + add-ons + hardware over 12 months + card fees at your volume, in writing.
2. Whose devices? If it needs a proprietary terminal, price the replacement cycle too.
3. One system or bolt-ons? QR ordering and kitchen screens as separate apps mean separate subscriptions, logins and failure points.
4. The exit. Month-to-month means a bad fit costs one month; a 36-month term means it costs three years.
5. The internet question. Ask exactly what happens mid-service when the connection drops, and how it recovers.

Servio publishes its answers to all five: every price, your own devices, one connected platform, no contracts, and automatic re-sync through drops. Or skip the reading and try it yourself. It's the same software venues run in service.

Common questions