How we compare UK POS costs
The comparison figures on this page use one model, applied the same way to each listed provider. This page shows the assumptions, the arithmetic and the sources, so you can check the numbers or rerun them on your own trade.
Figures last verified: 23 August 2026. Every rate below was read from the provider’s own published pricing page on that date. All figures exclude VAT.
The venue we model
Comparisons depend on the venue profile and card volume. These figures assume zero default Servio platform fees; configured platform fees are additional. The model does not validate a complete reader checkout or reconciliation flow. We use this independent full-service venue profile:
1,600 transactions is simply £40,000 divided by £25. It matters because most card pricing has a fixed pence component per transaction, so a venue with a low average order pays more in fees on the same turnover.
What we count, and why
Software subscription
The published monthly price of the plan that a venue of this profile would actually need, not the cheapest tier on the page. Where a provider prices per till or per device, we count one.
Feature parity add-ons
If QR ordering, kitchen display, inventory or loyalty are not in the base plan, we add what it costs to reach the same feature set, using the provider’s own add-ons where they exist and a sourced stand-in where they do not. This is the line most comparisons leave out, and it is usually the one that decides the answer.
Loyalty is the clearest example. Servio includes a loyalty programme from the Starter plan upwards, so a like-for-like comparison has to pay for one everywhere else. Square publishes UK Loyalty at £25/month for up to 500 loyalty visits per location, rising to £45 and £65 at higher volumes; we charge Square that lowest published tier even at volumes where a venue would sit on a higher one. SumUp publishes Advanced Loyalty at £19/month, so that is what we put on the SumUp stack. Zettle has no loyalty product of its own, so Square’s £25 stands in for a third-party app and is marked as an estimate.
Kitchen screens are priced the same way. Servio includes unlimited stations. SumUp publishes Kitchen Display Screen at £19 per terminal; a Growth venue is charged two. Square Restaurants Plus includes unlimited KDS, so Square is not charged extra for screens. Zettle has no first-party kitchen display or QR ordering, so those two features are priced at SumUp’s published Order & Pay / POS Plus (£39) plus two kitchen screens (£38), and marked as an estimate, because a Zettle venue would buy the equivalent from a third party.
Hardware, spread over twelve months
Cash to open is the first-party till and kitchen kit that vendor actually sells, not a full site fit-out and not tablets you already own. Terminals and printers are a one-off purchase, so quoting them as a monthly figure would flatter a subscription and quoting them as a lump sum would flatter hardware-free systems. We spread the purchase across twelve months, which matches how a venue actually feels the cost in its first year and how most finance and lease terms are written.
Twelve months is also the choice that most flatters Servio. A three-year spread would make hardware-based systems look cheaper per month and Servio look relatively more expensive. We use twelve months because that is how the first year feels, not because it is conservative against our own interest. The cash-to-open totals stay in the table so you can re-spread them over any life you expect from the kit.
The Growth kits are itemised SKUs that add up exactly. Square: Register £699 + Terminal £149 + the published 21.5-inch kitchen display £549 = £1,687. SumUp: the published POS Starter Kit (Register + printer) £549. Zettle / PayPal POS: two Terminals at £149, a printer dock at £99 and the stationary kitchen printer at £249 = £895. We do not add iPads. Square KDS software also runs on an iPad, and Servio kitchen display runs on a tablet you already own, so counting tablets only on one side would not be a comparison. Extra Square kitchen stations after the first published panel can also be an iPad.
A venue that keeps its terminals for three years spreads that cost further and pays less per month than shown; one that replaces a dropped reader mid-year pays more. The hardware figures are listed in full in the table below, so the line can be re-spread over whatever life you expect to get out of the kit.
Card processing fees
Card fees are the largest line in this model for every provider, so how they are applied decides the answer. Restaurant payments are not all one thing: most are taken in person at a till or on a reader, and some are taken card-not-present when a guest pays from their phone. Those two carry different published rates, and using the wrong one moves the total by more than any software price on this page.
We model 70% of volume in person and 30% card-not-present, and we apply that same split to every provider including ourselves. Each side is charged at that provider’s own published rate for that channel:
Servio settles through Stripe, so reader payments take Stripe’s in-person rate and QR payments take its online rate. SumUp publishes Order & Pay at 2.50% on those transactions, so the card-not-present share on SumUp is charged at that published rate. Zettle has no QR ordering of its own, so its card-not-present share routes through a third-party ordering app at that app’s typical rate; that one figure is an estimate rather than a published price, and it is marked as an estimate everywhere it appears. If your venue takes no QR payments at all, set the split to 100% in person and the gap narrows for everyone.
What we do not count
Staff training time, internet connectivity, receipt paper, and anything a venue would pay regardless of which system it chose. We also exclude promotional first-year discounts, because they expire and the comparison is meant to describe the ongoing bill.
The four models, worked
Same venue, same features, same volume. Software includes the feature-parity add-ons and loyalty described above. Every figure below is derived from the constants above rather than typed in, and a check script (scripts/check-figures.mjs) fails if any published page stops matching them.
Reading it honestly. On this venue Servio is the lowest all-in of the four, but the honest word is narrowly: SumUp’s published module stack lands at £1,002 against our £999, a difference small enough to be noise rather than a selling point. Zettle sits a little above both, and Square lands clearly highest, mainly because of the till kit and the kitchen display. Servio is the only stack that is one bill, £0 hardware, unlimited kitchen screens and no till to replace. The pricing page shows four lines so that is visible at a glance: cash to open, software, what is in the plan, and all-in. Card fees stay under the table and in this working. Twelve-month hardware already treats a replacement kit as a yearly cost; Servio has no unit to rebuy. Card processing is close to a wash against Square (£778 against £780). Stripe’s 10p in-person fee is why a small ticket can still favour a flat-percentage rival, which the average-order slider is there to show.
This result is specific to the venue at the top of the page. At a smaller average order the answer genuinely changes, and the reason is our own fixed pence charge: Stripe’s in-person rate carries 10p per transaction where Square, Zettle and SumUp charge a flat percentage with no fixed fee. Below roughly a £29 average order, their in-person rate beats ours, and a free-software option on a small ticket can come out cheaper than Servio overall. The calculator on the pricing page takes your own average order so you can see where your venue actually falls rather than trusting ours.
On the founding-venue pilot at £109/month, the same venue’s all-in figure is ~£889. That is a promotional rate for the first six paid months, so it is shown separately rather than used as the headline comparison.
Sources
Every price is taken from the provider’s own published pricing page, read on 23 August 2026. Where a provider does not publish a price we say so rather than estimate: Toast, Lightspeed, Epos Now and Revel are quote-based in the UK, which is why they appear in our system comparison but not in this table.
Two lines in the table are estimates rather than published figures, and we would rather flag them than bury them. The hardware kits are a chosen set of published SKUs rather than a single official restaurant bundle (except SumUp’s POS Starter Kit, which is a published bundle), and Zettle’s QR and kitchen-display software line is a sourced stand-in (SumUp’s published Order & Pay plus kitchen screens) rather than a Zettle product. Both are marked as estimates wherever the figures appear. The 70/30 channel split is our assumption rather than anyone’s published figure, which is why it is stated in full above rather than folded silently into a blended percentage.
What would change the answer
A lower average order value. The fixed pence per transaction hurts more, and it hurts us more than most: below roughly a £29 average order, competitors’ flat in-person percentages beat Stripe’s 1.4% + 10p. A dessert lounge at £12 average pays fees on more than three thousand transactions for the same turnover, and should run the calculator on its own ticket size before believing any figure on this page.
Much lower card volume. Below roughly £10,000 a month the subscription dominates and free tiers look genuinely better, which is why we say plainly that a simple counter may never need more than a free app.
A different channel split. The more of your volume is taken in person, the closer the card lines get, because the in-person rates sit nearer together than the online ones. A counter-service venue taking almost nothing by QR should run the model at 100% in person.
Hardware you already own. Square, Zettle and SumUp sell the kit. You own it. You do not hand it back. The pricing table still shows cash to open because that is what a new site, or the next replacement till, costs. If the till is already paid, drop that line and compare software plus cards only: at this venue Square lands around £951 and Servio around £999. The month can then favour them. The switch is one bill, the stack in the plan, and the next till being a tablet, not a cheaper month.
Not needing the features. The model assumes a venue wants QR ordering and a kitchen display. Without them, the parity add-ons come out and the comparison changes shape entirely.
A second or third kitchen screen. Servio does not charge per screen. SumUp does, at £19 per terminal. That is where a full-service kitchen stops looking cheap on a modular stack.
Run it on your own numbers with the calculator on the pricing page, or see the full line-by-line walkthrough in the UK POS cost guide.
Our bias, stated
Servio is our product and it is in the table. We publish the model instead of only the conclusion so the working can be checked rather than taken on trust, and every published figure is generated from one model file and re-checked by a script (scripts/check-figures.mjs) that fails if any page stops matching it, so the numbers here cannot quietly drift from the working. Where a competitor wins a line, the table shows it: Square’s software sticker is lower than ours, SumUp’s and Zettle’s POS apps are free, and SumUp’s in-person card rate carries no fixed pence charge where Stripe’s does, which is why a small enough ticket flips the monthly line to them. Servio’s case is the rest of the page: one bill, £0 hardware, no replacement till, month-to-month.
If you find an error, tell us at enquiries@servio.uk and we will correct it and note the change.
Common questions
Why £40,000 a month?
It is a realistic figure for a busy independent full-service venue, and it is high enough that card fees dominate the bill, which is the point the comparison exists to make. At much lower volumes the answer genuinely changes, and we say so.
Why spread hardware over twelve months rather than three years?
Twelve months matches how a venue feels the cost in its first year, and how most finance and lease terms are written. It is also the choice that most flatters Servio: a three-year spread would make hardware-based systems look cheaper per month. The hardware totals are published in full, so a venue planning to keep its kit for three years can re-spread that line over thirty-six months and read the result off the same table.
How often is this updated?
Prices are re-checked quarterly and whenever a provider announces a change. The verified date at the top of this page is when every rate was last read from the providers’ own pricing pages, and the same model produces the figures used in every comparison on the site.
Can I reuse these figures?
Yes. Cite the page and the date the prices were checked, and please link back so a reader can see the assumptions rather than the number alone. A figure without its model is not much use to anyone.