Square vs Servio: an honest comparison for UK venues
Square is excellent general-purpose payments technology with a POS attached — enormous ecosystem, polished hardware, per-device pricing. The comparison comes down to whether you want a payments company's POS or a hospitality platform that uses Stripe for payments.
| Servio | Square | |
|---|---|---|
| Software price | Growth £199/mo, everything included (pilot venues: £99/mo first 6 months) | Restaurants Plus £69/mo, per location |
| Add-ons to match features | £0 — QR ordering, KDS, inventory and analytics included | ~£99/mo for inventory and full staff permissions |
| Hardware | None — your own devices | Square Register £699, Square Terminal £149; typical multi-device kit ~£1,140 |
| Card fees (online, published UK) | Stripe's published rates, ~1.5% + 20p — no markup | ~1.4% + 25p |
| All-in on £40k/mo card sales | ~£1,119/mo | ~£1,223/mo |
| Contract | Monthly, cancel anytime | No long contract for core POS |
Comparison based on publicly available information and typical configurations, July 2026. Square's offering varies by plan, hardware and region — always check current details with Square directly.
Choose Square if…
You're primarily counter-based retail-style service, you want Square's hardware aesthetic and ecosystem, and your card volume is small enough that the per-transaction economics don't dominate.
Choose Servio if…
You run table service or mixed service, want QR ordering and a kitchen display without add-on stacking, and take enough card volume that the all-in monthly total — not the software sticker price — decides it.
The pricing, in detail
Here's the full worked example behind the table, using published UK prices at typical configurations for a full-service venue on £40,000 of monthly card sales. Square: Restaurants Plus at £69/month, roughly £99/month of add-ons to match inventory and staff-permission features, a hardware kit around £1,140 one-off (Register £699, Terminal £149, kitchen printer and spare reader) which spreads to ~£95/month over a year, and ~£960 in card fees at 1.4% + 25p online — about £1,223 all-in. Servio Growth: £199/month with nothing extra to add, £0 hardware, and ~£920 through Stripe at ~1.5% + 20p — about £1,119 all-in, or roughly £100/month less for a comparable feature set. During the founding-venue pilot (£99/month for the first six paid months) the gap doubles. Run your own volume through the calculator on the pricing page — the ranking can flip at low card volumes, and honest maths matters more to us than winning every row.
Switching from Square: what it actually involves
Moving from Square is mostly a menu exercise: export your item library (or just share your menu URL), upload it to Servio, and the menu builder recreates categories, modifiers and prices. Your Square hardware has no lock-in role afterwards — Servio runs in the browser on any tablet — so many venues keep the old kit as a backup during the first week. With a 14-day no-card trial and monthly billing, you can run both side by side through one quiet service before committing. Our guide to migrating your menu without the headache covers the details.
What you get with Servio, on every plan
Servio is one connected system rather than a bundle of modules: a cloud POS till for counter and floor orders, QR table ordering guests use without an app, a kitchen display that replaces paper tickets, and owner analytics that show the day in real numbers. It runs in the browser on the devices you already own, payments settle through Stripe (Servio never touches card data), and the price is on the pricing page, not behind a demo call. You can also see the wider market picture on our comparison page or check the maths in the UK POS cost guide.
Common questions
Is Square cheaper than Servio?
On the software line, yes: Restaurants Plus is £69/month against Servio Growth at £199 (£99 during the founding-venue pilot's first six paid months). On the total bill, usually not: matching Servio's included features on Square adds roughly £99/month in add-ons, a typical hardware kit is about £1,140 one-off, and on £40,000 of monthly card sales the worked total comes to ~£1,223/month for Square against ~£1,119 for Servio, based on published UK pricing at typical configurations.
Does Servio work with Square hardware?
No — and it doesn't need to. Servio runs in the browser on the tablets and phones you already own, and card payments settle through Stripe. There's no proprietary till to buy, lease or replace.
How do card fees compare?
Square publishes ~1.4% + 25p for online transactions in the UK; Servio processes through Stripe at Stripe's published UK rates (~1.5% + 20p online) and adds no markup. Which works out cheaper depends on your ticket size — on a £30 ticket the difference is pennies, and Servio's lower fixed fee favours smaller tickets.