Best Restaurant EPOS Systems UK: Pricing & Top Picks

Best restaurant EPOS systems for 2026

Square for Restaurants Free vs Plus

Square for Restaurants Free costs £0 per month. It includes core restaurant functionality such as menu management, table management, open bills and service charges, with standard in-person card processing at 1.75%.

Square for Restaurants Plus costs £69 per month per location after a 30-day trial. Plus adds features including course management, seat management, advanced reporting, live sales reporting, Team Plus and 24/7 support.

Square also includes unlimited devices on both plans, although hardware is purchased separately.

SumUp is stronger for hospitality than it used to be

SumUp’s current UK pricing has changed since earlier versions of this guide.

POS Plus is now £39/month excluding VAT. It adds advanced hospitality and retail tools including floor-plan management and accounting synchronisation.

SumUp Register remains an attractive countertop option at £399 excluding VAT. It includes a merchant display and customer-facing screen and avoids a traditional hardware-rental arrangement.

Payments

The standard PAYG card rate is currently 1.69%. Payments Plus costs £19/month and reduces eligible domestic consumer debit and credit cards to 0.99%, while premium, international and American Express cards remain at 1.69%.

For a busy café, that payments option can matter more financially than the £39 POS subscription.

What does a restaurant EPOS system actually need?

A retail sale is usually simple: scan an item, take payment, finish. Restaurant service is not.

A customer might order drinks first, add starters later, change a side, tell the server about an allergy, move tables, split the bill three ways and leave a discretionary service charge. Every one of those actions needs to reach the right person without staff re-keying information.

For most restaurants, the important features are:

• table and floor-plan management;
• open bills and tabs;
• menu modifiers;
• course and seat management;
• kitchen printers or KDS;
• split bills;
• tips and service charges;
• pay-at-table;
• online ordering and click-and-collect;
• delivery-platform integrations;
• staff permissions and time tracking;
• stock and menu availability;
• multi-site reporting.

KDS or kitchen printers?

Kitchen printers remain cheap, familiar and resilient. Kitchen Display Systems offer better ticket visibility, status tracking and course coordination.

Neither is automatically superior.

A small café producing ten menu items may be perfectly happy with a printer. A full-service restaurant with starters, mains, desserts, multiple stations and 150 covers may benefit far more from KDS.

What to check before buying KDS

• Can tickets route to different kitchen stations?
• Can one station mark an item complete without closing the whole order?
• How are courses held and fired?
• Can staff recall a completed ticket?
• Does the KDS continue working if the internet drops?
• What happens if the screen itself fails?
• Are wall mounts and displays included in the quoted price?

Integrated payments reduce small errors all night long

With a standalone card terminal, the server often reads £86.40 from the EPOS screen and types £86.40 into the card machine.

Do that hundreds of times a week and eventually somebody types £68.40.

Integrated pay-at-table passes the amount from the bill to the payment device automatically and returns the payment result to the EPOS. It can also speed up table turnaround because staff do not have to return to the main till.

For a busy full-service restaurant, payment integration is one of the features we would prioritise ahead of cosmetic dashboard extras.

Orders should enter once

A restaurant can now receive orders from tables, the counter, its own website, QR ordering and delivery platforms.

The operational goal is simple: avoid staff re-keying an order that already exists digitally.

Ask how the proposed system handles your actual mix of Deliveroo, Uber Eats, Just Eat, click-and-collect and direct online ordering.

Also ask what happens to menus and stock. If a burger is marked unavailable on the EPOS, does that update connected ordering channels or does somebody have to change each platform manually?

Restaurant support hours matter more than office support hours

If your busiest period is Friday at 9pm, support that closes Friday at 5pm has limited value when the till stops printing.

This is one reason paid hospitality plans can justify themselves. Square Restaurants Plus includes 24/7 support, Epos Now promotes 24/7 support within its proposition, and Toast includes 24/7/365 customer care.

Before signing, ask exactly what “support” means:

• telephone or ticket only?
• UK-based or international?
• hardware replacement included?
• weekend response times?
• remote troubleshooting?
• on-site engineer available?

Questions to ask every restaurant EPOS provider

1. Show me how a waiter opens, moves and combines tables.
2. Show me a three-way split bill.
3. How do menu modifiers reach each kitchen station?
4. How are allergies displayed?
5. What happens when an item sells out during service?
6. Can staff take both orders and payments tableside?
7. How are tips and service charges reported?
8. How much does each additional till, handheld and KDS cost?
9. Which delivery platforms integrate directly?
10. What still works if the internet goes down?
11. What support is available at 9pm on Saturday?
12. How long is the contract?
13. What are the exit or cancellation charges?
14. Can we use another payment processor?
15. What is our actual quoted card rate at our current turnover?
16. How much would a second location cost?

Start with the restaurant workflow, then compare total cost

Square for Restaurants remains our clearest starting benchmark for an independent venue. The £0 Free plan makes it easy to test, and £69/month Plus provides a transparent route into more serious restaurant features and unlimited KDS devices.

Epos Now makes more sense when you want a traditional supplier relationship with hardware, onboarding and support bundled around the system.

SumUp is particularly attractive to smaller cafés and quick-service venues, although its current POS Plus price is now £39/month excluding VAT.

Toast should now be on the shortlist for full-service restaurants willing to spend more for a restaurant-first platform, handhelds, KDS and around-the-clock support.

Whichever provider you choose, run your real service workflow during the demo and calculate card processing over a full year. Those two checks will tell you more than a 50-feature comparison chart.