How we compare POS systems
We list 7 POS systems sold to US small businesses, and a published software rate card exists for 4 providers. Where a vendor quotes instead, we show a quote rather than an invented figure, because putting a number against a company that refuses to publish one would be a guess dressed as a fact.
Ranking is arithmetic on published rates at the sales volume and register count you enter. The calculator asks for your current processing rate, because a system sold as software alone cannot otherwise be compared against one that bundles card processing into a single bill. Commission never moves a row, we do not sell prominence, and the cheapest line is whatever the arithmetic says it is.
Software prices are what each vendor publishes to a US buyer. The billing basis matters as much as the figure, because some are the monthly equivalent of an annual commitment rather than a true month-to-month rate.
Toast, Clover and the POS system fee questions buyers actually ask
The questions asked most often about American POS systems are what the fees come to and how long the contract runs. For the brands asked about most, neither has an answer you can read off a web page.
Toast lists its software as Quote ($0 Starter to ~$165/mo + add-ons) and its card processing as Quote (Toast payments, negotiable). Clover lists Quote ($0-135/mo by plan/reseller), with processing at Quote (~2.3-2.6% + 10c indicative), and it is sold both directly and through banks that resell it on their own terms. TouchBistro publishes a software floor of From $69/mo and then lists its rate as Quote (custom "cost plus" rate, never published).
That is a sales model rather than a scandal, but it has a consequence: you cannot price these from a website, and two restaurants on the same street can pay differently for the same equipment. What you can do is force every quote into the same shape before you sign. Ask, in writing and on one page, for the software fee per terminal per month, the processing rate and per-transaction fee, the hardware price and how it is being paid for, any implementation charge, and the term.
The published end of the table answers the same questions in public. Square lists software at $0/mo (Plus tiers $69-89/location), Shopify at $0 POS Lite (Pro ~$89/location), SpotOn at $55/station/mo and Lightspeed at $89/mo (Retail Basic, annual; Core $149, Plus $289).
Comparing the processing rates themselves is a different job from choosing a register, and it belongs on our payment providers comparison. What matters on this page is that a quoted rate and a published one are not the same kind of number, and averaging them in your head will mislead you.
Contract length, hardware financing and how a POS system deal is really structured
Contract length is one of the few things buyers here search for by name, and the table answers it unevenly. Shopify lists No lock-in (monthly), Square No lock-in and SpotOn No long-term lock-in (claimed). Lightspeed lists Annual term typical. Toast lists Quote (multi-year typical), Clover Varies (direct flexible; reseller multi-year), and TouchBistro's row reads Not stated.
Hardware is usually where the term comes from, because it is the part nobody wants to pay for up front, and it arrives in three ways. You buy it outright, which is how the counter-end systems sell it: Square lists Reader $0 magstripe / contactless $49 / Stand $149 / Terminal $299 / Register $799, Shopify Tap-and-chip reader from ~$49 / terminal kit to ~$329 and Lightspeed iPad-based; reader/stand/printer bundles (~$300-1,000+). You finance it, which TouchBistro states plainly as Quote (iPad-based; financing offered for 2 or more terminals). Or it arrives inside a quote with everything else, as with Toast at Quote (proprietary terminals, KDS, handhelds), SpotOn at Quote (SpotOn Terminal, handhelds, KDS) and Clover at Flex / Mini / Station Duo (purchase or financed, quote).
The questions that decide what the deal actually costs you:
Is the hardware agreement separate from the software agreement. Financed equipment is frequently papered by a finance company rather than the POS vendor, which means canceling the software does not end the equipment payments. Read whose name is on each document.
Who owns the terminals at the end of the term. A lease that returns the hardware and a payment plan that leaves you owning it look similar on a monthly basis and are not the same purchase.
What renewal and exit cost. Ask whether the term rolls automatically, how much notice ends it, whether the price is fixed for the whole term, and what the early termination figure is as a number rather than a policy.
The trial and setup rows show how much you can learn before committing. Lightspeed offers Yes (14 days) and Shopify Yes (3 days, then $1/mo intro), while Toast and SpotOn both list Demo only and Clover lists No. On setup, Square lists Free and Shopify Free, Lightspeed Possible onboarding fee, Toast Quote (implementation) and SpotOn Quote (onboarding with local rep).
Restaurant floor or store shelf: which side of the POS system market you are buying from
This table looks like one market and is really two, and buying across the line is the expensive mistake here. A restaurant needs a floor plan, tabs held open, courses fired to a kitchen screen, modifiers on every item and tips collected at the end. A store needs stock counts, barcodes, purchase orders, variants and returns. Almost nothing about those jobs is the same, and a system built for one handles the other as an afterthought.
Read the focus row first. Toast lists Hospitality (restaurants), TouchBistro Restaurants only and SpotOn Hospitality (some retail), while Shopify lists Retail (omnichannel). Square lists Both, Clover Both and Lightspeed Both (Retail + Restaurant). Those answers deserve a second look, because a vendor covering both sides usually does it with two separate products under one brand rather than with a single product that does everything.
The table management row is where that shows. Shopify reads No (retail/omnichannel), which is a deliberate product decision and not a gap. Square reads Yes (Square for Restaurants), Lightspeed Yes (Restaurant product) and Clover Yes (Table Service plan). Read those as prices, not as ticks: a named plan or a named product is a different subscription from the one you were quoted.
Depth then differs on each side. On the restaurant side the delivery apps are the integration that matters, and Toast lists DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub, QuickBooks, 100+ while SpotOn lists DoorDash, Uber Eats, QuickBooks, reservations, marketing. On the retail side it is stock and the online store: Shopify lists QuickBooks, Xero, Shopify App Store, Afterpay/Klarna and Lightspeed QuickBooks, Xero, built-in eCom, DoorDash, Uber Eats, 100s of apps.
Watch for the modules billed on top rather than included. TouchBistro lists inventory as Yes (paid add-on), loyalty as Yes (paid add-on) and staff tools as Yes (scheduling is a separate paid add-on). The starting software figure is a floor, and the features you are shopping for often sit above it.
Growth is priced on doors and lanes rather than headcount. Lightspeed charges $89/location (another subscription) and lists extra registers at ~$39 per register. Square lists $89/location (Retail Plus) and Shopify $89/location (POS Pro), while Toast lists extra devices as Quote (per handheld/terminal). If a second site is anywhere in your plan, cost that site now, because it moves the order of this table.
Locked to the vendor: whether a POS system lets you choose your own processor
Every system in this comparison can process cards itself, which is the modern default and the single most consequential thing about how these deals work.
When processing is locked to the POS, your card rate is part of your software contract. You cannot re-shop it without replacing the equipment, the staff training and the menu build, which is a far larger decision than switching processors used to be, and the vendor knows that when your rate comes up for review. When processing is open, the two decisions stay separate and you can re-shop the rate while keeping the system your staff already know.
TouchBistro is the row that states the alternative explicitly, listing Yes (TouchBistro Payments, US only; also Chase, Moneris, Worldpay). Elsewhere the answer is effectively the vendor's own processing, and Clover's arrangement adds a second layer, since a bank reselling it sets the merchant terms itself.
Three things to establish before signing, in this order. Whether the contract obliges you to use the vendor's processing for the whole term. Whether the software price changes if you bring your own processor, since a discount conditional on processing volume is a rate by another name. And whether the terminals you are buying will work with anyone else at all, because proprietary hardware answers the lock-in question on its own.
The rate arithmetic itself still belongs on the payments comparison. What this page tells you is which purchase you are making: a register, or a register and a processing relationship in one signature.
Instant payouts, cards and capital: the POS system as your bank
Because processing is built in, the vendor holds your money before you do, and that position is the foundation for the money products now sold alongside American POS systems: faster access to your own settled funds, a business account and debit card attached to the platform, and working capital advanced against your card sales. None of it appears in the comparison table, because none of it is part of the software subscription, and it is increasingly why merchants stay.
Faster payouts are priced as a percentage of the money moved. The standard settlement schedule is free and the instant option is not. Ask what the standard timetable actually is, including weekends and holidays, before deciding what speed is worth to you.
A capital offer is usually not a loan. The common structure is a purchase of future receivables: you take a lump sum, and a fixed share of each day's card sales is withheld until a fixed total is repaid. There is no term and no interest rate to compare, so ask for the total repayable, the withholding percentage, and the vendor's own estimate of how long repayment takes at your current volume. Then work out what that costs as an annual figure yourself.
A bundled account deepens the lock-in. If your deposit account, your card and an outstanding advance all sit on the platform, leaving is no longer a software migration. Ask what happens to the balance and to the repayment obligation if you switch systems.
These products are genuinely convenient, and for a business waiting on settlement they can be worth paying for. Price them as what they are, though: a separate financial product sold by the company that already holds your money.
Tips and sales tax: the American jobs a POS system has to do at the register
Two things a US register has to get right barely appear in any feature list, and both create work every month.
Tips are the first. The POS is where the prompt appears, where pooling is calculated and where the record originates, and that record has to survive the trip into payroll, because tips are treated as wages and reach the employee's W-2. States differ substantially on how tipped wages may be paid, and the arrangement your state allows decides what you have to be able to evidence. Ask whether the system exports tips per employee per shift in a form your payroll software ingests, whether pooling rules can be set by role and by shift rather than one rule for the whole business, and who is able to adjust a tip after close and whether that leaves an audit trail. TouchBistro's staff row, Yes (scheduling is a separate paid add-on), is a useful reminder that scheduling and labor tools are often a separate purchase from the register itself.
Sales tax is the second, and it is the part that surprises anyone who has run a business anywhere else. There is no single national rate. A single storefront can sit under a state rate plus a county rate plus a city rate plus a special district, and what counts as taxable varies by item, with prepared food commonly treated differently from groceries. The register is what applies all of that at the moment of sale, so ask whether tax rates are set per location, whether items can be assigned tax categories rather than one blanket rate, who is responsible for updating rates when a jurisdiction changes one, and whether it produces a report broken down by jurisdiction that you can actually file from.
If you also sell online, this stops being a register question at all, because economic nexus rules can create filing obligations in states where you have no premises. That is a conversation for your accountant and your state's revenue department. The register's job is narrower: charge the right amount, record it correctly, and produce a report that reconciles. Confirm it does all three before your first day of sales, not after your first filing.