Restaurant Software Cost per Location (2026 Breakdown)

Ask the owner of a restaurant group what they spend on software and the answer usually comes from memory: the POS, the scheduling app, the inventory system, QuickBooks. The real number is spread across six or more vendors, each billing a different way: per location, per device, per employee, per cover, or as a percentage of sales. Few owners ever see it in one place.

This post adds it up using the prices vendors publish, so you can compare your own stack line by line. All prices are as listed on each vendor's pricing page on October 2, 2026, in US dollars and before tax. They change often, and negotiated or multi-location pricing can differ.

How much does restaurant software cost per location?

At published prices, a mid-tier stack of POS, kitchen display, scheduling, payroll and inventory software comes to roughly $700 per location per month, plus about $140 a month for accounting across the whole group. That covers subscriptions only. Card processing usually costs several times more, as the section on processing below shows.

The range is wide. A full-service location on premium tiers, with reservations and extra kitchen screens, can pass $1,600 a month before reservation cover fees.

What a typical stack costs, category by category

Three things the table doesn't show:

• How a tool bills matters more as you grow. A $49 per-location POS plan is $147 a month at three locations, and per-employee payroll fees rise with every hire. Accounting is the exception: one QuickBooks subscription usually covers the group.
• Annual billing is cheaper, and it's a commitment. 7shifts takes 10% off for paying annually, and Homebase advertises 20% off. The saving comes with a year's commitment, a trade-off we covered in month-to-month software vs annual contracts.
• Promotional prices expire. QuickBooks currently shows 50% off for the first three months. Budget at the list price.

Card processing is usually the biggest number

Subscriptions get the attention, but processing is usually the largest software-related cost a restaurant pays. Square publishes its rates: 2.6% plus 15¢ per in-person payment on its free plan, 2.5% plus 15¢ on Plus, and 2.4% plus 15¢ on Premium, with online orders at 2.9% plus 30¢ on the paid plans. Toast advertises flat-rate processing but quotes the rate rather than publishing it.

The fixed fee per payment matters more than it looks. At 2.5% plus 15¢, the effective rate on a $25 ticket is 3.1%. On a $10 ticket, it's 4.0%.

For a location with $1 million a year in card sales and a $25 average ticket, that adds up to about $31,000 a year: $25,000 from the percentage and $6,000 from 40,000 fixed fees. The subscriptions in the example below come to about $8,300 a year per location. Unless a location's card sales are below roughly $270,000 a year, processing costs more than all of them combined.

When you compare POS providers, compare the effective rate on your own average ticket, not the headline percentage.

A worked example: a three-location group (illustrative)

Consider a hypothetical fast-casual group with three locations, about 30 employees at each, and one kitchen display screen per location. Each location runs Square Plus, 7shifts Pro (billed annually) with 7shifts Payroll, and MarketMan Growth. The group shares one QuickBooks Online Plus subscription. MarketMan's pricing page doesn't say whether its prices are per location, so we've assumed one plan per location; confirm that with the vendor.

That's about $26,400 a year in subscriptions. If each location takes $1 million a year in card payments at a $25 average ticket, processing at Square Plus rates adds about $93,000 a year, roughly 78% of the combined total.

The example leaves out hardware, reservations, delivery app commissions (see what third-party delivery really costs a restaurant), and any tool that pushes delivery orders into the POS. If you use one of those integration tools, add its fee too.

The cost that doesn't appear on any invoice

Each tool in the example keeps its own copy of part of the business. Sales live in the POS, hours in the scheduling app, wages in payroll, food cost in the inventory system, and the totals in QuickBooks. Someone has to reconcile them every week, usually a manager or the owner. We walked through what that takes for sales and labor in one sales view across every restaurant location, and for counts and food cost in multi-location restaurant inventory without spreadsheets.

To put a number on it, multiply the hours by a loaded hourly cost. As an example, five hours a week at $35 an hour is about $9,100 a year per location, more than the subscriptions above. Our software cost calculator adds that time to your subscription costs for you.

How to price your own stack

1. List every tool, for every location. Pull a month of card statements and invoices. Small add-ons are easy to miss.
2. Note how each one bills: per location, per device, per employee, per cover, or as a percentage.
3. Work out your effective processing rate. Divide one month's total processing fees by that month's card sales.
4. Check the contract terms: renewal dates, annual commitments, and how you'd export your data if you left.
5. Add the hours your team spends re-entering or reconciling data between tools.

When fewer systems make sense

The POS usually stays. It's the system staff know, and payments run through it. Payroll and accounting often stay too. The part that tends to sprawl is everything in between: scheduling, inventory, delivery reconciliation, and the reporting that ties them together. That's the layer we build as one platform for restaurant groups, connected to the POS each location already uses, with published month-to-month pricing.

If you'd like a second pair of eyes on your own numbers, you can book a 20-minute call.

If you're weighing what a fix would cost, our guide to how much custom software costs breaks down build, maintenance and three-year totals.