Compare POS Systems in the United Kingdom

How we compare POS systems

We list 18 tills and EPOS platforms sold to UK businesses, and a published rate card exists for 13 providers. Every figure comes from the vendor's own pricing page. Where a vendor quotes instead, the table says so, and hardware is priced separately on most rows.

The calculator takes your monthly card volume, average transaction, sites and tills, and whether to include processing. Each row is costed as its software fee plus processing on that volume plus any per-site and per-till charges, and the table sorts by the result. Where a system leaves processing out, the "Your card rate" input completes its cost. Commission does not change the order.

Integrated payments or your own processor: the POS system split

Part of this table sells software and payments as one bundle. The rest sells the till and expects you to arrive with a merchant account. The rate column shows which is which.

A software-only system can look inexpensive and finish more expensive than a bundled one, because the largest line in a busy venue's payment costs is the percentage, not the subscription. Enter your own rate and the comparison stops excluding that cost. A bundled rate is a headline rate quoted on the card mix the vendor expects, so ask for the schedule on commercial, international and keyed cards before you sign.

Pub, bar and restaurant POS systems built for table service

What separates hospitality from retail is the order lifecycle: a table is opened, added to over an hour, split between people and paid in parts. A shop has a queue and a stock number that has to be right.

The Platform integrations row is the second hospitality tell: hotel property management, bookings and the delivery apps. The estate-grade end of the table is built for managed groups and contracted that way, so a single freehouse almost certainly does not need it yet. Zonal lists its term as 36 months and its setup as £1,100 deployment.

One thing to raise in every hospitality demo, because we carry no row for it: allergen handling. Food businesses selling items pre-packed for direct sale have had to carry full ingredient and allergen labelling since Natasha's Law, and many kitchens expect allergen data to live with the menu and print on the label. Ask to see that path rather than taking a yes.

The expensive mistake is buying across the line. A shop that buys a hospitality platform pays for floor plans it will never open. A venue that buys a retail till finds on the first busy Saturday that it cannot hold an open tab.

Per site and per till: how a POS system bill multiplies

The figure most people compare is one till in one place. A second address is a second subscription on the rows below, and tills multiply differently by vendor.

In a venue with a bar till, a floor handheld and a kitchen pass, the register row is the difference between one subscription and three. Read what the meter counts: some charge per device, and TISSL charges per bundle of users. Clover in the UK is sold through bank resellers, so the term is theirs to set.

If you are one person behind one counter, a free app on a tablet you own plus a reader is a real answer until you need rotas, a second till or table service.

VAT, tips and surcharges: what a UK POS system has to get right

VAT is item-level and sometimes service-level. The same food item can be zero-rated cold and taken away, and standard-rated hot or eaten in, so the till has to hold a VAT treatment per product and switch it on the eat-in or takeaway choice. Ask to see one menu item carrying both treatments before you migrate a menu.

The takings have to reach the ledger. Under Making Tax Digital your VAT records must be kept digitally with a digital link through to the return, so check your accounting package by name in the Platform integrations row.

Tips are no longer yours to hold. Since the Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act 2023 took effect on 1 October 2024, qualifying tips must be passed to workers in full and allocated fairly, with a written policy and records kept for three years. Card tips arrive inside your settlement, so a system that reports tips by employee and by service period makes that policy administrable.

You cannot recover the card fee from the customer. Surcharging consumers for paying by card has been banned in the UK since 13 January 2018 under the Payment Services Regulations, so the processing rate is a margin cost, permanently.

Support hours and offline mode when a POS system loses the internet

Every demo runs on good broadband. Your Saturday might not. Be precise about what offline means, because vendors use the word loosely: can you take a card payment or only record a cash sale, are orders still routed to the kitchen, and who carries the risk if a stored transaction is declined later. The Offline mode row records what each vendor publishes.

Chat-only support is reasonable for a market stall and a poor fit for a hundred-cover restaurant mid-service. Settle hospitality or retail first, then whether the price includes processing, then how many sites and tills the meter counts. Compare monthly figures last.