Is Toast or Square Cheaper for Your Restaurant?
Compare current Square prices with a complete Toast quote using your payment mix, devices and contract terms. Includes worked costs and a break-even calculation.
In this guide
Neither Toast nor Square is always cheaper for a restaurant. Square publishes its plan fees and processing rates, from $0 a month with 2.6% plus 15 cents in person on Square Free to $149 a month with 2.4% plus 15 cents on Premium, while Toast lists software from $0 to $69 a month but does not publish its processing rate. Compare processing by payment channel, subscriptions, devices, implementation and contract commitments on the same restaurant volume. Then verify that the lower-cost setup can run your service.
What each company publishes
These prices were checked on Square's pricing page and Toast's pricing page on September 23, 2026. Custom, negotiated or existing-customer terms can differ.
| Item | Square | Toast |
|---|---|---|
| Entry option | Square Free, $0 per location per month | Starter Kit, from $0 per month, hardware kit with no upfront cost, one location with up to two terminals |
| Core paid plan | Plus $49, Premium $149 per location per month | Point of Sale from $69 per month with your own choice of hardware |
| In-person processing | 2.6% + 15 cents (Free), 2.5% + 15 cents (Plus), 2.4% + 15 cents (Premium) | Described as "simple, flat rate"; the rate is not published |
| Online processing | 3.3% + 30 cents (Free), 2.9% + 30 cents (Plus and Premium) | Not published |
| Custom pricing | Square Pro, for businesses processing over $250,000 a year | Build Your Own, custom quote |
| Payroll | Square Payroll from $35 per month plus $6 per person paid | Point of Sale and payroll bundle from $69 per month plus $9 per employee per month |
| Hardware | Options starting at $59 | Choose your own, or the Starter Kit terminal or handheld |
Toast's page explains that hardware and implementation depend on the setup, so obtain a complete numeric quote for your restaurant instead of substituting a third-party rate range.
Compare vendor evidence, integrations and contract commitments.
Make the transaction mix do the comparison
Illustrative POS calculation: assume one restaurant processes $120,000 in person across 3,000 transactions and $20,000 online across 500 transactions per month. Applying the published Square rates and monthly location fees gives the following limited comparison.
- Free: $3,120 + $450 in person, plus $660 + $150 online, totaling $4,380.
- Plus: $3,000 + $450 in person, plus $580 + $150 online, plus $49, totaling $4,229.
- Premium: $2,880 + $450 in person, plus $580 + $150 online, plus $149, totaling $4,209.
These totals exclude hardware, additional applications, optional services and any transactions priced differently. They show a $20 monthly difference between Plus and Premium under these assumptions. They do not establish which is cheaper after the full restaurant configuration or a negotiated proposal.
To compare Toast, give its representative the same volumes and transaction counts and ask for a complete repricing. Separate card-present, online, manually entered, international and other material categories. Include refunds and the treatment of fees on refunded transactions. A low percentage applied to only part of the business is not a full quote.
Find the break-even without guessing the winner
Proposed comparison method: express each option as monthly fixed charges plus the sum of each channel's volume times its percentage rate, plus transaction counts times fixed transaction charges. Add implementation and hardware over the same stated evaluation period. Use the actual contract for each input.
For the published Square comparison above, Premium costs $100 more per month than Plus and reduces the in-person percentage by 0.1 percentage point, with the listed online and per-transaction charges unchanged. On those fees alone, break-even is $100 ÷ 0.001 = $100,000 of monthly in-person volume. Required device applications and other differences can move that threshold.
Apply the same arithmetic to a Toast quote: its monthly software fee against the difference between its quoted rate and Square's on your in-person and online volume. Run a low-volume and high-volume case, and a case with more online ordering. This reveals whether the choice depends on one optimistic sales assumption. For a group, count location fees, device charges and support requirements across the actual rollout, not only the first counter.
A cheaper quote still has to pass service
Give both vendors the same demonstration: enter a modified order, split a check, adjust a tip, send items to the appropriate kitchen station, handle a refund and reconcile a payout. Add your important edge cases, such as an event deposit, offline interruption or an order from a delivery integration.
Mark each task as included, extra-cost, unsupported or still unverified. Record plan requirements and the people responsible for configuration. Do not assume that one platform serves only small restaurants or the other becomes worthwhile only at high volume.
Finally, price the transition: training, menu setup, integration work, overlap between contracts, hardware reuse and exit commitments. Have the controller check the financial comparison and the operations leader sign off on the tested workflow. The card-statement review guide helps establish your baseline, while the restaurant operations resources connect the choice to the systems it must serve.
Quick answers
Does Toast publish its credit card processing rate?
No. As of September 23, 2026, Toast's pricing page describes its processing as simple and flat-rate but does not publish the percentage, so ask for the rate in writing and reprice your own transaction mix.
What does Square charge restaurants?
Square publishes $0, $49 and $149 per location per month for its Free, Plus and Premium plans, with in-person processing of 2.6%, 2.5% and 2.4% plus 15 cents and online processing of 3.3% or 2.9% plus 30 cents.
When does Square Premium beat Square Plus?
On processing fees alone, above about $100,000 of in-person card sales per location per month, because Premium costs $100 more and lowers the in-person rate by 0.1 percentage point. Features can justify either plan at other volumes.
Sources
- Square's pricing page · squareup.com
- Toast's pricing page · pos.toasttab.com
Revision note · September 23, 2026: Updated with current Square and Toast published pricing in one table.
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