Square POS Review

Square's pitch is easy to repeat: the software is free, and you pay only when a customer pays. That is true, but it hides the real decision. On Square, card processing is most of what you spend, so the choice between Free, Plus and Premium comes down to how much you sell through the register each month.

Toolradar data: Toolradar tracks 35 restaurant POS tools as of October 10, 2026, and 31% of them are free, freemium or open source. Nearly a third have a free option, so the headline price is rarely the number that decides the bill.

This review is for owners of single-location shops, cafés, market stalls and pop-ups that sell in person and may also take orders online. It works from the fees Square publishes today, runs the break-even points, and says where the plan does not fit.

Square POS is the point-of-sale software and card processing service from Square, the payments company that also runs Square Payroll.

A Square account takes chip, contactless and digital wallet payments on a Square Reader, a Terminal, a Register, or the phone or tablet you already own. Tap to Pay on iPhone and Tap to Pay on Android accept contactless cards and wallets with no extra hardware.

The app keeps an item library, staff access and sales reports, and every payment settles through Square's own processing.

Setup takes minutes. Create an account, install the Point of Sale app on a phone or tablet, or buy a Terminal or Register, then build your item library. The plan you pick sets both the fee and the feature set. Square Free has no monthly subscription and includes the POS app and payments, the item library and a website builder with SEO tools.

Plus and Premium add a monthly fee per location, lower in-person rates and a free 30-day trial. Plus adds staff management and loyalty rewards, and Premium adds advanced reporting.

Paid add-ons are priced per device. The KDS app for kitchen tickets and the Kiosk app for self-service ordering are not on Free, and both cost more on Plus than on Premium. Text marketing is a Plus and Premium feature too, with 500 texts a month on Plus and 2,500 on Premium before per-text charges start.

Prices checked on Square's US pricing page on October 10, 2026. Square Free is $0 a month per location, and you pay only the processing fee on each sale. Square Plus is $49 a month per location and Square Premium is $149 a month per location, and both carry a 30-day free trial.

Hardware sits on the Terminal page and the Register page.

Here is the arithmetic for one shop with $30,000 a month in card-present sales, made up of 750 payments at $40 each.

The fixed 15¢ per payment comes to $112.50 on every plan, so only the percentage differs. Free costs $892.50 a month ($780 in rate plus $112.50). Plus costs $911.50 ($750 plus $112.50 plus $49). Premium costs $981.50 ($720 plus $112.50 plus $149).

At that volume the free plan is the cheapest. Plus pulls ahead once in-person sales pass $49,000 a month, and Premium beats Plus only above $100,000 a month.

Online and invoice payments reverse the logic. At 3.3% + 30¢ on Free against 2.9% + 30¢ on Plus, the paid plan wins once online card sales pass $12,250 a month.

Premium never beats Plus online because the two rates are the same.

Watch the extras. Gift card loads cost 2.5% on Free and Plus and nothing on Premium, so a $1,000 gift card load costs $25 on the lower two plans. Payroll starts at $35 a month plus $6 per person paid, and the Thrive Inventory sync with Shopify is $99 a month per location.

A store doing $100,000 a month in in-person sales pays $2,600 a month in rate on Free before any software fee, so the rate is the number to plan around, not the plan fee.

Square says merchants above $250,000 a year can ask its team about custom pricing.

Methodology. We read every fee on Square's US pricing and hardware pages on October 10, 2026, then calculated monthly costs at a stated volume with the arithmetic shown.

Nothing here comes from a third-party summary. Square changes its pricing, so we re-read the pages at each refresh and move the date only when a number changes.

Square POS fits a single-location shop, café, market stall or pop-up that takes most of its money at the counter. A boutique with one register gets a working point of sale, card payments and an item library on the free plan, with no monthly bill to justify before the first sale.

Owners who want a website without a separate build can use the Free plan's website builder, a useful extra for a shop with no online store yet.

It is a weaker fit when sales are large and steady. Once in-person sales pass the Plus break-even point, Plus costs less than Free, and Premium only pays off at a higher volume still.

Online-first stores pay the higher 3.3% + 30¢ rate on Free, so a store whose orders come mainly from a website may fit a Shopify-based POS better. Our Shopify review covers that side, and Shopify POS on Toolradar lists the product.

If you run several locations or a restaurant, compare the full field in our best POS systems guide before you commit.

For the tool itself, see Square on Toolradar.

Multi-channel sellers also need to match orders and stock, which our order management guide compares.