How to choose a restaurant EPOS system in the UK
The advertised monthly price is rarely the number that matters. Card processing percentage, contract length and hardware ownership decide what an EPOS actually costs you over three years — and those are the three things vendor comparison pages are least keen to put side by side.
Last reviewed July 2026
Work out total cost, not subscription cost
Take your expected monthly card turnover and multiply it by the processing rate. On £30,000 a month, 1.75% is £525 — more than any UK restaurant EPOS subscription on the market. A system that is free but takes 1.75% is more expensive than a £79 system that takes nothing, at every turnover above roughly £4,500 a month.
Then add hardware. A terminal bundle at £900 per till, amortised over a three-year agreement, is £25 a month you may not have counted.
The questions to ask before signing
- 1What is the total contract term, and what does early termination cost in writing?
- 2Is the hardware finance separate from the software subscription, and does it survive cancellation?
- 3What exactly is the card processing rate, including non-standard cards, and is it contractually fixed or variable?
- 4What happens during an internet outage — does the till stop, or does it queue and sync?
- 5Can I export my full sales and menu data in a standard format, on demand, without asking support?
- 6Who owns the customer data, and is it processed under UK GDPR terms?
- 7What is the actual support model — is on-site included, or is it remote-only with an engineer callout charge?
- 8How are software updates delivered, and can they be deferred during service?
Features that matter, in order
- Offline behaviour. Everything else is irrelevant if service stops when the broadband does.
- Speed of the order flow. Count the taps to send a modified item to the kitchen; multiply by 300 covers.
- Allergen data held on the menu item, given the FSA's 2025 written-information expectation.
- Tips recorded separately from sales, for the Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act record-keeping duty.
- Split bills that do not require rebuilding the order.
- Reporting you will actually read — item-level margin beats a dashboard with forty tiles.
- Delivery platform integration, if a meaningful share of your covers come through Deliveroo, Uber Eats or Just Eat.
Run a real trial
Demos are staged. Insist on putting the system through one full service — ideally a busy one — with your actual menu and your actual staff before committing. Systems that will not let you do that without a signature are telling you something.
Buying questions
- How much should a UK restaurant EPOS system cost?
- Software subscriptions in the UK range from £0 to roughly £150 per month per site. The bigger variable is card processing, typically 1.4%–1.8% on bundled systems, which at £30,000 monthly turnover is £420–£540 a month on its own.
- Should I buy EPOS hardware or use my own devices?
- If your system runs in a browser, using tablets you already own removes the largest upfront cost and avoids hardware finance. Dedicated terminals are more robust in a wet, hot environment and are worth it for high-volume sites, but they are rarely worth a multi-year lease for a new single-site restaurant.
- What contract length is normal for UK EPOS?
- Multi-year terms of 36 to 48 months remain common, particularly where hardware finance is bundled. Monthly rolling terms exist and are increasingly available — there is no operational reason a cloud system needs a three-year commitment.
- Do I need an EPOS that handles delivery platform orders?
- Only if delivery is a material share of your covers. If it is, direct integration with Deliveroo, Uber Eats and Just Eat saves your team re-keying orders from tablets during service, which is a genuine source of errors.