Toast POS Pricing 2026: Plans, Processing Fees and Real Monthly Cost

A one-terminal restaurant running $40,000 a month in card sales pays Toast about $1,476 a month on the $0 Starter Kit and about $1,305 on the Point of Sale subscription, processing fees included, by our arithmetic on Toast's published rates. The Starter Kit charges 3.09% + 15¢ per card with no monthly fee; the subscription charges 2.49% + 15¢ plus the monthly fee and hardware bought upfront. Retail starts at $90/mo and Build Your Own is quoted.

The monthly software fee is the smallest number on a Toast invoice. Processing is the line that moves, and Toast's two ways to pay are two ways to finance the same hardware: through a higher card rate or through a subscription plus an upfront purchase. This page puts both through the same restaurant, finds the volume where they cross, and lists every charge Toast prints around them.

Prices were read on Toast's pricing page, its Starter Kit page and its Countertop Starter Kit configurator on 26 October 2026. They are Toast's US prices for new customers and single locations; a second location or a switch from another system gets a quote. The fee schedules of the alternatives are in credit card processing fees 2026.

Toolradar data: Toolradar, the software directory we run, tracks 38 restaurant POS tools as of October 25, 2026, and only 32% of them offer a free tier, so a plan with no monthly fee is the exception in this category. The figures are on the restaurant POS statistics page, and Toast POS on Toolradar is the tool most often listed as an alternative among the category's 37 others. Finpresso data: this newsletter reaches 33,000+ finance readers as of November 8, 2026, with an open rate of 33%.

Toast POS plans and fees at a glance

Plan	Monthly software fee	Card rate, in person	Hardware	Who it fits
Starter Kit, Basic package	None	3.09% + 15¢	Countertop kit, nothing to pay	A single location on 1 or 2 terminals keeping cash in the bank
Starter Kit, Core package	None	3.39% + 15¢	Same kit	Counters that add online ordering and the delivery apps
Starter Kit, Growth package	None	3.69% + 15¢	Same kit	Venues that want gift cards, loyalty and marketing without a quote
Point of Sale, restaurant	From $69	2.49% + 15¢	Bought upfront	Restaurants past about $11,500 a month in card sales
Point of Sale plus payroll bundle	From $69 plus $9 per employee	Not printed with the bundle	Bought upfront	New restaurants that want payroll inside the POS
Point of Sale, retail	From $90	Not printed	Bought upfront	Convenience, grocery and liquor stores
Build Your Own	Custom	Quoted	Bought upfront	Operators adding inventory, scheduling, payroll and marketing

Every subscription includes Toast Care, the 24/7 support line, and the first terminal's software; each further device carries its own subscription. The 15¢ per card applies to both pricing options, so it drops out of any comparison between them and comes back only when you compare Toast with another processor.

How does Toast POS pricing work?

Toast sells the same system under two payment plans, Pay-as-you-Go and Traditional. On Pay-as-you-Go, the Starter Kit's basic hardware and basic software cost nothing, and Toast recovers them through the 3.09% rate. Toast's kit page says it is not a lease and you own the hardware from day one. On Traditional, you buy the hardware at purchase, pay the monthly software fee and process at 2.49%, which Toast describes as the option for "those who expect to process higher volumes".

The Starter Kit's feature packages are the second lever. Basic covers payments, reporting and support. Core adds online ordering, delivery and the DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub integrations for 0.3 points more on every card. Growth adds gift cards, loyalty, SMS and email marketing, websites and catering for another 0.3 points. Those features are add-ons with unprinted prices on the subscription plan, so on the Starter Kit you can at least see what they cost: at the scenario volume below, Core is $120 more than Basic and Growth twice that, by our arithmetic.

Two terms sit under both options. The configurator states that the software subscription comes with a 2-year agreement, and that recurring charges begin the day you go live, not the day you sign. Toast's card reader guide adds that keyed-in transactions cost 3.5% + 15¢ on the Traditional plan, the rate to budget for phone orders.

What a restaurant pays at this card volume

The scenario is one counter-service restaurant with $40,000 in monthly card sales across 1,600 transactions, a $25 average ticket. Each total adds the plan's monthly fee, its percentage on the sales and 15¢ on each of the 1,600 cards. Hardware is left out because the two options pay for it differently, and that is the next section.

Setup	Monthly fee	Percentage fees	15¢ per card	Monthly total	Effective rate
Starter Kit, Basic (Pay-as-you-Go)	None	$1,236	$240	$1,476	3.69%
Starter Kit, Core	None	$1,356	$240	$1,596	3.99%
Starter Kit, Growth	None	$1,476	$240	$1,716	4.29%
Point of Sale (Traditional)	$69	$996	$240	$1,305	3.26%

The subscription saves $171 a month at this volume, $2,052 a year and $4,104 over the 2-year agreement, before the hardware you paid for upfront. That upfront amount is the figure the comparison cannot complete, because the public configurator prices the base kit only under Pay-as-you-Go, where there is nothing to pay, and leaves the Traditional kit price to the quote. Whatever the quote, the saving is the budget it has to fit in: a kit that costs more than about $4,100 would not pay for itself within the agreement at this volume.

The break-even between the two options is where 0.6 points of card sales equals the monthly fee: $11,500 a month in card sales. Below it, Pay-as-you-Go is cheaper every month and the restaurant keeps its cash; above it, Traditional costs less each month and the gap widens with every dollar of volume. A café doing $15,000 a month saves $21 a month on Traditional, which is not worth a 2-year commitment plus a hardware bill; a restaurant doing $60,000 saves $291 a month, which is.

A finance note on the effective rate: the 3.69% on Basic is 0.6 points above the 3.09% headline because of the per-card fee, and the smaller the ticket, the wider that gap. At a $12 average ticket the same sales are 3,333 cards and $500 in 15¢ fees, which lifts Basic to 4.34% effective. Quick-service counters with small tickets feel the fixed fee more than a sit-down restaurant does, on any processor.

How Toast compares with Square at the same volume

Square prices its restaurant plans in public, which makes it the cleanest comparison. Square's restaurant pricing page, read the same day, lists Square Free at $0, Square Plus at $49 and Square Premium at $149 per location a month, with in-person rates of 2.6% + 15¢, 2.5% + 15¢ and 2.4% + 15¢.

Setup	Monthly total at $40,000 and 1,600 cards
Toast Point of Sale (Traditional)	$1,305
Square Free	$1,280
Square Plus	$1,289
Square Premium	$1,349
Toast Starter Kit, Basic	$1,476

Toast's subscription lands $25 above Square Free and $44 below Square Premium, so at this volume the two vendors are within a rounding error of each other on processing, and the decision moves to hardware, contract length and the kitchen features. The Starter Kit is the outlier at $196 above Square Free: it is a financing choice, and the premium is the cost of starting with no cash out. How Square's rates behave on an online or invoiced sale is in Square vs Stripe, and Helcim vs Square shows what interchange-plus pricing does to the same volume. The fee-by-fee breakdown of Square's plans is in Square fees, and Clover vs Square covers the other system a restaurant usually shortlists.

Hardware, installation and the recurring device fees

The Countertop Starter Kit is $0 to own on Pay-as-you-Go and includes a Toast Flex terminal, a Toast Tap payment device, a router, the point of sale software and self-service installation support. Everything beyond that is priced in the configurator, and the devices that matter most carry a monthly fee as well as a purchase price.

Item	Configurator price
14-inch Toast Flex with counter stand (extra terminal)	$749 plus $50/mo
14-inch Toast Flex for kitchen, wall mount	$749 plus $35/mo
Toast Go 3 handheld, Wi-Fi only	$599 plus $50/mo
8-inch guest-facing Flex display	$299
Toast Kitchen Printer	$339
Toast Receipt Printer	$329
Flex 3 cash drawer with insert	$99
Toast Tap, on counter	$99
Cellular backup for the router	$40/mo
Menu built by Toast	$250
Virtual-led installation	$250
First-day phone support	$225

The device subscriptions are the line a bookkeeper should flag. A second terminal and two handhelds add $150 a month for as long as they run, more than twice the restaurant software fee, and they apply on either payment plan. Cellular backup is another $40/mo for a counter that cannot afford to lose card acceptance when the Wi-Fi drops, although Toast's offline mode keeps taking payments through an outage on its own.

Two financing options change the upfront bill without changing the total. Toast Easy Pay is a 180-day lease that collects hardware, installation, shipping and taxes as a daily percentage of sales, with no interest, fees, credit check or personal guarantee. And under Toast's hardware promo terms, new US customers who sign their first order by 31 December 2026 get 60% off the hardware in that order, a limited-time offer rather than a list price. Toast's software also runs only on Toast-approved devices, so an existing iPad does not reduce the bill.

Payroll, retail and the quoted tiers

The payroll bundle is the one add-on with a printed price. New restaurants can take the Point of Sale plan with payroll essentials and basic scheduling for the Point of Sale price plus $9 per employee a month. It sits under a "special pricing for new restaurants" banner that shows $90 as the struck-through base, so treat the lower figure as an offer. A 12-person team is $177 a month by our arithmetic, which compares with the per-employee fees in QuickBooks Payroll pricing.

The retail Point of Sale plan starts at $90/mo for convenience, grocery and liquor stores, with basic inventory, barcode printing and EBT acceptance. The retail card prints no card rate and there is no retail Starter Kit, so a store's processing cost arrives in the quote. Build Your Own, for either segment, bundles inventory, scheduling, payroll, loyalty and marketing at a custom price. Toast lists those add-ons in its comparison chart as "available with add-on; additional fees may apply" and publishes no price for any of them.

Gotchas and hidden costs

• A 2-year agreement, with recurring charges starting on the go-live date, applies to the software subscription.
• Add-on prices are unpublished on the subscription plans: online ordering, loyalty, marketing, scheduling and xtraCHEF cost analytics are all quoted.
• Extra devices bill monthly, $35 to $50 each, on top of their purchase price.
• The free kit is paid for through the rate: 0.6 points above Traditional, which the scenario above puts in dollars.
• Keyed-in cards cost 3.5% + 15¢, so phone orders run a full point above the counter rate.
• The published prices are for new customers and single locations only; a second site is a quote.
• The 60% hardware discount and the $69 payroll base are offers, not list prices, with a year-end deadline on the hardware one.

Which Toast pricing option should you choose?

Choose the Starter Kit on Basic when you are opening and card sales will stay under about $11,500 a month, or when the cash matters more than the rate. It is the only Toast option where every price is on the page, and the hardware is yours. Move to Core or Growth only for features you will use, since each step is 0.3 points on every card forever.

Choose the Point of Sale subscription on Traditional pricing once card volume is clearly above the break-even, and get three numbers in writing before you sign: the hardware total, the add-on prices for the features you need, and the early-termination terms, which the published pages do not state. In the scenario above the subscription saves about $2,000 a year, enough to cover a reasonable hardware bill inside the agreement.

Shop Square alongside Toast when the kitchen features are not the deciding factor. The processing totals are within $25 of each other at this volume and Square's rates are printed for every tier, which is how a controller prefers a vendor to behave. The accounting side of either system, from daily batch to reconciliation, is in how to do bookkeeping for a small business. The product itself is in the Square review, and the sister comparison from the retail side is Toast vs Square on Retailpresso.

Methodology and sources

Plan prices, package rates, the hardware list, the 2-year agreement and the go-live rule were read on Toast's pricing page, its Starter Kit page and the Countertop Starter Kit configurator on 26 October 2026. The Traditional per-card fee and the keyed-in rate come from Toast's own card reader guide, the lease terms from its payment options page and the discount from its hardware promo terms. Square's figures were read on Square's restaurant pricing page the same day.

The $40,000 scenario, the break-even, the effective rates and the payroll and device totals are our arithmetic on those published prices, and they leave out anything Toast does not print, including the Traditional kit price and every add-on. Toolradar figures are from its restaurant POS category as of October 25, 2026.

Louis Corneloup, founder of Toolradar and Dupple, wrote this page. We run no test lab and give no rating. The method is on how we rate, corrections on the editorial policy and the author note on about. Confirm the rate, the term and the hardware total on your own quote before you sign.

FAQ

How much does Toast POS cost per month in 2026?

Toast costs $0 a month on the Starter Kit, where each card is charged 3.09% + 15¢ on the Basic package, 3.39% on Core and 3.69% on Growth. The restaurant Point of Sale subscription starts at $69 a month with a 2.49% + 15¢ card rate and hardware bought upfront. Retail starts at $90 a month and Build Your Own is quoted.

What are Toast's credit card processing fees?

3.09% + 15¢ per card on the Starter Kit's Basic package, rising to 3.39% and 3.69% with the Core and Growth packages, all with no monthly fee. On the Traditional subscription the in-person rate is 2.49% + 15¢ and keyed-in cards are 3.5% + 15¢. The 15¢ applies on both options, so only the percentage separates them.

Is Toast POS really free?

The Starter Kit has no monthly software fee and nothing to pay for its basic countertop hardware, so a single-location restaurant can start without paying before its first sale. The cost is the 0.6-point higher card rate, worth $240 a month in the scenario above, plus purchase prices and monthly fees on any extra devices.

Does Toast require a contract?

Yes. The Starter Kit configurator states that the software subscription comes with a 2-year agreement and that recurring charges begin on the day you go live. Early-termination terms are not on the published pages, so ask for them in the quote.

At what sales volume is the Toast subscription cheaper?

Above about $11,500 a month in card sales, by our arithmetic: that is where 0.6% of sales equals the monthly fee. In the scenario above the subscription saves $171 a month before hardware; at $15,000 it saves $21, too little to justify the commitment and the upfront purchase.

Is Toast cheaper than Square?

At $40,000 a month across 1,600 cards, Toast's Traditional subscription costs $1,305 against $1,280 on Square Free, $1,289 on Square Plus and $1,349 on Square Premium, by our arithmetic. Toast's Starter Kit on Basic costs $1,476, the most expensive of the five, because its rate finances the hardware.

Cite this: Finpresso, "Toast POS Pricing 2026: Plans, Processing Fees and Real Monthly Cost", October 2026.

The Finpresso brief covers payment and software price changes like these as they happen, with the arithmetic done. Subscribe at finpresso.com.

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