A pricing page shows one number. The bill that arrives every month is another one, and the gap between the two is what this post prices out, line by line, for a restaurant that switches on everything.
I came at this from an odd angle. The Heritage Diner, the family restaurant in Mount Sinai where I work, ran Aldelo for more than 20 years on a license model that cost little and was paid once. We now run Square. Both systems taught me the same lesson: nobody knows everything they need on day one. You find out in month six, or year three, and each discovery has a price tag nobody mentioned at the start.
How the diner paid for a POS system in the Aldelo years
The license was a low cost, bought one time, good for life, with upgrades free. That was the model, and it never became a monthly bill. Support was a separate purchase. So was the server, which sat inside our building, and keeping it on our own premises meant more security for us than a server somewhere else would have.
A disclosure belongs here. I also resold NextPOS, the product that became Aldelo, and I built training sessions for the managers and staff who used what I installed. That was through Nanos Media, my technology consulting group for restaurants.
Aldelo does not publish prices now. Its pricing page sends buyers to sales for a custom quote and says customers who process with Aldelo Pay pay no per-terminal licensing fee. So I have no Aldelo number to give you, and I won’t guess one.
What Square charges per location, and why the plan fee is a bet on volume
Square prices by plan, per location, per month. Here is what its restaurant pricing page showed on October 30, 2026.
| Plan | Per location, per month | In person (tap, dip, swipe) | Online |
|---|---|---|---|
| Square Free | $0 | 2.6% + 15¢ | 3.3% + 30¢ |
| Square Plus | $49 | 2.5% + 15¢ | 2.9% + 30¢ |
| Square Premium | $149 | 2.4% + 15¢ | 2.9% + 30¢ |
A fourth tier, Square Pro, is custom pricing. Square invites businesses that process more than $250,000 a year to talk to its team about it.
What the money buys changes with the plan. According to Square’s general pricing page, Plus adds a loyalty rewards program, email and text marketing, and staff management. Premium adds 24/7 priority support, advanced reporting, more text messaging and no gift card load fees.
The plan fee is a bet on volume
Look at the in-person rates again. Each step up the ladder trims 0.1 percentage points, and the 15¢ per transaction stays put. That makes the math clean, and ticket size drops out of it.
On $10,000 in card sales, Plus saves $10 over Free. The plan costs $49 more, so the rates alone pay for it at $49,000 a month in card sales. Premium saves another $10 per $10,000 and costs $100 more than Plus, so on rates alone it needs $100,000 a month to break even on the step up.
Online sales tilt it faster. Plus cuts the online rate from 3.3% to 2.9%, which is $40 saved per $10,000, and the $49 fee is covered at $12,250 a month in online sales.
Rates are only one reason to move up. Loyalty, staff tools and the 24/7 line are the other. But a restaurant that buys Premium for the lower rate and sells $30,000 a month on cards is paying for a discount it can’t use.
Every add-on at once: the monthly bill and the hardware
Now the maximum. Take one location on Square Premium and switch on the paid extras Square prices on its pages. The device counts and staff count below are my assumptions, there to show the arithmetic.
| Line | Price | Assumption | Monthly |
|---|---|---|---|
| Square Premium plan | $149 per location | 1 location | $149 |
| Kitchen display (KDS) app | $20 per device | 2 screens | $40 |
| Square Kiosk | $99 per device | 1 kiosk | $99 |
| Square Payroll | $35 + $6 per person paid | 25 people | $185 |
| Total before card processing | $473 | ||
That is $5,676 a year before a single card is swiped. The KDS and kiosk prices come from the restaurant pricing page, and the payroll price comes from Square Payroll. Square also lists a cheaper kiosk app, Kiosk Lite, at $30 a device on Premium.
Then comes the part that outweighs all of it. Card processing on Premium runs 2.4% plus 15¢. If the restaurant puts $50,000 a month through cards at a $25 average ticket, that is 2,000 transactions, $1,200 in percentage fees and $300 in per-transaction fees: $1,500 a month. The software is the small bill, and the processing is the large one.
Hardware: one of everything
Square sells hardware separately. From its hardware page, one of each device:
- Square Register (2nd generation): $899
- Square Handheld: $399
- Square Terminal: $299
- Square Stand: $149
- Square Kiosk, with counter stand: $1,999
- Square Reader for contactless and chip: $59
That adds up to $3,804. The page does not price kitchen display hardware, kitchen printers or cash drawers, so the real figure is higher. Square also offers installment plans on some devices, and the page’s footnote lists a 15% APR, so financing is a cost too. The new Kiosk requires an active Plus or Premium subscription.
What every plan includes, and the offline rule
Square lists four things on every plan, the free one too: end-to-end encrypted payments, active fraud prevention, next-day transfers and offline payments. The first three are what you would hope to find at that price. The fourth has a catch that deserves a close reading.
When the internet drops, a device can keep taking card payments. Those payments process when the device reconnects. If it does not reconnect within 24 hours of the first offline payment, they are declined, and Square’s footnote on its pricing page says the merchant is responsible for any expired, declined or disputed payments taken offline.
Picture that on a Saturday in a full dining room. Our server sat in the building. A cloud system moves that work somewhere else, and a rule with a clock on it comes along for the ride.
On contracts, Square’s pricing page promises “No hidden fees or locked-in contracts.” That is marketing copy, and the terms you sign are what count, so read them.
The costs no price page listed
I can’t put a dollar figure on these.
After COVID, DoorDash and Uber orders became a real share of what came through the door. Aldelo was not good at handling them, and that is why we moved to Square cloud. Square was the better option, though not a perfect one. For a while we needed tablets on the counter just to receive delivery orders. Those tablets were a cost no pricing page had mentioned.
Today Square says it can integrate delivery partners like Uber Eats and DoorDash with the POS, as its restaurant page puts it. What the delivery apps themselves charge is set by those companies, and Square’s pricing pages don’t list it.
Training sits in the same pile. Every system I installed came with a training session, and the hours people spent in it were as real as any license fee. Nobody quotes that line either.
Questions I would ask before signing
A salesperson will answer these if you ask them directly, and some will answer them only if you do.
- What is the contract length, and what does it cost to leave? Square says none, but your processor may differ.
- Which rate applies to my sales: the one on the page, or a custom one?
- Is each add-on priced per location, per device or per person?
- What hardware is not on the price list: kitchen printers, cash drawers, cables, tablets?
- Which of my delivery apps connect directly to the POS, and which still need a separate tablet?
- If I outgrow a plan, what changes and when does the new price start?
- Where does the data live, and who can reach it?
Where the diner stands now
The Heritage Diner runs on Square today. Its site is heritagediner.com.
The appeal of the lifetime license is plain: pay once, upgrade for free, and the software bill stops. It lost anyway. The thing I needed changed underneath it, and the cheapest license in the world can’t carry delivery orders it doesn’t know how to receive.
For informational purposes only — consult a licensed attorney or financial advisor. Prices were read from the vendors’ own pages on October 30, 2026 and can change without notice, so check them before you buy.
Sources
- Aldelo, pricing: https://aldelo.com/pricing
- Square, restaurant pricing: https://squareup.com/us/en/point-of-sale/restaurants/pricing
- Square, general pricing: https://squareup.com/us/en/pricing
- Square, hardware: https://squareup.com/us/en/hardware
- Square, payroll: https://squareup.com/us/en/payroll
- Square, restaurant POS overview: https://squareup.com/us/en/point-of-sale/restaurants
- Square on YouTube, Getting Started With Square for Restaurants: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xhOadzoe8c
