What will a restaurant POS cost you?
Enter your locations, terminals, kitchen screens and card volume to see a 12-month total for Square for Restaurants, TouchBistro, Lightspeed Restaurant and Waitery, in Canadian dollars. Every figure comes from each vendor's own pricing page, verified . Where a vendor publishes nothing, the calculator says so instead of guessing.
| Vendor | Plan | Software, 12 months | Kitchen display | Extra terminals | Card processing | 12-month total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Square for Restaurants | Plus | $720 | $0 | $480 | $12,000 | $13,200 |
| TouchBistro *assumption | Point of Sale | $1,159 | Quote | Quote | $12,000 | $13,159 |
| Lightspeed Restaurant *assumption | Starter | $1,159 | $504 | Quote | $12,000 | $13,663 |
| Waitery *assumption | Whole platform | $168 | $0 | $0 | $12,000 | $12,168 |
* Rows marked “assumption” rely on a rate or exchange rate you can change above, or leave out a quote-based item. Prices verified September 19, 2026 on each vendor's own pricing page.
Notes
- Square for Restaurants. Line items: Card processing (12 months): at published 2.5% in-person credit rate applied to all volume (upper bound; Interac debit is 0.75% + 7¢). Currency: Canadian pricing page; prices in CAD. Processing: In person 2.5% for all major credit cards; Interac debit 0.75% + 7¢; online 2.8% + 30¢; manually keyed 3.3% + 15¢. The calculator applies the 2.5% credit rate to all card volume, an upper bound for any restaurant with Interac debit share.
- TouchBistro. Kitchen display: Kitchen display is not listed in either priced plan and no per-screen price is printed; ask for it in a quote. Terminals: No per-terminal software fee is printed; the page says "starting at" for both priced plans. Line items: Software — Point of Sale (starting at): converted from unlabelled (treated as USD) at 1.4002 · Kitchen display software: not published — quote · Extra terminal software: not published — quote · Card processing (12 months): at your rate of 2.5% — vendor publishes no rate. Currency: TouchBistro prints no currency on its pricing page. This site treats the figures as USD by default and converts at an editable rate; set the rate to 1.0 if your TouchBistro quote is in CAD. Processing: No processing rates are printed. Essentials says "payment processing and additional fees apply".
- Lightspeed Restaurant. Terminals: Per-register pricing is not printed on the pricing page. Line items: Software — Starter: converted from USD at 1.4002 · Extra terminal software: not published — quote · Card processing (12 months): at your rate of 2.5% — vendor publishes no rate. Currency: Published in USD on the page served to Canadian visitors (region selector shows CA (EN)); no CAD price list. Processing: Payment processing rates are not printed on the pricing page ("integrated payments" varies by tier).
- Waitery. Line items: Card processing (12 months): at your rate of 2.5% — vendor publishes no rate. Currency: Published in CAD. Processing: Processing rates are quoted per restaurant — ask during your demo. The calculator applies your own rate.
Embed this calculator
Paste this into your page. The current inputs are kept in the link.
Cite this
Waitery, “Restaurant POS cost calculator (Canada)”, waitery.ca/tools/restaurant-pos-cost-calculator/, prices verified September 19, 2026.
How this calculator works
- Every total covers 12 months and uses each vendor's own published prices, as read on September 19, 2026.
- Software is charged per location. Kitchen display is charged per screen where the vendor publishes a per-screen fee; Waitery includes it.
- Card processing uses the vendor's published in-person credit rate (Square, 2.5%). Where a vendor publishes no rate, your own editable rate is applied and the row is marked as an assumption.
- USD prices (Lightspeed, and TouchBistro's unlabelled figures) are converted at an editable rate; the default is the Bank of Canada daily average, September 18, 2026.
- Provincial sales tax on software and hardware is optional and uses the combined rate for the province you pick.
- Nothing is invented. When a vendor publishes no price for an item, the cell says “Quote” and the item is left out of that vendor's total.
Toast is not in the table: its pricing pages blocked our check on September 19, 2026, so no figure could be verified. Read the Toast pricing note for what we could and could not confirm.
The pricing behind the numbers
Want the Waitery number for your restaurant?
Book a 20-minute demo. We walk through the $14 CAD per location price, the hardware you would need and the processing rate for your restaurant.
Book a demo