Small-Bar POS Pricing Compared: Square vs Toast vs Lightspeed (2026)
By the Hospitality Stack Team · written from hotel & resort F&B experience
What a small bar needs from a POS
Fast tab handling (preauthorized cards so walkouts don't cost you), quick modifiers for drinks, split checks, tip handling and reports you can read at close. For a general checklist see what to look for in a small-bar POS. This guide covers only what each vendor publishes on price.
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Square: three published plans, $0 to $149 a month
Square publishes three plans per location: Square Free $0/mo, Plus $49/mo and Premium $149/mo. In-person card fees drop as you go up a plan: 2.6% + 15¢, 2.5% + 15¢ and 2.4% + 15¢. Preauthorized bar tabs and split checks aren't in the Free plan. The KDS app costs extra per device ($30/mo on Plus, $20/mo on Premium). Plus and Premium have a 30-day free trial, and Square says businesses processing over $250,000 a year can ask for custom rates (checked Oct 2026).
Toast: quote-based, hardware first
Toast's pricing page doesn't give a fixed monthly plan grid we could verify. It says upfront costs are hardware and implementation and that they vary by package, with 0% financing by application. It offers a Pay-as-You-Go option inside its Starter package that cuts upfront hardware cost through an all-in-one platform rate. Toast runs only on Toast-approved hardware and includes 24/7 support with every subscription. Treat it as quote-only (checked Oct 2026).
Lightspeed Restaurant: $69 to $399 a month
Lightspeed Restaurant lists Starter $69, Essential $189 and Premium $399 (USD per month), plus a custom Enterprise tier. Pre-auth bar mode appears in all three listed plans. KDS is $30 per screen per month on Starter, and the page notes that prices may vary by business type (checked Oct 2026).
Which fits a small bar
One terminal, a simple menu and tight margins: Square's $0 or $49 plan is the only option here with a published all-in price and card fee, so you can work out your cost before you call anyone. Plus is the cheapest plan with bar tabs. Bigger menus, a kitchen and table service: get written quotes from Toast and Lightspeed and compare the total monthly cost (software + processing + hardware) at your real card volume. Always check the processing rate in the contract, because on a busy bar it outweighs the software fee. Weighing Toast against Clover? See Toast vs Clover. Deciding between Square and Clover? See Square vs Clover. Comparing SpotOn and Toast? See SpotOn vs Toast.
Get a Toast demo
If Toast looks like the right fit, the quickest way to see real pricing for your setup is a demo with Toast's team: they quote hardware, software and processing based on your locations and terminals. Get a Toast demo (paid link: we may earn a referral reward if your restaurant goes live on Toast, at no cost to you; see our disclosure).