Methodology
How we verify POS pricing
Three verification tiers per vendor. Live-verified means we fetched the price directly from the vendor's pricing page today. Industry-reported means the vendor publishes pricing but the page returned HTTP 403 or other anti-bot block — figure triangulated from 2026-dated third-party reviews (MerchantMaverick, Tech.co, Korona, Owner.com). Quote-only means no published per-location price exists.
Toast and Heartland (HTTP 403)
Both Toast and Heartland blocked automated fetch today. Toast figures verified via 2026 third-party reviews (Owner.com, MerchantMaverick); Heartland is fully quote-only.
Clover (title-only)
Clover's page returned only the title tag on fetch. Figures verified via Korona, Tech.co, MerchantMaverick (all 2026-dated). The 36-48 month hardware lease lock-in is consistently flagged across reviews — we surface this on the home page as a buyer warning.
Brand changes
Revel was acquired by Shift4 in June 2024 ($250M); the Revel brand is being sunset and the URL 301-redirects to Shift4 SkyTab. NCR rebranded to NCR Voyix. Both flagged at the vendor level.
Year-1 TCO formula
Hardware midpoint × terminals + monthly software × terminals × 12 + monthly processing × volume. Monthly processing = (transaction volume × percent rate) + (transaction count × flat fee). Honest about what's left out: setup fees (often waived), training, integration costs.
Industry benchmarks
Mobile/micro $200-$1,200 year-1. Single-location small $1,500-$5,000. Single-location mid $5,000-$15,000. Multi-location $15,000-$60,000. Synthesised from cross-vendor average plus 2026 SMB POS industry summaries.
Re-verification cadence
Quarterly. Pre-deploy CI gate refuses to publish data >90 days stale.
Conflicts of interest
Independent. No vendor sponsorship. No payment processor referrals. Display advertising only — POS vendor and payment processor ads excluded from the property.