Square
Square replaced 18 per-vertical subscriptions with unified plans in October 2025: Square Free $0/mo, Square Plus $49/mo and Square Premium $149/mo, each per location across retail, restaurant and appointments. A fourth tier, Square Pro, is custom-priced and offered to sellers processing over $250,000 a year. Card-present rates step down with the plan: 2.6% + 15c on Free, 2.5% + 15c on Plus, 2.4% + 15c on Premium. Keyed and card-on-file is 3.5% + 15c on every plan. Published hardware runs from a free first magstripe reader and the $59 contactless-and-chip reader up to the $899 Square Register.
What this POS actually costs in Year 1.
*Representative buyer: 1 location · 2 terminals · $40K/mo card volume · ~600 transactions/mo.
On Square Free: $0 software. Hardware anywhere from a free magstripe reader to the $899 Register; two $299 Terminals is $598. Processing at the Free rate of 2.6% + 15c on $40K/mo over 1,600 transactions is $1,040 + $240 = $1,280/mo, or $15,360 a year. Year-1 total on that basis: $15,400 to $16,300. Moving to Square Plus at $49/mo cuts the rate to 2.5% + 15c, which saves $40/mo in card fees against $49/mo in software, so Plus only pays for itself above roughly $49,000/mo of card volume.
Why this POS is priced this way.
Square's structural play is published, non-negotiable pricing. Every rate in the table above is a number on Square's own fees page rather than one a sales rep arrives at, and the rate steps down with the plan: 2.6% + 15c on Free, 2.5% on Plus, 2.4% on Premium. Block, Square's parent, earns on payments rather than software, which is why a genuinely free POS tier exists at all. That makes Square the simplest cost story in this table and the safest first POS for a buyer who does not want to negotiate.
What first-time buyers miss.
The trap is not the price, it is the plan arithmetic. Each paid plan buys you 10 basis points off the card rate, so the upgrade only pays back above a volume you can calculate: Plus at $49/mo needs about $49,000/mo of card volume to beat Free, and Premium at $149/mo needs about $100,000/mo to beat Plus. Below those lines you are paying for features, not for cheaper processing, and should decide on that basis. Above $250,000 a year Square will discuss custom pricing under its Pro tier, which is the only point at which Square's published rates stop being the whole story.
Who this POS fits.
Mobile vendors: food trucks, market stalls, pop-ups. Single-location SMBs. Hybrid operations that need retail and restaurant tooling in one subscription. Buyers who value pricing simplicity over negotiation, and first-time buyers who have not yet established what their volume will be.