For most small independent cafés and takeaways, SumUp or Epos Now cost far less a month than Toast once card fees are counted in. Toast suits a kitchen that needs table management and a proper kitchen display; Epos Now suits an owner happy to commit to a 12-month subscription for cheap hardware; SumUp suits low-commitment counters, food trucks and pop-ups. The card processing rate, not the software price, decides the real bill.
Key pointers
- SumUp's card fee is a flat 1.69% with no monthly software fee on its default plan, undercutting Epos Now's realistic card-present rate and the 2.49% plus 15p independently reported for Toast, which publishes no UK card rate of its own.
- Ask Epos Now for its actual card rate in writing. Its site advertises "from 0.8%", but an independent July 2026 check of UK EPOS pricing found the typical rate closer to 1.70%.
- Toast's quoted software price bundles the first hardware terminal as a subscription; it is proprietary Android kit that cannot move to another POS platform if you switch supplier later.
- Epos Now's discounted Complete Solution bundle, from £299, is tied to a mandatory 12-month payments, care and support subscription from £54 a month.
- SumUp needs no software fee to start. A Solo card reader is £49 and Pay As You Go processing carries no minimum term at all.
- Once your card takings pass roughly £3,000 a month, SumUp's own advice is to switch to its £19-a-month Payments Plus plan, which cuts the domestic card rate to 0.99%.
- UK rules cap the initial term on point-of-sale terminal contracts from major acquirers at 18 months, after which they must roll month to month. Ask where each system sits before you sign anything.
What Each System Actually Offers a Small Café
Toast describes itself as built for the UK's "pubs, cafés, takeaways, and restaurants", bringing point of sale, payments, kitchen communication, online ordering and reporting into one platform, with an offline mode that keeps orders and payments moving if the Wi-Fi drops during service. Toast launched in the UK on 4 May 2023, starting in greater London. The catch, as Business Expert's 2026 review puts it, is that Toast's restaurant-specialist features run on proprietary Android hardware, non-transferable if you switch platform, and UK domestic evidence is still thinner than longer-established players like Epos Now.
Epos Now is the older UK-origin option of the three, and its business model is built around a heavily discounted hardware bundle funded by a subscription. Its own UK pricing page currently advertises the Complete Solution bundle, a POS terminal, card machine and cash drawer, at "from £299" against a listed £849, requiring a 12-month payments, care and support subscription starting at £54 a month.
SumUp started life as a pocket card reader and has grown into a full till system. Its pricing page leads with a Pay As You Go option that has no monthly fee at all, just a 1.69% card rate, alongside a Payments Plus subscription for busier businesses and a Point of Sale Pro software tier for cafés that want table plans, stock control and a kitchen display screen. An independent café-focused comparison from May 2026 calls it "the cheapest serious option, genuinely fine for a market stall, a pop-up, a tiny single-counter café", while flagging that its reporting and integrations are shallower than the other two once a business grows.
How the Total Cost Really Stacks Up
The software subscription is the number every provider puts on its homepage, but it is rarely the number that decides the bill. Whito's 2026 EPOS cost breakdown puts it plainly: "The card rate is the number that decides the bill... A cafe taking £15,000 a month on card pays around £255 a month in processing at 1.7 percent. That is more than any software tier on this page." A café or takeaway comparing these three systems needs to add software, hardware and card processing together, not judge any one of them alone.
A worked example
Assumptions. A small independent café takes £8,000 a month by card, at an average transaction of £6, which works out at roughly 1,333 card transactions a month, using a single till. Toast's own pricing page states its plan price "includes first hardware terminal subscription", so no separate hardware purchase is added for Toast in this example; additional devices carry extra charges Toast does not publish, so budget for those separately if you need more than one terminal. Epos Now and SumUp hardware are treated as one-off costs spread over 24 months, roughly matching their subscription and contract lengths. For Epos Now, the calculation uses the independently reported typical card-present rate of about 1.70%, rather than the advertised "from 0.8%" floor, because Epos Now itself says the actual rate is agreed per business. SumUp marks its hardware prices as excluding VAT; confirm whether every other figure you are quoted, by any supplier, includes or excludes VAT before you sign.
| System | Software (monthly) | Hardware (one-off) | Hardware, spread over 24 months | Card fee at this volume | Total monthly cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Toast | £80 (Starter, bundles the first terminal) | £0 separate purchase for a single till | n/a | £399 (2.49% + 15p, independently reported; Toast agrees its rate per business) | about £479 |
| Epos Now | £54 (12-month subscription) | £299 (Complete Solution, current offer) | £12 | £136 (at the ~1.70% typical rate) | about £202 |
| SumUp | £0 (Pay As You Go) | £49 (Solo reader) | £2 | £135 (1.69%) | about £137 |
At this volume, moving from SumUp's 1.69% flat rate to the 2.49% plus 15p reported for Toast adds around £264 a month in card fees alone, well above the gap between any of the three software plans. If the café's card takings regularly clear £3,000 a month, SumUp's own pricing page recommends switching from Pay As You Go to Payments Plus (£19 a month, cutting the domestic rate to 0.99%), which would bring SumUp's total in this example down further, to around £100 a month.
Vendor and Option Comparison
| System | Software from | Hardware | Card rate | Contract | Best for | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Toast | £80/month, bundles the first terminal | First terminal included in the subscription; extra devices cost more, not published | Not published; a per-transaction flat rate agreed per business (2.49% + 15p independently reported) | No published minimum term on the software; hardware is subscribed, not owned outright | Cafés and takeaways running full table service that need kitchen display and order routing | Likely the highest card rate of the three (get Toast's quoted rate in writing), proprietary hardware with no resale value elsewhere, and less UK track record |
| Epos Now | £54/month bundled subscription | From £299 (Complete Solution, was £849) | Advertised "from 0.8%"; typical reported rate closer to 1.70% | 12-month minimum on the discounted bundle | Owners who want the cheapest hardware and are comfortable committing to a year | The gap between the advertised card rate and what you are actually quoted; get it in writing |
| SumUp | £0 (Pay As You Go) or £49/month (Point of Sale Pro) | £15 to £99 for a card reader or terminal | 1.69% Pay As You Go, or 0.99% with £19/month Payments Plus | None on Pay As You Go | Counters, food trucks, pop-ups and any business with unpredictable or seasonal volume | Thinner reporting and table-management depth than the other two unless you add paid modules |
None of the three is a universal winner. A single-counter operation with no table service is generally better off on SumUp's lower running cost; a café adding table numbers and a kitchen screen has to weigh Epos Now's cheaper hardware against Toast's deeper hospitality features and higher card rate.
Migration and Rollout Checklist
- Get your actual card-present rate in writing from each supplier, not the advertised "from" figure, before you compare totals.
- Confirm whether every quoted price includes or excludes VAT, and ask for both figures in writing.
- Check the minimum term on any subscription or terminal contract. UK rules cap point-of-sale terminal contracts from major acquirers at an initial 18 months.
- If you are choosing Toast, ask exactly what the £80-a-month Starter plan includes (Toast's own page says the first hardware terminal is bundled as a subscription) and what any second terminal, printer or kitchen display costs on top, since that is not published.
- If you are choosing Epos Now's discounted bundle, weigh the 12-month subscription cost against paying the higher list price for a contract-free machine.
- If you are choosing SumUp, decide between Pay As You Go and Payments Plus using your actual average monthly card takings against the roughly £3,000 break-even SumUp itself quotes.
- Test the new till with your Wi-Fi disconnected before go-live if your premises have patchy connectivity.
- Export or back up your existing sales and stock data before switching, and keep the old till working in parallel for your first week of trading.
- Train staff on refunds, voids and end-of-day reconciliation before the old system is switched off, and warn them that a hardware swap changes the physical routine at the counter.
Editorial Analysis
For a single-counter café or a food truck with unpredictable trading hours, the maths favours SumUp: no monthly software fee, a £49 reader, and the option to add Payments Plus only once takings justify it. A busier café running table service and printed kitchen dockets probably outgrows SumUp's free tier and should weigh Epos Now's 12-month subscription against SumUp's own £49-a-month Point of Sale Pro plan, which adds a kitchen display module for £19 a month rather than locking in a year upfront. Toast earns its place only where the kitchen genuinely needs that depth, table management, tip pooling and a dedicated kitchen display built for full food service rather than a counter. For most small independent cafés and takeaways, that is a narrower slice of the market than Toast's own marketing suggests, and its 2026 UK launch means less domestic track record than Epos Now or payment-first tills like SumUp.
Sources
- Toast UK, Toast, Inc.
- Toast POS Review 2026, Business Expert, 20 May 2026
- Epos Now UK pricing, Epos Now, checked 29 September 2026
- Epos Now payment processing, Epos Now, checked 29 September 2026
- EPOS and Till Systems UK: What One Actually Costs in 2026, Whito, 17 August 2026
- SumUp pricing, SumUp, checked 29 September 2026
- SumUp card readers, SumUp, checked 29 September 2026
- SumUp Point of Sale Pro pricing, SumUp, checked 29 September 2026
- Specific Direction 16: limiting the length of initial terms for point-of-sale terminal contracts, Payment Systems Regulator, varied May 2024
- Best EPOS Systems for UK Cafés in 2026, Brik.ly, 12 May 2026
