Square online ordering: what it costs a restaurant in 2026

Square online ordering is included with every Square plan, Square Free at $0 a month among them, and Square charges no commission on the orders. What you pay is the online card rate: 3.3% + 30¢ per order on Free, or 2.9% + 30¢ on Plus ($49 a month per location) and Premium ($149). On 300 pickup orders a month at $30, that is $387 on Free and $400 on Plus. Delivery through Square’s courier partners costs extra per order; in California, DoorDash charges $8.99 per delivery within 5 miles.

What does Square online ordering cost?

These are the prices on Square’s own pages on October 31, 2026.

Square says the sale is processed directly by Square, so you pay no commission or marketplace fee on orders from your ordering profile. Plus and Premium have a 30-day free trial, and Square says you can cancel or switch plans anytime. A business that processes over $250,000 a year can ask Square about custom pricing on its Square Pro tier.

You do not have to buy hardware to take payments with Square, according to its pricing FAQ. Online orders show on the Square POS and on a kitchen printer or the Square KDS app. If you want Square hardware, it starts at $59.

What does a month of online orders cost on Square?

Say a restaurant takes 300 online pickup orders a month at $30, or $9,000. We leave tax and tip out of the order total to keep the numbers simple, although Square charges its rate on the whole card payment.

On Free, each $30 order costs $1.29. The 30¢ weighs more on a small order: a $12 order costs 70¢, or 5.8%.

Plus lowers the online rate by 0.4 points, which covers its $49 once a location takes about $12,250 a month in online card sales. Plus also takes 0.1 points off in-person payments, so a restaurant with a busy counter reaches that point sooner. For many restaurants the features decide it: QR code ordering, the KDS app and loyalty are not on Free. With one KDS screen, Plus costs $79 a month before card fees.

How does delivery work on Square online ordering, and what does it cost?

Square’s on-demand delivery sends a DoorDash or Uber courier when a guest places a delivery order on your ordering page. The order lands on your POS, and you and the guest can follow the courier. Square’s delivery pricing policy, last updated March 16, 2026, lists what each delivery partner charges:

New York City has its own DoorDash rate, $9.98 per delivery up to 5 miles. A third partner, Nash, quotes variable rates. Square’s card rate applies to the order on top of the delivery fee.

You decide who pays the delivery fee: Square’s policy says it may be charged to the guest or to you, depending on how you set your delivery fees. In California, 100 DoorDash deliveries within 5 miles come to $899 a month if you cover them in full. A 5-kilometer Uber trip in California costs $9.25.

Square dropped its own dispatch fee on February 6, 2025. Before that, most Square Online plans paid $1.50 per on-demand delivery and 50¢ per delivery by your own staff; the top plan paid no in-house fee. You can still deliver with your own drivers.

A marketplace charges differently. DoorDash’s marketplace plans take a share of every order instead of a flat fee per trip; our breakdown of DoorDash fees for restaurants lists them.

Do guests pay a fee on Square online orders?

Not unless the restaurant adds one. Square lets you add a percentage or fixed service charge on every plan, and it shows as a line item to you and the guest. Before you add one, read how a restaurant service fee is taxed.

We put one item in the cart at two Square Online ordering pages on October 31, 2026: Taqueria Santa Cruz Express in San Luis Obispo, California, and Nixta Taqueria in Austin, Texas. Both carts had a “Service fee” line, and both showed it at $0.00 for a pickup order. Tax had not yet been calculated in the cart. The Checkout button stayed disabled for us at both, so we did not see the final payment page.

How do you set up Square online ordering?

Square’s steps: create a free Square account, then add your menu with photos and descriptions. If you already run the Square POS, the menu syncs from it; you can also import a menu from a PDF or from a marketplace. Then share the link to your ordering profile on your website, Google Business Profile, Yelp and social pages. Square also lists Order with Google on every plan, which lets guests order from your page through Google Maps and Search.

Square’s QR code ordering feature, for orders placed from the table, needs Plus or Premium. On Free you can still post a QR code that links to your ordering page. Our guide to QR code ordering prices table ordering on Square against Toast, Clover and ChowNow.

Is Square online ordering worth it?

If you already run Square, turn it on. On Free it costs nothing beyond the 3.3% + 30¢ card rate, orders go into the POS you already use, and guests pay no extra fee unless you add one. DoorDash’s delivery fee is flat within 5 miles, so a $60 order costs the same to deliver as a $15 one.

Count the 30¢ if your orders are small: on a $12 order Square Free takes 5.8%. And if you want And if you want Square’s QR table ordering or a kitchen screen, you need Plus at $49 a month, plus $30 per screen.

If you are still choosing a POS, Square publishes its plan prices and card rates. Our Toast vs Square comparison runs a full month of counter and online sales on both, and our Clover online ordering costs do the same for Clover.

Where Expresso fits

Expresso is not a POS, and it has no delivery. If you run Square, its own online ordering is the better choice for most restaurants: it costs about the same, puts orders in your POS, delivers through DoorDash or Uber, and charges guests nothing unless you add a fee.

Expresso takes pickup, curbside, scheduled and table orders from your own link and rings them on a kitchen tablet of its own ($149 once), separate from your POS. There is no monthly fee and no contract. The restaurant pays card processing of 3.2% + 30¢ on the order total, and guests pay a 2.5% convenience fee on the food subtotal, shown at checkout. On the same 300 orders at $30, before tax and tip, that is about $385 a month to the restaurant and $225 in guest fees.

So against Square Free’s $387, Expresso costs the restaurant about the same, and its guests pay $225 more. Against Square Plus, Expresso is about $15 a month less, with QR table ordering included, but the guest fee is still there. Expresso makes more sense for a restaurant that does not want to move its POS or card processing to Square, or that wants table ordering without a monthly plan (Square’s QR code ordering needs Plus at $49 a month). It has promo codes but no loyalty program. Our comparison of online ordering systems prices the other options.