Cheap EPOS system UK: where cheap is fine and where it costs you (2026 guide)
Cheap is not a warning sign; for many counters it is the right answer. This guide sets out which businesses a low-cost setup suits, where it quietly costs more, what a £499 bundle should contain, and the twelve-month arithmetic for three ways of doing it.
- Where a cheap setup is the right call
- Twelve-month totals for three setups, arithmetic shown
- A complete EPOS from £499 + VAT
Written by the Posso team in Leicester · Reviewed by Paul Robinson, Managing Director · Last reviewed
Short answer
A cheap EPOS system in the UK is anything from a £300 tablet with a payment-led card reader to a £499 bundle with a touchscreen terminal, printers and cash drawer. The tablet-and-reader route is fine for one till, card payments and no kitchen: at £60,000 a year of card sales it costs around £1,350 in its first year, mostly the 1.75% card rate. It costs more than it saves once you need kitchen printing, an offline mode or delivery platforms on the till, because the workarounds are paid in staff time and wrong orders. A full single-till system lands around £1,800–£2,000 in year one. Posso's complete system is £499 + VAT with software from £25 + VAT a month.
Key takeaways
- A tablet and card reader is the right cheap EPOS for one till, card payments and no kitchen.
- Flat 1.5–1.75% card rates are the real price of a cheap setup; at £60,000 a year that is over £1,000.
- No kitchen printing and no offline mode are the two gaps that cost a food business more than the hardware saved.
- A £499 bundle should include the terminal, both printers, the cash drawer, the menu build, training and a warranty.
Takeaway: Buy cheap when the business is one till and a card reader; buy a complete bundle the moment there is a kitchen to print to.
What 'cheap' is buying you
Searching for a cheap EPOS system means one of two things: the lowest up-front price, or the lowest total over the first year. They point to different products. The lowest up-front price is a tablet and a card reader, often with free software, where the supplier earns on a flat card rate of 1.5–1.75% on every sale. The lowest first-year total depends on your turnover and ticket size, because that flat rate is the largest line in the deal.
Neither is a trick. A payment-led setup is a sensible product for a business that takes card at one counter and does nothing else. Where owners go wrong is carrying it into a food business. A kitchen that needs printed tickets, a Friday night that cannot stop when the broadband drops, a Just Eat tablet whose orders need to reach the kitchen: each is something the cheap setup does not do, and each gets solved by a member of staff by hand. That labour is the hidden price, paid every shift.
This guide, part of the EPOS cost hub, is about choosing between those two kinds of cheap honestly. For table service specifically, the cheap EPOS for restaurants guide goes deeper.
Six principles for buying cheap without paying twice
Match the setup to the number of hands between the order and the food
If the person taking the order also makes it, a tablet and reader is enough: there is nobody to print a ticket for. A coffee cart, a market stall, a one-person sandwich bar. The moment there is a kitchen with a different person in it, orders need to arrive there in writing, in order, with modifiers legible at arm's length over a fryer. A kitchen printer is the cheapest wrong-order insurance there is.
Price the flat card rate on a year of your sales, not on one sale
1.75% looks small per transaction. On £60,000 a year of card sales it is £1,050, every year. A percentage-plus-pence rate such as 1% + 10p is £600 + £400 = £1,000 on the same £60,000 at a £15 average ticket, almost identical; at a £30 ticket (2,000 transactions) it is £600 + £200 = £800 against the same £1,050. The flat rate wins on £4 coffees and loses on £30 bills. The card fees guide has the method.
Refuse any till that stops trading when the broadband does
Cheap setups are usually fully cloud-dependent: the tablet needs a connection to take an order and the reader to take payment. A twenty-minute outage at 7pm on a Friday in a takeaway doing £900 an hour is £300 of orders lost or written on a pad. Ask whether the software holds a local database and keeps taking orders, printing to the kitchen and queuing card payments offline. If not, the hardware saving is a bet that your internet never fails during service.
Know what a £499 bundle should contain, and check each item
At around £499 + VAT a proper bundle should include a touchscreen terminal running a desktop operating system, a kitchen printer, a receipt printer, a cash drawer, the menu built for you, staff training and a warranty of at least a year. If any of those is missing the price is not £499; a kitchen printer alone is around £99 and a menu build is a day or two of work. Check whether software is included or a separate monthly fee.
Put the marketplace orders on the till from day one
A cheap setup leaves Just Eat, Uber Eats and Deliveroo on their own tablets, and someone re-keys each order into the till so the kitchen has a ticket. Thirty orders a night at a minute each is half an hour of a shift, plus the orders keyed wrong. Delivery integration costs £0–£60 a month per platform elsewhere; set that against the labour and the refunds. For a shop doing real marketplace volume, the integration is cheaper than the person. See delivery integrations.
Buy for the business in eighteen months, not the one at the launch
A cheap setup chosen for a soft launch gets replaced the month trade picks up, and the replacement costs full price plus retraining, the menu rebuilt and a week of two systems side by side. If you expect a kitchen, a second till, a kiosk or online ordering within eighteen months, buy a system that adds them as published-price components. If you honestly do not, buy the reader and keep the money.
Cheap EPOS options compared (UK, 2026)
Three ways to equip a single-till takeaway, and what each costs in its first twelve months on £60,000 a year of card sales at a £15 average ticket (4,000 transactions). The first two columns use typical UK ranges as illustrative figures.
| Tablet + payment-led reader | Budget cloud EPOS bundle | Posso POS system | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hardware | £300 (low end of £300–£1,500) | £499 (illustrative mid-range) | £499 + VAT: terminal, kitchen printer, receipt printer, cash drawer |
| Software, 12 months | £0 (assumed; software is usually bundled with the rate) | 12 × £30 = £360 (within £25–£70 a month) | 12 × £25 = £300 + VAT |
| Card processing, 12 months | 1.75% × £60,000 = £1,050 | 1.5% + 5p: £900 + £200 = £1,100 | From 1% + 10p: £600 + £400 = £1,000 |
| Twelve-month total | £1,350 | £1,959 | £1,799 |
| Kitchen printing | No | Usually, printer often extra | Included |
| Offline trading | Usually no | Varies | Yes, local database |
| Delivery platforms on the till | No | £0–£60 a month per platform | £45 a month, unlimited orders |
| Warranty | Typically 1 year | 1–2 years | two years |
Ranges are typical UK figures at October 2026; Posso prices are published on EPOS pricing. Posso Pay is quoted on card turnover; the figure shown uses the published from-rate.
The twelve-month arithmetic, and what it leaves out
On the table above, the tablet and reader is the cheapest first year by around £450. That is the honest result and why the route is right for a single counter. The gap buys a kitchen printer, a cash drawer, a menu built for you, training, offline trading and a second year of warranty; if you need none of those, the reader wins.
The arithmetic turns the other way in two circumstances. The first is ticket size: run the same table for a 40-cover restaurant at a £30 ticket on £96,000 a year of card sales (3,200 transactions) and the flat 1.75% rate is £1,680 against £960 + £320 = £1,280 at 1% + 10p, a £400-a-year difference that alone covers the Posso software. The second is the kitchen: one wrong order a night at £12 of food, 300 nights a year, is £3,600 written off, more than twice the first-year saving on hardware.
Read the table twice: once for a counter with no kitchen, where cheap is correct, and once for your business in eighteen months, where the missing rows start to carry a cost.
What to ask a provider before you sign
What exactly is in the box for the price?
Ask for the list: terminal, operating system, receipt printer, kitchen printer, cash drawer, card reader, cables, stand. Then ask what is not: the menu build, training, the software licence, the warranty length. A £299 price that needs a £99 printer, a £60 drawer and a day of your own time entering the menu is a £499 price with the work moved to you. Ask for the complete first-day cost as one figure, plus VAT.
What happens to orders and payments when the internet drops?
You want to hear that the till keeps taking orders from a local database, keeps printing to the kitchen, and either keeps taking card payments or queues them for when the connection returns, with a clear statement of which. If the answer involves a mobile hotspot or a paper pad, the system is not offline-capable. Ask the salesperson to unplug the router during the demo and run three orders through.
What will I pay in card fees on a real week of my takings?
Hand over last week's card total and transaction count and ask for the fee in pounds. A flat 1.75% and a 1% + 10p rate are within £50 of each other on £60,000 a year at a £15 ticket and £400 apart at a £30 ticket, so the answer is specific to you. Ask whether online orders carry the same rate and whether the reader is rented or yours.
The Posso approach to a low-cost EPOS
Posso's single-till system is £499 + VAT and is the complete bundle described above: a touchscreen terminal running Windows 11 Pro, a kitchen printer, a receipt printer, a cash drawer, the menu built for you and staff trained. You own the hardware outright with a two-year warranty. Software and support are from £25 + VAT a month; finance is available from £24.92 a week.
The two gaps that make cheap setups expensive are closed by default. The till runs an offline-first local database, so orders and kitchen printing carry on when the broadband does not. Kitchen printing is included, and a 21-inch kitchen display screen is £399 + VAT when ticket volume outgrows paper. Just Eat, Uber Eats and Deliveroo integration is £45 a month with unlimited orders, so marketplace orders print in the kitchen instead of being re-keyed.
Card processing runs through Posso Pay, Posso's own merchant service, from 1% + 10p and quoted on your card turnover, with the same rate in store and online. Teya and Dojo terminals are also supported. Online ordering on your own site is hosted free, with a 60p service fee per order paid by the customer; the store pays only the card processing. Every price is on the EPOS pricing page; the small business POS guide shows how the components fit a one-site operator.
Support is UK-based from Leicester, Monday to Friday, 9am–9:30pm, with an urgent out-of-hours line for till-down issues. Setup (menu build + configuration) is free; on-site installation for larger sites is priced on application. Systems are preconfigured and shipped plug-and-play.
Where to look elsewhere
If you are a sole trader at a single counter with no kitchen, taking a few dozen card payments a day, a card reader with its free app is the right cheap EPOS and Posso is more than you need. Buy the reader, watch the card rate as you grow, and come back when there is a kitchen to print to.
If the business is retail with hundreds of barcoded lines, stock control is what matters and a retail-first platform will do it better and cheaper; see the retail POS guide.
Related guides
Related guides
Cheap EPOS systems for restaurants
The table-service version: where a budget restaurant till holds up and where it fails.
Read the guideHow much does an EPOS system cost in the UK?
Every component with UK ranges and two worked three-year totals.
Read the guideEPOS hardware bundle UK
What a complete bundle should contain and what the price should include.
Read the guideEPOS system hidden costs
The fees that appear after signing and how to read a quote line by line.
Read the guideEPOS system with no monthly fee
What bought-outright software means and what a subscription actually buys.
Read the guideThis is one part of the Posso EPOS system — the same till, kitchen display, ordering and card payments, set up for your type of venue. Every one-off and monthly cost is on the EPOS pricing page.
Cheap EPOS system — frequently asked questions
What is the cheapest EPOS system in the UK?
The lowest up-front price is a tablet with a payment-led card reader, around £300 in hardware with the software bundled into a flat card rate of 1.5–1.75%. It suits one counter, card payments and no kitchen. On £60,000 a year of card sales the reader route is around £1,350 in year one, mostly fees, so the cheapest total depends on your turnover and ticket size.
How much does a cheap EPOS system cost?
A tablet-and-reader setup is around £300 up front plus 1.5–1.75% of card sales. A complete single-till bundle is typically £300–£1,500 plus £25–£70 a month software. Posso's complete system is £499 + VAT with software from £25 + VAT a month, which on £60,000 of card sales at the Posso Pay from-rate of 1% + 10p comes to around £1,800 in the first year.
Is a tablet POS good enough for a takeaway?
For a single-operator counter with no separate kitchen, yes. For a takeaway with a kitchen it usually is not, for three reasons: orders do not print to the kitchen, the tablet stops taking orders when the internet drops, and marketplace orders stay on their own tablets to be re-keyed. Each gap is covered by staff time and wrong orders rather than a subscription, paid every shift.
What should a £499 EPOS bundle include?
A touchscreen terminal on a desktop operating system, a kitchen printer, a receipt printer, a cash drawer, the menu built for you, staff training and a warranty of at least a year. Posso's £499 + VAT system includes all of those with a two-year warranty. If a bundle at that price is missing the kitchen printer (around £99) or the menu build, the real price is higher than the sticker.
Are free EPOS systems really free?
The software can be free; the deal is not. Free tiers are paid for through the card rate, typically 1.5–1.75% flat on every sale, and sometimes through rented hardware. On £60,000 a year of card sales that is £900–£1,050 a year. For a low-volume counter it is a fair trade. For a food business with a kitchen and higher turnover, the flat rate plus the missing features usually costs more over three years.
Can a cheap EPOS system handle Just Eat and Deliveroo orders?
Tablet-and-reader setups generally cannot; marketplace orders stay on the platforms' own tablets and are re-keyed. Budget cloud EPOS bundles may offer integration at £0–£60 a month per platform. Posso's Just Eat, Uber Eats and Deliveroo integration is £45 a month with unlimited orders, so the orders print in the kitchen with the rest.
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