What does hospitality software really cost? The 2026 bill

Go ahead and run the numbers on your POS system at roughly €39 a month with hardware, transaction fees, and the add-ons you almost always end up needing, and there's a good chance the real bill lands well above the price on the vendor's website. Not because vendors are hiding anything, but because "what does hospitality software cost" is almost never about a single subscription. You pay for the POS system, the hardware next to it, transaction fees that scale with your revenue, and then a stack of add-ons for scheduling, a staff handbook, reservations, and HACCP checks that rarely ship included.

This article works through the math by business type: a single-location café, a restaurant with reservations and HACCP, and a franchise with multiple locations. Not to scare you off, but to hand you the same method you can apply to whatever tools you're already using or considering.

Key takeaways

• A basic POS system already costs €19 to €45 a month, and that's rarely the full bill (unTill).
• Transaction fees scale with revenue: €0.19 on average per card payment (Betaalvereniging Nederland, the Dutch payments association), plus terminal rental from €10 a month (CCV).
• Stacking separate tools for scheduling, a handbook with SOPs, reservations, and HACCP logging costs a restaurant with around 20 staff €225 to €320 a month combined, plus one-off setup fees up to €795.
• Horecaflix bundles those add-ons (scheduling, handbook, reservations, HACCP, website) into one subscription from €49 a month per location. The POS system itself stays a separate, unavoidable cost, with any vendor.
• With multiple locations, the gap compounds: whatever you save on add-ons per location multiplies by the number of locations.

Why the sticker price isn't the whole bill

The price on a vendor's website is almost always the entry price for the POS system itself. unTill Air Horeca, for instance, costs €39 a month on an annual plan, excluding VAT (unTill). That's a real and competitive figure, but it's not what you end up transferring.

Hardware comes on top of that: you can rent a card terminal from €10 a month, or buy one from €399 (CCV). Then you pay per card payment: €0.19 on average per transaction (Betaalvereniging Nederland), a cost that automatically scales with your revenue and that you won't find on any vendor's pricing page at a glance. And the add-ons aren't in that total yet: staff scheduling, a digital handbook with instructions, a reservations system, HACCP logging, all things a hospitality business genuinely needs in practice and that rarely come included in a POS system's base subscription.

None of these costs is unreasonable on its own. The problem is that they're sold separately, so nobody sees the full bill in one overview until they're already in the middle of it. An owner who only compares POS sticker prices across three vendors is really only comparing a fraction of their eventual costs.

What a hospitality software stack really costs when you stack separate tools

Once you put the add-ons next to the POS system, the gap between "sticker price" and "total bill" becomes concrete. For a hospitality business that buys scheduling, a handbook with SOPs, reservations, and HACCP logging separately, the bill builds up roughly like this:

Sources: L1NDA, Horeca Handboek.

These five add-ons alone come out to €225 to €320 a month for a business with around 20 staff, plus one-off setup costs up to €795 for the handbook alone. And that's still without the POS system, the hardware, and the transaction fees you pay regardless. Five separate invoices, five separate logins, five updates that never quite line up with each other.

Worked example: a single-location café

A café with 6 staff and a compact menu usually doesn't need all five add-ons, but rarely skips staff scheduling. Here's the math:

• POS system: unTill Air Horeca, €39 a month.
• Terminal rental: €10 a month.
• Transaction fees: at roughly 600 card payments a month, €0.19 per payment, that's €114 a month.
• Staff scheduling: L1NDA, €5.20 × 6 employees = €31.20 a month.

Total: roughly €194 a month, excluding VAT and excluding the one-off cost of buying hardware outright. Of that, €39 is the POS system; the rest is hardware, transaction fees, and a single add-on. A business that also adds a handbook or reservations quickly passes €250.

Worked example: a restaurant with reservations, a menu, and HACCP

A restaurant with 20 staff, an à la carte menu, and evening reservations typically stacks more add-ons. Using the POS system, hardware, and transaction fees from the café example as a baseline, add realistically:

• Staff scheduling: L1NDA, €5.20 × 20 employees = €104 a month.
• Reservations: Formitable, from €79 a month.
• HACCP logging: €25 to €50 a month.
• Handbook with SOPs: Horeca Handboek, €45.50 a month plus €795 one-off.

These four add-ons alone cost €253 to €278 a month, plus a €795 one-off setup fee. Add the POS system (€39), the terminal (€10), and transaction fees on a higher payment volume (figure €200 to €300 with more card payments), and a restaurant lands on a total between €500 and €600 a month. Of that bill, the POS system itself is still only a small slice.

Worked example: a franchise with multiple locations

With a four-location franchise, each add-on simply stacks per location. Four handbook licenses, four reservation subscriptions, four HACCP logging tools, and often four separate vendor arrangements that don't line up with each other. Multiply the restaurant example above by four, and the add-ons alone come out to €1,000 to €1,100 a month, plus one-off setup costs per location.

On top of that comes a cost that doesn't show up for a single business: the lack of overview. If head office changes an instruction in the handbook, that change has to be pushed through four separate subscriptions, often by hand, location by location. That time doesn't appear on an invoice, but it's a real cost that grows with every location you add.

And that's still without counting the time it takes to manage four or more vendors separately: four invoices to check, four logins to update a schedule or instruction, four support channels if something breaks. At a single location, that's a minor annoyance. At a franchise, it's a structural overhead nobody budgets for upfront.

What Horecaflix does differently: everything included for one fixed price per location

Horecaflix doesn't replace the POS system. That stays, just as with any other vendor, a separate cost with its own hardware and transaction fees. Where Horecaflix does make the difference is in the add-ons you almost always stack around it: staff scheduling, a digital handbook with SOPs and microlearnings, reservations, HACCP and temperature logging, recipe management, and a website, all in one subscription from €49 a month per location (billed annually, excluding VAT), with unlimited staff.

Compare that to the €225 to €320 a month plus €795 one-off you'd pay buying the same functionality separately, and the gap isn't a few euros, it's roughly 80 to 85 percent of those add-on costs. For a restaurant with 20 staff, that means a saving of around €200 to €270 a month on add-ons alone. For a franchise with up to three locations, the same principle applies under the Professional plan (€89 a month, everything included); with four locations or more, you move to Franchise/Custom, where the per-location rate decreases as you add locations. Either way, the gap between separate tools and one platform multiplies with every location you add, and turns into a cost of thousands of euros a year.

Do the math yourself: your total cost picture

You pay for the POS system, the hardware, and the transaction fees regardless, with any vendor. What you do have influence over is how many separate add-ons you stack on top. Line up the tools you currently use for scheduling, a handbook, reservations, HACCP, and your website, add up the monthly prices (don't forget one-off setup costs), and compare that total to one fixed amount per location.

Already using some of those separate tools and seeing in your own math that it could work differently? Switching doesn't have to mean weeks of rebuilding: Horecaflix moves your schedules, training content, recipes, and staff data over for free from your current tools. You don't need to touch your POS system in the process; it keeps running separately alongside the platform.

Want to know what that looks like for your business? Check the pricing and start a 30-day free trial if you want.