Restaurant POS Cost in India: What You Actually Pay in Year One

The four cost lines nobody puts on the quote

Ask any owner who has changed systems and they'll tell you the same thing: the surprise was never the licence fee. It was everything around it.

1. Setup and menu entry. Someone has to key in 200 items with prices, variants, modifiers and tax rates. If the vendor does it, it is often a one-time fee. If you do it, it costs you two evenings.
2. Annual maintenance contract. A separate yearly charge on many desktop systems, sometimes framed as compulsory to keep getting updates and support.
3. Per-feature charges. Reports and exports. Each extra outlet. Each extra staff login. GST or e-invoice modules. A separate charge for the KOT printer module. Each one is small; together they are frequently larger than the base fee.
4. Support. Ask whether a visit is included or billed. Ask what the response time is on a Saturday night.

None of this is dishonest. It is just how the quote is constructed. Your job as the buyer is to force all of it onto one sheet of paper before you sign.

Three pricing models, compared

Forget brand names. In India you are choosing between three shapes of deal.

The one that catches people out is column two. "Free software" with a commission is not free — it is a variable price that rises exactly as your business succeeds.

Do the commission maths once

Take your own monthly sales and multiply. If a tool takes 3% and you do ₹5,00,000 a month, that is ₹15,000 a month, or ₹1,80,000 a year. At 2% on ₹3,00,000 a month it is ₹6,000 a month, ₹72,000 a year. Do it with your real numbers before you compare anything to a fixed monthly fee, because a fixed fee that looks expensive next to "free" usually stops looking expensive after this one calculation.

The same arithmetic applies in reverse to annual-upfront licences. A figure paid in April is real money out of working capital in April — the month you probably needed it for stock and salaries. Monthly billing is not just cheaper on paper; it is gentler on cash flow, and it keeps the vendor honest, because they have to earn next month.

Hardware: what you actually need

Be ruthless here. The classic counter setup — a desktop PC, a monitor, a UPS, a cash drawer, a barcode scanner, a dedicated KOT printer — exists because the software required it. If your POS runs on Android, iOS and the web, the phone in your pocket is the till, and the list shrinks to one item you might genuinely want: a thermal receipt printer, so guests get a printed bill and the kitchen gets a KOT on paper.

We are not going to invent prices for you, because printer and drawer prices vary by city, model and how well you negotiate. Do this instead: get two local quotes for a Bluetooth or LAN thermal printer, and compare them to whatever the software vendor wants to sell you bundled. Buying hardware from the software company is convenient and almost never the cheapest line on the sheet.

What NamastePOS costs

All prices are per register, in ₹, and include a 7-day free trial with no card required. Yearly works out to roughly two months free.

Two things to be straight about. GST tax invoices with HSN per item start on Pro, and e-invoice formats start on Advanced — Starter and Growth print plain invoices and receipts, so if you need a GST tax invoice from day one, Pro is your floor. And there is no annual lock-in on any plan, no charge to see your own reports, and add-ons like WhatsApp messaging or extra outlets are priced in-product so you can see them before you buy. Prices are read live from our own system on the pricing section, so that page is always the authority over this article.

Your year-one worksheet

Fill this in for each option you are considering. Same rows, same year, no exceptions — that is the only way two quotes become comparable.

That last row is the one owners forget and regret. It is the real measure of how much freedom you bought.

Six questions that reveal the real price

1. What is the all-in figure for twelve months, including setup, AMC and hardware, in writing?
2. What is the renewal price in year two?
3. Which features are charged separately — reports, exports, GST, e-invoice, extra outlets, extra logins?
4. If I stop paying in month four, what happens to my data, and can I export it?
5. Is support included, and what happens at 9pm on a Saturday?
6. Can I take a full order, fire a KOT and print a bill with the internet switched off? Show me.

Cheap is not the goal. Predictable is. A POS you can leave next month is worth more than a discount you have to prepay for a year — and if you are weighing a counter machine against an app, our billing machine vs POS app comparison takes that decision apart line by line. If you're already on a system and doing this sum because renewal is coming, read switching your POS without downtime next.