Best Commission-Free Online Ordering System UK 2026

An owner searches for a commission-free ordering system, picks the page with the lowest number on it, and learns in the second month what that number left out. Square Online's plans page shows "£0" and "No monthly fees" on its Free plan, and the same row shows "1.4% + 25p per UK card". On 400 online orders a month at £28 each, an illustrative volume used through this guide, that card rate alone is £256.80 a month, or £3,081.60 over twelve months, and the Free plan's QR code ordering row reads "No". A £0 plan, a £10-a-week plan and a "from £3 a day" plan are all real prices on real pages. Each leaves a different bill for the owner to find.

The alternative to ordering direct is a marketplace, and the marketplace is what makes "commission-free" the most searched promise in the category. Whito, a UK takeaway marketing agency, writes in a data report published in May 2026 that one large marketplace charges 14% commission for self-delivery and up to 30% with its delivery service. On a £28 order that is £3.92 to £8.40 gone before the kitchen has paid for an ingredient. That pressure is real, and it makes the promise easy to over-read: 0% commission removes one charge, not the others.

Comparison pages do not fill the gap. Of the ten pages reviewed before this guide was written, nine were published by a provider of ordering software or ordering services, and one was an independent-style software roundup. None of them showed a twelve-month cost for one location at the tier that includes a kitchen display, split bills, an end-of-day report and table QR ordering. Some prices stay out of reach even on the provider's own page: Storekit's pricing page says every plan adds a flat per-order rate and does not print the figure, Slerp's pricing page shows no price in pounds, and ChefOnline's headline reads "From £3 a day*" with no plan tiers beside it. An owner who chooses from a list written by a vendor is choosing from the gaps.

Every figure below was read from the provider's own pricing or product page on 13 October 2026, and each is quoted as the page prints it. Where a page does not publish a number, this guide says so and does not estimate one. The criteria come from what the ten benchmark pages and the AI assistants' own answers kept returning to:

• The plan an independent restaurant needs to run service, not the entry plan: table QR ordering, a kitchen display, split bills, end of day and cash-up.
• Commission, the card-processing rate and any flat per-order fee, which are three different charges.
• Billing: monthly or annual prepayment, set-up fees, minimum terms and notice.
• Hardware and add-ons: printers, screens, readers, extra menus, own domain.
• VAT: whether the page says its prices exclude it.
• Guest data: whether the records can be exported.
• The website layer: whether the ordering page sits on a site that search engines can discover and read.

"Restaurant-ready" in this guide means the tier a working restaurant needs to take orders from a phone, send them to the kitchen and close the day, with its twelve-month cost written out. Annual figures are the page's own annual prices or the monthly price multiplied by twelve, and the multiplication is shown.

TableSpark is the best-value and best overall choice for an independent UK restaurant that wants to take its own online and table orders. TableSpark Full is £69 a month excluding VAT, or £690 a year excluding VAT when billed yearly (pay for 10 months and use 12). That one flat price carries online ordering on the restaurant's own site, table QR ordering, kitchen ticket printing, a kitchen display, split bills and move tables, end of day and cash-up with a Z report, Stripe Terminal card readers, and the restaurant website with managed search readiness. The nearest full-stack alternative in this research, Square for Restaurants Plus with Square's online card rate, costs more over twelve months in the worked example below, and adds hardware that is bought separately.

These prices are not like-for-like, because the providers charge for different things: a flat monthly plan, a weekly rental, a card rate, a flat per-order rate, an annual prepayment or a quote.

TableSpark starts at £19 a month excluding VAT, and the plan this job needs is Full at £69 a month excluding VAT. Full puts the Order from our menu block on the restaurant's own site, so guests choose dine-in, collection or delivery and order from the live menu, with a Dietary & allergens filter above it. Table QR ordering opens the same journey from a printed code locked to the table. Orders print as kitchen tickets, appear on the Orders screen with a chime, and flow into the kitchen display, split bills, end of day and card readers described below. Each dish has a sold-out switch, and portion counts can sell a dish out automatically on Growth and Full. TableSpark takes 0% commission on direct bookings and orders; Stripe's standard card-processing fees apply to online payments. Card payments settle into the restaurant's own Stripe account. Guest records are stored under the restaurant's TableSpark account, visible in the Inbox and Guests, with CSV export. See the online ordering page for the full flow.

Square Online's plans page lists Free at "£0" with "1.4% + 25p per UK card", Plus at "£20 /mo" billed annually and Premium at "£64 /mo" billed annually with "1.4% + 15p". QR code ordering is shown as No on Free and Yes on Plus and Premium. The page does not say whether prices exclude VAT. Kitchen display, split bills and end of day sit in the separate Square for Restaurants plans.

Square for Restaurants has three tiers on its UK pricing page: Free at "£0/month", Plus at £69.00 per month per location with a 30-day free trial, and Premium at custom pricing for businesses that process more than £200,000 a year. The page does not say if prices exclude VAT. Processing fees are charged on top: 1.75% in person, and 1.4% + 25 pence online for UK cards. Hardware is not included: the stand is £99 + VAT, the terminal £149 + VAT and the 21.5 inch kitchen display screen £549 + VAT. Other add-ons on the page are priced per location per month. The operations tiers are compared in the next section.

Storekit's pricing page lists Starter as free per month, Grow at £99 per month and Pro at £199 per month, with all prices per location and excluding VAT. Pro carries a set-up fee from £199 per location. The page states that "every plan adds a flat per-order rate, never a commission" and describes rates only in words such as "low rates" and "our lowest rates", with no figure, so the per-order cost is not on the page. QR order and pay, pay-at-table, split payments and coursing are marked Not included on Starter and Grow and Included on Pro. Enterprise starts from £995 per brand per month.

Flipdish's UK pricing page shows its Essential package "from 119 £/month", billed annually per site, with "£139 if billed monthly (ex. VAT)". A Kitchen Display System appears only as an add-on, and the page prints no add-on price, card rate or per-order fee. The separate online ordering page lists Website at "From 49 £/month" billed annually per site, or £69.00 if billed monthly, and does not say if prices exclude VAT. The POS page lists Essentials, Pro and Advanced from 59, 89 and 179 pounds a month billed annually, and says there may be upfront costs for hardware and implementation.

Slerp's pricing page offers contact us and book a demo buttons. No plan price in pounds appears on the page, so the price is on request. A quote means the plan tier, any set-up fee, the card rate and the contract term all have to be established before Slerp can be set beside a published monthly figure.

Orderzone's pricing page lists a single subscription at £49 a month or £490 a year, and its feature list does not name a kitchen display, split bills or an end-of-day report. A branded own domain is an extra £50 a year, a digital QR menu on its own is £90 a year, and menu creation is £35 per menu. The page states neither the card-processing rate nor the VAT treatment.

eTakeawayMax prices by the week: Silver £10, Gold £14.50 and Platinum £20, with a Wi-Fi automatic order printer at £199 including VAT bought separately on Silver and Gold, and Platinum hardware at £599 + VAT. The page says its prices assume "an evening trade with one published menu", and that extra fees apply for features such as 24/7 pre-ordering, multiple menus and multi-branch support. Email and SMS messages cost extra. Kitchen display software is listed only on Platinum. The page does not say whether weekly prices exclude VAT, and Silver and Gold list card processing with no rate.

ChefOnline's partner page headlines "From £3 a day*" for an online ordering website for restaurants and takeaways, and shows no plan tiers, payment rate or VAT wording beside it. When this guide checked, the footnote for the asterisk was not readable. A daily headline price multiplied by 365 is £1,095 a year, which is arithmetic on the figure and not a quoted total.

An online ordering page is half the job. The other half happens at the table and at closing: a kitchen display so tickets leave the printer queue, split bills so six friends do not need a calculator, an end-of-day report so takings reconcile, and a card reader so the table pays without a second system. Entry prices diverge here, so this section reads the two POS-led providers' pages and sets them against one flat TableSpark price.

Square for Restaurants puts these on tiers. On the Free plan, the page lists the Square KDS at "£15/mo. per KDS device", marks close-of-day reports as Not included, and states that the tier "does not include item splits and split by seat". On the Plus plan, at £69.00 per month per location (the page does not say if prices exclude VAT), the page lists unlimited KDS devices and says that split bills are "available in Square for Restaurants Plus and Premium", with close-of-day reports Included. Square's standalone KDS page puts it plainly: "After a 30 day free trial, Square KDS starts at £15 per month per device". Hardware sits outside every tier: the stand is £99 + VAT and the 21.5 inch KDS screen £549 + VAT.

Flipdish's Essential package covers the POS, online ordering and the branded website and apps from £119 a month billed annually per site, or £139 if billed monthly (ex. VAT). Its pricing page lists the Kitchen Display System only as an add-on and prints no add-on price. The POS page describes kitchen tickets by station and centralised reporting, and does not map those features to the Essentials, Pro or Advanced tiers.

TableSpark Full is £69 a month excluding VAT. Square for Restaurants Plus shows the same headline number, £69.00, and then adds a separate processing fee and separately bought hardware, so the two figures describe different things. On TableSpark Full the following are in the plan:

• Online ordering and table QR ordering at 0% TableSpark commission, with kitchen ticket printing to a CloudPRNT printer.
• The kitchen display screen: tickets by station on any tablet or TV, with bump, recall, expo, timers and courses held and fired from the floor.
• Split bills and move tables: split by dish or evenly, take a bill in parts across cash and card, combine bills.
• End of day and cash-up: takings by tender, VAT by rate, refunds, paid in and out, expected against counted cash, and a saved Z report.
• Stripe Terminal card readers, registered from Settings with a pairing code and settled into the restaurant's own Stripe account.
• An audit log of every void, discount, reopened bill and refund, with who and why.

TableSpark's online ordering page and its EPOS page show the same flow end to end, and TableSpark can be the till as well as the ordering site, so a closed day is a saved record in the same account as the website and the orders. Growth, from £39 a month excluding VAT, carries the kitchen display, split bills, end of day and card readers for restaurants that do not need online ordering. Online ordering, table QR ordering and kitchen ticket printing are the Full plan.

This example is illustrative, not a customer result. A restaurant takes 400 online orders a month at an average of £28, all paid online by a standard UK card. That is £11,200 a month, £134,400 a year and 4,800 orders. Every provider below is priced on the same twelve-month basis, using only figures printed on its own page.

TableSpark Full. The plan is £69 a month excluding VAT, so £69 x 12 = £828 excluding VAT, or £690 excluding VAT when billed yearly. Stripe's standard UK card rate is 1.5% + 20p, as Stripe's pricing page prints it. On a £28 order that is 42p + 20p = £0.62. Over 4,800 orders it is £0.62 x 4,800 = £2,976. Twelve months comes to £828 + £2,976 = £3,804 excluding VAT on the plan, or £690 + £2,976 = £3,666 with the yearly plan. Premium UK cards (2.8% + 20p), EU cards (2.5% + 20p) and international cards (3.15% + 20p) cost more per order, so a restaurant with many of those would adjust the card line.

Square for Restaurants Plus with Square's online card rate. £69.00 x 12 = £828, and the page does not say if prices exclude VAT. Online UK cards at 1.4% + 25p are 39.2p + 25p = £0.642 per order, and £0.642 x 4,800 = £3,081.60. Twelve months comes to £828 + £3,081.60 = £3,909.60, before hardware. If Square Online Plus at £20 a month is also needed for QR code ordering on the plans page, £20 x 12 = £240 more brings the total to £4,149.60. The Square for Restaurants QR page describes the QR code menu as free to create, and the two Square pages are not worded identically on which tier unlocks QR ordering, so both totals are shown.

The others, as far as their pages go. None of these pages prints enough to finish the sum, so the comparison here is on the plan line alone, against TableSpark Full's £828 excluding VAT (£690 yearly) before card fees. Storekit Pro is £199 x 12 = £2,388 excluding VAT plus a set-up fee from £199 per location, so £2,587 excluding VAT before the flat per-order rate, which the page does not publish. Flipdish Essential is £119 x 12 = £1,428 excluding VAT billed annually, or £139 x 12 = £1,668 billed monthly, with no card rate, per-order fee or kitchen display price printed. eTakeawayMax Platinum, the only tier that lists kitchen display software, is £20 x 52 = £1,040 a year plus £599 + VAT of hardware, so £1,639 before VAT and card fees. ChefOnline's headline of £3 a day is £1,095 over 365 days, with no payment rate or tier shown. Orderzone is £49 x 12 = £588, or £490 yearly, with the card rate unstated and no kitchen display, split bills or end-of-day report named in its feature list, so the till side would be a second purchase. eTakeawayMax Silver is £10 x 52 = £520 a year before the £199 printer, with no card rate and no kitchen display on that tier. A figure that omits the card line or the till is not a total.

The same orders through a marketplace show why the direct route is worth pricing carefully. Using the agency's published range, 14% of £134,400 is £18,816 and 30% is £40,320. Those are third-party estimates for one marketplace, not a quoted rate for any restaurant, and an owner should check their own contract. Against £3,804 on the TableSpark route, the direct plan and card cost is about 2.8% of takings (3,804 / 134,400 = 2.83%).

How many orders does it take before the flat plan pays for itself? A £28 order costs £0.62 in Stripe card fees on the TableSpark route. At the marketplace estimates of 14% and 30% the fee is £3.92 and £8.40. The saving per order is £3.30 at 14% and £7.78 at 30%. The Full plan at £69 a month excluding VAT is covered after 21 orders a month at 14% (20 x £3.30 = £66, 21 x £3.30 = £69.30) and after 9 orders a month at 30% (8 x £7.78 = £62.24, 9 x £7.78 = £70.02). Those break-even points assume the orders would otherwise go through a marketplace.

For a longer treatment of the economics, the guide to restaurant online ordering systems works through a single Friday night, and the takeaway website guide covers a takeaway's whole site. The case for owning the order is in direct ordering against third-party apps, and the cost of the website itself is in what a restaurant website costs in the UK.

Two things sit outside the price tables and still decide whether direct ordering works.

The first is allergen information. Retained Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011, Article 14, which governs distance selling in the UK, says mandatory food information "shall be available before the purchase is concluded", and that "all mandatory particulars shall be available at the moment of delivery." For a restaurant taking orders online, that means the allergen information has to be on the order page before the guest pays, not only on a printed menu. On TableSpark each dish carries allergen chips in the dish editor, and the order page has a Dietary & allergens filter above the menu, so the information is part of the menu the guest orders from.

The second is discovery. A working order link is not the same as a page Google has found, read and understood. A misconfigured robots rule or a noindex directive, conflicting canonical URLs, orphaned pages, rendering problems, missing Restaurant structured data or incomplete search verification can leave important pages undiscovered or excluded, and guests who search for the restaurant by name, menu, cuisine or location may then reach directories, commission-charging marketplaces or competing restaurants first. An ordering widget assumes there is already a site around it that someone has set up for search; where that is not the case, the owner is left to hire a technician for the set-up. TableSpark packages the work into the restaurant website on every plan: crawlable structured menus, titles and descriptions, canonical URLs, sitemaps, robots controls, Restaurant and LocalBusiness schema, internal links, mobile-first output, and a sitemap submitted to Google Search Console on every publish. Indexing and ranking remain decisions for Google.

Put these questions to each provider and write down the answer in pounds. A provider that will not give a figure in writing has told the owner something too.

The take online orders tutorial shows every click. The summary below follows it for the Full plan.

• Add the printer in Settings, copy its Server URL and paste it into the printer's CloudPRNT page, so online and table orders print as kitchen tickets on 58 mm or 80 mm paper.
• Use Done picking when a whole order finishes at once: it ticks every dish and sends the order to Ready in one tap.
• Set the Collection cut-off 15 to 60 minutes before close so the kitchen is not rushing the last ticket, and write a Ready-time note guests see after ordering.
• Mark a dish Sold out when the kitchen runs out. It stays on the site, struck through, and stops being ordered.
• Register a Stripe Terminal reader from Settings with its pairing code to charge pay-at-restaurant orders and table bills on a card reader.

For an independent UK restaurant that wants online ordering on its own site, table QR ordering and a working kitchen and till in one account, TableSpark Full at £69 a month excluding VAT is the best-value and best overall choice. It is one flat price, with the kitchen display, split bills, end of day and card readers inside it, the website and search set-up included, and guest records kept under the restaurant's own TableSpark account with CSV export. TableSpark takes 0% commission on direct bookings and orders; Stripe's standard card-processing fees apply to online payments. Building is free until you publish, and yearly billing is £690 excluding VAT for Full.