Square vs Clover: a published rate against a mystery one
This comparison is really about pricing certainty. Square's whole rate card is on its website. Clover's rate card is whatever the reseller who answers your call decides it is. Everything else follows from that difference.
Judd Alsup and the Equip Payment Solutions team, who install and support restaurant POS systems nationwide and sell Shift4 Dine and Clover.Updated August 9, 2026. Sources and dates cited on every figure.
The short answer
- Choose Square for published pricing, no contract and a simple counter or small floor.
- Choose Clover when a specific app market capability fits your room and the reseller quote beats Square's published card in effective rate terms, in writing.
- At small tickets Clover's reported 10 cent fixed fee can beat Square's 15, if and only if the reseller's percentage is honest.
The rest of this page is the case for each line, with sources.
Square and Clover, on the numbers
| System | Software | Card present rate | Contract | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Square | $0 / $49 / $149per location, published | 2.6% / 2.5% / 2.4%+ 15c, published | None | The free plan carries the highest rate. Above roughly $25,000 a month in card volume it costs more than the paid one. Kitchen display and kiosk are excluded from free. |
| Clover | $89.95 to $129.85plus $849 to $4,447 hardware, reported | 2.3% + 10crestaurant plans, reported. The reseller sets your final rate | 36 months | Your rate depends entirely on who sold it to you, and identical hardware carries very different pricing from different sellers. Read who owns the equipment before signing. |
Square, Genius, SpotOn, Shift4 and Lightspeed software figures are published by those vendors and were read on their own pages on 8 August 2026. Toast, Clover and TouchBistro figures are reported by Merchant Maverick, Expert Market, POSUSA, NerdWallet, business.com and KORONA POS, cross checked against at least two independent sources where possible and labelled where sources disagree. Software units differ: Square prices per location, Toast and Shift4 per terminal, Clover per device, SpotOn per station. Rates change without notice. General guidance, not legal, tax or accounting advice.
Where each one wins
Square wins on knowing the deal before you sign
Every rate, every plan price and most hardware is published, there is no contract, and the deal you read is the deal you get. With Clover, two identical restaurants can hold quotes hundreds of dollars a month apart on the same hardware, because the reseller sets the economics.
Square wins on leaving
No contract and no termination fee against Clover's commonly reported 36 month agreements, hardware that is frequently reseller locked, and equipment leases described by reporting as frequently non cancellable. The exit is part of the price, and Square's exit is free.
Clover wins on counter hardware and the app market
The Station Duo and Flex are genuinely good restaurant counter hardware, and the app market covers gaps, bakery orders, scale integration, niche workflows, that Square handles thinly or not at all. A well chosen Clover app stack fits odd shaped rooms Square's tidy defaults cannot.
Clover wins when the reseller is actually good
An honest reseller quoting interchange plus with owned hardware can beat Square's flat published rates, particularly at volume, because flat rate pricing always carries headroom. The catch is that you cannot tell the good reseller from the bad one by the hardware, only by the quote, in effective rate, in writing.
The ten minute version of this diligence
For Square, the diligence is nearly done for you: the rates are on squareup.com, the calculator on this site multiplies them against your ticket size, and the one non-obvious check is whether the features your room needs, kitchen display and kiosk in particular, sit outside the free tier, because they do and they carry per device fees. Twenty minutes, no sales call, decision-grade information.
For Clover, the diligence is the deal, not the product. Write down four questions before the reseller calls: my effective rate at my volume in writing, who owns the hardware, whether the device is locked to your processing, and when the equipment lease ends versus the software agreement. The quote that survives all four in writing is a real candidate and often a good one. The quote that survives none is the reason this page exists.
If your ticket size is small, run the fixed fee math before anything else: Clover's reported dime against Square's published fifteen cents is a permanent per swipe difference that compounds with transaction count, and at diner or cafe volumes it can outweigh the entire software bill. The calculator makes that visible in one drag of the ticket slider.
Questions owners ask
Which is cheaper, Square or Clover?
Square's price is knowable from its website; Clover's exists only in your quote. At a $10 counter ticket, Clover's commonly reported 10 cent fixed fee beats Square's 15 cents if, and only if, the reseller's percentage is honest. Get the Clover quote as an effective rate, then run both in the calculator.
Do you sell either of these?
We place Clover, through Equip, quoted interchange plus so the markup is visible, and we will tell you when Square is the better answer for your room, which for small simple counters it often is. That disclosure is on every page of this site for exactly this moment.
Who owns the Clover hardware in a typical deal?
Frequently not you: reseller leases are common and reporting describes many as non cancellable, with devices locked to the originating processor. Ask who owns the device, whether it is processor locked, and what the lease's own term is, separately from the software agreement.
Choose which if?
Choose Square if you want published pricing, no contract and a simple room. Choose Clover if a specific app market capability fits your operation and the reseller quote, in writing, actually beats the published alternatives. Walk from any Clover quote that will not state your effective rate.
Have your own numbers checked
Send last month's statement. We read it with you, free, and tell you straight whether we are the ones to fix it.
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It reaches the Equip team. A person calls you back, and if we do not have a crew near you, the team routes it to whoever serves you best. We never ask for card or bank details on this site.