Vendor Pricing
ChowNow Pricing: How Much It Actually Costs a Restaurant
ChowNow sells commission-free online ordering on a subscription. You pay a flat monthly fee and keep the whole ticket instead of handing a marketplace 15-30% of it. That trade is genuinely good for some restaurants and bad for others, and which one you are comes down almost entirely to how many online orders you do a month.
Every ChowNow figure below is from ChowNow's own pricing page, read 18 September 2026, where each plan price is listed as “starting at”. Card processing is quoted separately by every provider here. Figures marked reported come from third parties because the vendor does not publish them.
Ginger · Ginger Direct is $0 a month with no commission and no contract; the $1 order fee is paid by the customer. Send us your ChowNow invoice and we will show the difference on your real orders.
How much does ChowNow cost per month?
ChowNow publishes three tiers. Every price on their pricing page carries a “starting at” qualifier, so treat these as the floor of a quote rather than the quote itself — what you are actually offered depends on how many locations you run and which pieces you take.
The annual column is the price if you pay for a year up front. The saving is about 8-9% across all three tiers, which is the normal shape of an annual discount and not, by itself, a reason to commit a year.
| Plan | Billed monthly | Billed annually | A year at this price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Launch | $249/mo | $229/mo | $2,988 or $2,748 |
| Grow | $349/mo | $319/mo | $4,188 or $3,828 |
| Elevate | $449/mo | $409/mo | $5,388 or $4,908 |
From get.chownow.com/pricing, read 18 September 2026. ChowNow does not publish a contract length on that page, so do not assume either a month-to-month or a term commitment — ask, and get the answer in writing before you sign.
ChowNow's other fees: setup, card processing, printer and delivery
The subscription is the number everyone quotes. It is not the number you pay. ChowNow lists five other charges on the same page, and two of them — setup and card processing — apply to essentially every restaurant.
Card processing at 2.95% + $0.29 is the one worth paying attention to, because it is charged on every order forever and it is above what a restaurant with decent volume can usually negotiate on card-present processing. On a $40 order it is $1.47.
| Charge | Amount | When it applies |
|---|---|---|
| Setup fee | $119–$499 | Once, at onboarding |
| Card processing | 2.95% + $0.29 | Every transaction |
| Apple developer fee | $99/year | Only if you take a branded mobile app |
| Printer | $250–$420 | Once, if you need their hardware |
| Flex Delivery | $7.98/order | Only on orders they dispatch a driver for |
All five from ChowNow's own pricing page, 18 September 2026.
What ChowNow costs per order at your volume
A subscription does not have a per-order cost until you divide it by your orders. That division is the whole story with ChowNow: the same $249 is a rounding error at 800 orders a month and a serious tax at 50.
Below is the Launch plan at $249 a month plus 2.95% + $0.29 processing, on a $40 order, at five monthly volumes. The last column is that cost as a percentage of the ticket, so you can hold it against a marketplace commission directly.
| Online orders a month | Subscription per order | Processing on $40 | Total per order | As a % of a $40 ticket |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 50 | $4.98 | $1.47 | $6.45 | 16.1% |
| 100 | $2.49 | $1.47 | $3.96 | 9.9% |
| 200 | $1.25 | $1.47 | $2.72 | 6.8% |
| 400 | $0.62 | $1.47 | $2.09 | 5.2% |
| 800 | $0.31 | $1.47 | $1.78 | 4.5% |
Launch at $249 billed monthly. Setup, the printer and any Flex Delivery orders are on top of this.
Is ChowNow cheaper than DoorDash?
The honest comparison is against what the marketplace actually takes, not against its headline rate. On a $40 order DoorDash's tiers work out to roughly $6 at 15% and $12 at 30%. ChowNow's Launch plan crosses under the 15% tier at about 55 online orders a month, and under the 30% tier at about 24.
So if you are doing more than a couple of online orders a day, a flat subscription is arithmetically better than a commission — that part of ChowNow's pitch is true. The question worth asking is not whether a subscription beats a commission. It is whether $249 a month is the cheapest subscription available for what you get, and whether the fee needs to exist at all.
There is also a floor problem that a break-even calculation hides. At 50 orders a month you are paying $6.45 an order, which is worse than the 15% tier you were trying to escape. A subscription punishes low volume in exactly the season — a slow January, a renovation, a first month live — when a restaurant can least afford it.
ChowNow alternatives: how the other commission-free options compare
“Commission-free” has become the category's table stakes rather than a differentiator — nearly everyone here charges 0% on a direct order. What separates them is where the money moves instead: into a monthly fee, into a per-order fee, into the card rate, or onto the diner's checkout.
Read the monthly column and the per-order column together. A provider with no monthly fee and a per-order fee is cheap when you are quiet and scales with you; a provider with a high monthly fee and nothing per order is the opposite. Neither is wrong — but one of them matches your January and one does not.
| Provider | Monthly | Per order | Card processing | Setup |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ChowNow Launch | $249 ($229 annual) | No commission | 2.95% + $0.29 | $119–$499 |
| Owner.com | $249–$499 | 5% order support fee | Separate | Not published |
| Menufy | $149 on a 12-month term, $179 month-to-month | No commission | Separate | Not published |
| UpMenu Web Ordering | $49–$169 by order volume | No commission | Separate | None published |
| Square Online (Free plan) | $0 | No commission | 3.3% + 30¢ | None |
| Online Ordering by DoorDash | $0 | 0% commission | 2.9% + $0.30 | None |
| Slice Online Membership | $39 | $3.00/order | 2.90% + $0.30 | Not published |
| Popmenu (reported) | $179–$499 plus ~$50 ordering add-on | ~$1/order charged to the diner | Separate | Not published |
| Toast Digital Storefront | Quote-based (~$75 reported) | Quote-based | 3.50% + 15¢ | Quote-based |
| Ginger Direct | $0 | $1, paid by the customer | As low as ~2% + 5¢, subject to volume | $0 |
Recurring terms only, from each provider's own pricing page except where marked reported, which are third-party figures because the vendor publishes none. Verified September 2026. One-off charges are excluded from this table — ChowNow additionally lists $119-$499 setup and a $250-$420 printer.
Questions to ask ChowNow before you sign
Ask for the contract length in writing. ChowNow does not publish one, which means the answer lives in the agreement rather than on the website, and a term you did not know about is the single most expensive thing in restaurant software.
Ask what happens to your customer list if you leave. Direct ordering is worth doing largely because the guest becomes yours rather than the marketplace's; that only holds if you can export the names, emails and order history on the way out. Get the export format named in the agreement.
Ask whether card processing is negotiable and whether you may bring your own processor. A rate of 2.95% + $0.29 locked into the software is a bigger long-run number than the subscription for any restaurant doing real volume.
And ask what you actually need. A branded mobile app sounds valuable and costs $99 a year plus a tier upgrade; almost no independent restaurant's customers install one. Pay for the ordering page, the printing and the customer data. Be sceptical of everything above that.
Frequently asked questions
How much does ChowNow cost per month?
ChowNow lists three plans on its own pricing page: Launch at $249 a month, Grow at $349 and Elevate at $449, or $229, $319 and $409 if you pay annually. Every one carries a “starting at” qualifier, so the quote you receive may be higher depending on locations and modules. On top of the subscription there is a $119-$499 setup fee and card processing at 2.95% + $0.29 per transaction.
Does ChowNow charge commission on orders?
No. ChowNow charges 0% commission on direct orders — that is the core of what you are buying with the subscription. You still pay card processing at 2.95% + $0.29 on every transaction, and $7.98 per order on any order they dispatch a Flex Delivery driver for.
Is ChowNow cheaper than DoorDash?
Above roughly 55 online orders a month, yes, compared with DoorDash's 15% tier on a $40 order; above roughly 24 orders a month compared with the 30% tier. Below that the subscription costs more per order than the commission it replaces. But the two are not really substitutes: DoorDash brings you customers who have never heard of you, and a direct ordering platform serves the ones who already have. Most restaurants end up running both.
Does ChowNow require a contract?
ChowNow does not publish a contract length on its pricing page, so the answer is in the agreement rather than on the website. Ask for it in writing before you sign, along with what happens to your customer data if you leave. An undisclosed term commitment is the most common expensive surprise in restaurant software.
What is the cheapest way to take online orders?
Providers with no monthly fee are cheapest at low volume: Online Ordering by DoorDash charges 0% commission with 2.9% + $0.30 processing, Square's Free plan includes an ordering page at 3.3% + 30¢, and Ginger Direct is $0 a month with a $1 per-order fee paid by the customer rather than the restaurant. Subscription providers like ChowNow become competitive as volume rises, because the fixed fee spreads across more orders.
Do I keep my customer data with ChowNow?
This is the question to settle in writing before signing, with any provider. The main reason to run direct ordering at all is that the guest becomes your customer rather than a marketplace's, and that only holds if you can export names, emails and order history when you leave. Ask for the export format to be named in the agreement rather than described on a sales call.
No monthly fee to spread across your orders
Ginger Direct is $0 a month with no commission and no contract. The $1 per-order fee is paid by the customer, card processing is as low as ~2% + 5¢ subject to volume, and orders print to the printers already in your kitchen — you keep the POS you have. Send us your current provider's invoice and we will show you the difference on your real order count.