Cost Guide
Free Restaurant Ordering Website: What Free Actually Costs
Rates and prices verified against each company's own pages, August 2026
Free restaurant ordering websites are real. But the cost moved, it did not disappear — it sits in one of four places, and every provider puts it somewhere different.
The short answer
"Free" describes who gets billed, not that the service costs nothing. Square Online has a genuinely $0/month plan, but its online rate is 0.4 points higher than its paid tiers. Menufy and ChowNow are subscriptions. Ginger Direct is $0/month and $0 per order to the restaurant, with the diner paying $1. GloriaFood, the best-known free option, is discontinued. Work out which line the cost lands on before deciding whether it is a good deal.
The four places "free" lands
1. A monthly subscription
Menufy is $179/month, or $149 on an annual agreement; ChowNow Launch is $249/month; Owner.com is $249 or $499. The website may well be built for free — the platform under it is a subscription.
From each vendor's own pricing page
2. The card-processing rate
Square Online has a genuinely $0/month plan, and the cost moves to the rate. Square's own fee page lists online payments at 3.3% + 30c on Square Free, against 2.9% + 30c on Plus and Premium.
Square help centre, article 5068
3. The customer's checkout
The fee still exists, it is just not billed to the restaurant. Ginger Direct is $1 per order paid by the diner; Owner.com's diners pay 5% on either plan.
From each vendor's own pricing page
4. The product shutting down
Free until it is gone. GloriaFood's homepage: "GloriaFood has been discontinued and is no longer accepting new signups." No date given.
GloriaFood's own site
The second one is the easiest to miss, because it never appears on an invoice. Four tenths of a percentage point on $10,000 a month in online sales is about $40 a month, roughly $480 a year — which means a $0/month plan can cost more than a cheap subscription.
What each one actually charges
| Provider | Monthly | Restaurant per order | Diner pays | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ginger Direct | $0 | $0 | $1 per order (5% small tickets) | Box + iPad included |
| Square Online (Free) | $0 | 3.3% + 30c online | — | Assumes you run Square |
| Menufy | $149-$179 | None stated on their page | — | Annual plan includes equipment |
| ChowNow (Launch) | $249 | 2.95% + $0.29 | — | $119-$499 setup |
| Owner.com | $249 or $499 | 5% (Flexible) | 5% | — |
| GloriaFood | — | — | — | Discontinued |
Recurring terms only, from each company's own pages and checked August 2026. Card processing is separate and varies except where a rate is shown — including for Ginger. One-off setup fees and hardware are excluded.
Is it a website, or just a menu page?
The phrase "free restaurant website" covers wildly different things. Some are complete sites; others are a single menu page on the vendor's domain, which does little for your own search results because the authority accrues to their domain rather than yours. Before you commit, check for these:
The site Ginger builds covers all of them: your name and branding, hours, address, phone, a map, a photo gallery, the menu, and ordering with payment taken on the page — on a domain that can be your own.
Common questions
Is there really a free restaurant ordering website?
Yes, several — but "free" describes who is billed, not that the service costs nothing. The cost sits in one of four places: a monthly subscription, a higher card-processing rate, a fee added to the customer's checkout, or a product that is free right up until it shuts down. Square Online has a genuinely $0/month plan; Menufy and ChowNow do not; Ginger Direct is free to the restaurant and charges the diner $1 an order; GloriaFood was the best-known free option and is now discontinued.
What does Square's free online ordering actually cost?
The software is $0/month, and the cost moves to the processing rate. Square's own fee page lists online and invoice payments at 3.3% + 30 cents on Square Free, versus 2.9% + 30 cents on Square Plus and Square Premium. Being on the free plan therefore costs 0.4 percentage points more on every online order — on $10,000 a month in online sales that is about $40 a month, roughly $480 a year, which is the part the word "free" does not cover.
Is a free restaurant website an actual website or just a menu page?
It varies, and it is worth checking before you commit. A restaurant website needs your name and branding, hours, address, phone, a map, photos, a readable menu and a way to order — on a domain you control. Some free tools give you all of that; others give you a hosted menu page on the vendor's domain, which does far less for your own search results. Ask which domain the site lives on and whether you can point your own at it.
Why did GloriaFood, the free one everybody used, disappear?
GloriaFood's own homepage now states: "GloriaFood has been discontinued and is no longer accepting new signups." No shutdown date is given there, and third-party articles disagree about one, so check the notice inside your own account rather than trusting a blog. It is the clearest illustration of the fourth cost: a free product with no revenue attached to your restaurant is the easiest one for its owner to switch off.
What does Ginger Direct cost, honestly?
Nothing per month and nothing per order to the restaurant, with no contract, and a Ginger Box and iPad included. The diner pays a $1 platform fee at checkout; high-volume, small-ticket shops such as boba, coffee and quick counters are 5% per order instead. Card processing is separate and billed at your own rate, as it is with every option on this page. So Ginger is in the third category above, not outside the table — the fee is on the customer's line, and we would rather say which line than call it free and stop there.
Do I have to change my POS to get a free ordering website?
No. Square's free ordering profile assumes you are on Square, but a direct-ordering product does not have to touch your POS at all. Ginger Direct runs beside whatever you already have: the Box plugs into your router and prints to the printers already on your wall, sharing them with your current POS rather than integrating with it, so its age does not matter and your POS vendor has nothing to approve.
Want to see what yours would look like?
Send us your menu. We build the site, ship the Box, and get it printing to the printers you already own.