The best restaurant loyalty programs of 2026, with Zayos ranked seventh.
Published July 2026 · Updated October 16, 2026
The best restaurant loyalty program in 2026 for a small independent is Square Loyalty, bundled into the $49 a month Square Plus plan. Loyalzoo wins if you are not on Square. Punchh and Thanx are the enterprise answers. Zayos includes loyalty rather than selling it.
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Sources for the prices and rates in this section: Square pricing and plans; Toast pricing; Owner.com pricing; ChowNow pricing, read 4 Oct 2026. A company can change them; its own page is what counts.
Do restaurant loyalty programs actually work?
A loyalty program is worth, roughly, the number of guests enrolled multiplied by the extra visits each one makes multiplied by your margin per visit. Write it out and something becomes obvious: every term is a multiplier, so a zero anywhere makes the whole thing zero. Most failed programs fail on the first term.
Enrollment is a friction problem, not a features problem. A sign up that needs a separate tablet, an app download, or a staff member to explain it during a rush will not happen, no matter how good the rewards engine is. A sign up that happens inside a checkout the guest was already completing, on the phone already in their hand, does.
That is the lens for this whole page. Rank loyalty vendors by where the enrollment happens first, and by feature depth second.
Points, punches, cashback or tiers: which should you pick?
Choose the mechanic before the vendor. Every platform below can run most of these, so getting this wrong is a self inflicted wound that no amount of software fixes.
| Mechanic | How it works | Best for | Where it fails |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stamps or punches | Buy ten, get one free. The digital version of the card in your wallet. | Coffee, bakeries, lunch counters, anything with a low ticket and daily frequency. | High ticket, low frequency rooms. Ten dinners is two years, so nobody ever finishes. |
| Points | Earn per dollar spent, redeem at a threshold. | Mixed ticket sizes and a broad menu, where a flat punch would overpay big spenders. | When the earn rate is so slow the guest never sees a reward. If the first reward is more than four or five visits away, it is invisible. |
| Cashback or credit | A percentage of each order comes back as store credit. | Delivery and takeout heavy operations where the guest is comparing your price to a marketplace price. | Margin, if you set it above what the discount is buying you in repeat frequency. |
| Tiers | Status levels that open up better earn rates or perks as spend rises. | Multi location brands with a wide spread between casual and heavy guests. | Small independents. Tiers need enough guests per level to matter, and the admin is real. |
| Paid membership | The guest pays monthly for free delivery, a standing discount or member pricing. | Operations with genuinely frequent regulars and enough volume to forecast. | Anywhere the maths is not tested first. Sell it to your most frequent guests and you can lose money on your best customers. |
Which restaurant loyalty program is best in 2026?
Ranked for an independent restaurant, which is who this site serves. We build one of these and it sits seventh, because loyalty is included with it rather than being the thing it sells. Every price was checked against the vendor's own page at write time; where nothing is published, the entry says so.
Square Loyalty
Best for a small independent on SquareSquare rebuilt its packaging so loyalty is no longer a separate subscription: it sits inside the paid plan alongside marketing tools, which makes it the cheapest way for a small restaurant to run a real program instead of a paper card. It fires at the register, on the same terminal the guest already taps, which is why enrollment on Square tends to work.
Published. Square Free is $0 a month per location; Square Plus is $49 a month per location and adds loyalty programs and marketing tools; Square Premium is $149 a month per location (Square pricing and plans, read 4 Oct 2026). Older per visit loyalty tiers are still widely quoted around the web; we could not verify them on a Square page, so they are not repeated here.
It only sees guests who pay at your Square terminal or Square online store. Marketplace orders never enroll, and the campaign tooling is basic next to a dedicated loyalty platform.
Loyalzoo
Best if you are not on Square or ToastLoyalzoo is the point of sale agnostic option, and one of very few loyalty vendors that puts a real number on a public page. Points or stamps, basic SMS, email and push, plus subscriptions and memberships on the entry plan, which is unusual: most competitors gate membership behind an enterprise conversation.
Published on loyalzoo.com/pricing, read 4 Oct 2026: Grow $77 a month with points or stamp based loyalty, basic SMS, email and push, plus subscriptions and memberships. Smart $167 a month adds targeted promotions, tiered loyalty and 5,000 messaging credits. Multi is custom priced with a dedicated account manager.
It is a loyalty layer, not an ordering channel, so it has no view of a diner who never reaches your counter. It also costs more per month than Square Plus, which bundles loyalty with a whole point of sale.
Toast Loyalty
Best if you already run ToastSame logic as everywhere else in the Toast ecosystem: if the floor already runs on Toast, the loyalty that plugs into the same check is the one your staff will actually use, and there is no integration to keep in sync. Enrollment at the terminal is the strongest enrollment there is.
Not listed by Toast. Toast lists its Starter Kit from $0 a month and its Point of Sale plan from $69 a month, and shows no price for loyalty on its pricing page (read 4 Oct 2026). Ask Toast for a written quote.
With no listed price you cannot budget it before a sales call. You also cannot buy it without Toast POS.
PAR Punchh
The enterprise standardPunchh, now sold inside PAR Engagement, is what national chains run: personalized rewards, tiered memberships, campaigns across email, SMS, app and web, and a guest profile that starts before enrollment. Its site cites "Trusted by over 275 global brands". At that scale it is the category benchmark and nothing on this page competes with it.
Not published. punchh.com carries no prices and directs every pricing question to its team.
Sized for chains, priced for chains, implemented like enterprise software. A one to five location independent will not get a workable quote, and would not have the marketing staff to run it if they did.
Thanx
Best for multi location guest valueThanx aims at frequency rather than acquisition, which is the correct target for a brand that already has traffic. It is refreshingly direct that price tracks your size, stating "Thanx pricing is designed to scale with your business" for multi location food service brands.
Not published. Thanx describes itself as "Enterprise solutions built for restaurants" and requires a demo for a number, with pricing driven by restaurant count and average unit volume.
Pricing tied to average unit volume means the bill rises with your best years. And as with Punchh, an independent cannot self serve their way in.
Owner.com
Best loyalty attached to your own channelOwner bundles loyalty and rewards with the thing that creates enrollments: your own ordering site and branded app, plus automated email and text campaigns. For an independent, loyalty that lives inside the checkout you own will out enroll a loyalty product bolted onto a channel you rent.
Listed on owner.com/pricing, read 4 Oct 2026: $249 a month plus a 5% restaurant fee per order, or $499 a month flat with no restaurant fee per order. Guests pay a 5% order support fee on both.
You are buying an ordering platform to get loyalty, so it is only the right purchase if you wanted the platform. The 5% guest fee is a percentage that grows with the ticket, unlike a flat fee.
Zayos
Loyalty included, not soldWe build Zayos, and it is seventh here for a straightforward reason: loyalty is a feature of the storefront rather than the product you are buying. Every Zayos storefront ships with loyalty alongside modifiers and catering, so there is no separate loyalty line on the bill and no second system to sync. If loyalty is the only thing you need, one of the six entries above is a better purchase.
Published on /pricing: Operator $399 a month, Operator plus Tablet $499, Concierge $599, each per location, month to month, no setup fee. Loyalty is included at every tier. The restaurant pays 0% commission and keeps 100% of food revenue, and 100% of tips on pickup and dine in; the diner pays $0.99 pickup or $0.99 delivery at checkout, $0 dine in and 10% on catering.
It is the youngest platform on this page. Naya Grill in Pompano Beach is live and taking orders today, and Aker Sweets, Arwa Coffee, Courtyard Cafe, Farooj Abo Alabed, Juice Time, Kunafa King Cafe, Madent Al-Taybat Roastery, Melt N Dip, Rosto Grill & Café, Shishka Lebanese Grill, Socotra Yemeni Coffee & Co., Syrian Shawarma, Tacos Arabes, The Fryer House, Vinny’s and Yummy Grill are live and taking direct orders. The loyalty depth is also deliberately simple next to Punchh or Thanx.
ChowNow
Included on every tier, with a ceilingChowNow puts loyalty and rewards on all three tiers, including the entry plan, and publishes how many customer contacts each tier holds. That transparency is genuinely rare in this category and worth crediting.
Listed on get.chownow.com/pricing, read 4 Oct 2026: Launch $229 a month annually or $249 month to month, Grow $319 or $349, Elevate $409 or $449, plus a $119 to $499 setup fee and 2.95% plus $0.29 processing. Grow includes 2,000 customer contacts and credits, Elevate 5,000.
A loyalty program is a contact list, so those caps are the real limit on the program. The entry Launch tier lists no contact allowance, and a busy restaurant will pass 2,000 unique contacts inside a year.
Sources for the prices and rates in this section: Square pricing and plans; Toast pricing; Owner.com pricing; ChowNow pricing, read 4 Oct 2026. A company can change them; its own page is what counts.
How do the loyalty programs compare on price?
Three of the eight publish nothing. The last column is the one that predicts whether your program will actually have members in it.
| Program | Price | Publishes pricing | Mechanics | Where guests enroll |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Square Loyalty | $49/mo per location on Square Plus | Yes | Points, with marketing tools | Register and Square online store |
| Loyalzoo | $77 Grow, $167 Smart, custom Multi | Yes | Points, stamps, tiers, memberships | POS agnostic |
| Toast Loyalty | Not listed by Toast | No | Points, inside Toast checks | Toast POS and Toast ordering |
| PAR Punchh | Not published | No | Points, tiers, offers, app | Branded app, web, POS |
| Thanx | Not published, scales with unit volume | No | Points, tiers, guest value | Ordering, app, POS |
| Owner.com | $249/mo + 5% per order, or $499/mo flat | Yes | Loyalty and rewards, automated campaigns | Own site and branded app |
| Zayos | Included in $399 / $499 / $599 per location | Yes | Loyalty on the storefront | Own site, catering |
| ChowNow | $229 to $449/mo + $119 to $499 setup | Yes | Loyalty and rewards on all tiers | Own site, branded app, ChowNow network |
Card processing, hardware and setup fees are excluded and are listed in each entry above. Confirm current terms with each vendor before signing.
Sources for the prices and rates in this section: Square pricing and plans; Toast pricing; Owner.com pricing; ChowNow pricing, read 4 Oct 2026. A company can change them; its own page is what counts.
What should loyalty cost as a share of the sales it touches?
A practical ceiling is about 1%. Above that, the program has to move repeat frequency measurably rather than just exist.
The test is one division: the monthly price of the program over the monthly sales that actually run through it. A program that costs $100 a month is 0.5% of $20,000 in loyalty eligible sales and 1.25% of $8,000. Run it with the price from the table above and your own eligible sales, not your total sales, because a program only touches the checkouts it is connected to.
Nothing here says do not buy a program that lands above 1%; it says know the ratio before you sign, because that ratio is what the program must beat.
One more comparison worth running: marketplace commission is 15% to 30% base and 25% to 35% blended. Loyalty at under 1% is not where your margin is going. See the commission statistics or model your own numbers with the free AI report.
Restaurant loyalty, answered straight.
What is the best loyalty program for a small restaurant?
How much do restaurant loyalty programs cost per month?
Do restaurant loyalty programs actually increase repeat business?
Points, stamps or cashback: which loyalty mechanic is best?
How much should a restaurant spend on loyalty software?
Does loyalty work on DoorDash and Uber Eats orders?
Sources for the prices and rates in this section: ChowNow pricing; Loyalzoo pricing; Owner.com pricing; Square pricing and plans; Toast pricing, read 4 Oct 2026. A company can change them; its own page is what counts.
Sources
- Square pricing and plans, read 4 Oct 2026: Square Free $0, Square Plus $49 and Square Premium $149 per month per location.
- Loyalzoo pricing page, read 4 Oct 2026: Grow $77 a month, Smart $167 a month with tiered loyalty and 5,000 messaging credits, Multi custom priced.
- Toast pricing, read 4 Oct 2026: Starter Kit from $0 a month, Point of Sale from $69 a month, no loyalty price shown.
- PAR Punchh, read 4 Oct 2026: part of PAR Engagement, "Trusted by over 275 global brands", no published pricing.
- Thanx pricing page, read 4 Oct 2026: "Enterprise solutions built for restaurants", pricing "designed to scale with your business", demo required, no published prices.
- Owner.com pricing page, read 4 Oct 2026: $249 Flexible plus 5% restaurant fee, $499 Flat Rate, 5% guest order support fee, loyalty and rewards included.
- ChowNow pricing page, read 4 Oct 2026: Launch, Grow and Elevate tiers, $119 to $499 setup, 2.95% plus $0.29 processing, loyalty on all tiers, contacts capped at 2,000 on Grow and 5,000 on Elevate.
- Zayos pricing: loyalty included on the $399, $499 and $599 tiers, no setup fee, flat diner paid service fee.
Sources for the prices and rates in this section: Square pricing and plans; Toast pricing; Owner.com pricing; ChowNow pricing, read 4 Oct 2026. A company can change them; its own page is what counts.
Loyalty is the small number. Check the big one.
A loyalty subscription costs under 1% of the sales it touches. Marketplace commission runs 25% to 35% blended. The free AI report models both against your real numbers in 60 seconds. No card, no sales call.
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