A cut of every order
The marketplaces. Nothing up front, then 15–30% of each order forever. Cheap at low volume and brutal at high volume, which is the opposite of how most people assume it works.
Choosing a platform
Online ordering for restaurants, and what it actually costs
We sell one of these, so read this with that in mind. What follows is the pricing structure of the whole category, including the parts that don't flatter us — because the thing that decides this purchase is arithmetic, and most comparison pages skip it.
Start here
There are only three ways these are priced
A flat monthly fee
You pay the same whether you take ten orders or a thousand. Across the platforms we've checked this runs from $0 to $449 a month, sometimes per location. Card processing sits on top, paid to your gateway.
Both at once
More common than you'd expect. A subscription and a per-order percentage, occasionally with a separate fee charged to your customer at checkout. Owner.com publishes $249 a month plus 5% per order, for instance.
Figures from each vendor's own pricing page, checked August 2026. See the platform-by-platform comparisons for the workings.
The arithmetic
Work out your crossover point before you shortlist anyone
Take your monthly online order volume and your average order value. Multiply them, take 20%, and compare that to a monthly subscription. For a lot of restaurants the answer is uncomfortable — the percentage passes the flat fee somewhere around fifty orders a month, and everything after that is pure difference.
Below that line, commission is genuinely the cheaper deal and you should take it. Above it, you're paying a subscription's worth every week for the privilege of not having a website.
Where we'd tell you not to bother
When a marketplace is the right answer
If you opened last month and nobody knows your name yet, the delivery apps are doing something a website cannot: putting you in front of people who have never heard of you. That discovery is worth a commission, and no ordering platform — ours included — replaces it.
The same goes if online is a rounding error for you. Ten orders a month through an app costs less than any subscription, and the setup afternoon isn't worth it yet.
The case for your own ordering changes when you have regulars. A customer who already knows your name, searching for you by name, and then paying a marketplace 25% to reach you — that's the order worth moving. Most restaurants run both for a long time.
Before you sign
Four things worth knowing that pricing pages skip
Who your customer belongs to
On a marketplace, the diner is theirs. Ask whether you can export your customer list, and whether you can email it. The answers are sometimes different.
What leaving looks like
Menu, customers, order history — on demand, in a usable format, not only on the way out. GloriaFood's shutdown is what happens when the answer turns out to be no.
Whether it works where you are
Several of the cheapest platforms simply aren't sold in the UAE, the Gulf or India. Check the country list before the price list.
What the guest sees at checkout
Some platforms add a service or support fee paid by your customer. It never appears in the monthly price you compared, and your regulars are exactly the people who notice it.
Whether the rate is published
If the transaction percentage takes a sales call to discover, you can't compare total cost from the website. That's a decision the vendor made, and it tells you something.
Whether you're also buying a till
Some of these are POS suites with ordering attached. Excellent if you want a POS. Expensive if you already have one.
Where we fit
What Ontabee is, in one paragraph
Your own ordering site on your own domain, $0, $49 or $99 a month, no commission and nothing added to your customer's bill. Payments settle through your own gateway at your own negotiated rate. We don't sell a POS, we don't run a marketplace, and we can't put you in front of strangers — if that's what you need, the apps are better at it than we'll ever be.
See the pricing → · open a real storefront and place an order
Questions
Commonly asked
What does an online ordering system cost for a restaurant?
It depends entirely on which of the three pricing models you pick. Marketplaces take a percentage of every order and charge nothing up front. Subscription platforms charge a flat monthly fee, roughly $49 to $449 depending on who you ask. A few charge both. The monthly figure is usually the small number — the percentage is where the money goes.
Do I still need to be on the delivery apps?
Often yes, at least at first. The apps bring people who have never heard of you, and that is worth paying for. What is not worth paying for is the regular who already knows your name ordering through an app because you never gave them anywhere else to go. Most restaurants end up running both and shifting repeat orders across.
How long does it take to set up?
A single-location menu is usually an afternoon of work, most of it typing in dishes. Platforms that import your existing menu cut that down considerably. What takes longer is the boring stuff nobody warns you about: delivery zones, opening hours, prep times, tax settings and payment configuration. Budget for those.
Is commission-free actually free?
No, and be suspicious of anyone who says otherwise. There is no commission on orders, but you still pay card processing to whoever handles the payment, and most platforms charge a monthly fee. What commission-free means is that the platform does not take a slice on top of that — so a busy month costs you the same as a quiet one.
What should I check before signing up?
Whether the transaction rate is published on the website, whether anyone adds a fee to your customer at checkout, and whether you can export your menu, customers and order history on demand rather than only on the way out. If any of those takes a sales call to find out, that is itself the answer.
Still deciding?
Run your numbers against the marketplaces, or just open the demo and see what a storefront looks like.
Run the numbers Compare the platforms