Square Loyalty is not expensive. For a single café it is one of the cheapest ways to stop being anonymous to your own regulars, and if that is your situation you can stop reading after the third section.
The reason it is worth understanding anyway is the shape of the price rather than the size of it. Square charges for loyalty per location, per month, and in most markets the rate moves with how much loyalty activity that location generates. Two multipliers, both of which climb as a brand grows. Here is how the model works, what Square publishes, and the arithmetic on what happens when you add sites.
How Square prices loyalty
Square Loyalty runs off Square POS. A guest enrols with a phone number at the terminal, points accrue on the transaction, and rewards redeem at the counter or online. You choose whether points are earned per visit, per amount spent, or per item or category. There is no separate app for the guest and no second tablet for staff, which is most of the appeal.
The pricing has three properties worth naming.
- It is per location. Each active location is billed separately. Adding a site adds a full subscription.
- It is separate from card processing. Payment fees are charged the same way whether or not loyalty is switched on.
- In most markets it is banded by usage. Each location's monthly rate depends on how many loyalty visits that location recorded that month. Square defines a loyalty visit as a customer enrolling in the program, earning a point, or redeeming a reward.
The United States is now the exception, and that is a recent change.
The numbers Square publishes
On Square's Australian Loyalty page, retrieved 26 August 2026, the bands are A$49 a month for 0 to 500 loyalty visits, A$99 for 501 to 1,500, and A$149 for 1,501 and above. Square's own wording is "per calendar month, per location", with a 30-day free trial.
Canada's page, retrieved the same day, uses the same bands at different rates: C$60, C$100 and C$140 per calendar month, per location.
In the United States, loyalty is no longer priced on its own. Square announced in October 2025 that three plans would replace 18 separate subscriptions, and loyalty moved inside them. Square's US plan comparison lists Square Free at $0 a month per location, Square Plus at $49 and Square Premium at $149. The loyalty rewards program is not available on Free. It is included from Plus upward.
So in the US the honest answer to what Square Loyalty costs is the difference between the plan you would otherwise be on and Square Plus.
For one café this is usually the right call
At a single Australian site under 500 loyalty visits a month, Square Loyalty is A$49, about A$1.60 a day. Nothing else at that price enrols a guest at the point of sale without a second device, a second login, or a staff member remembering to ask.
In the US there is a further wrinkle that runs in Square's favour. Plus carries a lower in-person card rate than Free, 2.5% + 15¢ against 2.6% + 15¢. That is a tenth of a percentage point, so a location taking around $49,000 a month in in-person card volume recovers the whole $49 fee in processing savings alone. Above that, the plan has paid for itself and loyalty comes with it. Premium works the same way against Plus, breaking even near $100,000 a month per location.
Add the cost of not using it, which is a second system holding a second copy of your guest data, and for one location the built-in option is usually correct. That is worth saying plainly, because the rest of this post is about the case where it stops being true.
What the shape does when you add locations
Run it forward on the Australian figures. Six locations, all quiet enough to sit in the bottom band, is A$294 a month. Six locations all in the top band is A$894 a month, or A$10,728 a year. Same brand, same software, same feature set. The only thing that changed is that more guests used the program.
The top band also arrives sooner than operators expect. 1,501 loyalty visits is about 50 a day. A site doing 300 covers a day with one guest in six enrolled and transacting is already there, and enrolments, point-earning transactions and redemptions all count toward the total.
None of that is a criticism of the model. Usage-based pricing is defensible, and it protects the small operator, which is exactly why the single-site answer above is what it is. It is simply worth knowing that the loyalty line rises on two axes at once, the number of sites you run and how well the program is working at each, and that there is no volume discount for the tenth location.
The US plan version is flatter but still linear. Ten locations on Square Plus is $490 a month, $5,880 a year. That buys a great deal more than loyalty, and if each site clears roughly $49,000 a month in card volume the processing saving covers it. If your sites are smaller than that, it does not.
How to work out your own number
- Count your active locations. Square bills per active location, so a site you no longer trade from should be deactivated rather than left open.
- Pull last month's loyalty visits for each location from Square Dashboard.
- Band each location on its own. The bands apply per location, not to your group total, so one busy flagship does not drag the quiet sites up with it.
- Add them, then run the same sum again using the location count and enrolment you expect in twelve months.
That second number is the one to decide on. The first tells you what loyalty costs today. The second tells you what it costs if the program works and the brand grows, which is the scenario you are buying it for.
When the shape matters more than the price
Habitu prices differently, and the contrast is in the shape rather than the headline. Starter is $49 a month for a single location plus $0.35 per pickup order. Growth is $199 a month for up to ten locations plus $0.20 per pickup order. Enterprise is $499 a month with no per-order fee and no location limit.
The structural difference is this. On a per-location model the tenth site costs the same as the first. On a banded model the tenth site adds nothing to the subscription. And the variable cost moves with direct orders rather than with loyalty engagement, so a program that is working harder does not by itself raise the bill.
These are not the same purchase and it would be dishonest to present them as one. Square Plus is a point of sale, a payment processor, staff tooling and a website, with loyalty inside it. Habitu is a guest layer that runs on top of the POS you already have, with Square and Foodics as the shipped integrations. Pretzel Australia is a Habitu client. If you run one site on Square, the built-in option is almost certainly the cheaper and simpler answer. The question only changes when the number of locations does.