Clover POS System Review 2027: Pricing, Fees and Verdict
How we make money: CanComCo earns a commission from some POS and payments vendors when a business we refer signs up. Commission never changes a rating or a rate we publish.
Clover POS System at a Glance
 Card rates (Compact Starter) |
2.6% + 10 cents tapped, swiped or inserted. 3.5% + 10 cents keyed. No separate online rate is published on that page. |
|---|---|
 Hardware |
Clover Compact: $349 outright, or $16/month for 36 months, which totals $576. |
 Software subscription |
Not priced on the Compact page. Clover's own footnote confirms that Essentials or Services Growth plan monthly fees apply, so a software fee exists and the page does not show it. |
 Contract length |
The hardware promotion footnote states "Requires a 3-year contract." Financing the Compact is a 36-month commitment. No cancellation policy, notice period or termination fee appears on any page we read. |
 Free trial |
90 days of no SaaS subscription fees on Clover Essentials or Services Growth, for qualified merchants of selected business types. Promotion runs March 5, 2027 to December 31, 2027, one per business tax ID. Not offered on the Compact Starter plan. |
 Support |
24/7 on all plans, per Clover. Capterra scores Customer Service 3.3 from 482 reviews. |
 Cash flow services |
Rapid Deposit, funds within minutes of a card sale, 1.75% fee. Clover Capital advances on future card sales, flexible repayment terms. |
 Countries available |
Not verified. We read no Clover availability page, and Clover states "Prices shown are only available on Clover.com," so reseller and bank channels may differ. |
 Standout feature |
Published per-device card rates, which most of this market does not provide. |
 Biggest weakness |
1.9 / 5 on Trustpilot from 2,213 reviews, 54% of them one star. |
Clover figures verified against clover.com/pricing/compact in November 2026. Review scores verified the same day.
Clover POS Pricing: What You'll Actually Pay
Clover does not sell one POS with plan tiers. It sells devices, each on its own pricing page, with software plans split across six verticals. This section covers the Compact on the Starter plan in US dollars. Check the matching device and vertical page before you quote any other configuration.
Hardware and plan
| Item | Price | Note |
|---|---|---|
 Clover Compact, outright | $349 | One payment. |
 Clover Compact, financed | $16/month for 36 months | 36 x $16 = $576, a $227 premium over buying outright, or 65%. Locks you in for three years. |
| Compact Swivel Stand | No price published | Listed as an available accessory behind a "See details" link. |
| Software subscription | Not published on this page | Clover's footnote confirms that Essentials or Services Growth monthly fees apply after the trial. |
Card rates on Compact Starter
| Transaction type | Rate |
|---|---|
| Card tapped, swiped or inserted | 2.6% + 10 cents |
| Card information typed in | 3.5% + 10 cents |
| Online and e-commerce | Not separately published. The plan lists "Take payments on your phone or online" with no distinct rate. |
| Rapid Deposit, funds within minutes | 1.75% of the deposit |
Real monthly cost
REAL MONTHLY COST
A shop doing $15,000 a month in card volume across 750 in-person sales, average ticket $20, financing the Compact:
Percentage: $15,000 x 0.026 = $390.00
Per transaction: 750 x $0.10 = $75.00
Device financing: $16.00
Known total: $481.00 a month. Effective rate: $481 divided by $15,000 = 3.21%
Not in that figure: the software subscription, which Clover does not price on this page. Treat $481.00 as a floor and not a quote.
Buy the device outright instead and the monthly cost drops to $465.00, plus $349 once. Over three years that saves $227.
Where Clover beats Square, and where it does not. Clover and Square both charge 2.6% in person, but Clover's per-transaction fee is 10 cents against Square's 15 cents on its free plan. That 5 cent gap pays back the $16 monthly device financing at 320 in-person transactions a month, because $16 divided by $0.05 = 320. Above 320 transactions the financed Compact costs less than Square's free plan. Below it, Square costs less. Buy the Compact outright and the $349 comes back after 6,980 transactions, about nine months at 750 a month.
Clover prices verified against clover.com/pricing/compact in November 2026. Square rates verified against squareup.com the same day.
Clover POS Features: What Works and What Doesn't
Written from Clover's published pages and from customer reviews on G2, Capterra and Trustpilot. No one at CanComCo has operated this product, so nothing here describes a screen we have used. Where Clover does not document a feature, we say it is unconfirmed.
Payments and checkout
The Compact Starter plan accepts all credit and debit cards, cash, checks and mobile wallets, takes payments by phone or online, adds tips to a bill, and handles invoicing and recurring payments. Clover marks invoicing, QR code payment and offline payments as Included. Offline card acceptance at entry level is the one to note: several competitors treat it as a premium feature and Clover does not.
Reporting
Basic sales reports are marked Included on Starter, and real-time reporting is part of the product. How deep those reports run, and what you can export, is not published on the Compact page.
Capterra rates Features 3.8 / 5 from 581 reviews.
Inventory and catalog
Product catalog management is confirmed. Low-stock alerts, multi-location inventory sync, product variants and barcode scanning are not confirmed in the material we read. A retailer running sizes and colors across two stores should get those four demonstrated before signing a three-year term.
Customers, gift cards and staff
Customer profiles, gift cards and multi-user permissions are confirmed, and employee profile management is marked Included on Starter. Loyalty, employee time tracking and payroll are not included: payroll integrations are listed as an optional add-on with no price.
Cash flow services
Two are published on the Compact page. Rapid Deposit puts funds in within minutes of a card sale for a 1.75% fee. Clover Capital advances money against future card sales on flexible repayment terms. Both are useful and both cost money, so read Rapid Deposit as 1.75% on top of your 2.6% whenever you use it.
What is not confirmed
Split checks, tip pooling, kitchen display integration, built-in online ordering, table management, appointment booking, loyalty, time tracking, multi-currency and public API access are absent from the material we read. Clover runs an app market, but we verified no named third-party partner, so this review lists none. For a full-service restaurant, get table management and kitchen display demonstrated before committing.
Feature list verified against clover.com/pricing/compact in November 2026. Capterra category scores verified the same day.
Hardware Options and Setup Experience
Clover's model is its own hardware, and the Compact is the entry point: $349 outright or $16 a month for 36 months, which totals $576. The Mini, Station Solo, Station Duo and Flex each have a separate pricing page we did not read for this review, so do not carry the Compact's price or rates across to them.
The only accessory shown for the Compact is a swivel stand with no published price. No receipt printer, cash drawer or barcode scanner is listed in the Starter plan, so budget for those separately if your counter needs them. Bring-your-own-device works in part: Starter includes taking payments on your phone, but whether a third-party tablet can run Clover is not established on the page we read. Clover publishes no setup timeline, so we give none.
One promotion worth knowing about, and worth not relying on. Clover is offering a $450 statement credit on Station, Mini or Flex, online only, and the Compact is not on the eligible list. It expires December 31, 2027 and carries real conditions: credit approval by January 31, 2027, a $25 sales batch within 30 days of approval, $10,000 or more in card transactions within the first four billing cycles, and a three-year contract.
Verified against clover.com/pricing/compact in November 2026.
Customer Support: What to Expect When Things Break
Clover states "All of our plans come with 24/7 support," including the cheapest. That is a real commitment and more than several competitors publish.
Availability is not quality, and the published scores say so. Capterra rates Customer Service 3.3 / 5 from 482 reviews, Clover's weakest category, and lists "Unreliable phone customer support" among its cons. Trustpilot reviewers name customer service as a leading complaint, describing long hold times, repeated transfers and unreturned callbacks. Clover's Trustpilot profile has been claimed since January 2016 and replies to 3% of negative reviews.
We did not verify the channel list, hours by channel, languages or a status page. Clover publishes none of those on the pages we read, so this review states none.
Capterra and Trustpilot verified November 2026.
Clover POS Pros and Cons
Pros
- Published card rates, per device. 2.6% + 10 cents tapped and 3.5% + 10 cents keyed are printed on the Compact page. Toast publishes no card rate at all.
- The per-transaction fee undercuts Square. 10 cents against Square's 15 cents on its free plan, at the same 2.6%. Worth $37.50 a month at 750 transactions.
- Offline payments included at entry level. Marked Included on Starter, not sold as an upgrade.
- Invoicing, recurring payments and QR-code pay on the cheapest plan. All marked Included.
- 24/7 support on every plan. Published, including on Starter.
- Purpose-built hardware you can buy outright. $349 for the Compact with no loan attached.
Cons
- 1.9 / 5 on Trustpilot from 2,213 reviews, 54% of them one star. The distribution is split, 54% one star against 42% five star, so experiences diverge sharply rather than averaging out. This is the single most important number on this page.
- Value and support are the two lowest published categories. Capterra: Value for Money 3.4 from 476 reviews, Customer Service 3.3 from 482, against Ease of Use 4.0. Published cons: "Consistently poor user experiences" and "Unreliable phone customer support".
- The cheap monthly price is a three-year hardware loan. $16 a month for 36 months is $576 for a $349 device, and Clover's own promotion footnote says "Requires a 3-year contract."
- No cancellation terms published anywhere. No notice period and no termination fee on any page we read, while cancellation difficulty and early termination fees are among the most frequent Trustpilot complaints. Get the exit terms in writing.
- You cannot total the cost from the pricing page. The software subscription is not priced there, though Clover's footnote confirms monthly fees apply. Reviewers also report PCI compliance fees and penalty charges that appear on no published page.
- Pricing is scattered across at least six pages. Device by device and vertical by vertical, with the caveat "Prices shown are only available on Clover.com," which means a reseller or bank channel may quote different terms.
This profile suits a business that will buy the hardware outright, read the merchant agreement line by line, and get the software fee and exit terms in writing first. It frustrates anyone who wants one price on one page.
What Real Users Say About the Clover POS System
This section aggregates ratings published by independent review platforms. We did not collect reviews ourselves and we quote no customer we cannot cite.
| Source | Score | Reviews | Scope | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Capterra | 3.8 / 5 | 587 | Ease of Use 4.0 (581), Features 3.8 (581), Value for Money 3.4 (476), Customer Service 3.3 (482). Sentiment 69% positive, 9% neutral, 22% negative. Capterra last updated October 19, 2027. | Nov 4, 2027 |
| G2 | 3.8 / 5 | 109 | Profile claimed and managed by Clover. Seller listed as Fiserv. | Nov 4, 2027 |
| Trustpilot | 1.9 / 5, labeled Poor | 2,213 | 5 star 42%, 4 star 1%, 3 star under 1%, 2 star 2%, 1 star 54%. Page titled "Clover POS Reviews". Claimed since January 2016, replies to 3% of negative reviews. Most recent review October 13, 2027. EXCLUDED from our rating per our method, but essential context. | Nov 4, 2027 |
| Apple App Store and Google Play | Not researched | Not researched | Clover runs on its own hardware, and whether the Clover Go app is the point of sale itself was not established. Recorded as not researched rather than left blank. | Not researched |
How the 3.8 was calculated: the unweighted mean of the product-specific published scores. G2 3.8 + Capterra 3.8 = 7.6, divided by 2 = 3.8. Trustpilot is excluded because its page rates the company rather than the product, though its title does say "Clover POS", which puts it closer to product level than most Trustpilot pages.
Category scores, all published by Capterra: Ease of use 4.0 / 5 · Features 3.8 / 5 · Pricing and value 3.4 / 5 · Customer support 3.3 / 5. No source publishes a hardware score, so this page gives none.
Recurring themes
Cancellation is the most common complaint. Reviewers describe hard-to-complete cancellations, long contracts and large early termination fees.
Unexpected fees. Recurring charges reviewers did not anticipate, including PCI compliance fees and penalty fees. None of these appear on Clover's published pricing page.
Customer service. Long hold times, repeated transfers and unreturned callbacks, against a published 24/7 support promise.
Held or delayed funds. Withheld payouts and account holds.
Ease of use is the consistent positive. Capterra's 4.0 Ease of Use score and its published pro, "Intuitive and simple operation", are the clearest thing users agree on.
The split matters more than the average. 42% of Trustpilot reviewers give five stars and 54% give one. Read that as a product that works well until something goes wrong with billing or cancellation, at which point the experience falls apart.
Best Clover POS Alternatives
If Clover is not the right fit, three alternatives are worth a look. Prices verified November 2026.
-
Square POS
Consider this if you want no hardware commitment and far better customer sentiment.
Plans at $0, $49 and $149 a month, every price and card rate printed, a 30-day free trial on Plus and Premium, and no three-year term. Capterra scores Square 4.6 from 3,036 reviews with Customer Service 4.3, against Clover's 3.8 and 3.3. You give up: Clover's purpose-built terminal range, and 5 cents per transaction, since Square's free plan runs 2.6% + 15 cents against Clover's 2.6% + 10 cents.
from $0 a month
-
Toast POS
Consider this if you run a restaurant and need kitchen display and handheld ordering built in.
Restaurant-specific hardware and workflow, with Toast Care support included in every software subscription at no additional cost, 24/7/365 by phone or web messaging. You give up: any published card rate. Toast prints none, which makes it harder to compare on cost than Clover.
from $0 a month by Toast's own description
-
Helcim
Consider this if processing cost is the main concern and you want no hardware loan.
$0 monthly fee, no setup fee, and published interchange-plus pricing from interchange + 0.40% + 8 cents in person below $50,000 a month, with volume discounts applied automatically off a three-month average. Serves the United States and Canada. You give up: a large review base, and predictability, since interchange-plus totals move with live interchange while Clover's 2.6% + 10 cents is fixed.
from $0 a month
None of the three fit? See our retail, restaurant and salon POS guides.
Clover POS FAQ
How much does the Clover POS System cost?
The Clover Compact is $349 outright or $16 a month for 36 months, which totals $576. A software subscription is charged separately and Clover does not price it on the Compact page. Other devices, the Mini, Station Solo, Station Duo and Flex, are priced on their own pages.
What are Clover's card processing fees?
On the Compact Starter plan, 2.6% + 10 cents for a card tapped, swiped or inserted, and 3.5% + 10 cents for a card typed in. Rates are published per device and per vertical, so check the page that matches your configuration.
Does Clover require a contract?
Clover's hardware promotion footnote states "Requires a 3-year contract," and financing the Compact is a 36-month commitment. Buying the device outright avoids the financing term. Get the software agreement's term in writing either way.
How do I cancel Clover, and is there a fee?
Clover publishes no cancellation policy, notice period or early termination fee on any page we read. Trustpilot reviewers name cancellation difficulty and large termination fees among their most frequent complaints. Ask for the cancellation terms in writing before you sign.
Is there a Clover free trial?
Yes, conditionally. Clover is running a 90-day trial with no SaaS subscription fees on the Essentials or Services Growth plans, for qualified merchants of selected business types, from March 5, 2027 to December 31, 2027, one per business tax ID. It is not offered on the Compact Starter plan.
Why is Clover's Trustpilot score so low?
Trustpilot rates clover.com 1.9 out of 5 from 2,213 reviews and labels it Poor, with 54% one star. Reviewers most often cite cancellation difficulty, unexpected fees including PCI compliance charges, customer service, and held funds. Capterra's scores are higher at 3.8 overall, so the two sources disagree sharply.
What does Rapid Deposit cost?
1.75% of the deposit, for funds within minutes of a card sale. That is on top of your card processing rate, so a $1,000 sale deposited instantly costs $26.00 in processing plus $17.50 in Rapid Deposit.
Is Clover available outside the United States?
We did not verify this. We read no Clover availability page, and Clover states "Prices shown are only available on Clover.com," so availability, pricing and terms may all differ through reseller and bank channels. Confirm with Clover for your country.
Is the Clover POS System Right for Your Business?
The Clover POS System does the thing this market mostly refuses to do: it prints its card rates. 2.6% + 10 cents in person is competitive, and the 10 cents per transaction actually undercuts Square's free plan by a nickel a sale. Offline payments, invoicing and QR-code pay on the cheapest plan are a real baseline, and 24/7 support on every tier is more than Clover's competitors commit to in writing. If you buy the Compact outright at $349, read the merchant agreement, and get the software fee and the exit terms in writing first, the hardware and the rates hold up.
The problem is what happens after you sign. Trustpilot rates clover.com 1.9 from 2,213 reviews with 54% one star, and the complaints cluster on cancellation, fees that appear on no published page, and support that does not resolve things. Capterra's 3.3 Customer Service score from 482 reviews points the same way. Skip Clover if you want one price on one page, if you will not read the contract, or if you need table management and kitchen display, neither of which we could confirm. Take the $16 a month at face value and you have signed a three-year, $576 loan on a $349 device.
Commission disclosure applies. Rating is 3.8 / 5 as of November 2026, derived from published third-party scores by the method in How we review.
compare against Square POS, Toast POS and Helcim.