Written by: JJ Tan, Founder, Jelly | Last updated: 26 October 2026

Last Updated October 2026

Key Takeaways

  • UK restaurant inventory software pricing ranges from free spreadsheets to over £5,000 annually, with most flat-rate tools between £79–£129 per site per month.
  • Flat-rate pricing supports predictable budgeting, while usage-based models add variability that makes annual forecasting harder.
  • Jelly charges a flat £129 per site per month with no per-user fees or feature tiers and typically delivers onboarding within one week.
  • Hidden costs such as POS integration fees, onboarding charges, VAT treatment and invoice-scan limits should be confirmed in writing before signing.
  • Jelly is the best restaurant inventory management software in the UK for operators who need a predictable, budgetable cost because it charges a flat £129 per site per month with no per-user fees and no feature tiers, onboards within a week, and includes native POS integrations and Xero sync.

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The Three Pricing Models Explained

Flat-Rate Per Site charges one fixed price per location regardless of invoice volume, user count or feature usage. The bill stays the same in a quiet January and a busy December. This model is straightforward to budget and to defend to a finance team. Jelly and Growyze both use this model.

Usage-Based Pricing charges per invoice scan, per product scan, or per user seat, so the bill rises with activity. Usage-based pricing rewards groups with uneven trading between sites but is harder to forecast until the operator has a few months of real usage data across all locations. Foxera, for example, charges £1.00 per invoice scan and £0.50 per product scan, with users and sites unlimited. This model suits operators whose invoice volumes are low or highly seasonal, but it introduces variability that complicates annual budgeting.

General Cloud Inventory Management covers broader tools, often priced by module depth, that include hospitality-specific costing as a paid tier rather than a core feature. Across eight cloud inventory management tools with published paid pricing, the typical starting price ranges from about $39 to $349 per month (median $195), as of 2026-10-12. Full-featured and enterprise systems can cost considerably more, often $1,000 to $5,000+ per month. Several platforms in this category, including MarketMan, Apicbase, Nory and Fourth, withhold published pricing entirely and direct prospective customers to a sales team or demo booking.

What It Costs Over A Year: Worked Examples

These examples show how the main pricing models translate into real annual budgets at published monthly prices.

Single Site, Annual Cost At Published Monthly Prices

Five-Site Group, Annual Cost At Published Monthly Prices

  • Jelly: £129 × 5 × 12 = £7,740 per year
  • Growyze Premium: £139 × 5 × 12 = £8,340 per year

Usage-Based Illustration For Different Invoice Volumes

An operator processing 40 invoices per week at a hypothetical £1.00 per scan would spend approximately £160 per month, or £1,920 per year, at that volume. A site processing 10 invoices per week at the same rate would spend £40 per month, or £480 per year. This mechanism rewards low-volume sites and penalises busy kitchens with high invoice throughput.

Annual totals above are arithmetic based on published monthly prices and do not account for annual billing discounts, VAT treatment, or any setup fees. Each of these items should be confirmed with every vendor before signing.

For USD-denominated tools, the sterling cost moves with exchange rates. At the exchange rates seen around September 2026, MarketMan’s starter tier at $249 per month equates to roughly £185 to £200 per month before card currency-conversion fees. This figure is materially higher than the published dollar price suggests.

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What Is Included In Jelly’s £129 Per Site Per Month

Jelly’s flat £129 per site per month covers the core workflow from invoice to GP insight.

  • Automated invoice scanning via email or photo, with line-item digitisation of quantity, SKU, price and tax. Manual data entry is not required for these invoices.
  • Live dish costing and GP margins that update automatically as new invoices arrive.
  • Flash report that shows a daily, weekly or monthly view of gross profit margin calculated from invoice costs and POS sales.
  • Price alert that flags every ingredient price increase or decrease by supplier, giving operators data to negotiate credits or switch suppliers.
  • Sales mix report that highlights which dishes are most popular and which are most profitable.
  • Native POS integrations with Square, Epos Now, Lightspeed and Toast, with each connection typically taking approximately five minutes via a user-led sign-in flow according to third-party testing.
  • Xero sync for one-click push of digitised invoices into accounting software, with Sage integration in development.
  • No per-user fees and no feature tiers, so every user at every site accesses the full platform.

Jelly’s flat price of £129 per location per month includes Xero sync at no additional charge, although a one-time setup fee per site applies and POS integration may carry a pass-on fee. One third-party aggregator has published claims that Jelly charges a POS integration pass-on fee from £15 per month per location and an unstated one-time setup fee. These claims appear on Tablespark’s October 2026 comparison page. Jelly’s own published pricing states a flat £129 per site per month with no per-user or per-feature charges. Prospective buyers should request written confirmation of the total monthly and annual bill, including any integration or onboarding charges, directly from Jelly before signing and compare that written figure against the published price.

Operators using Jelly save 10–20 hours of admin per month and see an average two percentage point gross margin improvement in the first three months. They also cut food costs by an average of 3% in the first three months. Amber, a Mediterranean restaurant in East London, has saved £3,000–£4,000 per month since adopting Jelly, which equates to approximately 68× ROI on the subscription cost.

Hidden Costs To Check Before You Sign

The annual bill often sits above the headline subscription price. Before committing to any restaurant inventory software, confirm these items in writing so the budget reflects the real cost.

Free Restaurant Inventory Management Options In The UK

Free options exist, but their scope is narrow. Square’s core inventory module is free for Square POS users but is tied to Square POS and does not include hospitality-specific recipe costing or invoice scanning. Recipe costing is available only through the beta Square Recipes feature, which supports one-level recipes only, with no recipes on modifiers or on items with multiple variations, and invoice scanning only via the separate Square Restaurant Inventory by MarketMan add-on.

Sortly’s free tier is capped at 100 items and a single user. Backbar’s basic plan is a standing free tier limited to one location, ten recipes and six months of transaction history. This is the strongest free standing option in the bar-stock category, but it does not function as a kitchen costing tool.

Freemium restaurant inventory products typically paywall the four features that convert stock counting into financial value: recipe and dish costing, waste tracking, non-manual invoice entry, and support for more than one site or one to two users. A free tier that cannot calculate the gross profit on a dish only counts stock; it does not control it.

A spreadsheet costs nothing and outperforms an unused subscription. It stops being adequate when supplier prices change faster than recipes can be re-costed manually. It also struggles when a second person edits the file or when the operator needs a live GP figure without waiting for a monthly accountant’s report.

Flat-Rate Vs Usage-Based For A Multi-Site Group

For operators running two to twenty sites, the choice between flat-rate and usage-based pricing has direct budget implications.

Flat-rate per site is predictable because the annual bill is known on day one. It does not change with invoice volume or headcount and is straightforward to defend in a budget review. The trade-off is that a quiet site pays the same as the group’s busiest location. For a five-site group on Jelly’s flat rate, the annual bill is £7,740 regardless of how trading is distributed across sites.

Usage-based pricing is harder to forecast until the operator has a few months of real usage data across all locations. It can reward groups with uneven trading because a seasonal site with low winter invoice volumes costs less in slow months. It also introduces variability that makes annual budgeting an estimate rather than a fixed commitment. Seasonal peaks, new supplier relationships and menu changes all affect the bill.

For operators rolling out to additional sites, flat-rate pricing scales linearly and predictably. Usage-based costs scale with activity, which may be higher at new sites during the setup and recipe-building phase.

Frequently Asked Questions

How Much Does Restaurant Inventory Management Software Cost In The UK?

As of September 2026, published UK restaurant stock control software prices range from £0 for a spreadsheet to about £1,548 per year for Jelly. Jelly charges £129 per location per month. Growyze runs £79–£139 per month (£948–£1,668 per year). Stocktap’s bar-focused Pro plan is £19 per month (£228 per year). USD-denominated platforms such as MarketMan (from $249 per month) and MarginEdge (around $350 per month) cost materially more in sterling once exchange rates and card-conversion fees are applied. Enterprise platforms such as Kitchen Cut and Apicbase are quote-only.

A hospitality-specific kitchen costing tool for a single UK site can cost around £750 per year, for example Kitchen Cut’s KC Lite at £75 per month or £750 per year. Kitchen Control costs roughly £156 per year at £12.99 per month. The cheapest UK options start around £15–20 per month, while some tools such as QSR Suite’s Smart Food Cost charge £175 + VAT per outlet per month.

What Is Included In A £129 Per Site Per Month Plan?

Jelly’s £129 per site per month covers automated invoice scanning with full line-item digitisation, live dish costing and GP margins, flash and price alert reports, and a POS-linked sales mix report. The plan also includes native integrations with Square, Epos Now, Lightspeed and Toast, plus Xero sync, with Sage integration in development. There are no per-user fees and no feature tiers, so every user at every site accesses the complete platform.

Is There Free Restaurant Inventory Software In The UK?

Free options exist but remain limited in scope. Square’s inventory is free for Square POS users but cannot be used standalone and does not include full recipe costing or invoice scanning. Backbar’s basic plan is a standing free tier for bar stock, capped at one location and ten recipes. Spreadsheets cost nothing and work well for stable single-site operations managed by one person.

Hospitality-specific features such as automated invoice scanning, live dish-level GP and POS-linked margin data are paid features on every platform that offers them. Free tiers are typically abandoned within weeks when invoice entry must be typed manually line by line.

Do I Pay Per User?

Pricing units vary by vendor. Jelly charges per site, so every team member, from the owner to the head chef to the operations manager, is included in the flat £129 per site per month. Some platforms charge per named user or per seat, which raises the bill as headcount grows or as access extends to additional managers. Before signing any contract, confirm whether the price is per site, per user, or another unit and model the cost at your actual or anticipated team size.

How Long Does Setup Take?

Jelly typically onboards and delivers first value within the first week. Once suppliers send invoices to a dedicated Jelly email address, or within 24 hours of the kitchen photographing invoices into the app, price alerts and spending insights go live. Connecting a supported POS such as Square, Epos Now, Lightspeed or Toast usually takes approximately five minutes via a user-led sign-in flow.

Some enterprise platforms take weeks or months to configure fully and may charge a separate onboarding fee for the implementation period. Jelly positions its week-one onboarding as a standard part of the service.

Conclusion: Budget Using The Annual Bill

The annual bill, including VAT, POS integration fees, onboarding charges, per-user seats and any invoice-scan limits, is the figure that belongs in a budget. Build a like-for-like annual cost comparison across the vendors you are evaluating before booking demos. Confirm every line item in writing so the final bill matches the forecast.

For UK restaurant, pub and hotel operators who need a predictable, defensible budget, Jelly’s flat £129 per site per month provides a clear fit. The price structure keeps per-user and feature charges off the table, while published case studies show rapid onboarding and measurable GP gains. Third-party comparisons report a POS integration pass-on fee from £15 per month per location, so written confirmation of the full annual cost remains essential.

For further reading, see Best Restaurant Inventory Management Software UK 2026, Best Inventory Management Software For UK Restaurants, and Restaurant Inventory Software Reviews 2026: UK Guide.

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