Guide
How much does a loyalty program cost?
The software is the small number. Most owners compare monthly fees, sign up for the cheapest, and never work out the figure that actually matters — what they are giving away. Here is the whole cost, in the order of how much it will affect you.
· 7 min read
Start with what you give away, not what you pay
Take your reward, work out what it costs you to provide — the food cost, not the menu price — and multiply by how many you expect to hand over each month. A café giving a £3.50 coffee that costs 60p to make, on a ten-stamp card, with 200 active customers finishing a card every six weeks, is giving away roughly £80 a month in cost and £470 in menu value. The subscription is a fraction of that. If you only do one calculation before choosing a loyalty product, do this one.
What software actually costs in 2026
For a single site, expect $25 a month at the low end for a wallet-based stamp card. Multi-site is where products diverge sharply: some sell fixed plans that jump at three and ten locations, others charge per location. At four or five sites the difference between those two models is often larger than the whole cost of the first site, which is worth checking before you commit rather than after you open. Free tiers exist and are usually free because they own your customer data or put their branding on your card.
The hidden cost: rewarding people who were coming anyway
This is the expense nobody puts in the spreadsheet. If your most loyal customers were visiting four times a week before you launched, a stamp card does not make them more loyal — it makes them cheaper. That is not automatically bad; they will feel valued and they will tell people. But it is only worth it if the programme also converts occasional visitors into regulars, and you cannot know whether it does unless you can see repeat rates before and after. A programme you cannot measure is a discount you cannot justify.
Staff time, and why speed is a cost question
A scan-and-tap stamp costs a couple of seconds. A system that requires typing a phone number, or asking a customer to open an app they have not installed, costs thirty — and at a lunchtime rush your staff will simply stop offering it, at which point you are paying a subscription for a programme nobody is running. Speed is not a nice-to-have; it is the difference between the cost you planned and the cost of a scheme that quietly dies.
A worked example
A single café, 300 active customers, ten-stamp card, free coffee worth £3.50 and costing 60p. Say 120 rewards are redeemed a month: £72 in cost. Software at $25 is about £20. Staff time, at two seconds a stamp across 1,200 stamps, is under an hour a month. Total under £100. The question is whether the programme produced more than £100 of extra trade — which for most cafés means about thirty extra visits. That is the bar, and it is a low one, but you have to be able to see it.
Questions
- Is a free loyalty program worth it?
- Sometimes, but check what the provider gets instead of money. Common answers are your customer data, their branding on your card, or a limit that becomes a paid upgrade the moment the programme works. None of those is disqualifying — just know which one you are agreeing to.
- What is a reasonable monthly budget?
- For a single site, $25 to $50 is normal and the giveaway will cost more than the software. For multiple sites, look at the price at your actual number of locations rather than the headline plan, because that is where products differ most.
- How do I know if it is paying for itself?
- Compare repeat visit rate before and after launch, not total sales. Sales move for a dozen reasons; the share of customers who come back is the number the programme is supposed to change.
Related guides
How to start a café loyalty program
A practical guide to launching a loyalty program in a café: choosing the reward, setting the target, launching it at the counter, and knowing whether it worked.
How to measure loyalty program ROI
The numbers that tell you whether a loyalty program is working — repeat rate, visit frequency and incremental trade — and the vanity metrics to ignore.
How many stamps should a loyalty card have?
The right number depends on how often your customers visit, not on what the café down the road does. Here is how to work it out.
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