DotPe Pricing: What It Actually Costs

DotPe's website has no pricing page. Its FAQ answers "What are the commissions?" with one sentence: "We have a bare minimum service fee which is charged per transaction." That sentence is the whole published pricing model, and it tells you the most important thing before any number does: DotPe charges you on each order, not a flat fee. Here's what independent listings report the rate to be, what the POS half costs, and how a per-order model behaves as you grow.

Fair warning: I build a competing product. I've kept this to what DotPe publishes about itself and what independent listings report, so you can check every claim.

Key takeaways

• DotPe publishes no rupee figures. Its own FAQ describes a "bare minimum service fee" charged per transaction.
• Independent comparisons put that fee at roughly 1 to 3 percent an order, plus payment gateway charges. Treat it as a range, not a quote.
• DotPe's POS is a separate product, Rista, which it acquired. Listings put it around ₹2,000 a month per licence, with a wide spread.
• Per-order pricing is cheap when you're small and expensive when you're busy. Run it against your own volume before deciding.
• Settlement is T+1 working day and onboarding is promised within three days of a demo request, both from DotPe's own FAQ.

What DotPe publishes, and what it doesn't

DotPe's site is clear about what the product does. QR ordering for dine-in, a unique URL for pickup and delivery, more than 150 payment options, WhatsApp order notifications, a real-time dashboard, and integrations with delivery fleets and leading POS systems. It claims 75 lakh merchants across India, a figure that covers its retail and kirana business as well as restaurants.

What it doesn't publish is a single price. The pricing URL returns a 404, and the FAQ gives you the sentence above and nothing more. Like Petpooja, it's quote-on-request. Unlike Petpooja, the thing you're quoting isn't a subscription.

The model: you pay per order

This is the fact that matters more than the rate. Petpooja charges a flat annual fee whether you do 200 orders or 20,000. DotPe charges on each transaction that runs through it, so your cost moves with your revenue.

That's genuinely a feature when you're starting out. Almost nothing upfront, no annual commitment, and a quiet month costs you a quiet amount. DotPe's own testimonials lean on exactly this, with owners describing a 98 percent cut in third-party commission compared with the aggregators.

It becomes a cost problem at scale, which we'll get to.

What it actually costs

Since DotPe won't say, here's what the sources that quote numbers report.

Two caveats worth taking seriously. The 1 to 3 percent figure comes mostly from competing products' comparison pages, which have every incentive to round up, so I'm giving it as a range rather than a fact. And the payment gateway charge sits on top of it, which is easy to miss when someone quotes you "just 2 percent". Ask for both numbers, separately, in writing.

Per-plan and per-partnership pricing means your quote can differ from the next restaurant's. That's normal for quote-on-request vendors and it means the rate is negotiable.

Rista POS: the subscription half

DotPe acquired Rista to enter the POS market, and it now markets Rista as "Rista POS by DotPe". This is the billing, KOT, inventory and menu system, and unlike the QR product it's sold as a subscription.

Reported pricing is scattered. One listing has it at ₹2,000 a month per sales licence with unlimited users and devices. SoftwareSuggest lists a Basic and a Premium tier at roughly $139 and $278 per licence per store. Others quote ₹2,000 to ₹5,000 a month depending on tier. That's a wide spread, so the honest position is "budget around ₹2,000 a month per outlet for the base tier, and expect more for the premium features".

So if you want both halves, ordering and billing, you're pricing a per-order fee on one and a monthly subscription on the other. Get them itemised.

What per-order pricing means at your volume

Here's the maths nobody selling per-order pricing puts in front of you.

Take a 40-seat restaurant doing 3,000 orders a month at a ₹400 average ticket, which is ₹12 lakh of monthly revenue through the system. At 2 percent, DotPe's service fee alone is ₹24,000 a month, or ₹2.88 lakh a year, before gateway charges.

Petpooja's reported flat fee for the same restaurant is about ₹7,500 a year. A flat-fee product at ₹1,999 a month is ₹24,000 a year.

Now take a new cloud kitchen doing 300 orders a month at ₹350. That's ₹1.05 lakh through the system, and 2 percent is ₹2,100 a month. Cheaper than any flat fee, and you paid nothing to start.

That's the whole decision. Per-order pricing is the right answer below a threshold and the wrong answer above it, and the threshold is your own volume. It's also why the comparison against aggregators, where DotPe wins comfortably, is the wrong comparison. The right one is against a flat fee at the volume you actually do. Our full Petpooja vs DotPe comparison walks that line, and what Zomato and Swiggy really charge covers the aggregator side.

Who you're dealing with

DotPe was founded in March 2020 in Gurugram by Shailaz Nag, a co-founder of PayU India, with Gyanesh Sharma and Anurag Gupta. It raised a $27.5 million Series A from PayU, Info Edge Ventures and Google in 2021, then a $58 million Series B led by Temasek in 2022, and acquired Rista to add a POS to its ordering and payments stack.

That's a well-funded company with a payments pedigree, which is why the per-transaction model comes naturally to it. It also means the product is built around payments first and restaurant operations second, which is a different centre of gravity from a billing-first vendor.

Is it worth it?

If you're small, seasonal, or just starting, the per-order model is hard to argue with. You carry almost no fixed cost and you get a QR storefront, payments and a real-time dashboard for a percentage of what you actually sell. DotPe's T+1 settlement and dedicated relationship manager are both real operational advantages at that stage.

If you're busy, do the arithmetic above with your own numbers before signing. A percentage of a growing business is the most expensive way to pay for software, and the point where a flat fee wins arrives sooner than most owners expect.

And here's the bias I declared up front, so weigh it accordingly. DotPe takes the order and processes the payment. It doesn't sell anything at the table. If your ticket is flat, the question isn't whether you pay per order or per month, it's whether the system that takes the order is also growing it. That's the difference we cover in DotPe vs dineomAI, and DotPe alternatives covers the wider field. For the other incumbent's numbers, see Petpooja pricing.

FAQ

How much does DotPe charge per order?

DotPe doesn't publish a rate. Its FAQ describes a "bare minimum service fee" charged per transaction, and independent comparisons report it at roughly 1 to 3 percent an order, plus payment gateway charges on top. Treat that as a range and get your own quote in writing with the gateway fee shown separately.

Is DotPe free?

There's no published free plan and no subscription for the QR ordering product. Because it's per-transaction, there's little to pay upfront, which is what makes it feel free at low volume. The cost shows up as a percentage of every order, so it grows with your sales.

How much does Rista POS cost?

Rista is DotPe's separate POS product, sold as a subscription. Listings put it around ₹2,000 a month per licence for the base tier, with premium tiers reported at roughly double, though the figures vary widely between sources. Budget ₹2,000 a month per outlet and confirm the tier in your quote.

When does DotPe pay out?

DotPe's own FAQ says funds are reconciled and settled to your bank account on T+1 working day, meaning the working day after the transaction. Refunds to customers go back to the original payment method within three to five working days.

Is DotPe cheaper than Petpooja?

At low volume, usually yes, because there's almost nothing upfront. At high volume, usually no, because a per-order percentage grows with your sales while Petpooja's flat fee doesn't. Work out 1 to 3 percent of your monthly revenue and compare it with roughly ₹7,500 a year to see which side of the line you're on.

What to do next

Pull last month's order count and average ticket, multiply out 2 percent of that revenue, and compare it with a flat fee. That single sum decides whether DotPe's model works for you, and it takes two minutes. Then request the demo and ask for the service fee and the gateway charge as separate figures, in writing.

If the number that's actually bothering you is a flat average ticket rather than the software bill, book a short dineomAI demo and see what changes when the system taking the order also suggests the next one.