Digital Menus
What Is a Truly Free QR Menu?
A QR menu truly costs nothing when the codes on your tables keep working, there is no cap you will hit in a busy month, guests see your menu rather than someone else's ads, and the features you need are not locked behind an upgrade. The expensive surprise with QR menus is rarely the monthly fee — it is having to reprint every table card because the service behind the code changed its terms or went away.
The hidden costs of a QR menu
| Hidden cost | What it looks like |
|---|---|
| Codes that stop working | A dynamic code's redirect is switched off when a paid period ends or the service closes |
| Scan or order caps | The menu stops opening, or ordering stops, after a set number per month |
| Item limits | Only a few dozen dishes before you must pay |
| Ads on your menu | Banners for the vendor or for other businesses next to your dishes |
| Reprinting | Every table card, sticker and window poster, if you have to change codes |
Five checks before you print
- Ask what happens to your printed codes if you stop paying or leave the service.
- Find the limits: scans, orders, menu items, languages — and what happens when you reach them.
- Open a sample menu on your own phone and look for ads or vendor branding.
- Check whether price changes and sold-out dishes show up without reprinting.
- Check whether you can export the menu, so you are not typing it again elsewhere.
View-only or ordering
Many restaurants start with a menu guests only read, and add ordering from the table later. Check that adding ordering later does not mean new codes: the same code should be able to open the same menu, now with an order button.
The basics: what a QR menu is.
How Thmenu handles it
Thmenu is our product. Each table gets its own code, downloadable as a print-ready PDF. Codes go through a permanent redirect that is worked out again on every scan, so renaming the menu link does not break the codes already on your tables, and a price change or a sold-out dish shows up for the next guest without reprinting. Scans are counted per day and per table. Ordering from the table is a switch: leave it off and the same code opens a view-only menu. There is no monthly fee, no paid tier and no ads on your menu; Thmenu's revenue is a 1% platform fee on payments guests make online through Thmenu, with the processor's fee separate and no Thmenu fee on cash or your own card terminal. The menu shows "Powered by Thmenu", and that line cannot be hidden.
Sources
- Thmenu — Free Forever (accessed 28 October 2026)