How much does digital signage cost? A per-screen breakdown

One digital signage screen typically costs €150 to €250 in its first year if you reuse a TV you already have, and roughly €600 to €1,250 if you buy a commercial display, a small player and a mount. Both figures include a year of software, which is usually a subscription per screen: SignageStack, for example, costs €11 per screen a month or €100 a year. After the first year, what remains is the software, the time someone spends on content each week, and the electricity for a panel that is on all day.

How much does digital signage cost for your own setup? Below is the breakdown line by line, then two worked examples: a café with one screen, and a small chain with twenty. The hardware figures are typical ranges for shop-bought equipment, not quotes. Check them against your local supplier on the day you buy.

How much does digital signage cost per screen?

Every signage screen, from a bakery counter to a hotel lobby, has the same parts:

• The display: a TV or a commercial panel.
• The player: the small computer that runs the signage software and feeds the display over HDMI.
• Mount, cables and power: the parts that decide whether the screen is still working in a year.
• Installation: your afternoon or somebody else's.
• Software: the dashboard where you build playlists and set when each screen plays, usually billed per screen.
• Content: someone has to make and change what is on the screen.
• Electricity: small per hour, not small per year.

The first four are mostly paid once. The last three keep coming.

The display

This is the largest single item and the one most worth spending on. The choice is between a consumer TV and a commercial display. A consumer TV is built for a few hours of viewing a day. A commercial panel is rated for twelve to twenty-four hours, is usually brighter, and expects to be mounted in a tight space. The difference between a signage display and a TV has its own article.

As typical ranges: a 43-inch consumer TV from a known brand costs somewhere between €250 and €500, and a 43-inch commercial display rated for long daily hours roughly €450 to €900. At 55 inches, expect roughly €400 to €800 for a consumer TV and €650 to €1,300 for a commercial panel. A window-facing, high-brightness display is a different category, priced like one, so get a quote.

Two things move this line more than brand does. The first is size: buy for the distance people read from, not for the wall. The screen size guide does that arithmetic. The second is resolution. Full HD is right for most rooms, and 4K is money spent on detail nobody four metres away can see.

One more thing to check: the warranty. Some consumer TV warranties do not cover commercial use. Read the terms before a TV goes above a counter for twelve hours a day.

The player

An Android TV box that does the job typically costs between €40 and €120. What matters is not the brand but four specs: Android 8 or newer, 2 GB of RAM or more, wired ethernet if you can get it, and automatic power-on after a power cut. The guide to Android boxes for signage goes through them.

Sometimes the player costs nothing:

• A TV running Android TV or Google TV can install the SignageStack app directly, with no box.
• A Windows PC you already own can run the SignageStack app for Windows, which runs full-screen, starts with Windows and recovers by itself. A Mac runs the web player in a full-screen browser that starts with the machine.

A Samsung (Tizen) or LG (webOS) smart TV has no native SignageStack app. Its built-in browser can open the web player, but it will not restart itself after a power cut or stay locked full-screen. For a screen nobody is watching over, add a small Android box.

Buy one box, test it on the real screen for a week, then buy the rest. Keep one spare.

Mount, cables and power

These are small amounts that turn into large ones when they are wrong.

• Wall mount. A fixed or tilting mount for a 43 to 55-inch screen typically costs €20 to €80. Full-motion arms and ceiling mounts cost more. Check the VESA pattern on the back of the display and what the wall is made of.
• HDMI cable, plus a spare. A few euros each. The spare goes in a drawer, because the cable is the part that fails.
• Network cable. Wired ethernet is worth the run. If the router sits behind the coffee machine at the other end of the room, the cost is the cable channel and the drilling, not the cable.
• A power socket behind the screen. If there is not one where the screen needs to go, that is an electrician's job. Get the quote before you choose the spot, not after.

Installation

One screen on a plasterboard wall is an afternoon for anyone handy with a drill. Masonry, ceilings or several screens are worth paying someone for, with the work done outside opening hours. Either way, leave the player reachable without closing the shop.

Software

Signage software is usually priced in one of these ways:

• a subscription per screen, sometimes in tiers where scheduling, reporting or extra users cost more, and sometimes with a setup fee;
• a one-off licence, where updates and support may be charged separately;
• free or open-source software, where the cost moves into hosting, updates and your own time, as the article on free signage software explains.

SignageStack is one data point: €11 per screen a month, or €100 per screen a year, excluding VAT. There is one plan with every feature, no setup fee, no per-user seats and no minimum, and monthly billing is month to month. A screen is each screen you add in the dashboard. An Enterprise agreement adds volume pricing, a signed DPA, an uptime SLA and onboarding, with the price on request. The current figures are on the pricing page.

Over three years, the software for one screen on yearly billing comes to €300, less than a typical commercial display. Whatever you buy, ask each vendor the same questions: what counts as a screen, which features sit in which tier, whether users cost extra, whether there is a setup fee or a minimum term, and whether the price includes VAT. The buyer's checklist has the rest.

Content: the cost that never arrives as an invoice

A reasonable planning assumption for one screen is an afternoon to build the first playlist and around half an hour a week after that. It is more if every slide is designed from scratch, and less if much of the screen updates itself.

What keeps this line small:

• Apps that update themselves. A clock, the weather or exchange rates need no weekly attention. SignageStack includes 32 apps in the plan.
• A form instead of a design tool. The Menu board app takes items typed in or imported from a CSV and lays them out in one of eleven designs. A price change is an edit, not a redesign.
• What you already have. A menu that exists as a PDF can go on screen as it is. Designs made in Canva, or a deck in Google Slides, can be connected rather than re-exported every time.
• Switching instead of rebuilding. An item on a screen can be switched off and back on without deleting it, so a seasonal offer returns next year with a tap. Nothing takes a promotion down for you, though: put its end date in your calendar and switch it off that day.

One cost that surprises people is sound. Most signage runs silent. If a screen plays music that customers can hear, that is public performance, and in most countries it needs a licence from the local music rights organisation.

Electricity

The EU energy label on a TV or display states consumption in kWh per 1,000 hours, and that figure is the same number as the power in watts. The yearly cost is:

watts × hours on per year ÷ 1,000 × your price per kWh

For one real panel: a manufacturer's 55-inch commercial display lists a typical consumption of 154 W. A café open twelve hours a day, six days a week, runs it for about 3,744 hours a year, which is roughly 577 kWh. Eurostat puts the average price for medium-sized business customers in Germany at about €0.23 per kWh, excluding VAT, for the second half of 2025. At that rate the screen costs around €130 a year to run. A café uses far less power than the businesses in that band, and smaller consumers generally pay more per kWh, so the rate on your own bill is the one to use.

So for a bright panel that is on all day, the electricity can land in the same range as the software. A smaller or dimmer screen draws less; read its label.

To cut it, switch the display off when nobody is there. SignageStack's working hours put a screen into standby out of hours: black, with nothing playing. On most LCD screens a black picture is not the same as off, though, because the backlight can still be lit. For the power bill, use the display's own on/off schedule if it has one, or a timer switch. In either case make sure the display powers itself back on when the power returns. The Android player starts at boot and after a power cut, so it will follow.

Worked example: a café with one screen

A café with one screen above the counter, showing the menu, a QR code for reviews and the weather. Two versions: reusing the TV already on the wall, or buying a 43-inch commercial panel.

The hardware ranges are typical shop prices, which in most of Europe include VAT. The software price excludes VAT. On monthly billing the software line is €132 instead of €100.

Add the time (an afternoon to start, then roughly half an hour a week) and the electricity from the formula above. From the second year on, the only fixed cost is the software.

Start with the left column: put the menu on the TV you have and see what customers actually read. Buy the commercial panel when the TV shows its limits, whether that is hours, brightness or not coming back on after a power cut.

Worked example: twenty screens across five shops

A bakery chain with five shops. Each has three 43-inch menu screens above the counter and one 55-inch screen in the seating area. All are commercial panels, because they run from opening to close.

That makes the hardware roughly €11,400 to €24,600 before installation, and the software €2,000 a year, or €2,640 on monthly billing.

What changes at twenty screens is less the price per screen than where the money leaks:

• Site visits. A box that does not come back after a power cut means someone drives to the shop. That is what auto power-on, wired ethernet and a box provisioned for kiosk mode are for. The dashboard shows whether each player is online and when it was last seen, so a box that has dropped off is visible without anyone phoning in. A display switched off at the wall, with the box still running, is not.
• Content time does not scale with screens. If all five shops show the same menu, the same playlist goes on every menu screen, and a price changed once changes on all of them. Time grows with the number of different things you show, not the number of screens.
• Standardise the hardware. The same box and the same display everywhere means one spare fits any shop. Test one of each before ordering twenty.
• Proof it played. Playback history per screen, exportable as a PDF, answers "was the new menu on?" without a phone call.

At this size it is also fair to ask about volume pricing. SignageStack's Enterprise agreement exists for that, and for the signed DPA and uptime SLA a larger buyer's procurement may need.

What is not worth paying for

Some money buys nothing:

• a "signage-branded" box at three times the price of the same chipset;
• a player bundled with software you are not going to use;
• anything that needs a vendor engineer to re-image it;
• a per-device licence on top of the software you already pay for.

Where to start

Measure where people will stand, then try the software before buying any hardware at all. The web player runs in a browser on a laptop or on a TV you already have, and the SignageStack trial covers one screen for 21 days with every feature, and needs no card. Once you have seen your own menu on your own wall, price the display for the room you actually have. The hardware page lists what to look for, and the small business guide covers running that first screen.