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If you’re looking to switch or get started with a new restaurant POS system, we’d recommend using Toast – especially if you manage a full-service restaurant with complex operations. Toast offers the best customer engagement and stock management features we’ve tested, and its intuitive back end makes it a breeze for new users to get to grips with. Pos System
However, Toast is only compatible with Android devices. So, if you’re after iOS compatibility, we’d recommend Square. It’s the best POS for small businesses that require a basic iPad setup, such as cafes and food trucks, and its scalable packages are perfectly suited to growing operations.
There are tons of competent restaurant POS systems to choose from though, each with unique strengths. So, whether you want an all-singing, all-dancing restaurant system or simply a fuss-free way to streamline ordering and payment processes, there’s something here for everyone. Check out the list of our top picks below, or use our 🔎 free restaurant POS comparison tool to receive personal recommendations in minutes.
The best restaurant POS providers for 2024 are:
Use the links above to start comparing pricing information directly, or scroll down the page for in-depth reviews.
While it may cost you to fork out on new technology, investing in a sector-specific POS system can be one of the most financially worthwhile decisions a restaurant can make. As inflation rates continue to hike up the price of suppliers, our goal at Tech.co is to make your dollar stretch as far as possible by matching you to a POS that suits your needs.
We compare the best restaurant POS systems head-to-head below.
Best restaurant POS system overall
Best POS for single-location food businesses
Best for professional restaurant hardware
Best for retaining loyal customers
Best for managing complex inventories
Free (but transaction fees apply)
Free (but transaction fees apply)
Dependent on third-party payment processor
Offers a full hardware suite for $799 but custom pricing is available on more expensive software tiers
Options include: Contactless reader ($49), Portable terminal ($299), Square terminal and stand ($799)
Sells a range of proprietary hardware devices from handheld tableside tablets to full POS terminals.
Offers several hardware options for businesses including include touchscreen monitors and payment terminals.
Offers kits for iPads, MacOS devices, Windows PCs but all are $POA.
Restaurant POS package costs $999 or $72 per month. Also works with a variety of third-party peripherals.
Toast stole our top spot because we were really impressed with its intuitive interface in our user testing. It boasts the best user experience of any provider on this list and even offers a useful step-by-step guide for beginners to get started with the platform.
We were also impressed by its hardware options, as the POS lets businesses build specific hardware packages or just get started for free with its Handheld Starter Kit. Toast isn’t compatible with iOS thought so if you’re after a simple iPad set up, Square is the better option. Square offers an equally competitive free plan, and its cost-effective software makes it ideal for smaller food businesses like food trucks and cafes.
Clover and SpotOn are also worth checking out, especially if you manage full-service restaurants with large teams and need a platform that can keep up – although they aren’t quite as easy to use as Toast. That’s why it’s been our favorite for some time!
As all of our research is completely independent, we wanted to make sure we tested every factor that could impact the success of your food business, especially with rising living costs. To learn more about how we rank and review software, jump to our research section.
Toast is an Android-POS system designed specifically for food and beverage businesses. Its shallow learning curve and feature-rich software make it a great option for most food businesses. However, our research found it’s especially suited to large, full-service restaurants with complex operations, due to its enterprise-grade hardware and profit-focused features aimed at encouraging long-term growth.
Toast offers just about every trick in the book, but when we tested out the platform ourselves, we were especially impressed with its inventory management system – which includes several standout tools, including real-time sales and inventory updates and low stock alerts. The software also lets you re-order goods when inventory is low, meaning you don’t have to handle this process through a third-party app like you would need to with most other POS providers..
In addition to Toast’s impressive inventory controls, the POS offers lots of unique features for businesses serious about protecting their profitability. For example, the system gives users access to granular, mobile-friendly reports and a profit margin calculator that helps you consistently track your incomings and improve your restaurant’s margins.
Toast POSs automation feature helps teams save on average 8 hours a week, Source: Toast
Unlike leading systems such as Square, Toast also offers a dedicated cost management feature that lets you easily study the costs of labor and dishes, factoring in fixed overhead costs for a simple, unified view of total revenue. This means you can get an in-depth understanding of where your restaurant is making and losing money – a capability that’s becoming more important than ever as supplier prices continue to rise.
Toast’s customer loyalty program, Toast Loyalty, is a cut above the competition too. The system offers point-based rewards to encourage repeat buying, and gives businesses access to a range of customer-focused perks like accrual and redemption rates, sign-up bonuses, and birthday rewards. However, while Toast will be a great choice for businesses looking to retain loyal customers, Lightspeed goes a step further by offering segmented marketing insights and automated email marketing.
Aside from streamlining operations, Toast is also one of the most server-friendly POSs on this list. With a sleek, modern interface and shallow learning curve, we found it was the easiest POS to use. Our users particularly liked Toast’s initial tutorial, which offers a clear step-by-step guide for new users – a beginner-friendly feature that other major systems like Square and Clover lack.
Toast is also the only provider we tested that offers automated tip sharing. This handy capability makes it easy for servers to split hard-earned tips at the end of their shift. According to Toast, streamlining this process can save wait staff up to eight hours a week, which will be especially useful for businesses looking for ways to maximize worker productivity.
Despite Toast’s accolades, of which there are many, it won’t cut the mustard for every food and drinks-based business. For one, the app is only compatible with Android hardware, ruling it out from being used by businesses that rely on other technology. For vendors needing advanced hospitality features that aren’t Android-friendly, TouchBistro will be your best port-of-call, as the system is compatible with iOS devices, offers a similarly great user experience, and provides tons of industry-leading sector-specific capability.
Toast POS shouldn’t be the first choice for small businesses that want a simple POS setup, either. For vendors with basic needs, Toast’s feature-rich software will likely be overwhelming, and the system lacks a knowledge center too, making it harder for POS beginners to resolve queries quickly. For small businesses who don’t need bells and whistles, we’d recommend Square – as the system has a shallow learning curve, and has a knowledge center packed with useful resources.
Learn more about how the providers compare in our comparison of Toast vs Square.
Toast POS offers three pricing plans: Starter Kit, Point of Sale, and Build Your Own.
Small, single location food vendors, and mobile sellers
Established food and beverage businesses
Large or complex food and beverage establishments
Remote or in-person installations are an additional cost, and they start at $499. Learn more about Toast’s pricing structure and features in our Toast POS review, or see how its pricing plans compare below.
Toast’s free tier, affordable monthly packages, and low transaction rates make it a great value for small businesses. However, if you’re looking for slightly more bang for your buck, we’d recommend using SpotOn instead, as it offers the most feature-rich free plan of any other provider on this list.
If you run a small food business and are looking for a dependable, affordable point-of-sale system, Square POS is a great option. Square is the cheapest POS we reviewed, and its feature-rich plans and versatile hardware options make the POS a great fit for most hospitality vendors. However, its generous free tier and app-based approach make it especially useful for small food vendors with single locations, such as cafes, food trucks, and kiosks.
Square was previously our top choice for restaurant POS systems, but during our latest round of testing, it just lost out to Toast’s superior ease of use. That said, Square is still one of the best restaurant POS systems on the market. It offers an excellent array of hardware options, from fully-fledged POS registers to payment terminals, and even gives a complimentary chip and PIN card reader to users of its free forever plan – providing a lifeline for new businesses looking to sell with minimal outlays.
Despite Square’s suitability for single-location businesses, its robust feature package also lends itself well to growing businesses and those with multiple venues. For example, Square offers a really strong menu management feature in comparison to other providers, equipped with customizable layouts and item grouping, which helps servers sell faster.
Square also lets you create automatic discounts for specific items, categories, and daily specials, which is especially useful for bars and restaurants running promotional deals like happy hours.
Square’s payment and pricing features are only getting more expansive over time, too. Businesses using Square can now accurately identify customers by using their iOS or Android camera to scan a ‘reference ID’ via QR code or barcode. This benefits businesses that have members’ clubs or those that apply group discounts to certain customers, like a ski resort that issues discounts for Season Pass holders, for example.
Square’s software offers a number of great capabilities for sit-down restaurants, including table management, seat management, and table-side ordering. However, unlike Lightspeed and SpotOn, Square doesn’t let you customize the colors and labels of tables when creating or editing a floor plan. So, if you have a complex layout, or change your floor plan regularly, you’ll probably be better off opting for one of these alternatives instead.
Creating a new floor plan using the Square app. Image: Tech.co
If your business is new to POS technology or requires regular support, you can contact Square through live chat, phone, and social media channels 24/7, making it the best provider on this list to depend on when you’re in a pinch. It also performed well in our wider research, which also found it to be the best POS system for small businesses and the best mobile POS system.
Despite Square’s impressive versatility, it lacks some profit-focused features that may prove useful to bigger chain restaurants, such as ingredient tracking and cost management. If lacking these features is a deal-breaker, we’d recommend using Toast instead, as it gives you a clear overview of where you’re investing your money.
Our custom POS quotes tool will get you set with the perfect provider in just a few minutes.
If, like most food businesses, inflation and rising food costs are currently your top concerns, you’ll be pleased to know that Square is available for free. See how its free and paid plans compare below or check out our full guide to Square POS pricing for more.
Small, mobile food and beverage vendors
Established food and beverage businesses
Large and multi-location food and beverage establishments
Yes, Square is an extremely affordable POS for food vendors to get started on. It doesn’t require you to pay any upfront costs, making it a great option for new food businesses, or mobile sellers like food trucks. However, its processing fees are a bit steeper than alternatives like Clover, so will provide less value to restaurants with high turnovers.
How many terminals will you require?
Clover is another highly competitive POS system that offers some of the best hardware options on the market. Its hardware boasts an ultra-sleek design, and we found it to be super responsive and fast. It also offers advanced features like fingerprint logins, making it ideal for larger restaurants with big teams. However, with no free plan in sight and restaurant packages starting from $105 a month, Clover may exceed the budgets of smaller establishments.
Clover offers just about any restaurant-focused feature you can think of, including menu editing, table and floor plan management, bill splitting, and advanced inventory management. In fact, Clover offers even more features than Toast, making it an excellent choice for full-service or multi-venue restaurants.
Clover offers lots of advanced features like customizable floor management. Source: Clover POS
Clover’s stock management features are continually improving too. On top of offering impressive capabilities such as stock alerts, bespoke inventory systems, and real-time stock analytics, the system also enables an integration with Shopventory – a friendly app with advanced features like discount reporting and ingredient-level tracking. This makes Clover even better at handling large and complex inventories than our frontrunner Toast.
Check out our POS data analysis guide for more information on utilizing POS data
Clover Rewards lets you customize rewards for your customers. Source: Clover POS
With the average customer retention rate for US restaurants currently sitting at 30%, attracting loyal customers is one of the biggest hurdles facing food vendors. Fortunately, Clover’s unique CRM app, Clover Rewards, allows you to build contact lists, share promos and rewards, and collect private feedback, helping restaurants forge meaningful relationships with their clientele. The app also makes it simple to c reate offers and automate personalized perks for customers, which is a great way to improve the customer experience.
If you offer food-to-go options, Clover’s Online Ordering platform lets you manage online ordering and delivery processes in-house, and even integrates the service with its in-house CRM system Stream, unlike systems like Square which lacks this type of integration. Clover’s integration with Stream removes the need to enter data manually as well, making it easier than ever for restaurants to manage orders with delivery partners like GrubHub and Uber Eats.
Clover offers a great array of hardware options, from handheld payment terminals like Clover Flex to all-in-one POS solutions like Clover Station Pro. When we tested out Clover’s interface, we were really impressed by its straightforward, intuitive nature and speedy response times. We were able to log orders in a breeze, suggesting the POS will be perfectly suited for fast-paced restaurants with high turnarounds.
Clover isn’t perfect though. It lacks certain capabilities that more affordable solutions like Square offer, such as automated tip sharing and advanced menu customization. Clover hardware and software bundles aren’t cheap either, making it unsuitable for small food vendors or pop-ups with slimmer profit margins.
Unlike other providers, such as Square and Toast, Clover offers software and hardware bundles instead of retailing these options separately.
Clover offers three plans for quick-service restaurants and three for full-service restaurants. We break them down below.
Small counter service food businesses
Mid-size to large full service restaurants
Clover’s upfront costs are more expensive than most of the other providers on this list because all of its packages include software and hardware. Businesses won’t have to buy pricey hardware elsewhere though, and the average price of Clover’s processing fees are lower than alternatives like Toast and Square, somewhat justifying the provider’s steeper price tag.
Clover also offers a free 30-day trial, which allows you to trial the system before you sign any contracts.
Learn more about how much the provider might cost you in our Clover POS pricing guide.
SponOn is a specialized POS system designed with the needs of food and beverage businesses in mind. With hospitality features that match our front-runner Toast’s, and a generous free version available to small vendors, the POS has improved by leaps and bounds since our last round of testing.
It’s SpotOn’s labor management and staff scheduling software that really sets it apart from the competition though, making it a top pick for busy managers with large teams. However, the POSs limited hardware options and lackluster customer support prevented it from appearing any higher on this list.
SpotOn may not be as well known as other providers on this list, but it offers just about every capability small to medium restaurant businesses might desire, including flexible stock management tools, stand-out ordering tools like QR ordering and payment features like bill and tip management.
SpotOn even offers reservation features that let customers add themselves to a waitlist from your website or Google profile page, enabling you to simply text them when their table is ready. This makes it more ideal for full-service restaurants that rely heavily on bookings than Square and Clover, which offer fairly basic reservation features in comparison.
SpotOn’s reservation features let customers book a table directly through their website. Source: SpotOn
On top of its basic package, which has more than enough capabilities for small or single-location businesses like food trucks and cafes, SpotOn offers a host of integrations to stretch its potential even further. For example, SpotOn integrates with FreshKDS for businesses that want to use a kitchen display system (KDS) to connect their front of house to their kitchen, this gives the POS a leg up over cheaper systems like Zettle, which lack this integration.
SpotOn also offers a custom integration called Teamwork, which streamlines a range of employee processes including staff onboarding, shift management, cost projections, payroll administration, and more. The app takes a lot of the grunt work out of coordinating staff, which will be a lifesaver to managers who are juggling a busy schedule.
SpotOn’s Teamwork integration handles a wide range of staff management processes. Source: SpotOn
SpotOn is an extremely intuitive platform, boasting a particularly user-friendly back-end for managers – we found it easy to handle business processes and track analytics. Its front-end is simple for servers to get grips with as well, but when we tested it out, we did find that it took a couple of extra steps to make orders and take payments, compared to alternatives like Toast and Clover.
If you manage a sit-down restaurant, you’ll be able to create a detailed table layout with SpotOn’s software. However, it’s slightly harder to create and edit custom floor plans with SpotOn, which isn’t helpful for food businesses that regularly change their layout. By comparison, Epos Now enables users to handle the process much more simply with a drag-and-drop tool.
Despite offering a free plan, SpotOn isn’t compatible with tablet-based systems, unlike other software such as Square and Epos Now. Unfortunately, this will be a deal breaker for lots of small food businesses that want to save money by integrating the technology with their existing tablets.
SpotOn has a custom pricing model, so the price you’ll end up paying will depend on the size and needs of your food and beverage business. Like Clover, SpotOn offers software and hardware bundles. Here’s an overview of the starting price of SpotOn’s plans:
Small counter service restaurants or cafes
Large or complex food and beverage establishments
Yes, SpotOn’s rock-bottom starting price and affordable processing fees will make it a great value for most food and beverage businesses. In fact, due to its free tier and paid packages that offer great bang for your buck, SpotOn is the best value POS system we researched, overtaking our previous frontrunner in terms of value, Square.
All of SpotOn’s plans run on its cloud-based restaurant POS software. Find out more about the provider’s potential and price points in our SpotOn review.
POS expert Judy KreisMarel spoke to us about one time-saving POS hack:
“ One time-saving POS feature is automated inventory syncing. By leveraging this feature, businesses can streamline inventory management processes and eliminate the need for manual data entry.” – Judy KreisMarel, Marketing Manager at Hellovein
Lightspeed Restaurant is an industry-specific POS system perfectly suited to food and beverage businesses looking to grow ther customer base. The POS has the best customer loyalty toolkit we researched, offering a raft of unique features such as SMS marketing and custom loyalty programs. Yet, since Lightspeed Restaurant is app-based, the system is not suitable for businesses looking for an all-in-one POS terminal – preventing it from edging out contenders like SpotOn and Clover.
If your restaurant handles a large or complex inventory, chances are you’ll benefit from Lightspeed’s advanced inventory management tools. The system allows you to track inventory across multiple locations, helping maintain consistency across your chain of restaurants. Lightspeed’s inventory tools aren’t able to integrate with weighing scales though, making the POS unsuitable for self-service food businesses.
Lightspeed lets food businesses keep an eye on their margins by viewing a cost vs profit breakdown of their goods. While the capability’s reporting features aren’t as detailed as Toast’s, SpotOn’s profit margin calculator is still a valuable tool to have in your arsenal in 2024 as the US hospitality industry continues to contend with rising wholesale costs.
Lightspeed Restaurant gives you a cost vs profit breakdown of the goods you sell. Source: Lightspeed HQ
Even though Lightspeed is an app-based system, it offers all the advanced customer loyalty tools that you get with rivals like Clover and Toast, and then some. Its in-house loyalty system, Lightspeed Loyalty, lets businesses issue highly targeted rewards to encourage repeat buying, and also gives granular insights into your customer base with market segmentation features.
Lightspeed also makes it easier for businesses to expand their reach, with promotional SMS features available, alongside a built-in drag-and-drop email builder. The system also syncs with major third-party delivery channels like Doordash and User Eats, and lets you send out push menu updates to multiple delivery channels at once to encourage online purchases.
Lightspeed Restaurant’s email marketing features are a great way for food businesses to spread awareness about their brand. Source: Lightspeed HQ
To learn more, use our time-saving POS comparison tool to see how Lightspeed POS compares with other popular providers.
Lightspeed Restaurant is available at three main price points. Take a look at how its paid plans compare below.
Small, single location food and beverage establishments
Full-service restaurants, and food delivery businesses
Large or specialist full-service restaurants
Card-present rate: 2.6% + 10¢ Card-not-present rate: 2.6% + 30¢
Card-present rate: 2.6% + 10¢ Card-not-present rate: 2.6% + 30¢
Card-present rate: 2.6% + 10¢ Card-not-present rate: 2.6% + 30¢
Lightspeed’s upfront costs aren’t too dissimilar to Clover’s, but its comparatively high card processing fees make using the POS less affordable in the long term. Due to this slightly worse value, if you aren’t looking for expansive stock handling and customer loyalty tools, we’d recommend using cheaper solutions like Toast or Square instead.
Find out more about Lightspeed’s pricing in our Lightspeed POS review.
Epos Now is a versatile POS system that combines feature-rich software with professional hardware. Whether getting started with its tablet-based app or a multi-device POS terminal, Epos Now lets businesses skirt monthly fees by paying upfront, and offers inventory management features sophisticated enough to meet the needs of most large, full-scale restaurants.
Epos Now comes into its own when it comes to inventory management. It offers just about any feature a large restaurant would need, including low-stock alerts, bulk uploads, and cost vs profit management tools. For businesses with large, fast-moving inventories, this gives Epos Now an edge over our frontrunner Toast, which doesn’t currently alert businesses when stocks are low.
Epos Now also lets you customize your menu directly through its front-end, making it easier for servers to make amendments quickly. However, unlike rivals Square and Lightspeed Restaurant, Epos Now doesn’t let you create multiple menu types for different services like lunch and dinner, making it less suitable for restaurants that offer more than one dining experience throughout the day.
Epos Now notifies you when stock counts are low, to prevent you from running out of inventory, and has a clear, simple floorplan layout that minimizes mixups. Source: Epos Now
Our product research also suggests that Epos Now could make a great fit for larger restaurants or chains because it offers solid till features and excellent till-based products. It lets you create custom floor plans easily with a drag-and-drop tool, and you can customize tables by size, shape, and label.
However, compared to the other restaurant POS systems on this list, Epos Now isn’t the easiest to use. While testing it, we didn’t find its interface very intuitive, and the software wouldn’t respond when we tried to handle some basic processes. If usability is a high priority for you, we would recommend using Toast instead, as it’s the simplest POS to use that we tested.
Epos Now offers three pricing plans, but prefers to keep the specifics of those plans close to its chest — you’ll need to speak to a sales rep to get details for your company. However, we do know that a free plan is not currently available.
Small, single location food and beverage businesses
Large or complex full-service restaurants
Since Epos Now is fairly opaque with its pricing, it’s hard to say definitively whether it will be a good value for your business. However, it’s one of the only providers that lets you evade monthly costs by paying an up-front fee, so if your restaurant is in a position to pay for a system in one lump sum, Epos Now will be a good option for you.
If you’re unhappy with your current restaurant POS system, you might be here looking for a replacement. After all, how hard can switching POS systems be, right? Well, there are definitely some things you’ll want to consider before you make your decision to avoid any issues.
For starters, be sure to find a new POS system that is compatible with as much of the hardware your restaurant currently uses as possible – such as the portable card machines and tablets your wait staff use to take orders – but be aware that you might need to switch to new terminals if they’re specific to your provider.
You should also make sure your new system can integrate with the third-party software your restaurant currently depends on. Not all POS software is compatible with the same third-party software – for example, if you use QuickBooks for your accounting, you’ll want your new restaurant POS to be able to integrate with QuickBooks.
Importantly, before you lose access to your old POS, make sure you migrate your menu to the new system, or at least download your menu data for a simple data import down the road. Recreating a menu from scratch on a new POS is a time-consuming process, and it’s easily avoided.
Finally, a bit of training for your team will be vital. New systems can be hard to learn for anyone, but especially for employees who are very familiar with the system your restaurant used to run on. Find out whether your new provider offers training sessions or onboarding guidance that you can share, and ask your team if there’s anything they’re finding particularly difficult, so you can get help from your provider if needed.
To aid with this, we’d also recommend launching your new POS at a quiet time for your restaurant. Busy food service can be hectic enough without a brand new system to learn simultaneously. For example, if Mondays are typically quiet for your restaurant, make that the first day your staff need to use the new system. You could also consider paying your team members to come in before their shifts, or on a day when the restaurant is closed, to spend some uninterrupted time getting familiar with the new POS.
A good POS system will help any business thrive and grow, providing accurate and important data to base decisions on. A restaurant will especially benefit from an industry-focused POS System.
Every business records its sales, but a restaurant must also be able to accept reservations and link an order to the table is was placed at. Every business tracks inventory, but a restaurant must track the amount and cost of the ingredients used in each dish, in addition to the amount and cost of the orders that are placed.
In addition, a high-quality restaurant system can:
The bottom line: A good POS centralizes all the processes of a restaurant, bar, or cafe, allowing the manager to improve upon – and fix – its processes. It will pay for itself and then some.
With a few key bits of information from you, our dedicated comparison tool will filter through the available POS systems and obtain a quote specifically designed for your restaurant business.
For those moving to a new system. We asked hospitality expert and CEO of Ingredient Brothers Eran Mizeahi how to switch to a new POS with ease:
“In order to provide a seamless transition to a new POS system, I believe that proper training is very necessary. This will reduce the number of errors, increase efficiency, and improve the overall quality of service provided to customers.” – Eran Mizrahi, CEO of Ingredient Brothers
While the best systems might include a handful of unique traits, they should also provide a selection of the following top features.
Learn more about the best industry-specific capabilities in our POS features guide.
We asked Shaz, a hospitality expert and co-founder of Tono Pizzeria + Cheesesteaks, for some top features to look out for when buying a POS:
“A full service restaurant and quick service restaurant have different needs. But reliability, ease of use, printers vs KDS, clock-in capabilities, integrations are a small number of general factors to consider, to name a few.” – Shaz co-founder of Tono Pizzeria + Cheesesteaks
Learn more about restaurant-specific capabilities in our POS features guide.
While the software powering a restaurant POS system is the main element of a POS system, hardware is important as well. Here are some of the best physical POS accessories that will make your daily chores more manageable.
In summary, small food businesses with modest POS needs should only expect to pay $200 upfront to cover the costs of hardware, plus around $15 per month for simple POS software – though quality free options are available too.
Larger restaurants or chains that need multiple terminals may need to invest anywhere from $1,500 to $2,000+ on a comprehensive hardware setup, plus around $150 per month for a decent multi-terminal software package.
Transaction rates will also bump up this amount substantially, but since they come out of your sales, you don’t need to account for these costs upfront. These are only ballpark figures, however. The cost of a POS system will depend on the following variables:
Looking for specific pricing estimates? Use our free quote-finding tool to reach out to the right POS vendors for customized quotes you can compare.
Our POS quotes comparison tool will match your business with the perfect provider in less than ten minutes. You're under no obligation to choose any provider, either.
When ranking the best POS systems for restaurants, we tested and evaluated systems that are specifically equipped to cater to the food service industry. Since restaurants’ POS needs differ to those of retail stores and other businesses, we used a dedicated research process to match, paying close attention to six main metrics:
After researching each restaurant POS against these six metrics — as well as considering a range of wider factors to help us understand how the system fairs overall — we create our research scores. These ratings allow us to rank the systems in order of their overall potential and determine which POS system is best suited to a particular type of business.
Read more about our research process here, and if a product you’re interested in hasn’t made our list, you can use our free comparison tool to compare the top POS brands.
Toast is the best restaurant POS we tested, because of its sophisticated hospitality-focused features, industry-leading hardware, and unbeatable usability. If you manage a full-service restaurant, Toast will be able to easily meet your needs, as long as you’re comfortable with using an Android system.
Smaller food and beverage vendors after an iPad setup will be better off using Square instead, as the system lets you get started for free, and offers more than enough features and integrations for single-location establishments – and it’s scalable if your needs evolve in the future.
Clover is another great choice for sit-down hospitality businesses, boasting quick-service and full-service focused packages with even more restaurant-focused features than Toast – but with a less intuitive user experience.
If you’re not entirely sold on these options, you can still check out prices using our quick and easy POS quote matching questionnaire, which you can use to get tailored prices from the best restaurant POS systems for you.
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