Best POS Systems For Restaurants

Square is a low-cost restaurant POS with a free plan, built-in payments, and free online ordering for pickup and delivery.

Restaurants can use Square to take orders, manage menus, track inventory, connect with delivery options, use kitchen display tools, and add loyalty or team management as needed. Paid plans add more advanced restaurant and employee management features.

Clover gives restaurants more flexibility to choose a merchant services provider while still using Clover’s restaurant POS hardware and software.

Restaurants can use Clover for online ordering, loyalty, floor plans, QR code ordering and payments, delivery integrations, shift management, item-level cost tracking, kitchen display tools, and app marketplace add-ons. Pricing and contract terms vary depending on where you buy your Clover system.

Lightspeed Restaurant is built for fast casual restaurants and hotel food service operations with multiple ordering workflows.

Fast casual restaurants get buildable menus, modifiers, inventory alerts, loyalty, kiosks, delivery tools, and kitchen display software. Hotels can use Lightspeed with property management integrations, QR code ordering, room service menus, poolside ordering, bar management, and hotel revenue tools.

Toast is built for full-service restaurants that need to manage multiple dining areas, courses, checks, and tableside service.

Restaurants can use Toast for floor plans, seat and table management, check splitting, order coursing, kitchen routing, expo screens, tipping, loyalty, gift cards, and handheld ordering and payments. Add-ons can get expensive, but Toast’s restaurant-specific tools are strong for larger, more complex operations.

If your restaurant needs help managing waitlists and reservations, look no further than TouchBistro. This POS has built-in wait list and reservation software that doesn't require a third-party integration -- although it does come at a cost.

TouchBistro is also excellent for restaurants that offer catering, with features including catering order and delivery settings, and an offline mode so caterers can sell from anywhere.

Revel Systems is built for large restaurants, franchises, and drive-thru businesses that need more control than a basic restaurant POS can offer.

Revel supports drive-thru integrations, kitchen and expo screens, order status displays, delivery integrations, self-ordering kiosks, royalty payments, franchise reporting, location-specific controls, and advanced performance reporting. Pricing is quote-based, and implementation fees may apply.

talech gives smaller full-service restaurants access to table-service POS features at a more affordable price point.

Restaurants can use talech for table management, floor plans, menu coursing, ticket splitting, tipping, house accounts, service charges, purchase orders, stock counts, low-stock alerts, and employee management. It may not be as polished as larger restaurant POS systems, but it covers a lot for the price.