5 Best Toast Alternatives & Competitors

Square offers three different restaurant POS plans.

• Free: This plan starts at $0 a month. This is the best option if you simply need the basics and some simple processing abilities.
• Plus: This plan starts at $60 a month per location. This plan will add advanced inventory management and 24/7 customer service.
• Premium: This plan option comes with custom pricing and is only for restaurant owners that process more than $250,000 per year.

Here are just some of the Square for Restaurant features for businesses looking for toast alternatives:

• Multi-store support
• Contactless payments
• Gift cards
• Inventory management
• Menu management
• Reporting
• Online ordering
• Delivery management
• EBT acceptance
• Employee management
• Text messaging

Features like the customer loyalty, integrated marketing, payroll, and kitchen display system (KDS) can be added to any plan for additional costs.

Square hardware costs are standard across all of their products. You can get your first Square Reader for magstripe cards for free but the other options range from $49 contactless card readers to $799 dual-display touch screen registers.

On the Free and Plus Square for Restaurant plans, Square charges a 2.6% + $0.10 fee per tap, dip, or swipe payment. Online payments (QR code payments and orders placed on your Square website) are charged a 2.9% + $0.30 transaction fee.

Premium plans come with custom processing rates.

The main benefit of Square when compared to Toast is that there are no long-term commitments or fees if you end your service early. You pay month-to-month and there are no incentives to sign any contracts.

Similar to Toast, but missing a free plan, Lightspeed Restaurant has one of the more expensive plan options on this list.

• Starter: This plan begins at $69 a month and is best for restaurants with only one location who only need one terminal.
• Essential: This plan begins at $189 a month and is best for full-service restaurants with one or more locations who want to take advantage of online ordering capabilities.
• Premium: This plan begins at $399 a month and is really only necessary for large restaurants and hotels that are looking for custom payment processing rates.

Here are just some of the Lightspeed Restaurant features for businesses looking for Toast alternatives:

• Multi-store support
• Contactless payments
• Customer loyalty
• Marketing tools
• Online ordering
• Inventory management
• Reporting
• Menu management
• Delivery management
• Employee management
• Text messaging

Some features that are available at an extra cost include customer-facing displays, kitchen display systems, advanced reporting, accounting, and ordering ahead.

Lightspeed Restaurant offers quotes on fully customized hardware options for your business. You can choose an iPad hardware kit or purchase individual hardware like mobile tap card readers, mobile payment terminals, and receipt printers.

\There are no prices listed on their website and restaurant owners will need to contact Lightspeed directly to learn more.

Lightspeed Restaurant offers multiple options for payment processing with their POS system. These include Dejavoo with Worldpay, Cayan, and Bridgepay.

If you choose to use the integrated payment processor Lightspeed Payments, card-present transactions will be charged a 2.6% + $0.10 fee. Keyed-in transactions have a 2.6% + $0.30 fee.

The Pro plan offers custom payment processing rates that are typically lower than the standard rates for the Essentials and Plus plans.

Unlike Toast, Lightspeed Restaurant offers month-to-month and annual pricing. You will get the best pricing with annual and long-term contracts but Lightspeed does charge an early termination fee.

This fee can be pretty costly depending on the length of your subscription and how early you decide to terminate your contract. You have to send a cancellation notice before the next billing period to avoid being charged for another month.

Lightspeed doesn’t accept hardware returns after 30 days (14 days for Apple products) and you must validate that you have received your hardware within five days or it won’t be covered under their warranty.

TouchBistro POS offers one plan for one price. For $69/month you receive the basic features you need in a restaurant POS system.

There are additional features that can be included as add-ons to your basic TouchBistro POS system like profit management, a kitchen display system, online ordering, loyalty, marketing, etc.

This is where TouchBistro has some disadvantages. While the base price is fairly reasonable when compared to the other Toast alternatives on this list, the add-ons can get expensive fast. Online ordering alone will run you an extra $50 per month.

Here are just some of the TouchBistro POS features for businesses looking for Toast alternatives:

• Floor plan and table management
• Menu management
• Reporting and analytics
• Tableside ordering
• Staff management
• Integrations
• Kitchen display system
• Profit management
• Loyalty program
• Marketing
• Online ordering
• Reservations
• Customer facing display

TouchBistro’s Restaurant POS Hardware is iOS based and integrates seamlessly with the POS software.

The required piece of hardware is the newest iPad. From there, you can mix and match additional POS equipment like cash drawers, receipt printers, and handheld card readers.

There are no costs available on the website, so TouchBistro is another restaurant POS system that will base the price of your hardware off of your needs and the size of your business.

It’s important to note that while Apple products might be the top of their class, they are also going to be at the top of their price range.

TouchBistro offers TouchBistro Payments powered by Chase that gives you hardware, software, and support.

The pricing for TouchBistro Payments is listed as “transparent” but is, like almost everything else, quote-based and not listed on their website.

Their built-in payment processor integrates seamlessly with the POS, allows owners to accept almost every kind of payment, and keeps your business running and taking payments even when the system is offline.

TouchBistro operates on a month-to-month payment systems. Be warned that some reviews mention sales reps who convince them to sign up for a one-year contract. Do your research and ask plenty of questions to avoid having to work against a contract that is difficult to get out of.

POSist is a quote-based platform. Restaurant owners will need to contact POSist to schedule a demo in order to receive a personalized quote for their business needs.

Reviews list the cost-effective pricing of POSist’s Restaurant POS system as a benefit/reason for continuing to use the platform.

Here are just some of the POSist Restaurant POS features for businesses looking for Toast alternatives:

• Online ordering
• Loyalty program
• Order management
• Wait list management
• Marketing automation
• Reporting and statistics
• Customer database
• Employee management
• Menu builder
• Online reservations
• Third party integrations
• Partnership with delivery services like Doordash, Postmates, deliverect, GrubHub, etc.

POSist can run on any device (iOS, Android, etc.) so there’s no need to pay large expenses for hardware that will need to be updated at some point. The best part about this is that you’re able to have a desktop register POS system, tablets for your servers, and your own smartphone application for managing your business on the go.

This could save your business money in the long run because there’s no need to take on a monthly/yearly lease.

POSist does not currently offer their own built-in payment processor. Through the POSist Marketplace users are able to take advantage of integrations with Razorpay, Paytm, and PhonePe.

New integrations are being added all the time and fees are going to vary based on your customized plan. You’ll need to contact POSist for more information.

Because POSist is a quote-based, highly-personalized system, there isn’t any information available on their website about contracts or early termination fees. It can be assumed that the contract terms available are similar to Lightspeed or Toast.

Clover’s payment plans can get a little complicated, but are as follows:

• Clover Payments: Starts at $0 per month. This plan will only be useful for business owners who only need to process payments and don’t need any POS hardware.
• Clover Essentials: Starts at $14.95 per month. This option is best fit for small restaurants/service-based businesses that don’t take returns.
• Clover Register: Starts at $49.95 per month when paid annually. This plan is best for owners who find themselves needing more features than the Essentials plan offers.
• Clover Counter Service Restaurant: Starts at $54.95 per month when paid annually. This plan is best if you have a quick-serve restaurant, cafeteria, or mobile food service business.
• Clover Table Service Restaurant: Starts at $84.95 per month when paid annually. This plan is going to work best for full-service restaurants or bars.

Here are just some of the Clover POS features for businesses looking for Toast alternatives:

• Floor plan management
• Kitchen pace management
• Menu management
• Modifiers linked to guests
• Bill splitting
• Offline payments
• Online ordering
• Reporting and analytics
• Employee management
• Website builder
• 24/7 support

You have to purchase Clover hardware in order to use Clover POS software. You are able to purchase this hardware from Clover resellers, but we would caution and encourage you to do a good amount of research before taking this route.

Hardware options start with Clover Go (card reader that accepts mobile payments) at $49 and expand to include more features and larger equipment with the Clover Station Duo (fully integrated POS hardware plus customer-facing display) for $1,799.

Another problem with using a Clover reseller is that you might end up with a higher payment processing rate.

If you go with Clover as your hardware provider your in-person transaction fees will be 2.3% – 2.6% + $0.10 and card-not-present transactions will run you a 3.5% + $0.10 transaction fee.

The biggest complaint for almost all users of Clover products is the contract lengths and early termination fees. These can vary dramatically because of the potential for merchant service providers taking advantage of business owners looking for a deal.

These contracts can span months or years, renew automatically, and be difficult to back out of. Make sure you know how to choose a merchant service provider.