Toast VS Square: Find The Winner For Your Restaurant

Toast VS Square For Restaurants At A Glance

Toast and Square are both strong restaurant point of sale systems. However, Square offers more free features like a free online ordering platform and Google Ordering integration, while Toast offers more extensive restaurant-specific features like perishable inventory management and menu performance reports.

Toast Overview

Toast is a great choice for busy small to midsize restaurants because there are several restaurant-specific features like customizable ordering, tipping, online reservations, and kitchen workflow features. Toast also offers the most customizable loyalty program builder out of any restaurant POS on the market. Full-size restaurants will appreciate fast and intuitive server table management, while quick-serve restaurants can take advantage of self-serve kiosks and an order-ready screen so customers can quickly pick up to-go orders.

The system’s ingredient-level inventory tracking, easy 86-ing functions, and automated menu item syncing across locations and ordering platforms also allow for easy inventory management, especially for multilocation restaurant businesses.

Plus, Toast’s Android-based hardware can survive spills, drops, and most other restaurant mishaps (while iOS devices may not).

Toast POS online ordering app, PC reporting screen, kitchen display screen, handheld POS, and countertop POS.

Square For Restaurants Overview

Square is overall the best free/low-cost restaurant management system for small food service business owners. Square’s free features, including your own website, online gift card generator, Google Ordering, and social media marketing integrations, make Square a fantastic all-in-one inventory, online ordering, and POS software option for those with a limited budget.

You can use an unlimited number of your own iPads as POS systems (free plan only), purchase a dedicated Square Register stand for countertop and self-serve kiosk ordering, or purchase Square’s new durable Android-based mobile POS kit (starting at the Square Plus plan). Square card readers are compact and affordable, so it’s easy to sell at a restaurant, in a food truck, and on-location at events like farmers’ markets and festivals.

Square For Restaurants kitchen display screen, iPad POS, online ordering app, QR code menu, countertop POS, and handheld POS.

What’s The Difference Between Square & Toast?

Toast offers more restaurant-specific features like highly-custom floor planning, reservation capabilities, and perishable inventory tracking, but comes with a higher price tag. Square offers many more free features and affordable hardware but lacks some features that larger restaurant businesses need to run smoothly.

While both systems offer similar features, Toast offers more granular levels of control, while Square’s features aren’t as detailed but are much less expensive.

Both Square & Toast Offer…

• Online ordering for pickup and delivery (Square offers this for free)
• Tableside ordering via QR code
• Third-party delivery platform integrations (Doordash, UberEats, Chowly, etc.)
• Gift card programs (Square online gift cards are free)
• Custom tipping and order splitting rules
• Self-ordering capabilities
• Built-in payment processing systems which support cash, card, and check payments
• Mobile and tabletop register hardware
• Loyalty program builders

Only Toast Offers…

• Perishable inventory management
• Extensive floor planning capabilities
• Dedicated self-serve kiosk hardware and software
• Credit-card-based loyalty program that works for all ordering types (online and in-person at any location)
• Several restaurant-specific analytics reports
• Restaurant-specific add-ons like catering and built-in reservation management

Only Square Offers…

• Free eCommerce/online ordering website builder
• Free integration with Google Ordering, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook
• Free built-in appointment scheduler (great for catering and as a makeshift reservation system)
• Month-to-month subscription plans
• Simple, predictable payment processing fees

Toast VS Square Pricing

Square and Toast both offer plans that cost $0/month. However, Toast charges higher payment processing fees on all orders to cover the cost of the “free” plan, especially if you add online ordering to your plan. Toast is a more advanced restaurant POS system, but it’s quite expensive considering the cost of add-ons like online ordering and eGift cards (which Square offers for free).

Which Is Cheaper, Square Or Toast?

Square is cheaper than Toast. With Square, you can use any iPad or smartphone and card readers cost $49. Toast’s “free” plan has high payment processing fees, which can end up being more expensive than paid plans. Toast’s paid plans require you to pay upfront for strong (but pricey) restaurant-grade hardware.

Toast VS Square Features

Toast and Square both have strong tipping, check splitting, menu management, online ordering, loyalty program, gift card creation, floor planning, card pre-authorization, and email marketing features. Toast offers more customization in most of these categories, but for the average restaurant, you may not need such granular levels of custom settings.

Toast has a definitive edge over Square in terms of inventory management. Square, on the other hand, has better built-in online ordering, marketing, and offline payment capabilities.

For many restaurant needs, like reservations, Square offers free and low-cost workarounds, while Toast offers either proprietary (paid) solutions or (paid) integrations with third-party restaurant software providers.

The biggest difference between Toast and Square is the way you get (and pay for) your restaurant hardware. You have to use Toast’s proprietary hardware, while Square allows you to bring your own iPad-based devices or purchase affordable Square hardware.

Let’s dig into a more detailed feature comparison so you can decide which POS system you need.

Toast VS Square Reviews

As you would expect with two companies that are used by thousands of merchants, there is a wide range of positive reviews as well as complaints.

In general, Square user reviews praise the software’s ease of use and that it’s a straightforward, all-in-one POS, online ordering, team management, and payment processing solution. They dislike very little, but the complaints that do exist are mostly about payment processing.

Toast users, on the other hand, have many pain points. While users praise the software’s server-centric features and like the level of customization that’s possible, they have many complaints about customer service, contracts, software glitches, and the price point of said customizations.

Square For Restaurants Common Complaints

• Limited restaurant-specific reporting and inventory management
• Occasional fund holds if there’s a suspicious transaction
• Payment processing fees for businesses with higher transaction volume

Toast Common Complaints

• Horrible customer service
• Trapped in long-term contracts
• High card-not-present payment processing fees
• Expensive add-ons
• Frequently glitching hardware and time-consuming software updates

Which Is Best For My Business Needs: Toast Or Square?

Toast and Square are both great restaurant POS systems, but each one fits a certain business type. Here’s how to tell which restaurant POS is right for your business.

Choose Toast If…

• Your larger, full-scale restaurant needs in-depth features and durable, restaurant-grade hardware
• You have several restaurant locations that could benefit from master menu and inventory management
• You fully understand and are comfortable with Toast’s processing fees and contract requirements
• You have a restaurant inside a hotel or your restaurant focuses largely on catering as well as in-person orders
• Your takeout-heavy restaurant could use an order-ready screen to communicate order statuses with customers and delivery drivers

Choose Square For Restaurants If…

• You want a free/low-cost restaurant management solution
• You want affordable, diverse restaurant hardware options
• Your restaurant would benefit from a simple, easy-to-use POS system
• You don’t process a high volume of transactions
• Your restaurant could benefit from helpful add-ons like Square Loyalty and Square Payroll
• You want a month-to-month contract

Our Methodology For Evaluating Square VS Toast

At Merchant Maverick, we review Square For Restaurants and Toast restaurant POS systems multiple times throughout the year based on several factors, including pricing, core feature set, user-friendliness, payment processing fees and options, contract terms, and POS hardware availability.

We take into account real, unincentivized user reviews from review sites such as G2, Software Advice, and GetApp, as well as our own free trial/demo experiences, when evaluating POS systems. We consider which features different types and sizes of restaurants need as well as price points when deciding whether a person should use Toast or Square for their foodservice business.

Read more about how we rate POS systems at Merchant Maverick.

How Square For Restaurants & Toast Compare To Other Restaurant POS Software

TouchBistro

Unlike Square and Toast, TouchBistro offers a built-in reservation and waitlist system that neatly integrates with the software’s web-based online ordering app and loyalty program. TouchBistro software also allows you to manage catering delivery orders, which Toast offers but Square does not.

TouchBistro also allows you to choose your own payment processor out of several options, while Square and Toast require you to use their in-house payment processors.

Lightspeed Restaurant

Like Toast, Lightspeed Restaurant integrates with several property management systems such as Stayntouch and Mews. Lightspeed Restaurant is a more affordable hotel restaurant management platform than Toast in most cases, and offers a little more transparency when it comes to pricing.

Both restaurant POS systems offer a great loyalty program, although Toast outranks Lightspeed in this area.

Square is more affordable than both restaurant POS systems, but also has fewer restaurant-centric features such as perishable inventory management.

Clover

The biggest draw of Clover over Square and Toast is the ability to customize your POS system with third-party software apps and the option to choose from a number of Clover merchant services providers (which will help you save on payment processing fees).

Unfortunately, Clover does not come with many restaurant features, so you’re almost required to add extra software to your Clover device. This can make Clover a more difficult system to work with. For example, Clover does not have its own kitchen display system software, so you’ll need to find one in the Clover app market and make it work with your POS setup.

Toast VS Square Comparison: The Final Verdict

Toast and Square restaurant POS systems both have great feature sets for restaurant owners. Toast features are more in-depth, but can also be much more expensive.

Square’s payment processing fees and hardware costs are consistent and transparent, while Toast’s custom-quoted pricing plans and customer service are anything but consistent and transparent.

If cost and responsive customer service are significant issues for your business, then Square for Restaurants is the better option. However, if you need a true top-of-the-line restaurant management system and are willing to pay for it, then choose Toast for your restaurant POS needs.

If neither of these POS providers sounds like the right fit for you, read our post on the best restaurant POS systems to find the software that will take your food service business to the next level.

FAQs: Toast VS Square