Best Tablet POS Systems For Restaurants

Revel’s pricing is quote-based. You’ll score the lowest pricing if you sign up for Revel’s standard three-year contract, agree to use Revel’s in-house payment processor, and use a minimum of two POS terminals.

Add-ons like online ordering or delivery features cost an extra monthly fee.

Revel’s onboarding service also required a one-time fee and includes software setup plus on-site installation.

Revel’s iPad POS system is highly customizable and integrates smoothly with hardware, making it an excellent fit for cafés, bubble tea shops, and hybrid businesses that sell both food and retail items.

Key features include:

• Kitchen Display System: Customize order sources by color and workflow, route tickets to specific stations, and use an expo screen to verify accuracy before pickup or delivery.
• Online Ordering & Delivery Management: Create a branded web app for takeout and delivery—no third-party fees required. Customers can track order status and driver location in real time, while you monitor deliveries from your dashboard.
• Order-Ready Display Screen: Show customers live order updates to reduce questions and keep lines moving efficiently.
• Retail Sales Capabilities: Sell items by weight, manage merchandise or event tickets, and offer subscriptions or service packages.

Additional tools include:

• Appointment booking and waitlist management
• Table and floor plan customization
• Digital signage integrations
• Drive-thru hardware compatibility
• Optional third-party security software

Most Revel restaurant tablet ordering system software runs on iPads. You can use iPads as cash registers, customer-facing displays, self-serve kiosks, tableside ordering screens, and kitchen display systems.

Revel kitchen display system software also works on Android tablets, while the company’s customer order-ready monitors only work with Android TVs.

A Revel representative can give you a custom hardware quote, or you may purchase Revel-compatible hardware with express written permission from the company.

Revel has an in-house payment processing system, Revel Advantage. You’ll receive a custom quote for processing fees.

If you want to work with a third-party payment processor such as TSYS, Elavon, or Chase Payment Solutions, you will pay an additional monthly fee.

Revel’s standard contract lasts three years and comes with substantial early termination fees (up to $15,000).

Test out the software, ask questions, and try to negotiate a merchant agreement that includes a monthly contract until you’re sure Revel is the right tablet POS system for your restaurant.

All Lightspeed plans come with one restaurant POS tablet software license. Additional tablet register software licenses cost $59/month.

Popular Lightspeed add-ons include kitchen display systems and self-ordering kiosks.

Lightspeed integrations, such as liquid inventory management software, cost a separate monthly fee.

Lightspeed works well for both quick-serve and full-service restaurants, as well as niche venues like wine bars and hotels.

Customer engagement tools include:

• Loyalty program: Included on all plans; create membership tiers and special offers like brunch or VIP events.
• Discounts: Set custom promotions or reward frequent customers with freebies.
• Marketing campaigns: Send text or email offers to bring back loyal and inactive guests alike.

Menu and inventory management features include:

• Assign ingredients to vendors and get low-stock alerts in real time.
• Auto-disable sold-out items to prevent server errors.
• Generate detailed reports on sales trends, spoilage, and top-performing menu items.

Multi-location management features:

• Manage multiple restaurants under one master account with shared settings and reports.
• Duplicate POS, KDS, and menu configurations to streamline training and consistency.
• Apply loyalty programs and gift cards across all locations.

Self-ordering features:

• Lightspeed’s table mode lets customers order multiple courses at their own pace and pay at the end.
• Supports contactless, register, or tableside payments.
• Guests can request server help, add modifiers, and check order status directly on the tablet.

While Lightspeed doesn’t include a built-in reservation or waitlist system, it integrates with several affordable third-party solutions for restaurants and hotels.

You can use iPads as tablet POS registers, customer-facing displays, kitchen display screens, self-serve kiosks, tableside ordering screens, and delivery managers.

You can contact Lightspeed about pricing for iPad bundles, iPad stands, card readers, cash drawers, and other POS accessories.

Alternatively, you may purchase your own Lightspeed-compatible hardware. Lightspeed has a support page listing all your hardware options, but you may want to check with a representative to make sure that your hardware choices are all still compatible.

You are required to use Lightspeed Payments, Lightspeed’s payment processor (powered by Stripe), which charges the following per-transaction fees for those on the Essential plan:

• In-Person Payments: 2.6% + $0.10
• Online/QR Code Payments: 2.9% + $0.30

Lightspeed requires you to fill out a custom order form, which will detail your contract length. Lightspeed Restaurant’s pricing page lists only monthly fees, meaning that you can get a monthly contract to start with.

While longer contracts cost less in the long run, Lightspeed does charge an early termination fee, and hardware return windows are short (14 days for Apple products, and 30 days for accessories). Consider starting on the monthly plan until you’re sure Lightspeed is the tablet POS for your restaurant.

Popular Square add-ons that will increase your monthly fees include:

• Square Payroll
• Square Marketing
• Square Team Plus

If you want to use the Square KDS (Kitchen Display System), there’s an additional fee per device.

Square uniquely offers these features at a low cost (or even for free):

• Free Online Ordering Site: This free builder allows you to create a website for pickup or delivery.
• Free Google Business Profile: This free integration helps potential customers looking for food near them and order directly from your business.
• On-Demand Delivery With DoorDash: This paid integration allows you to offer delivery without having to hire your own drivers.
• Unlimited POS Software Licenses: The Free plan allows you to have an unlimited number of free software licenses, which can be used as self-ordering kiosks and customer-facing displays.
• Intuitive KDS: This system allows you to take all order types, including third-party delivery platform orders.
• Low-Cost Integrations: These affordable integrations allow small restaurants to rely on third-party apps for exposure to save some money while growing their customer base.
• Menu & Inventory Sync: With this low-cost integration, you can be sure your servers won’t be able to sell out-of-stock items/modifiers when you run out of an ingredient.

Square’s paid plans give you access to order coursing, more employee management features such as user roles and permissions, and 24/7 support (on the Premium plans) in case something goes wrong with your tablet POS system.

To take payments using Square, you’ll need at least the Square contactless card reader.

You can run Square software on iPads and Androids. Most models are compatible with Square, so you can source any hardware you’d like.

• Recommended: Complete Buyer’s Guide To Square POS Hardware

Payment processing is provided by Square Payments at the following rates:

• Card-present Transactions:2.4% – 2.6% + $0.15
• Card-not-present Transactions: 3.5% + $0.15 (includes Square Online orders and QR code orders)

Square contracts are all month-to-month with no early termination fees.

Square hardware is sold upfront but also offers no-interest financing. The company also has a great hardware warranty that applies whether you purchase your POS hardware from Square or a third-party retailer.

If you choose to purchase Clover hardware from another merchant services provider, you may pay different monthly software fees.

Clover’s best built-in features include:

• Loyalty Program: As part of Clover’s guest engagement tools, offer a loyalty program that customers can use in-person and online. Choose how customers earn and redeem points, allow customers to check in at your restaurant to earn points, and create loyalty campaigns.
• Online Ordering Page: Create a personalized online ordering page that syncs to your Google Business profile to generate sales from people looking for dining options near them. Allow customers to schedule orders for pickup or delivery.
• QR Code Ordering: Customers can scan to order or scan to pay using QR codes, uniquely available on all Clover plans.
• Third-Party Menu Integrations: Create menus for third-party apps like DoorDash, Grubhub, and Uber Eats. Funnel all order types to kitchen printers or kitchen display screens.
• Additional Integrations: Other integrations include KDS software, perishable inventory apps, reservation management software, and ID scanners for bars and nightclubs.

Clover’s restaurant hardware options include the following:

• Clover Go: Bluetooth card reader to accept swipe, chip, tap, and mobile wallet payments
• Clover Flex: Handheld POS terminal for servers to take orders, accept payments, and print receipts
• Clover Mini: Compact countertop POS device for restaurants with little space to take orders, payments, and print receipts
• Clover Station: Full-size countertop POS system and optional customer-facing display to take orders, payments, print receipts, fire orders, and more

Clover also offers a variety of hardware accessories, such as kitchen printers, barcode scanners, and cash drawers.

Pricing will also vary depending on whether you purchase your hardware from Clover.com or through a Clover reseller.

If you use Clover’s parent company, Fiserv, for payment processing, you’ll get the following flat-rate payment processing:

• Card-Present Transactions:2.3% – 2.6% + $0.10 per transaction
• Card-Not-Present Transactions:3.5% + $0.10 per transaction

Clover offers 36-month and 48-month contracts, with early termination fees if you cancel your Clover subscription early.

Also, you can’t use your Clover hardware with any other POS software, sell your Clover hardware, or transfer ownership of your hardware in any way, making your Clover devices useless if you want to stop using Clover POS software.

Most of Toast’s best features, such as its loyalty program, kitchen displays, multilocation, and third-party delivery integrations, come as paid add-ons.

Toast’s best features are built into its loyalty program, online ordering platform, employee management, multi-location management, and accounting capabilities.

• Loyalty Program: Automatically prompts customers to sign up or use their current loyalty account on all ordering platforms, creates customer loyalty accounts, collects and saves card data, and allows customers to earn and redeem points at any of your locations.
• Online Ordering Platform: Allows you to sell eGift cards, provide dynamic upselling suggestions, set order limits during peak hours so your staff won’t get overwhelmed, and customize a branded ordering and delivery experience like Revel offers, but arguably sleeker-looking.
• Employee Scheduling: A great solution to shift gaps and call-outs with a formal submission request system for changing/shifting ships. Employees will receive text notifications about shift updates and available shifts that they can pick up.
• Multi-Location Support: Toast makes it easy to duplicate your setting across all locations including small details like your KDS workflow. Templates can be used to duplicate and modify anything that you need, restaurant owners can create locked-in rules as well as variable ones that can only be changed by users with the proper permissions.
• Accounting: Toast’s ability to create Toast and partner-generated reports with accounting data makes it one of the best POS systems for QuickBooks integration. The third-party app xtraCHEF syncs restaurant invoices, sales, payroll data, and more while automatically funneling that information into your chosen accounting software.

Toast offers excellent proprietary Android-based POS hardware built specifically for restaurants. The hardware is more expensive than if you sourced your own tablets, but it’s more spill-proof, heat-resistant, and durable than the tablets you can buy in stores.

Midsize single-location and multilocation businesses will need to get a custom quote on a specialized POS hardware package.

Toast’s processing fees can be a bit complex and vary based on the plan you’re on, whether you pay for your hardware upfront, and other factors.

Any plan with a custom hardware quote will also have a custom payment processing fee.

Toast’s standard contracts last 1 to 3 years, come with a substantial early termination fee, and require you to use Toast payment processing.

As always, we recommend you make extensive use of demos, read through your contract, and consider a short-term plan before committing to any one tablet POS system in the long run.

The pricing listed above is the minimum you’ll pay. You’ll need to get a custom quote directly from TouchBistro.

The company also charges a nonrefundable setup fee that includes your hardware setup and a software walkthrough.

TouchBistro add-ons include:

• Online Ordering: $50/month
• Loyalty: $99/month
• Gift Cards: $25/month

TouchBistro is one of the best POS systems for food trucks, specifically because of its offline mode that allows you to take orders and payments from within your truck. You can place a space-saving iPad Mini in your truck and get going fast without wasting precious counter space.

Other features include:

• Online Ordering Platform: Allows food trucks to post your current location on your own branded web-based app. This feature is also a benefit for restaurants that have more than one brick-and-mortar location or also have a food truck in the area to help customers know where  they’re ordering from.
• Web-Based App: Offers customizable branding/pages, the ability to accept orders for pickup and delivery with estimated wait times, an automatic loyalty program integration, generated item pairings for dynamic upselling suggestions on orders, and customer feedback options.
• Reservation Solution: Allows customers to place themselves on your waitlist via your app, Google, on an existing website with your reservations widget, by phone, or in-person at the host stand. Customers will receive updates about their reservations and have the option to confirm which helps reduce your number of no-shows.
• Catering Features: Take catering orders a preset number of days in advance, require deposits that vary on several factors, and take notes for orders during/after consultations. You can start a house account with a catering client and charge regularly including any service fees or gratuity owed. The KDS software can also be customized to receive and set aside resources for catering orders.

You may purchase iPads on your own and use them as tablet POS registers, customer-facing displays, and kitchen displays.

Alternatively, you can buy iPads from TouchBistro as part of a software bundle and pay for your hardware monthly. We don’t recommend this option, as it could cost you substantially more over the long term.

TouchBistro also offers hardware bundles with cash drawers, iPad stands, card readers, and other accessories, or you can shop compatible hardware on your own using information from the company’s support pages.

TouchBistro offers an in-house payment processor, TouchBistro Payments, powered by Chase.

You also have the option to work with other payment processors such as Worldpay, Square, Moneris, and TSYS.

TouchBistro requires all restaurant owners to get a custom quote and fill out an order form. This means that you’ll get a custom contract length, price, and terms.

Early termination fees apply. You also have to notify TouchBistro in writing at least 30 days before the end of your contract if you’d like to cancel. Otherwise, your contract will renew automatically.