9 Best POS Systems for Restaurants of 2026

Toast is built only for restaurants, and its pricing page shows how far that reaches. The core POS covers table and order management, digital menus, mobile payments and surcharging, and offline mode keeps orders, kitchen tickets, receipts and card payments working when the internet drops. Around that core sit paid suites: Digital Storefront for commission-free online ordering and Toast Delivery Services, Marketing Essentials for email, loyalty and gift cards, Team Management with scheduling and a tips manager, payroll with tax filing, and xtraCHEF for invoice automation, recipe costing and inventory. Entry is cheap: the Starter Kit begins at $0 per month for one location with up to two terminals, and the Point of Sale plan starts at $69 per month with your choice of hardware. New restaurants can bundle POS and payroll for $69 per month plus $9 per employee. The catch is that the full platform adds up quickly, and larger setups go through a quote.

Square is the easiest way to get a restaurant POS running without a contract or a sales call. The Free plan costs $0 per location and takes card payments at 2.6% plus 15 cents in person, with next day transfers and offline payments included. Square Plus at $49 per location per month lowers the in-person rate to 2.5% plus 15 cents and opens paid restaurant apps; Premium at $149 drops it to 2.4%. For full service, Square documents coursing, table and seat management, custom floor plans and check splitting by item, by seat or evenly. Bars get preauthorized tabs, auto-gratuity for larger parties and a dark display mode. Counter service gets auto-86 based on stock, order-ready texts and Square Kiosk. The trade-off is that many restaurant tools cost extra per device: the KDS app is $30 per device per month on Plus and $20 on Premium and is not offered on Free, and Kiosk is $99 per device. For a small venue, it is still the lowest-risk start.

SpotOn publishes more of its restaurant pricing than most rivals, which makes it easy to model. The All-In Plan costs $0 per station per month and includes POS software and hardware, paid for through a card-present rate of 2.79% plus 20 cents, processing minimums and a two-year minimum term. POS Essentials costs $55 per station per month on a month-to-month basis, lowers the card-present rate to 2.45% plus 15 cents and has you buy hardware, listed at $750 for a Station 15 and $297 for a handheld plus implementation. Both include ordering, payments, table layouts, menu management, reporting and 24/7 support. The optional Core Bundle adds SpotOn Order for commission-free online ordering, Profit Assist for AI P&L analysis, Marketing Assist campaigns and a white-labeled GoTo Place guest app for $50 per month plus 20 basis points of volume, capped at $200. Read the All-In terms carefully: the zero software fee is tied to the contract.

TouchBistro sells one thing: restaurant POS. Its Point of Sale bundle starts at $69 per month, and the company says that price includes the full POS software suite, with tableside ordering, floor plan and table management, menu management, staff management and reporting all unlocked. Hardware and payment processing are extra on that plan. The Essentials Bundle at $119 per month adds restaurant-grade hardware and integrated payments, and a custom setup adds front-of-house, back-of-house and guest tools. Those tools are where the bill grows: a kitchen display system, inventory, labor and profit management, online ordering, reservations, loyalty, marketing and gift cards are all add-ons sold by quote. Support is a strength, with phone and email help 24/7 including holidays and no fee for updates, and hardware financing is available for venues with two or more terminals. It suits table-service venues that want a focused POS, less so owners who need many add-ons priced upfront.

Lightspeed Restaurant is the most configurable POS here after Toast, and it suits operators who care about data. The pricing page lists three plans, Starter at $69 USD, Essential at $189 and Premium at $399, shown on the annual setting, and highlights offline mode and 24/7 support. The feature table spans a customizable POS, menu manager, floor plans, Advanced Insights, Lightspeed AI, pre-auth bar mode, single-view reconciliation, online and contactless ordering, order and pay at table, multi-location management, advanced inventory, multiple revenue centers for hotels and raw API access, with more of them unlocked as you move up the tiers. Integrated payments run on default rates on Starter and custom rates on the higher plans. A kitchen display system costs $30 per screen per month on any plan, and Lightspeed Reservations is an add-on. Enterprise buyers get a custom package with unlimited launch services and a customer success manager. The jump from Starter to Essential is steep, so check the comparison table for the features you need on day one.

Genius is the restaurant POS sold on heartland.us under the Global Payments name, and it is one of the few in this list with starting prices on the page. Essentials starts at $0 per month, Advanced at $42 and Complete at $129, each with an in-person card rate of 2.6% plus 10 cents. The fine print says those prices cover software for a single station on a standard configuration and exclude interchange and other processing charges. Features cover countertop and handheld devices, on-premise, off-premise and online ordering, employee management with tipouts, scheduling and attendance, loyalty and marketing, and a self-ordering kiosk with a kitchen display system, plus third-party app integrations. The restaurant page names counter service, full service, bars, QSR, food service management and stadium venues as targets. Online and card-not-present rates are not published, and final pricing is subject to underwriting, so compare a written quote with Square and SpotOn before choosing.

Shift4 Dine is the restaurant POS that Shift4 sells at skytab.com, and the company also notes that Revel is now part of Shift4. The pitch is an all-in-one platform with the extras included: Shift4 lists marketing and loyalty, reservations and waitlist, a QR code order and pay solution and a website builder as free. Hardware covers a workstation, handhelds and tablets for tableside ordering, a customer-facing display, a kitchen display system and a self-service kiosk, all with a lifetime warranty. Support is 24/7 from an in-house team, and certified technicians handle onsite installation nationwide. Payments are built in, and Shift4 offers an Advantage Program it says can completely offset your processing fees. The weak spot for buyers is transparency: the pricing page says you can get started for $0 but does not publish monthly software rates, and it notes that advertised pricing is for new customers only. Ask for a written quote.

Clover is best known for its hardware, and its restaurant page leans on it: Station Solo for the main counter, Station Duo with a customer screen for high-volume lines, the compact Mini, the Flex and Flex Pocket handhelds for tableside orders, the Go reader for phones, a kitchen display system and a self-ordering kiosk. The software covers coursing, menu modifications, seating and table maps up front, timed order routing and inventory tracking in the kitchen, and a single back-office dashboard. Online ordering is commission-free and ties into third-party delivery apps. Clover is run by Fiserv's First Data, which means credit approval and underwriting for every account. Through December 31, 2026, qualified new merchants get 90 days with no SaaS fees on the Essentials plan, and a $450 hardware credit that requires a three-year contract. We could not confirm USD plan prices from the pricing page on the check date, so get your rate in writing.

Aloha is NCR Voyix's restaurant POS, aimed at chains rather than single cafes. Its strengths show up in complex operations: the company documents forced and nested modifiers, multi-tiered check splitting, multiple revenue centers and the pizza and wings menus that trip up simpler systems. Menu management is central, so one team can publish dine-in, takeout, online, kiosk, digital signage and third-party delivery menus, with pricing and availability set by channel, location or time of day. The mobile POS manages tables, tabs and check transfers between staff, shows suggested tips on the device and supports EMV, tap-to-pay, Apple Pay and Google Wallet with point-to-point encryption. NCR Voyix also stresses built-in redundancy to reduce lost transactions during network drops, and lets operators adopt data sharing or marketplace integrations in stages. The cost of that depth is complexity and opacity: there is no public price, and rollouts usually involve NCR Voyix deployment services.