Square vs Toast vs Lightspeed: Which POS is Best for Food and Beverage Businesses?

We tested and compared Toast, Square and Lightspeed, and found that Square is the best POS system for restaurants and other food and beverage businesses. It earned that spot thanks to its low price, ease of use, and extensive hardware range.

Square’s range of affordable ecommerce, marketing and scheduling add-ons also makes it easily scalable, making it a favorite for ambitious small businesses.

Toast is a close second, offering more advanced inventory management and reporting tools than Square, making it a better option for established full-service restaurants with complex operations.

Lightspeed Restaurant offers equally advanced tools to Toast, particularly in its built-in loyalty and marketing features. However, Lightspeed lags behind Square and Toast, owing to its limited hardware range and usability issues.

Square vs Toast vs Lightspeed: Which Is Best?

Square is the best overall POS system for food and beverage businesses, especially for small, growing businesses. However, Toast and Lightspeed are still great options for established businesses.

Here’s a quick comparison of Square, Toast and Lightspeed:

Square for Restaurants: Best for growing hospitality businesses

Square for Restaurants is the best overall POS system for hospitality businesses, earning the most points in our research and testing.

Square is an especially good option for small businesses that need a POS system they can scale up with, since it offers a free POS software plan and hardware, and paid plans that don’t cost as much as most competitors, with the $165 per month Premium plan costing less than Lightspeed Restaurant’s starting plan.

Besides low costs, Square’s POS system comes with a functional set of features, such as tip sharing, an integrated kitchen display system (KDS) and live reporting. It also offers useful add-ons such as staff scheduling, an ecommerce website builder and email marketing software.

That said, Square isn’t the perfect system. It’s missing a few advanced features, such as recipe costing and ingredient tracking, as well as cost versus profit management. These are offered by rivals Toast and Lightspeed Restaurant, and are vital for helping large restaurants with complex inventories reduce wastage.

Square also doesn’t have a training mode, unlike Lightspeed and Toast, which could slow down new employee onboarding. That said, Square was the easiest to use POS system that we tested, so most users should pick it up quickly.

Toast: Best for established full-service restaurants

Toast is a close second to Square, with its slightly higher price and less user-friendly interface being the main factors dragging it down a notch.

Toast is a great option for established restaurants, especially full-service ones, that need a POS system with advanced features.

It offers advanced inventory management tools, such as recipe ingredient tracking and costing, as well as cost versus profit analysis, all of which can help busy restaurants reduce wastage.

On top of this, Toast offers built-in reservation management tools (most competitors only offer integration with third-party apps), advanced menu settings (create different menus for different times of day), and add-ons such as loyalty program building (set spending and create a points system), email marketing and gift card creation. These are all features that can help full-service restaurants run more smoothly.

That said, most of Toast’s best features come as paid add-ons, available individually or as part of an add-on bundle that can quickly push your monthly spend to over $500. This means Toast isn’t the best value for money for small businesses looking for the most features for the lowest price.

Additionally, unlike Square and Lightspeed Restaurant, Toast isn’t compatible with iOS tablets, only those that run on Android. This makes it a poor choice for restaurants with an iPad-based POS system looking to switch providers but keep the same tablets.

Lightspeed Restaurant: Best for businesses looking to create a loyal customer base

Lightspeed’s overall score was dragged down by some usability issues and its high price. That said, it offers the same level of advanced features as Toast, especially when it comes to marketing and loyalty tools.

Lightspeed’s high price (its cheapest plan costs $189 per month), paired with its advanced feature set, automatically makes it more suited to established restaurants than new ventures.

The platform really shines when it comes to its built-in marketing and loyalty tools, with businesses getting access to email and SMS marketing tools, loyalty programs, automated marketing campaigns, gift card creation, and customer tabs, so you have a history of all previous orders.

Unlike rivals Square and Toast, these tools are built into the order processing pipeline, so staff are prompted to either assign an order to a customer in the directory or create a new customer profile before completing an order.

Like Toast, Lightspeed Restaurant also offers advanced management features, such as ingredient usage tracking, cost versus profit breakdowns for menu items, and automated resupply orders.

As we’ve noted, Lightspeed’s high cost compared with other POS systems is its main downside. During testing, we also ran into a few glitches and found Lightspeed’s menu confusing, making it a challenging system for beginners to use.

Square vs Toast vs Lightspeed: Which Is the Best Value for Money?

Winner: Square for Restaurants

Square for Restaurants offers better value for money than Toast and Lightspeed Restaurant. Square’s free plan is more functional and comes with cheaper processing fees than Toast’s, while Lightspeed’s cheapest plan costs more than Square’s most expensive one, $189 per month compared with $165.

Square is also more transparent with its pricing overall and offers better value hardware when compared with Toast (Lightspeed doesn’t publish its hardware costs, which makes comparison difficult).

Here’s a side-by-side look at each provider’s pricing:

Which POS system has the cheapest software plans?

Square for Restaurants has the cheapest software plans overall, with pricing ranging from $0 to $165 per month, compared with Toast’s $0 to $503 per month, and Lightspeed’s $189 to $399 per month.

On the surface, Toast and Square appear to be similarly priced, since Toast advertises its POS as starting from $69 per month, the same price as Square’s Plus plan. However, this doesn’t account for Toast’s add-on bundles, which drag its monthly pricing up to $503 per month. Many of the features in these bundles, such as ecommerce and mobile ordering, are included at no extra cost on Square plans.

Which POS system has the lowest card processing fees?

Toast has the lowest processing fees, at 2.49% + $0.15 on standard paid plans, compared with Square and Lightspeed’s 2.6% + $0.10.

That said, Toast has the highest processing fees if you opt for its free Pay-as-you-go plan, with fees creeping up to 3.69% + $0.15 if you choose add-ons. That’s because with this plan, you’re essentially paying for software and hardware over time with high transaction fees.

Square also charges higher fees on its free plan. However, they only go up to 2.6% + $0.15, only $0.05 more than on paid plans.

Which provider has the cheapest hardware?

Square has cheaper hardware than Toast and, since Lightspeed Restaurant doesn’t advertise its hardware pricing, it’s impossible to compare it to other providers.

Looking at card machines, Square offers three, with its most expensive costing $399, still cheaper than the $449.10 it costs to purchase Toast’s only card machine. Square’s countertop registers are also cheaper than Toast’s. Square’s full register, which comes with a built-in guest display, costs $799, while Toast’s equivalent costs $944.10.

Add to this the fact that Toast charges an additional $50 per month software fee for all its hardware, while Square and Lightspeed don’t, and Toast is the most expensive option for hardware in the long term.

Square vs Toast vs Lightspeed: Which Has the Best Software Features?

Winner: Toast

Toast offers the best POS software features for managing a hospitality business, with Lightspeed Restaurant being a very close second. Square trails behind, but only by a little in this category, mainly because it doesn’t offer the same advanced inventory management tools as Toast and Lightspeed.

Here’s a closer feature-by-feature comparison:

Order and table management

Winner: It’s a tie

Square, Toast and Lightspeed are quite evenly matched when it comes to their order and table management features. However, each platform has its strong suit. Square excels at online and mobile ordering, while Toast and Lightspeed Restaurant offer great table management.

When it comes to in-person orders, all three platforms offer solutions for counter-service and table-service, offering customer displays and handheld POS devices. Square takes it a step further by offering its own free ecommerce platform builder and free QR ordering, whereas this is a paid add-on with Toast, and Lightspeed only offers ecommerce integration, not its own native software.

That said, Toast and Lightspeed offer more control than Square over in-person dining. Lightspeed allows wait staff to assign orders not just to specific tables, but to specific seats, allowing for a seamless, tailored guest experience, well-suited to fine-dining.

Meanwhile, Toast allows its table plan to be edited from both the frontend and backend of its POS system, while Square and Lightspeed only allow editing from the backend. This makes Toast a better option for restaurants that change their floorplan frequently (for example, between lunch and dinner service).

Post order, all three platforms offer flexibility when it comes to how customers pay, allowing bills to be split by percentage, amount and menu item.

That said, while Square and Toast both offer automatic tip sharing, Lightspeed Restaurant does not. This makes the first two providers better suited to restaurants with a tip pooling policy.

Inventory management

Winner: Toast and Lightspeed tie

Toast and Lightspeed Restaurant are tied in top place when it comes to inventory management, while Square trails behind slightly.

This is mainly because both Toast and Lightspeed Restaurant offer cost versus profit breakdowns for menu items, as well as recipe ingredient and cost tracking, while Square doesn’t. This makes these two providers better suited to larger, more established businesses with a lot of moving parts that need to keep a close eye on where money is spent and minimize wastage.

This doesn’t mean that Square is bad for inventory management. Like Toast and Lightspeed, Square still offers core tools such as bulk CSV uploads, low-stock alerts, and automatic resupply ordering. These tools are more than enough for small businesses to keep track of stock and avoid running out of favorite menu items.

Reservation management

Winner: Toast

Toast beats both Square and Lightspeed Restaurant when it comes to reservation management, since it’s the only provider to offer native reservation tools. Square and Lightspeed don’t, but allow businesses to integrate third-party reservation platforms into their POS systems.

With Toast’s reservation management tool, staff will be able to not only accept reservations but also to automatically assign seating based on guest count, and the host will be able to keep track of service progression. This allows for a more seamless reservation-to-service experience for guests that isn’t possible with Square and Lightspeed.

Marketing and loyalty tools

Winner: Lightspeed Restaurant

Lightspeed Restaurant offers the best marketing and loyalty tools for keeping customers engaged, although Square and Toast are close joint seconds.

With Lightspeed, businesses will get access to email and SMS marketing tools, loyalty programs, automated marketing campaigns, gift card creation and customer tabs, so you have a history of all previous orders.

Toast and Square also offer these features, but what gives Lightspeed an edge over competitors in this department is that its customer retention tools were built into the sales process. When finalising an order, we were prompted to either assign an order to a customer in the directory or create a new customer profile.

This encourages staff to gather data, such as phone numbers and emails, from customers for marketing purposes, and makes it easy for customers to be rewarded for their loyalty.

Reporting and analytics

Winner: Toast and Lightspeed tie

Toast and Lightspeed are tied at the top spot when it comes to reporting and analytics. They have a slight edge over Square since they provide cost versus profit analysis. As we’ve noted above, this makes Toast and Lightspeed better suited to more established businesses interested in reducing wastage.

That said, all three providers have detailed reporting dashboards and let businesses access and filter reports on a variety of topics, including menu items, staff, discounts and refunds.

Square vs Toast vs Lightspeed: Which Offers the Best Hardware?

Winner: Square

Square has the best hardware range, offering a wide variety of card machines and accessories, as well as a terminal with a built-in customer display and card machine.

Toast is a close second, but it doesn’t offer quite as many card machine options or accessories as Square, and its terminals don’t have built-in card machines.

Meanwhile, Lightspeed scored lowest for hardware in our testing, mainly because it offers a tablet-based POS system, meaning it doesn’t sell physical terminals or customer displays. It only offers tablet stands.

Square’s hardware range

Square’s hardware is white and grey, giving it a sleek, modern appearance similar to Apple products. A highlight is that its terminals come with built-in card readers, so restaurants or cafes that do counter-service don’t need to purchase separate card machines.

Here’s what you can get with Square:

• Card machines ($59-$399): Three types, a compact card machine (no screen or PIN pad) that connects to the main POS system via Bluetooth, and two handheld touchscreen devices (one with a built-in receipt printer) that run POS software.
• Countertop terminals/registers ($149-$799): Two types, a tablet-stand with built-in card reader, and a physical terminal with built-in customer display and card machine.
• KDS screens ($499-$599): Three touchscreens ranging from 10 inches to 21.5 inches (wall-mounts also sold).
• Hardware bundles ($399-$1,899): Five hardware bundles featuring either tablet case, tablet stand or terminal with a combination of accessories (printers, cash drawers, barcode scanners, etc.).
• Accessories: Printers (seven models, including receipt and kitchen), cash drawers (three models), cases (for smartphones and tablets), kitchen scales (one model), cables, mounts and replacement parts.

Toast’s hardware range

Toast’s hardware is available in both white and black, although black is the default design. It’s less eye-catching than Square’s, but all Toast terminals and card machines are heat and spill-resistant, making them perfect for busy kitchens or bars.

Here’s what you can get with Toast:

• Card machines ($494.10): Two types, a compact card reader (no screen or PIN pad), and a handheld touchscreen device that runs POS software. Only the handheld device is available to purchase individually; the compact reader comes in a kit with a terminal.
• Countertop terminals/registers ($719.10-$944.10): One type, a 14-inch touchscreen terminal. One kit comes with a customer display, increasing the price, and a compact card reader is also included in each terminal kit.
• KDS screens ($647.10): One type, a 22-inch touchscreen with a wall mount.
• Hardware bundles (N/A): No hardware bundles, but all terminals come with Toast’s compact card machine and a security router.
• Accessories: Printers (receipts, kitchen, label, one model each), cash drawer (one model).

Lightspeed’s hardware range

Lightspeed is a tablet-based POS system, which means it doesn’t sell physical terminals or customer displays, only tablet stands. What Lightspeed does sell is a range of third-party card machines and accessories, but it doesn’t advertise the price of any of its hardware.

Here’s what you can get with Lightspeed:

• Card machines: Four types, three Verifone models with PIN pads and screens, and a compact contactless card reader. Lightspeed software can also be downloaded onto smartphones to turn them into handheld POS devices.
• Countertop terminals/registers: No physical terminals, but Lightspeed sells three types of tablet stands, two for iPads (one with a built-in card reader), and one for Androids (no built-in reader).
• KDS screens: One type, a 21.5-inch touchscreen that’s heat and spill-resistant.
• Hardware bundles: Not available.
• Accessories: Printers (four models, receipt, kitchen and label), cash drawer (one model), barcode scanner (one model), charging stations (if using smartphones as handheld devices) and cases (for tablet and smartphones).

Square vs Toast vs Lightspeed: Which Is Easiest To Use?

Winner: Square

Square was the easiest to use POS platform that we tested by a long shot, with Toast falling somewhere in the middle when it comes to usability, and Lightspeed Restaurant being one of the most difficult to use platforms.

Part of what made Square so easy to use was its clear signposting throughout most tasks, and its well-organized menu. We also liked the search bar, which meant we could quickly locate the features we wanted. The only real issue we encountered was a glitch when creating a floor plan, since we found that saved changes didn’t appear in the backend.

Toast was also quite an easy platform to navigate, especially its backend, which made great use of a white background and spacing to distinguish functions. That said, we had trouble making amends to orders and splitting a bill, mainly due to the use of the vague term “update” to describe a variety of possible amendments.

With Lightspeed Restaurant, we found the frontend, where orders are processed and customer tabs created, very intuitive, but we struggled a lot with the backend. Our main gripe was that the backend menu featured a lot of unlabelled icons that required hovering to interpret. This meant that we were never sure where features were located. We also encountered glitches when trying to bulk upload items.

Square vs Toast vs Lightspeed: What Are the Best Alternatives?

If neither Square, Toast, nor Lightspeed Restaurant is right for your food and beverage business, here are some alternative POS systems that might fit the bill:

You can find more detailed recommendations and reviews in our rankings of:

• The best restaurant POS systems
• The best POS systems for food trucks
• The best POS systems for bars
• The best iPad-based hospitality POS systems.

Methodology: How Did We Compare Square, Toast and Lightspeed?