Payments & POS
Toast
Restaurant-specific POS and payments built for food service operations.
4.2· 552 reviews· via CapterraFounded 2011 · Boston, MA
What is Toast?
Toast is a restaurant-specific point-of-sale and management platform built on Android hardware, covering payments, online ordering, kitchen operations, and payroll. It is designed for food-service businesses of all sizes.
Best known for: All-in-one restaurant POS
Key features
- Restaurant POS hardware
- Integrated payment processing
- Online ordering and delivery
- Kitchen display systems
- Loyalty and marketing
- Payroll and team management
Who Toast is best for
- Restaurants, bars, and cafes wanting purpose-built POS
- Operators needing online ordering, KDS, and loyalty in one stack
- Multi-terminal venues that want hardware tuned for food service
Ideal team: Full- and quick-service restaurants that want an all-in-one restaurant platform rather than a general-purpose POS.
Toast pricing
Starter Kit
$0
- $0/mo software with pay-as-you-go hardware
- Higher processing 2.99% + 15¢
- Best for single-terminal small venues
Popular
Point of Sale
$69/per terminal / mo + per-txn fee
- $69/mo per terminal
- Lower processing 2.49% + 15¢
- Core POS and reporting
Build Your Own
$165/flat / mo + per-txn fee
- Custom bundle from ~$165/mo
- Add online ordering, loyalty, marketing
- Scales to multi-location operations
Costs to watch before you commit
- Modules like online ordering, loyalty, gift cards, and email marketing are each additional monthly fees.
- Payroll runs ~$90/mo plus a per-employee fee on top of POS pricing.
- Real all-in cost for a single location often lands at $150–$500/mo before processing.
- Toast has raised processing fees for existing customers over time.
Top Toast alternatives
Popular Payments & POS tools teams evaluate alongside Toast.
SquareAll-in-one POS, hardware, and payments for retail, food, and services.
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GoCardlessBank debit and ACH collection built for recurring and invoice payments.
Lemon SqueezyMerchant of record for digital products, SaaS, and subscriptions.
Authorize.netLong-standing payment gateway that plugs into existing merchant accounts.