Toast vs Square vs Clover: how to compare restaurant and retail POS systems

Short answer: Toast is built for restaurants and is the deepest on restaurant workflows, usually with its own hardware and payments. Square is the easiest to start with, flexible across retail, cafes and services, and has a free software tier. Clover is hardware-led, sold mostly through banks and resellers, with plans that vary by who sells it. Compare them on the full cost and on how they behave offline, not on the sticker price.

Prices, plans and country availability change often and differ by reseller. This post gives you the structure of each, so you can ask the right questions. Get a written quote for your own volume. Also check availability: all three are strongest in the US and a few other markets.

How do the three differ at a glance?

• Toast: designed for restaurants. Table service, courses, kitchen display, online ordering, delivery integrations, staff scheduling and payroll options. Typically sold as a bundle: software, hardware and payment processing together.
• Square: started with a card reader and grew into a full POS. Retail, restaurant and appointment modes. A free plan exists with paid tiers for more features. Payments run through Square at a flat percentage per transaction.
• Clover: terminals that run apps from a marketplace. Often sold by a bank or payments company, so contract terms and rates vary a lot by seller.

How is the pricing built?

All three earn money from some mix of the following. Knowing the mix tells you where the cost hides.

• Software subscription, monthly per terminal or location.
• Payment processing, a percentage plus a fixed fee per card transaction. This is often the largest cost for a busy business. A small difference in percentage matters more than a monthly fee.
• Hardware, bought upfront or financed or rented.
• Add-ons, such as online ordering, loyalty, payroll, marketing.
• Contract terms, like length and early termination fees.

Run the arithmetic on your real monthly card volume. If you process 20 lakh rupees or 25,000 dollars a month on cards, a 0.3 point difference in rate is a meaningful monthly amount.

What about payment lock-in?

Some systems require you to use their payment processing. Others let you bring your own. Lock-in means you cannot shop for a better rate. Ask: can I use another processor? What happens to my terminal if I leave? Do I own the hardware?

What matters for a restaurant?

• Course firing and modifiers that match how your kitchen works.
• A kitchen display or printed tickets by station.
• Table management and splitting checks.
• What happens if the internet drops during dinner service? Ask for exact behaviour on orders, kitchen tickets and card payments.
• Integration with delivery apps and your accounting software.

What matters for retail?

• Barcode scanning, variants, purchase orders, low-stock alerts.
• Multi-location inventory.
• Returns with receipts and exchanges.
• Tax and receipt rules for your country.

How should you decide?

• Full-service restaurant in a supported market: get quotes from Toast and at least one alternative.
• Cafe, food truck, pop-up or small shop that wants to start fast: Square is the usual starting point.
• You already bank with a provider that offers Clover: compare their bundled offer with Square's flat rate.
• Outside these markets, or you want to own the data and server: a self-hosted system such as OrderRestro runs on a machine in your restaurant with no per-order fees, at the cost of you being responsible for hosting and backups.

Use the tests in how to choose a POS system on your top two choices before you sign anything.