Toast alternatives: what a POS must do here

An owner opening a second venue reads American restaurant forums, where one till comes up again and again. It does the orders, the kitchen tickets, the payments, the online ordering and the reports, and owners there seem to like it. Then the owner looks for a local sales contact and finds there is none, because the till is not sold where the venue is. The search starts again, now with a vague idea of what a good till looks like and no clear way to compare the ones on offer.

Searches for Toast alternatives often start this way. Toast is a well-known restaurant till in the United States, and it has expanded into a few other markets, but many venues, including those in the Gulf, cannot buy it at all. What those venues need is not a copy of one product but a clear list of what a till must do in their own market, and a way to test every vendor against it.

This guide sets out that list: the core of what a till must do, the payments question that shapes everything else, the local requirements that matter and how to compare total cost of ownership. It compares by criteria rather than by brand, and it quotes no prices, because plans and fees change: ask every vendor for current figures in writing. Every venue and figure in it is an example.

Toast is a point of sale and restaurant management company based in the United States, where most of its customers are. In its 2025 results it described its international markets as Canada, the UK, Ireland and, from 2025, Australia.

Venues outside those markets cannot simply sign up, so the useful question is what makes a till like Toast popular in the first place, and which local tills offer the same things. The answer is a list of functions and qualities, not a brand.

Venues look for Toast alternatives for different reasons. Some cannot buy Toast where they are. Some can, but want a different payments arrangement, a different contract or a system that does more of the venue's other jobs, such as bookings and guest records. Others want to compare before committing to any till for years.

Whatever the reason, the comparison works best with a written list of what the till must do, agreed by the people who will use it, before the first sales demonstration.

Before comparing tills, describe your own service: the number of tables and covers, the busiest hour, how orders reach the kitchen, how guests pay, whether you take bookings, deliveries or takeaway and how many venues you run. A till that suits a busy counter café may not suit a fine dining room, and the other way round.

Write it on a page. Every vendor should be asked to show how their till handles that service, not a generic demonstration of their favourite features.

Choosing a POS is easier when the questions come in the right order: the service first, then the functions it needs, then payments, then hardware, then cost and contract. Starting with price or hardware usually leads to a till that is cheap or pretty and wrong for the service.

Our guide to choosing a POS: twelve questions, in order sets out the full sequence, and this guide adds the questions that matter most for venues comparing Toast alternatives.

Every restaurant till must do a handful of things well: open checks for tables, add dishes with their options, send orders to the kitchen, split and move bills, take or record payment, handle voids and comps with a record of who did what, and produce clear reports at the end of the day.

These are the functions staff use hundreds of times a night. A till that does them slowly or awkwardly costs time on every table, however impressive its other features.

Speed is the quality servers notice first. How many taps does it take to add a round of drinks, a dish with two changes and an allergy? How quickly does the screen respond when the room is full? Can a new server learn the basics in one shift?

Time it during the demonstration. Ask the vendor to ring a real order from your menu while you watch the clock, and ask one of your servers to try it too.

How orders reach the kitchen matters as much as how they are taken. Some tills print tickets; others send them to screens at each station; some do both. Look at how allergies, changes and notes appear, how courses are held and fired and how the kitchen marks dishes as ready.

The kitchen's view should be part of the comparison. Ask the head chef to watch the demonstration and to judge the ticket or screen they would be reading all night.

Some POS features matter more after the first week than during the demonstration: reports that answer real questions, permissions that match your roles, menu changes that are quick to make, and a clear record of voids and comps. Others look impressive and are rarely used.

Our guide to POS features that matter after the first week covers which ones to weigh most heavily.

The biggest single question in any till comparison is payments. Some tills include their own payment processing, so card payments are taken through the till's own terminals and the provider earns a fee on each transaction. Others record payments taken on a separate terminal from a bank or payment provider of your choice.

Each approach has trade-offs. Built-in payment processing can be smoother, with amounts passed to the terminal automatically, but it often ties the venue to one provider and its fees. Separate terminals keep the choice of provider, at the cost of keying amounts or relying on a connection between the two.

Compare payment processing on its real cost: the fee on each card payment, any monthly terminal charges, how quickly money reaches the bank and what happens with refunds and disputes. Small differences in the fee on each payment add up to a large sum over a year's takings.

Ask which local banks and payment providers the till works with. In markets where a till's own payment service is not offered, the till must work with the providers that are.

Look at how the till handles tips and service charges: whether guests can add a tip on the terminal, how tips are recorded against each server and how they appear in the reports. Rules on tips and service charges differ by country, so make sure the till can follow yours.

A till that mixes tips into takings makes both the sales figures and the team's pay harder to get right.

A till must handle the tax rules where you trade: the right tax rate on each item, prices shown to guests as the law requires and receipts or tax invoices that meet local requirements. In some countries, invoices must also be issued in a particular electronic form and reported to the tax authority.

Ask every vendor to show a receipt or invoice that meets your country's requirements, and to explain how they keep up when the rules change. A till that cannot produce compliant invoices is not an option, however good it is otherwise.

Internet connections fail. A till that stops taking orders when the connection drops can stop a service. Ask what happens when the internet is lost: can orders still be taken and sent to the kitchen, can payments still be recorded and what happens when the connection returns?

Our guide to POS offline mode: the night the internet died covers what to test before you rely on any till.

Hardware ranges from dedicated terminals to ordinary tablets and phones. Dedicated hardware is robust and built for the job; ordinary devices are cheaper and easier to replace, but may need cases, stands and care.

Ask what hardware the till needs, whether you can use devices you already own, what happens if a device breaks during service and who owns the hardware if you leave. Our guide to POS hardware: what a venue actually needs covers the options.

Some tills include bookings and guest records; others connect to separate systems; some do neither. A till that shares the guest's details with the booking system lets the host's notes, the guest's allergies and their visit history reach the server and the kitchen.

Decide whether you want bookings and guests in the same system as the till. If you do, compare tills on that too; if not, check how well each connects to the booking system you use.

If you take delivery or takeaway orders, ask how they reach the till and the kitchen. Some tills connect to delivery platforms so orders arrive automatically; others expect the platform's own tablet to be used alongside. Each connection is something that can fail during service.

Check which platforms are actually supported in your market, not just which ones appear in the vendor's brochure for other countries.

If you run several venues, or plan to, look at how the till handles them: one menu shared and adapted, staff who can work at more than one site, reports for each venue and for the group and, if you trade in more than one country, different currencies and tax rules.

A till chosen for one venue can become a problem when the second opens. Ask about the second venue before signing for the first.

In markets where guests and staff speak several languages, menus, receipts and screens may need more than one. Some tills handle several languages on the menu and the receipt; others work in one language only.

Decide what your venue needs: menus guests can read, receipts that meet local requirements and screens your team can use quickly. Ask each vendor to show their till in the languages you need, not just tell you it is possible.

Ask how the vendor trains your team: in person, online or with written guides, and how long a new server takes to learn the basics. A till that needs days of training for every new starter costs time every time someone joins.

Ask too what support is offered in the first week after switching, when most problems appear. A vendor who is on hand for the first services makes the switch far smoother than one who hands over a login and disappears.

Reports turn the till's records into decisions: sales by hour, by dish and by server, voids and comps, tenders, and the figures the accountant needs. Ask to see the reports a manager would read each morning, and check that they can be exported for the accounts.

Reports that answer real questions are worth more than many reports that nobody reads.

Support matters most at eight on a busy night. Ask when support is available in your time zone, how it is reached during service, how quickly it responds and whether there is anyone local who can visit if hardware fails.

A till sold from another continent, with support hours that end before your dinner service starts, is a risk however good the software is.

Compare tills on total cost of ownership, not the monthly price: the subscription, fees per device, user or location, payment processing fees, hardware, installation, training, support plans, integrations and the cost of leaving. Work it out for a year, at your real volumes.

Our guide to how much does a POS cost in the first year covers the full sum, and it often changes which till looks cheapest.

Read the contract before signing: its length, the notice period, renewal terms, early termination fees, hardware leases and what happens to your data when you leave. A long contract with a payments commitment can be costly to leave.

Prefer terms you could live with if the till turned out to be wrong for you. A vendor confident in its product rarely needs to lock customers in.

Ask what data you can take with you if you leave: menus, sales history, guest records. A till that holds your data but cannot export it makes the next switch harder.

Know the answer before signing, and keep your own copies of anything important, such as monthly reports and the menu.

Treat the demonstration as a test, not a presentation. Bring your menu, your service description and your list of questions, and ask the vendor to show your service rather than theirs. Our guide to POS demo questions vendors hope you forget lists the questions worth asking.

Ask for a trial period or a test account if possible. A few days of real practice tells you more than an hour of demonstration.

Ask other venues in your market which till they use, what they like and what they wish were different. Venues of a similar size and style, in the same country, are the best guide to how a till works in practice, including support and payments.

Ask specifically about the first months after switching, and about the worst night they had with the till.

Toast alternatives fall into a few types: tills built mainly for restaurants, general retail tills adapted for food, platforms that combine the till with bookings, guests and the kitchen, and simple tablet tills for small venues. Each type suits a different kind of venue.

Decide which type fits your service first, then compare the options within it. Comparing a simple tablet till with a full restaurant platform on price alone compares two different things.

Once a till is chosen and running, look again after a month. Are the servers using it as intended, or working around it? Are the reports being read? Did the payments arrangement cost what was expected? Has support answered when it was needed?

A month of real use shows what no demonstration can. If a serious problem appears, raise it with the vendor while the relationship is new, and before the contract's terms make it harder to change course.

An invented restaurant group opening its second venue in the Gulf starts by wanting the till it has read about, then finds it is not sold locally. The owner writes a one-page description of the service and a list of must-haves: speed on the floor, kitchen screens, local payment providers, compliant tax invoices, working offline, two venues in one account and support during dinner.

Three local vendors are asked to show that service, with the head chef and a senior server present. One fails on tax invoices, one on support hours. The third is chosen after a two-week trial, with a contract that can be ended on notice and payments through the group's existing bank.

servearound is one of the platform type of alternatives: the till, kitchen screens, bookings, the floor plan, guest records, campaigns and reports in one system, running in a browser on iPhone, iPad, Android and computers. It records payments against each check by method, cash, card, transfer or an external terminal, with card payments taken on your own terminal from the provider you choose; card processing of its own is coming, and so is kitchen ticket printing, so for now orders reach the kitchen on station screens, oldest first with allergies at the head of each ticket.

It connects to no delivery platform and produces no Saudi ZATCA e-invoices, and a network can hold venues in different countries and currencies, with the dashboard adding them up at each day's rate. Pricing is per venue, per month, with no fees per cover, order, screen or user. See point of sale and kitchen and pricing.

Because Toast is not sold in many markets, or because a venue wants different payments, terms or features.

Open and move checks, send orders to the kitchen, split bills, record payments, handle voids and comps and report clearly.

Whether the till processes card payments itself, with its own fees, or works with a separate terminal from your provider.

The till must produce receipts and invoices that meet your country's rules.

Yes. Test what happens when the internet drops before you rely on any till.

By total cost of ownership over a year, at your real volumes.

Length, notice, renewal, termination fees, hardware ownership and your data.

Ask when it is available in your time zone, and ask other local venues how it worked for them.

Toast alternatives are best chosen by criteria rather than by brand. Describe your service first, then test every till on the core functions, speed on the floor, the kitchen connection, payments, tax invoices, offline working, hardware, several venues, reports and local support. Choosing a POS in that order avoids a till that is cheap or impressive and wrong for the service.

Weigh payment processing carefully, because it shapes the cost and the contract, compare total cost of ownership over a year, read the exit terms and ask other venues in your market how each till works in practice. Use the demonstration as a test of your service, and the POS features that matter after the first week will decide whether you chose well.