Restaurant software by job: POS, inventory and food cost, scheduling, online ordering, reservations, accounting and KDS — with published prices, real ratings and what the stack costs.
Restaurant software in 2026: what to use for POS, inventory, labor, ordering and the floor
Restaurant software by job: POS, inventory and food cost, scheduling, online ordering, reservations, accounting and KDS — with published prices, real ratings and what the stack costs.
For this guide we tested and reviewed the platforms hands-on wherever a trial or demo was available, and verified each price against the vendor's own pricing page before publishing.
Restaurant software is a stack, not a product. The POS sits in the middle and owns the check; around it sit the systems that turn those checks into something you can manage — inventory and food cost, labor scheduling, online ordering and delivery, reservations and the floor, accounting. Most operators buy the POS first and bolt on the rest in the order it starts hurting. Below is the shortlist by job, with the prices vendors actually publish, then the stack math and the cost ranges that decide it.
Start here: the pick for each job #
Point of sale — Toast or Square for Restaurants for most independents #
Toast is the restaurant-native default: software starts at $0/month on its Pay-as-You-Go starter package, and the real cost shows up as hardware, implementation and per-device subscriptions, with card processing bundled through Toast as payment facilitator. That bundle is also the trade-off — you cannot bring your own processor or run it on arbitrary hardware. Square for Restaurants publishes the clearest ladder in the category: Free $0/mo per location at 2.6% + 15¢, Plus $49/mo at 2.5% + 15¢ (adds inventory tracking and close-of-day reports), Premium $149/mo at 2.4% + 15¢ (adds coursing and seat management), month-to-month with no long-term contract. Square also charges KDS and Kiosk per device as add-ons ($30 and $50/mo on Plus; $20 and $30/mo on Premium), so a four-screen kitchen is a line item, not a rounding error.
For a full-service room that wants restaurant-specific floor tools on an iPad, TouchBistro starts at $69/mo; Lightspeed Restaurant also starts at $69/mo. Clover sells turnkey device bundles — full-service tiers run $179–$354/mo financed over 36 months, or hardware up front plus $89.95–$129.85/mo software, with processing at 2.3% + 10¢ tapped/dipped/swiped — but the financed plans and the hardware promo are tied to a three-year contract, and the device is locked to Clover's processing. Rezku prices flat from $99/mo with unlimited terminals, and Oracle Simphony is the enterprise answer for multi-unit and global brands, sold by quote. Full field and the trade-offs: restaurant POS software and best POS system for a restaurant.
Inventory and food cost — MarketMan or MarginEdge #
This is the layer that turns supplier invoices into a food-cost number you can act on. MarketMan starts at $249/mo and rates 4.7 on Capterra from 112 reviews; MarginEdge is flat $350 per location per month with no contract and rates 4.6 from 47 reviews. Craftable (4.5, 123 reviews) and Toast-owned xtraCHEF are the other two serious options, both sold by quote. The decision is less about features than about who keys your invoices and whether the output lands in your accounting system without a re-entry step. See restaurant inventory software and the best restaurant inventory management software.
Accounting and back office — Restaurant365 #
Restaurant365 is the one platform here that is accounting-first rather than a layer on top of QuickBooks: accounting, inventory and scheduling in one system, sold by quote, 4.1 on Capterra from 72 reviews. If your books already live in QuickBooks or Xero and you only need invoice capture and daily food cost on top, the back-office tools above do that job for less. Both routes are laid out in restaurant accounting software and ranked in best restaurant accounting software.
Scheduling, time clock and labor — 7shifts #
7shifts is the restaurant-specific choice at $39.99/mo per location (freemium entry) with the strongest review base in the category — 4.7 on Capterra from 1,212 reviews. The generalist shift-work tools undercut it per head: When I Work from $2.50/user/mo (4.5, 1,300 reviews), Deputy from $5/user/mo (4.6, 773), Sling from $2/user/mo (4.6, 212). HotSchedules is the enterprise incumbent, sold by quote (4.4, 462 reviews). Compare them head to head in best restaurant scheduling software, and if tip distribution is the reason you are shopping, in tip pooling software.
Online ordering and delivery — ChowNow, GloriaFood or Olo #
The split here is commission. ChowNow is commission-free ordering and marketing for independents from $229/mo (4.7, 47 reviews); GloriaFood is free and commission-free for ordering and table reservations (4.6, 68 reviews); Slice does the same job for pizzerias only, from $39/mo (4.6, 47). For multi-unit digital ordering with its own guest-data and payments layer, Olo is the enterprise platform, by quote. If the website and marketing are the real gap, Popmenu starts at $159/mo (4.7, 22 reviews) and BentoBox sells restaurant sites with commission-free ordering by quote (4.5, 29). Start at restaurant online ordering systems and the best restaurant online ordering system.
Reservations and the floor — OpenTable or Resy #
OpenTable runs $149/$299/$499 per month on a one-year term and adds a $1–$1.50 per-cover network fee on diners booked through its network — you are buying demand, and you pay by the head. Resy is $289 or $459/mo flat with no per-cover fees (4.5 on Capterra from 20 reviews — a thin sample, read it as directional), Tock matches that pricing and adds prepaid and ticketed events (4.2 on G2 from 96), and SevenRooms is the guest-data and marketing play, by quote (4.4, 24 reviews). The arithmetic that actually decides it — network covers × fee versus the flat-rate gap — is in best restaurant reservation systems; if the floor plan and seating matter more than the booking network, start with restaurant table management software.
Kitchen display — a POS module, not a separate purchase #
In this niche a KDS is almost always a module of the POS you already bought, priced per screen. Square charges $20–$30/mo per device depending on plan; Toast, Clover, Lightspeed, Lavu, Revel, SpotOn and Oracle Simphony all ship kitchen display as part of their own stack. That is why the buying question is "does my POS route tickets the way my line works", not "which standalone KDS". See kitchen display systems and the best kitchen display systems by segment.
The shortlist in one table #
| Job | Pick | Published price | The catch worth knowing |
|---|---|---|---|
| POS, counter service | Square for Restaurants | Free $0, Plus $49, Premium $149/mo per location | Processing 2.6%/2.5%/2.4% + 15¢; KDS and Kiosk billed per device |
| POS, full service | Toast | $0/mo software on Pay-as-You-Go | Hardware, install and per-device fees; processing bundled, no bring-your-own processor |
| POS, turnkey hardware | Clover | $135–$354/mo financed, or $89.95–$129.85/mo + hardware | Three-year contract on financed bundles; locked to Clover/First Data processing |
| Inventory and food cost | MarketMan · MarginEdge | from $249/mo · $350/mo per location | Sits on top of your POS; neither takes payments |
| Accounting back office | Restaurant365 | by quote | Accounting-first; heavier than a QuickBooks add-on layer |
| Scheduling and labor | 7shifts | from $39.99/mo per location | Per-user tools (When I Work $2.50, Deputy $5, Sling $2) cost less at small headcount |
| Online ordering | ChowNow · GloriaFood | from $229/mo · free | Commission-free, but you drive your own demand |
| Reservations and floor | OpenTable · Resy | $149–$499/mo + $1–$1.50 per network cover · $289–$459/mo flat | Cover fees versus flat rate is the whole decision |
| Kitchen display | module of your POS | e.g. Square KDS $20–$30/mo per device | Rarely worth buying standalone |
How the stack fits together #
The reason integrations matter more than feature counts is that each number is produced by one system and consumed by another. A server fires a check on the POS; the POS writes the item-level sales mix that your inventory platform depletes against recipes; the invoice your produce vendor emails lands in the back-office tool, gets costed, and posts to QuickBooks or Xero as a journal entry; the hours your staff clock in the scheduling app become payroll and the labor half of prime cost. Break one link and someone re-keys data — which is where the week goes in most independent restaurants.
Delivery is the other seam. Orders from DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub either land on their own tablets or flow into the POS through an integration; the second way is the only one that keeps your sales mix and your 86 list honest. Our integrations directory maps which vendors connect to QuickBooks, Xero, DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub, Gusto, ADP and the major POS platforms, and at what depth.
What restaurant software costs #
Three cost lines, and operators routinely underestimate the third.
Software subscriptions. POS software runs from $0 (Toast Pay-as-You-Go, Square Free, GloriaFood) to roughly $69–$149/mo per location for mainstream paid tiers, with enterprise sold by quote. Back-office and inventory sit higher — $249–$350/mo per location for MarketMan and MarginEdge. Scheduling is cheap per head ($2–$5/user) or $39.99/mo per location for a restaurant-specific tool. Reservations are the outlier: $149–$499/mo, plus per-cover fees on OpenTable.
Hardware and implementation. Terminals, handhelds, cash drawers, printers and kitchen screens are either financed into the monthly rate (Clover's 36-month plans) or paid up front (Clover's buy option starts at $849 for a QSR Mini bundle and $1,799 for a full-service Station Solo bundle). Toast folds hardware and install into its Pay-as-You-Go platform rate or finances it at 0% by application.
Card processing — usually the biggest line. Interchange alone is about 1.5–2.0% on credit, network assessments add roughly 0.13–0.15%, and all-in in-person rates in 2025–26 typically land at 2.49–2.99% + $0.10–$0.15 per transaction (PaymentCollect, gosnappy). Published examples: Square 2.6% + 15¢ on Free, Clover 2.3% + 10¢ on restaurant plans, 3.5% + 10–15¢ for keyed or card-on-file at both. At $80,000 a month in card volume, a 0.3-point difference in rate is $240/month — more than most software tiers. Run your own numbers in the restaurant POS cost calculator.
The restaurant management software market, briefly #
Analyst scopes differ enough that a single market number is meaningless, so here is the range with its sources. The Business Research Company puts global restaurant POS software at about $12.38B in 2025, growing to $17.58B by 2030 (~7% CAGR); Market Research Future models 8.6% CAGR through 2035; an OpenPR market note projects $21.62B by 2033 with North America at roughly 40% of the global total. Call it a 7–9% growth category led by North America.
Concentration in the POS layer, by install-tracking estimate: Square ~24%, Toast ~22%, Clover ~6%, Lightspeed ~4.6%, Aloha ~2.8% (6sense, a web-footprint estimate across a broad POS category that includes retail — directional, not restaurant-only share). In the small-restaurant segment specifically, Payments Dive has Clover at roughly 20% (~175,000 locations) against Toast at ~17% (~145,000). Toast itself reported about 156,000 active locations and ~$2.0B ARR by Q3 2025. The practical read for a buyer: the two platforms you will be pitched most are also the two with the deepest app ecosystems, and both monetize through bundled processing.
The numbers that force the purchase #
Restaurant margins do not leave room for guesswork. Net profit typically lands at 3–9% and commonly only 2–6% after everything (UpMenu, Toast), which means a one- or two-point move in food or labor cost is the whole profit. Prime cost — COGS plus labor — is the number operators manage to, targeted around 60% of revenue (55–65%, with full-service at 60–65% and QSR 55–60%). Food cost runs 28–35% and labor about 30–35%, higher in QSR. Annual turnover above 75% overall and 100–130% in quick service (Homebase, Toast) is why scheduling, onboarding and tip tooling sell themselves, and why "easy to train on Saturday night" beats any feature list.
Who is buying: roughly 70% of US restaurants are single-unit and about 90% are small businesses under 50 employees (Toast). That is why all-in-one bundles win more often than best-of-breed stacks — one bill, one support number, one login for a manager who is also expediting.
How to choose, by what you actually run #
- One room, counter service, tight budget. Square Free or Toast Pay-as-You-Go, GloriaFood for commission-free ordering, Sling or When I Work for shifts. Watch the processing rate, not the software fee. See POS systems for small restaurants and the cheapest POS systems.
- Full-service, tables and tabs. A restaurant-native POS (TouchBistro, Lightspeed, Toast) plus a reservation and floor platform, then inventory once food cost starts drifting. Bar POS systems covers the bar-specific version of this.
- Two to five locations. The back office becomes the bottleneck before the POS does: MarginEdge or MarketMan for invoice-to-food-cost across stores, 7shifts for labor across stores, Restaurant365 if you want accounting in the same system.
- Multi-unit and enterprise. Oracle Simphony or Aloha on the POS side, Olo for digital ordering, and integration depth as the deciding criterion — ask which connections are native versus marketplace before signing.
How we research this #
We pull every pricing fact from the vendor's own live pricing page and separate verified facts from marketing claims. Ratings are real third-party aggregates (Capterra, G2) with the review count shown so you can weigh a 4.5 from 20 reviews differently from a 4.7 from 1,212; where no reliable aggregate exists, we show none rather than invent one. Cons are matched per vendor from that vendor's own reviews, not applied as a blanket. Rankings are editorial and are not paid placements. Method and sourcing rules: methodology. Full directory: all restaurant software vendors. Head-to-head: comparisons. Switching off a platform you already run: alternatives.
Frequently Asked Questions
In practice, six or seven systems: the POS that owns the check, inventory and food-cost tools that cost out supplier invoices, labor scheduling and time clock, online ordering and delivery, reservations and floor management, accounting, and the kitchen display that routes tickets to the line. The POS is bought first; the rest get added as each one starts costing money.
POS software runs from $0 (Toast Pay-as-You-Go, Square Free, GloriaFood) to about $69–$149 per location for mainstream paid tiers, with enterprise by quote. Inventory and back office are $249–$350 per location (MarketMan, MarginEdge). Scheduling is $2–$5 per user or $39.99 per location for 7shifts. Reservations are $149–$499, plus $1–$1.50 per network cover on OpenTable. Card processing — typically 2.49–2.99% + $0.10–$0.15 in person — is usually the largest line of all.
Square for Restaurants on the Free plan or Toast on Pay-as-You-Go, because the software fee is $0 and the cost is in processing and hardware you can size to your volume. Add GloriaFood for commission-free online ordering and a cheap per-user scheduling tool. The decision that matters at this size is the processing rate and whether you are locked into a multi-year contract.
All-in-one wins for single-unit operators — one bill, one support line, one system for a manager who is also running the pass. Best-of-breed starts paying off at two to five locations, where a dedicated back office (MarginEdge, MarketMan) or a dedicated labor platform does a job the POS module does shallowly. The test is whether the data moves between systems without anyone re-keying it.
No. Inventory, back-office and accounting platforms read sales and item-level mix out of the POS and write costs into your books; they do not take payments or ring in orders. MarginEdge, MarketMan, Craftable, xtraCHEF and Restaurant365 all sit on top of an existing POS.
Most back-office and accounting tools post to QuickBooks or Xero, most POS platforms take DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub orders through an integration rather than a separate tablet, and scheduling tools export hours to payroll providers such as Gusto or ADP. Our integrations directory lists which vendor connects to what, and whether the connection is native, certified or marketplace-level.
Yes. Rankings are editorial and are not paid placements. Pricing comes from each vendor's own pages, ratings are real Capterra and G2 aggregates with review counts shown, and cons are matched per vendor from real reviews. See our methodology.