Our take
Toast dominates the restaurant POS category for good reason. Every feature is designed for food service workflows: servers can fire courses from handhelds, the kitchen display replaces messy paper tickets, and the built-in online ordering system avoids the 15-30% commissions charged by DoorDash or Uber Eats. The offline mode is a genuine differentiator — your restaurant keeps running even when the internet goes down. The downsides are real, though. The two-year contract locks you in, and you must use Toast's proprietary hardware (no BYOD iPads). The free plan's 2.99% + $0.15 per transaction adds up fast at high volume, pushing most restaurants toward the $69/mo plan for the 2.49% rate. If you run a restaurant or bar and plan to stay for at least two years, Toast is the best-in-class option.