Toast vs Square vs Clover vs Opero: a restaurant POS comparison

Most restaurant POS comparisons pit two systems against each other. Buyers usually have three or four open in different tabs. This page puts Toast, Square for Restaurants, Clover and Opero (operoos.com) side by side on the questions that decide a purchase: whose hardware you run, how the price is built, what happens to card processing, how long you are committed, and what each system cannot do. Opero loses several rows, and the table says so.

How this comparison was built

Competitor figures appear in one place only: the sourced tables near the end of this page, copied exactly from each vendor's own pricing page, with the link and the date we checked it. Nothing comes from memory, review sites or estimates, and where a vendor's page shows no figure, the table says so. Qualitative statements in the comparison come from the same pages; where those pages were silent, the cell sends you to the vendor's site to confirm. Opero's own prices are $149 per location per month for the Opero plan and $249 for Opero Full-Service, with Enterprise quoted.

Prices on these sites change, and resellers quote differently from list prices, so treat the sourced tables as a starting point and confirm current pricing on each vendor's site before you sign.

Toast: deep restaurant tooling on Toast hardware

Toast is built for restaurants, and its pricing page shows it: a Starter Kit aimed at single locations with one or two terminals, a Point of Sale plan, a Build Your Own option at custom pricing, and a long chart of add-on suites for online ordering, marketing and loyalty, scheduling and payroll, supplier and accounting tools, and multi-location management. Its FAQ says Toast's services may only be used on approved Toast hardware. Processing is described as a flat rate without a figure on the pricing page, and offline mode and around-the-clock support are listed among its headline features. Contract length is not stated on that page, so ask before you sign.

Square for Restaurants: the easiest start

Square publishes three priced restaurant plans per location, starting with a free plan, plus custom Square Pro pricing for high-volume businesses, and its card rates step down as the plan steps up. The kitchen display app and the kiosk software are priced per device on the paid plans and are not offered on the free one, so a busy kitchen with several screens pays for each. Its FAQ says the paid plans include a free trial and can be cancelled or switched anytime, and that you do not need to buy hardware to take payments. Square lists offline payments on every plan, with conditions set out in its footnote.

Clover: devices, software and processing in one package

Clover's full-service restaurant pricing page sells packages that combine Clover devices with its Restaurant Growth software, each available as one monthly price over a fixed term or as an upfront hardware price plus a smaller monthly fee. Card rates are published for in-person and typed-in transactions. Every full-service package lists table mapping, open tabs with card pre-authorization, item and order-level discounts, online ordering, stock tracking and shift management, and the Standard and Advanced packages add tableside ordering and firing. Clover's pricing FAQ says its subscriptions are non-cancelable, that its devices cannot be used with other processors, and that contract terms vary by the provider who sold you the system.

Opero: unlimited devices at one price per location

Opero is a restaurant operating system that runs on the Android tablets and phones you already own. The Opero plan ($149 per location per month) includes the POS, unlimited kitchen screens and pay-first self-order kiosks, QR and online pickup ordering, menu boards, a guest database with loyalty and coupons, and reporting with a multi-location dashboard. Opero Full-Service ($249) adds table service, inventory with recipe costing and labor scheduling. Every plan is month-to-month with unlimited devices. The one piece of hardware you must buy is the card reader, one for each register or kiosk that takes cards, bought from Opero, and card processing runs only through Opero at a rate quoted per business.

Where each one wins

• ✓Toast wins on restaurant depth and ecosystem: a long add-on catalogue on its pricing page, a POS and payroll bundle offered to new restaurants, multi-location management, and offline mode listed among its headline features.
• ✓Square wins on the lowest-commitment start: a free plan, published card rates, a free trial on paid plans, and cancellation anytime according to its FAQ.
• ✓Clover wins for bars that hold a card on a tab, for operators who want purpose-built handhelds from the same vendor, and for owners who want the POS sold through their bank.
• ✓Opero wins when the device count is the problem: unlimited registers, kiosks and kitchen screens with no per-device software fee, at one per-location price, on Android tablets you own, month-to-month.

What Opero does not do

• ✓No offline mode: every register, kiosk and kitchen screen needs a working internet connection.
• ✓No other processor and no published card rate: payments run through Opero and are quoted per business.
• ✓Android only: Opero does not run on other tablet platforms or on Toast, Square or Clover hardware.
• ✓No manual comps or price overrides, and full refunds only.
• ✓No merging checks, no hold-and-fire by course, and no bar-tab pre-authorization.
• ✓Reservations are host-run, with no online guest self-booking.
• ✓No gift cards, and sales history, saved cards, gift card balances and loyalty points do not move over from another system.

How to compare total cost across all four

Software price is the easiest number to compare and the least useful on its own. Build a twelve-month total for each system using your own counts:

• ✓Software for every location, on the plan that actually covers how you run (table service, inventory and labor often sit on higher tiers).
• ✓Every device: registers, handhelds, kiosks and kitchen screens, including any per-device software fees and hardware bought, financed or bundled into a term.
• ✓Card processing on a real month of your sales, in person and online. This is usually the largest line, and the one most often left out of comparisons.
• ✓Add-ons you would buy on day one: online ordering, loyalty, payroll, apps.
• ✓The cost of leaving: the remaining term, buyout or return terms, and what it takes to move your menu and staff.

Switching between them

Moving from any of these systems to another is mostly a question of what carries over. Moving to Opero, your menu comes across through an import that reads Toast, Square and Clover item exports and waits for your review before anything goes live. Sales history, saved cards, gift card balances, loyalty points and the old hardware do not move. Each location applies for its own Opero merchant account, which is underwritten before you can charge a card, so keep your current processing live until a real sale has gone through on the new reader. Check your current agreement's end date and buyout terms before you set a date.