Toast POS vs Square POS (2024): What’s the Difference?

Struggling to settle the debate of Toast POS vs Square POS?

Both of these point of sale systems have plenty to offer today’s business leaders. From tools to help you track your inventory, to solutions for staff management and customer loyalty, Toast and Square POS can both help to ramp up your revenue.

While Toast is most commonly connected to the restaurant and food service landscape, Square is a more flexible solution for all-around fast-paced mobile commerce.

Today, we’re going to take a closer look at the features and functionality of each system, to help you make the right choice for your business.

Toast POS vs Square POS: An Introduction

Both Toast and Square are Point of Sale solutions designed to help business leaders in a range of environments manage transactions, customers, inventory, and employees.

With Toast POS, you’ll be getting a solution with a strong standing in the restaurant industry, offering innovative hardware, excellent customer service, and various tools just for the food service space.

While Square also has its own dedicated solution for restaurants, it’s also more of a comprehensive POS solution, ubiquitous in the point of sale world for its flexibility and ease of use.

Square is one of the most powerful tools on the market for rapidly getting your new business up and running.

Toast

Toast is an Android-based point of sale system built to deliver an effective way to run your restaurant or service.

The solution has some major benefits for those in the foodservice landscape, including countless tools for tracking menus, and arranging your own floor plans.

Square

Square is an affordable and convenient tool for all kinds of business management, helping companies to run stores and restaurants alike.

The ecosystem comes with its own generous selection of hardware tools to choose from, as well as a wide variety of fantastic online features, including the ability your own online store for free.

Toast vs Square POS: Software Features

When comparing point of sale technology, you’ll usually have two different areas you’ll need to pay extra close attention to.

The point of sale software is the most important consideration for many business leaders, as it’s what’s responsible for everything from payment processing to inventory and store management.

Square POS

Square benefits from offering one of the most flexible and easy-to-use point of sale solutions in the current landscape.

You can access this software through online ordering, a smartphone app, or a dedicated tablet with it’s own mount and stand.

Suitable for omnichannel selling, Square enables a range of different transaction types. You can take payments in person, allow people to order online and pick up in store, and even integrate with a range of third-party food service providers.

Square allows companies to build their online and offline presence at the same time. You can build your own online store for free, and your inventory will sync automatically with your inventory in-store.

You’ll also have access to integrations with social media and various online marketplaces, so you can sell through different digital channels.

Offline, Square allows access to a range of powerful tools, designed for different kinds of business. For instance, there’s the standard Square POS ecosystem for retail, or you can use Square for Restaurant for things like menu management, and restaurant floor organization.

You’ll also have access to a host of tools for building customer loyalty on all packages.

Some of the most significant features of Square include:

• Global transactions in 7 different countries with a flat free pricing system
• Purchase ordering, online ordering, and access to integrations with third-party groups.
• Dedicated solutions for appointment scheduling, retail, and restaurant establishments
• Multiple payment options, including Apple and Google Pay.
• Offline mode, so you can continue to take payments even if you don’t have a connection.
• Inventory management with automatic syncing across all online and offline channels.
• Loyalty program (for an extra fee of $45 per month) with access to customer profiles.
• Available add-ons like Square Payroll, Square Marketing, and custom domains.
• Free online store builder with access to various growth tools and integrations.
• Multi-channel selling through social media, eBay, and other marketplaces.
• Customer insights and statistics, customer profile management, and email marketing.
• Integration with leading tools like Wix, Xero, and WooCommerce, as well as full API access for those with developer skills.

Toast POS

As mentioned above, Toast takes a slightly different approach to Square by focusing exclusively on the food service and restaurant industry.

The solution has become one of the most popular point of sale tools for restaurants, with exceptional levels of customer support, and powerful integrations.

With Toast, you can access third-party delivery systems to get your food to your customers, unlock a wide range of specialist tools for different kinds of food service business, and play with a wide range of hardware options.

There’s even access to contactless ordering.

Toast’s technology is extremely easy to use and modern, with convenient color-coding systems and table mapping, to help you keep track of your team.

There are fantastic tools for menu creation, and lots of options to take orders both online and offline. Toast also has a fantastic kiosk mode, which allows customers to place orders for themselves.

While Toast might not have the same versatility as Square, it’s definitely one of the top picks for the restaurant industry, offering features like:

• Convenient online and contactless ordering with integrations with GrubHub and UberEats
• Purchase ordering with support for multiple vendors in the same system.
• Payment processing with a quote based system
• Online ordering with pickup and delivery functions
• Customer profile creation with complete customer management
• Purchase ordering with automations based on low stock.
• Kiosk functionality for customers to make their own orders
• Offline mode to continue selling in any situation
• Convenient employee and performance reporting
• Specialist support for different kinds of food business
• Payroll, team management, and contactless ordering all in one

Toast vs Square: Hardware Solutions

Toast and Square both come with a series of hardware solutions to help you get the most out of your point of sale strategy.

Square offers a range of hardware options to choose from. Unlike most POS systems, Square even offers access to a free magstripe reader with certain packages.

The hardware options from Square range all the way from the intelligent “Square Terminal”, an all-in-one card machine for receipt printing and taking payments, to the “Square Register”, a fully integrated POS and payments solution.

There’s also the Square Stand for iPad POS strategies.

Alternatively, if you’re just looking for a simple way to manage payments as a small business owner, you can opt for the basic “Square Reader”, which offers quick and affordable debit card and credit card processing, as well as contactless payments like Google Pay or Apple Pay.

Merchants can also access all-in-one kits, like the Square Register Kit and Square Stand Kit, which come with access to a register solution.

Since Toast primarily focuses on restaurant management with it’s POS software, it’s hardware solutions are tailored to food service businesses too.

Whether you’re running a takeout restaurant, or a selection of cafes and bakeries, there are tools to suit all business needs.

Products include the Toast Go handheld POS, for processing mobile payments instantly, and the Toast “Mobile Order and Pay” system.

You can also purchase self-ordering kiosks, to allow customers to choose their own menu items easily. Plus, there are kitchen display systems available to keep your teams informed when orders roll in.

If you’re looking for a comprehensive all-in-one dashboard, the Toast Flex is a great option for managing products, sales, and inventory.

Plus, Toast offers a range of system accessories, such as Toast Tap for on-counter payments, a mobile card reader you can attach to your wrist, and back of house displays.

Toast POS vs Square POS: Performance and Analytics

No matter what kind of POS solution you choose for your business, access to comprehensive tools for analytics and reports will improve your chances of long-term growth.

Fortunately, both Toast and Square make it easy to collect valuable data throughout your organization.

Square offers a comprehensive back-end environment where you can not only schedule, manage, and pay team members, but also monitor and track all of your cash and invoices.

You can build customer profiles, recording their preferences and purchases over time. There’s also support for requesting user reviews and feedback, so you can keep your finger on the pulse of customer sentiment.

The complete “Square analytics” dashboard provides access to both real-time and historical data on sales trends, labour vs sales, and purchases.

You can download reports in a range of formats, and send financial CSVs straight to Xero with an easy integration.

Plus, the Square mobile app ensures you can access employee management tools, ecommerce insights, and front of house data, while you’re on the move.

Toast also makes it simple to learn more about the performance of your business. You can collect and respond to guest feedback immediately within the software platform.

Plus, the analytics system within the solution provides a completely unified overview of net sales and labor across different environments.

This means if you’re running a multi-location restaurant business, you can get a birds-eye view of how all of your restaurants are performing at once.

Restaurant owners can also monitor product mix reports, to identify potential areas of improvement, and use sales summaries to examine profits over specific time periods.

Toast can also integrate with tools like QuickBooks, for tax and bookkeeping purposes.

Toast POS vs Square: Pricing

Whether you choose Toast or POS for your store or quick-service restaurants, the price you’ll pay for your solution will depend on a number of factors.

It’s not just the monthly fee for the software you’ll need to account for, but also the price of any POS hardware and set-up costs too.

Toast offers a variety of plans to choose from, starting with its “Quick Start” bundle, which is available for free.

It comes access to the cloud-based point of sale solution, and setup for initial hardware, although the hardware itself may incur an additional cost.

Other options include:

• Core: Starting at $69 per month for all the features of the free bundle, plus reporting and analytics, flat-rate payment processing, real-time fraud monitoring, mobile dining solutions, 24/7 customer care, and all the hardware you like (for an extra fee).
• Growth: Starting at $165 per month for all the features of Core, plus Toast Online ordering, Toast Delivery Services, the Toast TakeOut app, and more.
• Build your own: A custom solution, with custom pricing, which includes all the hardware and software you need, as well as online ordering and delivery, easy integrated payroll and tips management, third-party integrations, employee scheduling and benefits, automated inventory management, guest marketing and gift cards.

Square takes a slightly different approach to pricing. The point of sale software from the company is free to use, with no setup or monthly fees.

You only pay when you take a payment. Transaction fees start at 1.75% for contactless payments, and 2.5% for virtual terminals and invoices.

Hardware fees start at $19 for a Square reader, or you can contact the Square sales team to build your own hardware bundle.

If you’re looking for a custom solution, businesses that process a certain amount of sales each month can ask for custom prices for hardware and transactions.

Specific versions of Square can come with additional fees, however. For instance, Square for Retail costs $60 per month per location, with access to advanced tools, like inventory management, retail reports, and team management.

Square for Restaurants also costs $60 per month per location, and includes extra tools for restaurateurs, additional employee permissions and modules.

Square POS vs Toast: Which is Best?

Whether you’re looking for a simple iOS solution to help process payments in your stores, or you want a comprehensive restaurant POS solution, there are plenty of different options out there to choose from.

Both Square and Toast offer a broad range of features for various business owners.

With both providers, you can access a range of valuable tools for inventory management, payment processing and analytics.

Plus, both companies offer various hardware solutions to choose from. However, Toast is perhaps a more comprehensive solution if you’re focusing on restaurant POS systems, as it’s dedicated to the food service industry.

Alternatively, Square is a more generalized POS solution, ideal for small business owners hoping to run virtually any kind of store, both online and offline.