Compare the best restaurant order management software to streamline ordering, reduce errors, and boost efficiency across all types of restaurants.
High-quality restaurant order management software streamlines operations, improves efficiency, helps ensure accuracy, and enhances the overall customer experience, whether it’s a small local cafe or a branch of a large national chain.
Additional functions, such as real-time inventory management and data management, take some applications beyond being basic order-takers.
In this guide, I take a look at six restaurant order management software products to determine which ones offer great value and functionality, and suit different types of restaurant and food service businesses.
Visit Toast
This is a paid placement. However, our team of experts approved it as an appropriate product and our content remains editorially independent.
| Provider | Free trial? | Key features | Monthly starting price | My score |
 Toast | X Free demo only | • Streamlined online and POS order-taking • Real-time reporting and analytics • Team management functions | $69 + $9/employee | 4.5/5 |
| Visit Toast | ||||
 Square | 30 days | • QR-enabled order management • Kitchen communication system • Third-party integration | $69/location | 4.4/5 |
| Visit Square | ||||
 Lightspeed | X Free demo | • Advanced inventory management • Order tracking and table management • Customer behavior insights | $189 | 4/5 |
| Visit Lightspeed | ||||
 Clover | 90 days | • Cloud-based accessibility • Extensive app ecosystem • Flexible hardware options | $89.95 + $849 upfront | 4/5 |
| Visit Clover | ||||
 SpotOn | X Free demo | • Advanced customer relationship management • Sales tracking tools • Real-time manager alerts | $50 + $55 per POS station | 3.9/5 |
| Visit SpotOn | ||||
 ChowNow | X Free demo | • Integrated online order platform • Top spenders identifier • Automatic data synchronization | $119 | 3.7/5 |
| Visit ChowNow | ||||
Pricing: 4.25/5
General features: 5/5
Advanced features: 5/5
Support: 5/5
Expert score: 4.56/5
There are plenty of sound reasons why Toast is a popular choice for many restaurants (it’s one of our top online ordering systems overall). Busy restaurants typically don’t have the time or resources to spend days training new employees on new systems, so Toast’s user-friendly interface and intuitiveness make it easy to onboard people.
Toast offers good communication systems between BOH and FOH, easy order-taking with mobile devices, and manages customer data to help restaurants provide personalized experiences to loyal customers. For an extra cost, you can add inventory management functionality to a Toast subscription.
The main downside to Toast as a restaurant order management software is that it only works with Toast’s own hardware and payment processing services, which might not be the flexible option many businesses are seeking.
Additionally, it means you can’t really shop around for the best deal for hardware and payment processing solutions. That said, for some businesses, the one-stop-shop concept is an easy way to plug and play in a hurry — if the price is right.
Pricing plans
Order management: Users have praised the efficiency and accuracy of Toast’s order management, which reduces errors and helps speed up service during busy shifts.
Inventory control: Many users believe this function is worth paying extra for. Users generally regard Toast’s inventory control as an effective way to keep track of inventory, reduce food waste, and save costs.
Real-time reporting: This feature includes live sales data during shifts, so managers can keep track of daily revenue, hourly revenue breakdowns, and comparisons to earlier periods. In particular, being able to access this data via Toast’s mobile app or web platform is popular with users.
Payroll and HR solutions: Rather than shopping around for a separate payroll and HR management software provider, these functions can be added to a Toast subscription for a streamlined, unified approach to restaurant management.
Tip management and bill-splitting: Automated POS tip and bill-splitting calculation functions make the sometimes-awkward bill-paying and tipping experience more seamless for customers.
Pricing: 4.75/5
General features: 4.25/5
Advanced features: 2.38/5
Support: 4.63/5
Expert score: 4.65/5
Managing costs is essential for small and new restaurants. Square scores well among startups and smaller businesses thanks to its generous 30-day free trial, free starter plan, and reasonable $69 opening price for a monthly plan.
Square’s mobile hardware and POS system is great for food trucks, small cafes, and outdoor venues. It’s easy to use and doesn’t require onerous training sessions to get started. The interface is minimalistic, and while it doesn’t come with a lot of the bells and whistles of other systems, it allows for unlimited tills, integration with online orders, and QR ordering, which became popular during the pandemic and is here to stay.
Larger restaurants might prefer an option with more advanced features, such as more in-depth reporting options and greater customization options. But for smaller-scale businesses, the free and affordable options make it a smart choice for keeping costs down and operations streamlined, especially in the startup phase.
Pricing plans
Easy, transparent payment processing: Square’s payment processing allows for contactless payments, chip cards, and manual card entries, with a transaction fee of 1.6% per transaction to make it easy for businesses to budget.
Online ordering: Particularly for businesses with a delivery service, the online ordering dashboard streamlines this process, helping save time and improve the customer experience.
Multi-location management: Ideal for businesses with more than one site — or businesses keen to scale up — Square’s multi-location function means you can manage multiple locations from the one dashboard.
Online booking: Restaurants need to offer online booking to stay relevant and competitive, and Square’s system enables easy booking and sends customers reminders to reduce the risk of no-shows.
Inventory management: This function allows restaurants to efficiently and transparently track stock in real time and across multiple locations.lation functions make the sometimes-awkward bill-paying and tipping experience more seamless for customers.
Pricing: 3.5/5
General features: 4.25/5
Advanced features: 4.25/5
Support: 5/5
Expert score: 3.66/5
Lightspeed’s wide range of functions is far from basic. Larger restaurants will benefit from the advanced inventory management, reporting, analytics, and excellent customization. In particular, the reporting and analytics help managers make better business decisions quickly.
While the lack of a free trial and starting price of $189 per month may be beyond the reach of many smaller or less established businesses, full-service, fine dining, and fast-growing restaurants may find Lightspeed to be a worthwhile investment.
As a restaurant order management system, Lightspeed caters to complex business needs with great functionality for in-person and device users. Its advanced reporting and analytics provide detailed critical insights, making it a solid choice for businesses with the drive to scale up, as well as those who are already at the top of their game and need the extra tech backup to keep thriving.
Pricing plans
Inventory management: A favourite feature with many users, Lightspeed’s inventory management includes tools for managing purchases and vendors, as well as stock tracking.
All locations view: This allows multi-location restaurant businesses to view aggregated data across all sites, with breakdowns for each location’s contribution to the overall business. This is new for 2025.
Most popular items: Also new for 2025, this feature lets users quickly view the top ten best-selling items at all business locations.
Tailored staff profiling: This security feature means every employee has their own profile on the system so they can only access the functions they need to use, while protecting confidential business data.
Menu customization: Busy restaurants often need to be agile with their online menus and make last-minute adjustments. This function allows restaurants to add or remove items in minutes, as well as include photos and descriptions.
Pricing: 3.31/5
General features: 4.25/5
Advanced features: 3.88/5
Support: 4.81/5
Expert score: 4.24/5
Clover has become a very popular product for good reason. While it might not have the same wide-ranging customization options as some of its competitors, Clover comes packed with plenty of handy functions. If you’re looking for a plug-and-play turnkey solution that is easy to learn, it’s definitely worth considering.
This one stands out for its long 90-day free trial, which is ample time for a business to decide if it’s worth making the bigger investment in a monthly subscription and hardware. While some users may balk at the financial outlay required, it’s worth noting that Clover integrates well with QuickBooks, multiple ecommerce platforms, and PayPal.
While some users have complained about less-than-perfect customer support when dealing with more complex issues, Clover response times are generally good. The extensive suite of standard features helps make up for limited customization, and it’s a sound choice for growing businesses.
Pricing plans
Order management system: All subscription tiers come with an extensive order management system, including bill splitting, tipping, table maps, open tabs with card authorization, contactless dining, and discounting functionality.
Online ordering: No-fee online ordering, pick-up and delivery functions, and online menus might make Clover worth the investment for smaller businesses that rely on delivery and takeout customers.
Reporting: All tiers can help restaurants make better decisions via functions such as real-time sales tracking, detailed sales reports, tax management, and itemized cost tracking.
Menu management: This omnichannel function allows all subscribers to track stock and manage different menu categories with an easy color-coded system.
Rapid deposit: This cash flow-boosting function, which deposits funds in the business account within minutes of a credit card transaction, is available with all tiers for a 1.75% fee.
Pricing: 4.69/5
General features: 5/5
Advanced features: 4.75/5
Support: 4.75/5
Expert score: 4.35/5
SpotOn is not a brilliant option for smaller businesses, but if you have at least 15 team members, the counter-service and full-service plans represent great value and functionality. If you’re a smaller business that’s still keen on trying the free plan, do bear in mind that you’ll need to buy hardware that is compatible with SpotOn.
Many users praise SpotOn for being easy to learn, which is a boon for restaurants that need to train many employees. In terms of support, professional local reps are rated highly by many users, along with responsiveness to customer queries.
With the top monthly subscription price similar to the lower tier prices of some of SpotOn’s competitors, it represents great value for managing bigger teams in busy restaurants. And with no annual contracts to lock you in, SpotOn is a safe financial choice in these uncertain economic times.
Pricing plans
Free online demo: While SpotOn doesn’t offer a free trial, the free online demo has been hailed by users for the personalized experience based on individual business requirements.
Email marketing: In a crowded market, it can be hard for busy restaurateurs to take the time to reach out to customers, so this function can be an easy way to help encourage repeat visits.
SpotOn Teamwork: Designed for bigger teams, this comprehensive HR function helps with payroll, sharing tips, controlling labor costs, scheduling, and clocking in.
SpotOn Reserve: This function makes turn-time recommendations based on how busy the shift is, manages wait lists online, communicates via text with diners, and integrates customer data for marketing and decision-making.
Advanced reporting: Clear dashboards help restaurant managers analyse the reports SpotOn generates on labor costs, available stock, and sales.
Pricing: 3.38/5
General features: 4/5
Advanced features: 3.5/5
Support: 5/5
Expert score: 3.33/5
During the pandemic, takeout and home delivery businesses boomed while restaurants were temporarily closed. And even after lockdowns were lifted, it became clear that consumers still enjoyed the convenience of enjoying restaurant-quality food at home. ChowNow is a solid, affordable option for restaurants with a strong focus on takeout and home delivery.
ChowNow leaves behind the rapidly fading world of telephone takeout and delivery orders, with online ordering options, including via Instagram, Yelp, and Google. Customers can download an Android or iOS app to order food and search for restaurants.
While ChowNow does not offer the broad range of features, such as in-depth reporting functionality, that bigger, table service-focused restaurants demand, it’s a great option for smaller takeout and delivery businesses that are looking for efficiency and instant engagement with their customers.
Pricing plans
Customizable branding: This is a quick and easy way to boost restaurant brand recognition every time customers interact with ChowNow applications.
Multiple support options: Users can receive customer support via phone, email, live chat, and FAQs.
Centralized dashboard: A user-friendly way to help managers synchronize menus across multiple channels, track high spenders for marketing and engagement, and gather basic data from daily, weekly, and monthly reports.
Flexible packages: To provide businesses with flexibility, especially when cash flow fluctuates, ChowNow offers packages on a monthly or annual basis.
Menu editing: The intuitive menu-editing function allows businesses to quickly add or remove items, allowing for easy pivoting when demand rises or falls for certain menu items or there are issues with ingredient availability.
Obviously — and especially in a challenging economy — businesses have to watch their outgoing expenses. Pricing is a major consideration, but it doesn’t necessarily mean the cheapest product is automatically the best.
It’s important to balance value for money with functionality and whether a business is better off spending more for a solution that best suits their needs. This is where free demos and trials are useful.
It’s important to look first and foremost at the general features — the ones most businesses will use most of the time — to work out what products will be the most valuable on a day-to-day basis.
Because almost all employees will interact with the software during their shifts, it’s smart to evaluate how intuitive and user-friendly every product is, especially when it comes to how easy it is to train people.
When it comes to choosing software, most businesses will have a list of need-to-have requirements, as well as nice-to-haves.
Individual restaurants will have different needs when it comes to the more advanced features. For example, a fine dining establishment that values repeat business and loyalty may require deeper insights into customer behavior than a highway diner with a more itinerant customer base.
Especially when someone is new to the restaurant business and onboarding requirements are extensive, it’s vital that they have the right support from day one.
The products that will be praised for customer service and support are generally the ones that allow busy, and often frustrated, people to solve problems quickly and via their preferred form of communication. While online support is the main way of accessing support, for many users, the human touch is still important.
I always analyze as many expert and user reviews as possible. Expert scores are useful for getting an overall picture of how effective each product is and what features and benefits it has to offer restaurant managers and employees.
Equally, it’s important to find out what real people who use the software on a daily basis have to say about everything from ease of use to customer service to the advanced functions they find genuinely worth the purchase price.
Bigger premises and bigger teams will have different needs than smaller spaces where you may be able to count the number of employees on any given shift on one hand. If a restaurant has multiple tills, a large number of tables, and a complex menu, easy access is crucial.
As well as the capacity for multiple users, it can be useful to invest in a product that allows different levels of access, from day-to-day functions to access to detailed reports. Smaller businesses and startups may need a more basic program to help them hit the ground running, although they may find they need to upgrade their subscription if they scale up.
Every restaurant needs to work out how much it can afford to spend on order management software and, ideally, seek out the product that ticks as many boxes as possible without breaking the bank. Simply choosing the cheapest option can turn out to be a false economy if it’s not right for your business.
Free demos and free trials can be useful for making a decision before committing to a system. Check contracts and cancellation terms carefully. Are you confident enough in your business to lock into a longer contract, or would a short-term option be a safer bet?
Most businesses are looking for a software solution that does more than just basic POS functions. With this in mind, ensuring the product meets your software and hardware integration needs is important. Many systems integrate with popular programs, such as QuickBooks.
Some restaurant software requires you to purchase their hardware, while others can be integrated with other brands. If you already have hardware or software that you’re happy with, definitely make sure you check the integration capacities on any product you’re considering.
What are your need-to-haves when it comes to choosing restaurant order management software? And what are your nice-to-haves? First, make a list of the need-to-haves, the functions that are absolutely not negotiable. These are usually the functions that you and your team will be using every day.
When it comes to additional bells and whistles, such as advanced reporting and inventory management, determine if you already have the capacity to manage these functions or whether it’s worth paying a bit more for software that does more than just order-taking and POS tasks.
Everyone’s mileage varies when it comes to how quickly and easily they can learn new software. That said, Clover and Toast consistently score well with real-world users when it comes to rating ease of use and easy staff training.
Some brands offer free versions or free subscriptions with a few additional costs. These include Toast’s Starter Kit, Square’s free POS plan, and SpotOn’s Quick Start plan. However, free versions will always be more limited than the paid packages, so it’s worth analyzing whether you should spend a bit more.
Absolutely. Indeed, every product we have reviewed here is designed to easily integrate with existing POS systems or comes with its own. Some plans require restaurants to purchase their POS hardware, while others work with existing systems. It’s smart to determine what will work best for your needs and budget.
POS software handles customer-facing transactions, payments, and checkout interactions. Order management software takes on more roles for the whole journey from sale to delivery, which can include communication between BOH and FOH, reporting, data analysis, inventory control, marketing, and HR operations.
Every establishment is different, so when it comes to choosing ordering software for restaurants, it’s a case of “horses for courses.” What might be ideal for a fine dining restaurant at the premium end of the market might be too complex for a more down-to-earth food truck or takeout-and-delivery focused venture. The needs of a restaurant with a large staff will differ from a small operation with a few employees, so it’s important to shop around.
While we’ve rated Toast as the best overall product, this guide serves as a window into a range of leading software options that work well for different types of restaurant businesses. Striking the right balance between the best functionality for your unique needs and getting great value for money is vital.
Georgia Lewis has been a journalist for more than 30 years. Her work has taken her all over the world, including Australia, the Middle East, Africa, the US, Europe, and the UK. Over the years, she has had an interesting relationship with restaurants, from working at Pizza Hut as a driver, wait-person, and manager, to almost getting fired for an honest restaurant review in Dubai. Two of her main areas of professional interest are hospitality and technology, so contributing to The Restaurant HQ is an opportunity to take deep dives into both industries.
Restaurant HQ is your headquarters for restaurant business advice from industry experts. Learn how to start, run and grow any food and beverage business.
Property of TechnologyAdvice. © 2025 TechnologyAdvice. All Rights Reserved
Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this site are from companies from which TechnologyAdvice receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site including, for example, the order in which they appear. TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies or all types of products available in the marketplace.
