AI drive-thru vendors compared: Presto, Hi Auto, SoundHound and others

AI drive-thru vendors with current product pages include Presto, Hi Auto, SoundHound, ConverseNow, Omilia and Incept AI. Most sell to chains and franchise groups, none prints a price, and each connects to the lane in its own way. Shortlist the two or three whose POS and headset partners match your store, then test them on the same menu.

Everything below comes from each vendor's own site, its press releases, or a partner's release. We have not tested these products. Maple sells a drive-thru unit too, so it sits in the same table with the same columns.

Which vendors sell AI drive-thru ordering?

Vendor	Channels	How it connects to the lane	POS or chain partners named publicly	Published price	Start here if
Presto (Presto Voice)	Drive-thru; launched a phone ordering unit in April 2025	Connects to the existing POS, confirmation board and drive-thru speaker; Presto says it installs in a few hours	Toast (joined its partner ecosystem in September 2026), plus PAR, Oracle and Qu logos; Wienerschnitzel, Taco John's and Dairy Queen	Not on presto.com	You run a QSR brand or franchise group on one of those POS systems and want to choose between AI-only and agent-assisted modes
Hi Auto	Drive-thru	An "audio box" joins the existing headsets and POS; Hi Auto says install takes about three hours with remote support	HME, PAR and Xenial for audio and POS; Sparkfly for loyalty; Bojangles and Lee's Famous Recipe Chicken quoted on its site	Not on hi.auto	Your stores run HME, PAR or Xenial and you want a remote human supervisor behind the AI
SoundHound (OASYS)	Phone, drive-thru and kiosk, plus SMS, apps and in-car assistants	Its restaurant page says it works with your existing POS and kitchen systems; lane hardware is not described there	Toast and Olo on its partners page, with Square and Oracle Restaurant logos; White Castle, Jersey Mike's, Five Guys and Church's Texas Chicken quoted	Not on soundhound.com	You want one vendor across phone, lane and kiosk
ConverseNow, which now owns Valyant AI	Phone, drive-thru and SMS; an order API for apps and kiosks	Bought Valyant AI in July 2024; Valyant's Holly assistant uses its own hardware to join drive-thru systems such as PAR and HME	Brink, NCR Aloha, PAR, Qu, Xpient and Olo logos; brands shown include Domino's, Wingstop, Hardee's and Denny's	Not on conversenow.ai	Phone orders are your larger volume and you want the lane from the same vendor
Omilia	Drive-thru; also sells contact-center voice AI	Not described in its Taco Bell release	Taco Bell, live at 890+ US restaurants in 38 states, per Omilia's July 2026 release	Not on omilia.com	You run a large brand and want to see a single-chain rollout of that size
Incept AI	Drive-thru and phone	Not detailed; its site says rollouts work across differing on-site hardware	Named as an AI voice ordering partner in Toast's April 2026 Toast Drive-Thru launch	Not on incept.ai	You are a Toast brand looking at Toast Drive-Thru, which Toast offers first to brands with 15 or more locations
Maple	Phone ordering (live); drive-thru and kiosk (early access with a small number of restaurants)	Its own unit stands beside the existing speaker post, with a directional microphone, a speaker and a screen showing the live cart; nothing is rewired and headsets keep working	Writes orders into Toast, Square, Clover, SkyTab, Lightspeed and others on its integrations page; no chain named	Drive-thru is priced per unit, with no public price	You want a lane unit that leaves your headset system in place and can join an early-access waitlist

OpenCity (Tori): a May 2023 release said Carl's Jr. and Hardee's had put Tori in select drive-thrus on Brink and Xenial POS. OpenCity's web address now leads to a page for ShiftCoach by TORI, which it titles drive-thru performance management. Ask OpenCity whether Tori order-taking is still for sale before you add it to a list.

What do vendors publish about their own results?

Several vendors print success rates on their sites. These are the vendors' own claims. Each uses its own definition, and some give none.

Vendor	The vendor's own claim	What the vendor says it counts
Presto	"Up to 95%" non-intervention rate, on its home page	The home page does not define non-intervention
Hi Auto	93% order completion and 96% accuracy across about 1,000 stores, on its product page	Completion means orders sent to the POS without staff stepping in; accuracy means every item and customization right. Its site also describes a human supervisor who steps in when the AI is not confident
SoundHound	90% AI order completion rate, shown beside a White Castle quote on its drive-thru page	The drive-thru page gives no definition
Incept AI	95%+ AI-only completion, on its home page	The home page gives no definition
ConverseNow	95%+ order accuracy, listed for its phone ordering product	The product page gives no definition

The one outside check we found is Intouch Insight's 2025 drive-thru study, which placed 120 mystery-shop orders at AI-enabled lanes of three chains. It reported 83% accuracy on those orders against 87% across the study, and 95% when staff stepped in to help. The study names the chains and leaves out their vendors, so read it as a view of the category.

What should you ask each vendor?

1. What goes in my lane? Ask for the parts list and who installs it: audio box, own unit, cameras or screens. Ask whether your headset system stays as it is. HME, for one, sells a NEXEO Pro headset platform it says is built to support a voice AI provider.
2. Which POS versions do you write into? Name your POS and version. A logo on a partners page does not show that your menu setup works.
3. Who steps in, and how? Ask whether remote agents take over, whether your crew does, and how a crew member takes the lane back mid-order.
4. How do you count a completed order? Ask whether orders fixed by a remote agent count, and whether cars that drive off count as failures.
5. How do menu changes reach the AI? Ask about price changes, sold-out items and limited-time offers, and how fast each one shows up.
6. Who owns the recordings and order data? Ask how long audio is kept and whether you can export it.
7. How is it priced? Per lane, per store or per order; hardware bought or leased; install fees; contract length and exit terms. Get it in writing.
8. Which stores like mine can I call? Ask for a reference with a similar menu, lane layout and POS.

How do you compare vendors fairly on the same menu?

Run every vendor through the same script in a real lane. A demo room leaves out engine noise, wind, a second voice in the car and a crew member talking over the headset.

1. Write 15 test orders from your own menu: a combo with a drink swap, an item with something removed, a change halfway through, a sold-out item, a nickname for an item, a limited-time offer, a large family order and a request for a person.
2. Write the expected ticket for each order, with every item, modifier and price.
3. Place the orders at the speaker with the engine running, once at lunch and once at a quiet hour.
4. Time each order with a phone stopwatch, from the greeting to the end of the order.
5. Compare each POS ticket with the expected ticket. Mark it right, fixed by the AI, fixed by a person, or wrong.
6. Test the takeover: have a crew member cut in mid-order and finish it.
7. Score every vendor the same way, and write down who stepped in and why.

For phone calls, our voice AI comparison guide has a matching shared-menu checklist. If you have not yet chosen between the phone and the lane, start with phone ordering vs drive-thru voice AI.

Published by Maple, which sells phone ordering and an early-access drive-thru unit. This AI-assisted guide combines vendors' own pages and press releases with one mystery-shop study. It does not rank vendors, report any Maple test of these products, or verify any vendor's performance figures.