Square POS alternatives for restaurants, and when to move on

If Square no longer fits, start with Toast for restaurant hardware and 24/7 support in one quoted package, Clover for devices and dining-room software in one printed monthly bundle, or SpotOn for a month-to-month plan priced per station. Square prints no contract term, so moving costs new hardware and setup time, plus any Square hardware installments you still owe.

Square does a lot well: it prints every plan and card rate, and Plus and Premium start with a free 30-day trial. Our Square review and Square pricing guide cover the system, and Toast vs Square, Square vs Clover and Square vs Lightspeed compare it head to head. This page covers the signs you have outgrown a plan, the exports to run before you leave, and a year's cost on each option. Leaving Clover instead? See Clover POS alternatives.

POS	Price and card rate, as printed	Dining-room features on its pricing page	Contract, as printed	Start here if
Toast	Toast plans: Point of Sale from $69/month; Build Your Own custom pricing; Visa, Mastercard and Discover rate not printed	Its chart lists table and order management, offline mode, and catering and events; scheduling, payroll and inventory come in separate suites	Term set in your order; leaving early costs the software fees left	You want restaurant hardware and 24/7 support in one quoted package
Clover (bought on Clover.com)	Clover full-service bundles: $179, $239 or $354 a month for 36 months, devices included; cards swiped, dipped or tapped 2.3% + 10¢	Table mapping, pre-authorized tabs and bill splitting on all three; tableside ordering and firing on Standard and Advanced	The subscription cannot be canceled; you can pay it off at any time	You want devices and software in one printed monthly price
SpotOn	SpotOn plans: POS Essentials $55/station per month at 2.45% + $0.15; All-In $0/station per month at 2.79% + $0.20	Table layouts, menu management, ordering, reporting and 24/7 support on both plans	Essentials month-to-month; All-In has a 2yr minimum term and processing minimums	You want month-to-month terms, or no hardware bill up front
Lightspeed	Lightspeed plans: Starter 69 USD, Essential 189 USD, Premium 399 USD, with no billing term beside the figures; KDS $30/screen per month	Lists floor plans, pre-auth bar mode and multi-location management across its plans	Not on the pricing page	You run a bar or several sites and will confirm which plan includes each feature
HungerRush	HungerRush base package: $149/month, all-in, $0 down, with hardware leased; flat card rate not printed	Online ordering, delivery dispatch, and DoorDash and Uber Eats integrations	36-month agreement with the price locked	You run a pizza or delivery shop

Sources: Toast's pricing page and merchant agreement; Clover's full-service pricing and pricing FAQ; SpotOn's pricing page; Lightspeed's restaurant pricing; HungerRush pricing.

When might a restaurant outgrow Square?

Square's restaurant pricing page marks which plan carries each feature. These are the lines to check against how you run service:

1. Dinner service needs Premium. Course management, seat positions, Send & Stay (firing items before payment), the drive-thru workflow and reservation integrations such as OpenTable and SevenRooms appear on Square Premium only, at $149/mo. per location.
2. Table service needs at least Plus. Split checks, preauthorized bar tabs, floor plans, tableside ordering, close-of-day reports and labor cost reports are not on Square Free.
3. Screens cost extra per device. The KDS app is $30/mo. per device on Plus or $20 on Premium, and the Kiosk app $50 or $30. Neither runs on Free.
4. Every location pays its own plan fee. Plus and Premium charge per location.
5. Phone support around the clock needs Premium. Plus gets phone support from 6am to 6pm PT on weekdays, and Free gets the same for its first 90 days.
6. Some features sit outside the three plans. Square lists advanced modifiers, with step-by-step flows for toppings or sides, as available for Square for Franchises. A business processing over $250,000 a year can talk to Square about custom pricing and processing fees under Square Pro.

If you run more than $250,000 a year through Square, get that custom offer in writing and price it beside the options below.

How do you export your data from Square?

Square's help center sets out each export. Run them all before you close anything.

1. Menu: the item library guide says go to Items & services, then Items, then Item library, then Actions, then Export Library. Choose all items and Excel or CSV; Square recommends Excel.
2. Guests: in Customers, then Customer directory, choose Import / Export, then Export customers, and download the CSV.
3. Cards on file: Square's card export guide says the account owner calls Square Support to verify ownership, and Square sends the cards to your new processor, which must be PCI DSS Level 1. It can take up to two weeks.
4. Sales: Transactions has an Export button for a CSV of transaction details, and each report exports to CSV from its export icon.
5. Tax forms: download any Form 1099-K issued to your account.

You may not need to close the account at all. Square's deactivation guide says an open account costs nothing and keeps your sales history, tax forms and customer directory. Deactivation cannot be undone, removes that access, and does not cancel your subscriptions, so cancel Plus, Premium and any KDS or Kiosk apps separately.

What does a year cost on each option? A worked example

The figures are made up. A 60-seat restaurant on Square Plus wants coursing. It takes $50,000 a month in tapped cards across 1,250 payments at $40, with no American Express, and runs two stations. The table prices 12 months at each vendor's printed rate, leaving out kitchen screens, tax and add-ons.

Option	Software for 12 months	Card fees for 12 months	Year total
Stay on Square Plus (no coursing)	Plus: 12 × $49 = $588	Plus, 2.5% + 15¢: 12 × $1,437.50 = $17,250	Plus year: $17,838
Move up to Square Premium	Premium: 12 × $149 = $1,788	Premium, 2.4% + 15¢: 12 × $1,387.50 = $16,650	Premium year: $18,438
SpotOn POS Essentials, two stations	Essentials: 12 × $110 = $1,320	Essentials, 2.45% + $0.15: 12 × $1,412.50 = $16,950	Essentials year: $18,270, plus two Station 15s at $750 each ($1,500) and implementation
Clover full-service Standard	Standard bundle: 12 × $239 = $2,868, devices included	Clover, 2.3% + 10¢: 12 × $1,275 = $15,300	Clover year: $18,168, with 24 more monthly payments owed on the 36-month subscription

Premium's lower card rate saves $600 a year and its fee adds $1,200, so moving up costs $600 more than Plus here. Before SpotOn's hardware, all four totals sit within $600 of each other, and the card rate moves them most. At these sales, each 0.1 point on the rate is $600 a year, so compare quotes on the rate first. This restaurant takes $600,000 a year in cards, above Square's $250,000 line for custom pricing, so it should ask Square for a quote too.

Check in a demo that each option runs your service: the Clover and SpotOn pricing pages do not list course management, and Clover's Standard bundle takes tapped cards on the Flex only. Toast quotes its card rate, so add its quote as another row. Hardware prices for SpotOn come from its pricing page, where the Station 15 is marked down from $995.

What should you ask a new POS vendor?

1. What is my card rate for tapped, typed-in and online cards, in writing, and can it change during the term?
2. How long is the term, and what do I owe if I leave in month 12?
3. Can you import my Square item library and customer CSV, and who does the work?
4. Will you accept my Square cards on file, and are you PCI DSS Level 1?
5. Does your plan include coursing, seat positions and a kitchen screen, or do those cost extra?
6. Which of my Square devices, printers and cash drawers can I keep using?

Our guide to choosing a restaurant POS has a demo script, and what a restaurant POS costs prices three-year totals.

What about the tools connected to Square?

List every tool that sends orders into Square, such as delivery apps, online ordering and phone ordering, and check each one works with the new POS. Maple Pro's integrations page lists Square, Toast, Clover, SpotOn, Lightspeed and SkyTab (now Shift4 Dine). HungerRush is not on it. Test a phone order on the new POS before you move your number.

Published by Maple. This AI-assisted guide combines Square's own pricing and help-center pages with the pricing and agreement pages of Toast, Clover, SpotOn, Lightspeed and HungerRush, plus an original worked example using made-up sales. It does not include a quote from any vendor, report hands-on testing, or name a best system.