Toast POS alternatives for restaurants, and what leaving Toast involves

If you leave Toast, start with Square for printed prices and no contract, Clover for devices and software in one printed monthly bundle, or SpotOn for a month-to-month plan priced per station. Before you choose, find the term in your Toast order: its merchant agreement charges the software fees left in the term if you leave early.

Toast does a lot well. Its pricing page includes 24/7 support in every software subscription, and its offline mode keeps orders, tickets and card payments going when the internet drops. Our Toast review and Toast pricing guide cover the system, and Toast vs Square and Toast vs Clover compare it head to head. This page covers the exit, prices a mid-term switch and lays the other options side by side. Leaving Clover instead? See Clover POS alternatives.

POS	Price and card rate, as printed	Contract, as printed	Start here if
Square	Square plans: Free $0/mo., Plus $49/mo., Premium $149/mo., per location; cards tapped, dipped or swiped 2.6%, 2.5% or 2.4% + 15¢	"No hidden fees or locked-in contracts. Cancel or switch anytime."	You want every price in print and the right to leave in any month
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¢	The subscription cannot be canceled; you can pay it off at any time	You want the 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	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	Not on the pricing page	You want floor plans and pre-auth bar mode, and will confirm which plan includes each
HungerRush	HungerRush base package: $149/month, all-in, $0 down, with hardware leased; flat card rate not printed	36-month agreement with the price locked	You run a pizza or delivery shop

Sources: Square's restaurant pricing page; Clover's full-service pricing and pricing FAQ; SpotOn's pricing page; Lightspeed's restaurant pricing; HungerRush pricing. Shift4 renamed SkyTab as Shift4 Dine on May 12, 2026, per its rename notice; our SkyTab fees guide covers what Shift4 prints.

What does leaving Toast involve?

These steps come from Toast's merchant agreement (last updated September 10, 2025), its pricing FAQ and its help center.

1. Find your term. The initial term is set in your order and starts on the contract start date or your go-live date, whichever comes first. After that it renews for one year at a time.
2. Price the exit fee. Leave before the term ends and you owe the software subscription fees left in the term, or $150 for each month left on a Pay-as-you-go subscription, plus any processing fee for software financing. Amounts you prepaid are not refunded.
3. Or wait for the renewal date. To stop the next one-year renewal, give written notice at least 30 days before the term ends. Toast's subscription help says closing the whole account is not self-service; contact Customer Care with the product names, your reason, the date you want and your latest invoice number.
4. Watch for a price notice. Toast can change card rates on 30 days' written notice. If it raises your card rates or core POS fee, you can end the agreement by written notice before the change takes effect, and the early termination fee does not apply.
5. Save your data first. Toast's backup answer says there is no single export. Download each report you need from Toast Web; reports reach back 48 months, six months at a time. Toast's Guestbook guide emails a CSV link to your guest list that expires after 72 hours. For menu, order and payment files, Customer Care can set up nightly data exports.
6. Know the data deadline. The agreement gives you 30 days after termination to ask for access to pull your data, after which Toast may delete it. The backup answer says US data stays accessible for 60 days. Plan on 30.
7. Plan the hardware. Hardware you bought is yours: the agreement moves title to you at shipment. The pricing FAQ says Toast works only on approved Toast hardware, so ask each new vendor which of your printers, cash drawers and routers it can reuse. If you leased on Toast Easy Pay, Toast collects any balance left at the end of the 180 days by ACH.

Does leaving mid-term save money? A worked example

The figures are made up. Toast prints only a starting price of $69/month, so this example assumes an order with $120 a month in software fees, a 24-month term and a quoted rate of 2.49% + 15¢. The restaurant is in month 10, so 14 months are left. It takes $40,000 a month in tapped Visa, Mastercard and Discover cards across 1,000 payments at $40, and it weighs Square Plus with two Square Terminals.

Line, months 11 to 24	Stay on Toast	Switch to Square Plus now
Toast software fees	Stay: 14 × $120 = $1,680	Switch: $1,680 as the early termination fee
New plan	Stay plan: none	Square Plus: 14 × $49 = $686
Card fees for 14 months	Assumed Toast quote, 2.49% + 15¢: 14 × $1,146 = $16,044	Square Plus, 2.5% + 15¢: 14 × $1,150 = $16,100
New hardware	Stay hardware: none	Two Square Terminals at $299: $598
Total	Stay total: $17,724	Switch total: $19,064

The switch costs $1,340 more in this example. The early termination fee equals the software fees you would pay by staying, so the extra cost is the new plan, the new devices and a $4 a month gap in card fees. On a Pay-as-you-go plan the fee would be 14 × $150, or $2,100.

Two moments change the sum. At renewal there is no fee, so you pay only the new system. And if Toast gives notice of a card rate rise, you can leave before it starts without the fee, apart from any software financing fee. Square's prices come from its pricing page and hardware page; put your own order and quoted rate into the same table.

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 Toast menu export and Guestbook CSV, and who does the work?
4. Which of my Toast add-ons, such as payroll, scheduling or online ordering, does your plan cover, and what do the others cost?
5. Can you go live on the day my Toast term ends, so I do not pay for two systems?
6. Which devices, kitchen printers and screens will I need to buy?

Test the new system with your own menu before you sign. 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 Toast?

List every tool that sends orders into Toast, such as delivery apps, online ordering and phone ordering, and check each one works with the new POS. Toast's subscription help says DoorDash, Grubhub and Uber Eats connections are removed under My Integrations, and Toast Payroll through Customer Care. Maple Pro's integrations page lists Toast, Square, 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 Toast's merchant agreement, pricing pages and help center with the pricing pages of Square, Clover, SpotOn, Lightspeed and HungerRush, plus an original worked example using made-up sales and an assumed Toast order and card rate. It does not include a quote from any vendor, report hands-on testing, or name a best system.