Toast vs Lightspeed for restaurants

Start with Toast if you want a plan price with a billing term in print (Point of Sale starts at $69/month) and the right to leave without an exit fee if Toast raises your card rate. Start with Lightspeed Restaurant if you run several locations or a hotel outlet on iPads. Lightspeed prints 69, 189 and 399 USD for its plans, with no billing term beside them.

Neither company prints a Visa, Mastercard or Discover rate, so both card rates come from quotes. Lightspeed also requires its own processor, Lightspeed Payments, and charges a monthly fee if you keep another one: $400 a month at $35,000 to $99,999 in monthly card volume. Toast prints its American Express rates, which gives you one fixed point to compare against. Prices below are for the United States.

Question	Toast	Lightspeed Restaurant	Start here if
Plan price	Starter Kit starting at $0/month for 1 location and up to 2 terminals; Point of Sale starting at $69/month; Build Your Own by quote	Starter 69 USD, Essential 189 USD, Premium 399 USD, with no billing term shown; Enterprise by quote	Toast, if you want the billing term in print before a call
Visa, Mastercard and Discover	Rate quoted	Rate quoted; the plan table marks integrated payments "Default" on Starter and "Custom" on Essential and Premium	Either; get both in writing and run the sum below
American Express	3.29% + 15¢ in person, 3.89% + 15¢ typed in	No rate printed	Toast, if you want the Amex cost known now
Keeping another processor	Point of Sale lists "flat-rate processing"; the pricing page does not mention outside processors	Lightspeed Payments required; another processor costs $200 to $1,120 a month by volume	Lightspeed, if you are ready to move card processing to it
Kitchen screens	Toast KDS hardware; no printed price	Kitchen Display System: $30/screen per month on every plan	Lightspeed, if you want the screen cost in print
Contract	Term set in your order; renews for one-year periods unless either side gives 30 days' notice	Term set in the order form; renews for the same length unless you give 90 days' notice	Toast, if you want a shorter notice window
Several locations	Printed prices are for single locations; multilocation management sits in Restaurant Management Pro, with no printed price	Manage as many locations as you want from one system; hotels can run several revenue centers	Lightspeed, if you run several stores or a hotel outlet

Toast's figures come from its pricing page, the footnotes on its starter kit page and its merchant agreement. Lightspeed's come from its restaurant pricing page, its restaurant POS page, its Lightspeed Payments FAQ, its US transaction fee table and its service agreement. For every fee on one system, see our Toast pricing guide and Lightspeed pricing guide.

What does the Lightspeed Payments rule mean for cost?

Lightspeed's Payments FAQ says it now requires merchants to use Lightspeed Payments, charges a monthly third-party processing fee to merchants who keep another processor, and supports only payment terminals bought from Lightspeed. Its service agreement says the fee applies in each month you process through another service, and is assessed on renewal for customers on an annual subscription. The fee table sets it by estimated monthly volume, from $200 at $5,000 to $34,999 up to $1,120 at $200,000 to $249,999. You pay it on top of your own processor's charges.

So the Lightspeed side of the sum turns on the Lightspeed Payments rate in its quote. Toast's pricing page says Toast is a payment facilitator that partners with processors, and its Point of Sale plan lists flat-rate processing. Both quotes need every rate in writing: tapped, typed in, online and American Express.

What card rate must a Lightspeed quote beat? A worked example

Every input below is made up, including the Toast rate. One location takes $50,000 a month in card sales across 1,250 payments at $40 each. Of that, $5,000 across 125 payments is American Express. Toast is on Point of Sale at its $69 starting price with an assumed quote of 2.49% + 15¢ for Visa, Mastercard and Discover. The example reads Lightspeed's figures as monthly fees and leaves out hardware, kitchen screens, installation, tax and cash.

Toast line	Input	Monthly cost
Plan	Point of Sale at its starting price	Toast plan: $69.00
Visa, Mastercard, Discover	$45,000 across 1,125 payments at an assumed 2.49% + 15¢	Toast card line: $1,120.50 + $168.75 = $1,289.25
American Express	$5,000 across 125 payments at Toast's printed 3.29% + 15¢	Toast Amex line: $164.50 + $18.75 = $183.25
Month	$50,000 in card sales	Toast month: $1,541.50

Now the rate Lightspeed must beat, as one rate on every card with 15¢ per payment ($187.50 on 1,250 payments):

Lightspeed plan, read as monthly	Card fees must stay under	Break-even rate at 15¢
Starter, 69 USD	Starter room: $1,541.50 − $69 = $1,472.50	Starter break-even: 2.57% + 15¢
Essential, 189 USD	Essential room: $1,541.50 − $189 = $1,352.50	Essential break-even: 2.33% + 15¢
Premium, 399 USD	Premium room: $1,541.50 − $399 = $1,142.50	Premium break-even: 1.91% + 15¢

To get each rate, take the room, subtract $187.50, and divide by $50,000. Each 0.1 point on $50,000 is $50 a month. Two Lightspeed kitchen screens add $60, which lowers the Essential break-even to 2.21% + 15¢. Add Toast's own screen cost from its quote to the Toast side. If you keep an outside processor on Lightspeed Essential, the $400 fee joins the plan, and that processor's total card fees must stay under $952.50, about 1.91% of card sales, to match this Toast month.

What do you sign with each?

Toast's merchant agreement (last updated September 10, 2025):

1. Term and renewal: your order sets the initial term, then it renews for one-year periods unless either side gives 30 days' written notice.
2. Price changes: software fees stay fixed in the initial term. Card rates can change on 30 days' written notice, and if Toast raises your card rate or core POS fee, you can end the agreement before the change without the early termination fee.
3. Leaving early: the software subscription fees left in the term, or $150 for each month left on Pay-as-you-go.

The Lightspeed Service Agreement (last updated February 26, 2026):

1. Term and renewal: your order form sets the initial term, and says whether fees are paid upfront or monthly. The agreement renews for a period equal to the initial term unless you give written notice 90 days before the end of a term longer than 90 days.
2. Leaving early: unpaid one-time fees, the recurring fees left in the term, and the gap between list price and any discount you got on software or hardware.
3. Discounted hardware: it depends on 24 months of the POS and Lightspeed Payments, starting Payments within 30 days, and a minimum daily average of 100.00 in local currency. Miss one and you pay the hardware's value plus shipping.
4. Changes: Lightspeed can amend the agreement, including fees, on 30 days' written notice.

Suppose each order sets a 24-month term and the restaurant closes after month 12. On Toast at the $69 plan, the fee is 12 × $69, or $828. On Lightspeed Essential, the recurring fees left are 12 × $189, or $2,268, plus $30 a month for each kitchen screen and any list-price gap.

What happens when the internet drops?

Toast's pricing page says offline mode lets you keep placing orders, printing tickets and receipts, and taking card payments until the connection returns.

Lightspeed's help article on offline POS functionality says devices keep talking over the local network, so staff can take orders, print kitchen tickets and use the KDS. Integrated card payments stop working in real time: you take cards on the terminal in standalone mode over LTE or 4G, and terminals without a cell connection stop. Allergens in item descriptions are hidden, and delivery and online ordering integrations are unavailable until you reconnect. Our guide to POS offline mode sets this beside other systems.

What should you ask before you choose?

1. Lightspeed: is 69, 189 or 399 USD a monthly fee, and is it billed monthly or upfront? Get the answer on the order form.
2. Both: what are my rates for tapped, typed-in, online and American Express cards? Put them into the sums above.
3. Lightspeed: does my quote discount any hardware in a way that ties me to 24 months of Lightspeed Payments?
4. Toast: what does each device beyond the first terminal cost, including kitchen screens?
5. Both: how long is the initial term? Write down Lightspeed's 90-day notice date and Toast's 30-day one.
6. Both: unplug the router in the demo and take a card.

If you take phone orders, Maple Pro lists both Toast and Lightspeed among the POS systems it writes phone orders into. See the Toast and Lightspeed integration pages. For features in depth, see the Toast review and Lightspeed review, and if Square is on your list, Square vs Lightspeed.

Published by Maple. This AI-assisted comparison combines Toast's and Lightspeed's own US pricing, payments, help-center and agreement pages with an original break-even calculation using made-up sales, an assumed Toast card rate and an assumed Lightspeed billing term. It does not include a quote from either company, and it does not claim anyone tested either system.