Toast vs Square: Which POS Is Right for UK Hospitality?

Q: Is Toast suitable for pubs and multi-site hospitality groups?

Yes. Toast's multilocation management is designed for groups running multiple venues, with centralised menu management, cross-location reporting, and loyalty available across your estate. Toast is purpose-built exclusively for restaurants and hospitality businesses — from independent operators to large groups.

Q: What kind of support does Toast offer ?

Toast includes 24/7 phone, email, and live chat with real employees on every software plan.

Looking at Toast and Square? Get a breakdown of pricing, features, restaurant fit, and scalability for UK operators.

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Toast vs Square for UK Hospitality: Which Is Right for Your Business?

Toast and Square both offer cloud-based POS options for restaurants and hospitality businesses, but their approaches to supporting operators differ. Toast is designed for UK restaurants, pubs, and cafés that need deeper operational tools, reliable hardware, and room to grow. Square may be a practical starting point for smaller, simpler concepts. The right solution likely depends on where your business is now, and where it's going.

Pricing and Total Cost

Square has a low barrier to entry with its most basic hardware offerings designed to sync with iPads (iPad not included). For a brand new market stall in Hackney, that’s genuinely appealing.

Toast operates on transparent flat fees and includes restaurant-specific capabilities across its plans — including bill splitting, course management, and kitchen reporting — so you're less likely to find yourself upgrading plans to access features your operation depends on.

If you'd otherwise be pairing Square with OpenTable, a separate loyalty app, and a third-party online ordering tool, it's worth comparing the total cost of both setups before deciding.

Toast includes table management tied directly to your POS, kitchen display systems designed to keep front-of-house and back-of-house in sync, tableside ordering with handhelds, and modifier capabilities for custom orders and dietary needs.

Square does not have a dedicated restaurant waitlist and reservation system built directly into its POS. Accessing restaurant-specific waitlists and reservations on Square requires integration with third-party platforms — OpenTable, SevenRooms, or ResDiary — all of which require a Square for Restaurants Plus or Premium subscription to activate.

Toast Tables brings restaurant waitlist, reservations, and table management together with zero cover fees, available as an add-on with your POS. Because it's built into the same platform rather than bolted on through a third-party integration — there's nothing to reconnect or renegotiate as your business grows. Your reservations system scales with you automatically, and the costs are included rather than stacking up as separate subscriptions. Toast customers in the US with Toast Tables saw a 57% lift in Toast Loyalty sign-ups*.

When something goes wrong mid-service, how quickly you can reach someone matters.

Toast offers support 24/7 — by phone, email, or chat — across every plan. And, from day one, Toast provides UK restaurant owners and teams with tailored onboarding to get you up and running as soon as possible.

With Square, standard phone support on the Free plan is available Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm GMT. 24/7 phone support requires a Square for Restaurants Plus subscription.¹

Toast has its own dedicated network infrastructure, which enables offline functionality when your internet drops during service. Depending on your onboarding package, a Toast contractor can install it on-site or guide you through setup remotely. With support from a dedicated implementation specialist through setup, you won’t have to configure your hospitality system on your own.

Toast is designed for restaurants, which tend to grow in complexity over time. Square's ecosystem frequently relies on different third-party tools for specialised restaurant needs. As a small business grows, those disconnected integrations don't always grow with you: you may find yourself switching to a different tool, re-integrating it with Square, retraining staff, and rebuilding workflows, just to unlock the next level of functionality.

That distinction matters when you factor in what switching systems mid-operation involves — retraining staff, rebuilding your menu, re-integrating your tools. For a neighbourhood pub in Manchester or a hospitality group expanding across the UK, it's worth weighing that against the cost of setting up on a platform designed for that scale from the start.

Which POS Fits Your Operation?

Square UK may be worth considering if you're…

Choosing the right POS from day one saves you the massive headache of switching systems mid-operation later on. If you expect your business to scale quickly into multiple locations, complex menus, or integrated reservations, it's worth factoring those future needs into your decision now. However, if your immediate focus is keeping things lean and straightforward, Square UK may be worth considering if you're:

Opening a small café or coffee shop with a tight budget and a simple menu
Running a food truck, market stall, or pop-up with straightforward ordering flows
Looking to launch quickly with minimal setup, and operational complexity isn't a factor yet

Toast may be a good fit if you're…

Running a full-service restaurant, pub, or café in London with table service and a more complex operation. Managing — or planning to manage — multiple locations across the UK.

Looking for a restaurant-built platform where every tool — POS, online ordering, reservations, loyalty, marketing — is designed to connect, not cobbled together from third-party integrations
Prioritising support access: 24/7 phone, email, and live chat on every plan
Building a hospitality group where reporting, menu management, and loyalty need to work across every venue

Frequently Asked Questions: Toast vs Square for UK Hospitality

Is Toast more expensive than Square in the UK?

Toast and Square are structured differently when it comes to pricing. Square publishes a Free tier a Plus and Premium plan. Toast pricing is available on our website for different plans, and includes custom plans that vary depending on your hardware package and software needs. For hospitality businesses that would otherwise need separate tools for reservations, loyalty, or online ordering — or that need to upgrade Square plans to access certain features— it's worth comparing the total cost of each setup, not just the starting price. Square's third-party integrations often carry their own subscription costs on top of the plan fee, so the real price of Square grows as your needs do.

Is Toast suitable for pubs and multi-site hospitality groups?

What happens if my internet goes down mid-service?

What kind of support does Toast offer ?

How do Toast and Square handle service charges and tips in the UK — and how does the Tipping Act affect this?

The Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act has required all UK hospitality businesses to pass 100% of tips and service charges to workers, maintain written tipping policies, and keep distribution records.

Both Toast and Square support configurable service charges on their UK products. Toast allows operators to configure service charges as either employer-kept (reported as net sales) or as mandatory gratuity paid to staff, with separate reporting for each — and Toast Tips Manager supports tip pooling and tip sharing across your team. Toast has published guidance for UK operators on the Tipping Act and its implications for POS configuration.

Can Toast and Square handle different VAT rates for eat-in and takeaway orders?

Yes — both platforms support this. In the UK, eat-in food is typically subject to 20% VAT, while cold takeaway food is generally zero-rated. Getting this right at the POS level matters for accurate VAT reporting and correct receipt presentation to guests.

Toast allows operators to configure VAT at the menu, menu group, or item level, with a "Tax Included" option for VAT-inclusive pricing and the ability to set different rates by dining option — so an item can carry 20% VAT when ordered eat-in and 0% when ordered as cold takeaway.

Square supports conditional tax rules based on fulfilment method, meaning you can apply different VAT treatment to eat-in versus takeaway or delivery orders at the item or category level.

The Bottom Line

If your hospitality business needs reliable operations, a broader restaurant-specific feature set, and support available every day from the moment you go live — Toast is designed for that. Square's free tier makes it easy to get started, but as your operation grows, so does the cost and complexity of the integrations you'll need to keep up. Toast gives you an all-inclusive platform built for restaurants from day one — so you're not outgrowing your tools right when things start to take off.

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This page was last updated on: 20 July 2026

Disclaimer: Competitive information and data on this page compiled as of March 2026 and is based on publicly available information. This information is subject to change or update without notice. Toast does not make any representations as to the completeness or accuracy of the information on this page.

* Based on Toast internal data comparing loyalty signups in Q2 2025 vs Q2 2024. Individual results will vary.
1. Based on information available on Square's UK Get Support page as of June 2026