Toast restaurant POS: pricing plans, key features, pros and cons, and how it compares for restaurants in 2026.
Toast is a restaurant technology company founded in 2011 in Boston, Massachusetts by Steve Fredette, Aman Narang, and Jonathan Grimm, three former colleagues from the enterprise software company Endeca. The founders set out to build a point-of-sale system designed specifically for the operational realities of restaurants, running on Android hardware rather than the iPad-based systems that dominated the market at the time.
What began as a POS terminal has grown into a full restaurant operating platform that spans front-of-house ordering, payment processing, back-of-house kitchen display systems, online ordering and delivery, payroll and team scheduling, inventory management, and guest marketing and loyalty tools. Toast went public on the New York Stock Exchange in September 2021 under the ticker TOST, and by 2026 the company reports roughly 5,700 employees and quarterly annualized recurring revenue above 2 billion dollars, with well over 100,000 restaurant locations using the platform.
Toast's business model combines software subscriptions with integrated payment processing, meaning the company earns revenue both from monthly platform fees and from a cut of every card transaction processed through its terminals, a structure similar to competitors like Square and Clover but built around restaurant-specific workflows like table management, tip pooling, and menu modifiers.
At its core, Toast provides an Android-based point-of-sale terminal built for the pace of restaurant service, with menu and modifier management, split checks, tableside ordering on handheld devices, and kitchen display systems that route orders to the right station in real time. Integrated payment processing handles card, contactless, and gift card transactions directly through Toast's own hardware.
Beyond the core POS, Toast offers online ordering and delivery management, payroll and team scheduling tools, inventory tracking with vendor and recipe costing, and guest-facing loyalty and marketing modules that let restaurants build repeat business through email, SMS, and gift card campaigns. These modules can be added incrementally as a restaurant's needs grow, rather than requiring a full platform switch.
Toast also supports reservation and waitlist management through its Toast Tables product, and provides real-time reporting and analytics dashboards accessible from Toast Web, letting owners and managers track sales, labor costs, and guest data across single or multiple locations from any browser.
Toast's pricing has several tiers. The Starter Kit is a free entry point for restaurants running one or two terminals, bundling core POS, payments, order and table management, and reporting, but it comes with higher payment processing rates around 3.09 percent plus 15 cents per transaction. The standard Point of Sale plan starts around 69 dollars per month and unlocks custom hardware configurations along with reduced processing rates near 2.49 percent plus 15 cents for in-person transactions.
For restaurants that need online ordering and delivery, payroll and scheduling, automated inventory, or guest marketing and loyalty, Toast offers a custom Build Your Own plan priced through a sales quote. Real-world monthly costs typically run higher than the advertised base price once hardware (799 to 1,500-plus dollars), installation fees (250-plus dollars), a roughly 9.95 dollar monthly PCI compliance fee, and payment processing are factored in, which reviewers note can add 500 to 2,000-plus dollars a month depending on transaction volume.
Toast offers a free Starter Kit for one or two terminals with higher processing rates, a Point of Sale plan starting around 69 dollars per month with lower processing rates, and custom enterprise pricing for full-featured deployments.
Toast was founded in 2011 in Boston, Massachusetts by Steve Fredette, Aman Narang, and Jonathan Grimm, former colleagues from the enterprise software company Endeca.
Yes, Toast, Inc. went public on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker TOST in September 2021.
Toast POS terminals run on Android, distinguishing it from iPad-based competitors like Square for Restaurants.
Yes, Toast offers payroll and team scheduling as an add-on module alongside its core POS and payments platform.
Yes, Toast requires restaurants to use its integrated payment processing, with rates that vary by plan, generally lower on paid tiers than the free Starter Kit.
As of 2026, Toast reports well over 100,000 restaurant locations using its platform in the US and internationally.
Toast Tables is Toast's reservation and waitlist management add-on, sold separately from the core POS platform.