Toast vs Clover for restaurants
Last updated: September 2, 2026
Toast POS
B
Toast POS is the leading all-in-one cloud-based restaurant management platform, purpose-built for the food service industry with deep features for ordering, payments, payroll, and analytics, but comes with restrictive multi-year contracts, mandatory payment processor lock-in, and a history of transparency controversies.
Clover
B
Clover is a widely used, all-in-one POS platform (hardware + software + app marketplace) favored by small and medium retailers and restaurants and backed by Fiserv, offering broad functionality but with real-world variability in support and reseller pricing.
VS
Overview
Both are restaurant-capable POS systems that bundle hardware, software and card processing, and both lock you to their own devices. Toast is built for restaurants only and publishes the cheapest way in — a $0/month Starter Kit and a $69/month Point of Sale plan — but it does not publish its card rates anywhere on its site. Clover is a general-purpose platform sold in restaurant, retail and services configurations, and it does publish rates: 2.3% + 10c card-present and 3.5% + 10c keyed on the plans you can buy directly at clover.com. The trade is a cheaper, restaurant-native entry (Toast) against published pricing and a broader app market (Clover), with contract exit terms that are unpleasant on both sides.
Key Takeaways
- ✓Clover publishes its card rates — 2.3% + 10c card-present on clover.com restaurant plans; Toast prints no rate at all, only 'simple, flat rate'.
- ✓Toast is cheaper to start: $0/month Starter Kit or $69/month Point of Sale, against Clover's $89.95/month Restaurant Growth plan.
- ✓Toast's early termination fee is written down — remaining software subscription fees, or $150 x months left on pay-as-you-go (Merchant Agreement s8.4).
- ✓Toast lets you exit without that fee if it raises your card rates mid-term (s6.2(b)); Clover publishes no equivalent protection.
- ✓Toast rates better with customers on Trustpilot (2.6/5 from 1,473 reviews) than Clover (2.0/5 from 2,184), though neither score is good.
Toast POS
Toast is for restaurants that want a single restaurant-native stack — POS, online ordering, payroll, kitchen — and will accept a rate quoted privately by a salesperson in exchange for the lowest entry cost and 24/7/365 support included in every subscription.
Clover
Clover is for operators who want to see the rate before they sign, who run a mixed or non-restaurant business, or who want the widest third-party app market — and who are comfortable with a 36-month device subscription and pricing that changes depending on who sold them the account.
The Verdict
It Depends on Your Needs
Why?
This one genuinely splits, and it splits on what kind of restaurant you are. If you run a full-service restaurant and want one vendor for POS, online ordering, kitchen display, payroll and marketing, Toast is the better-fitting system: it is cheaper to start at $0 or $69 a month, its support is 24/7/365 and included, and its contract at least writes down what leaving costs and lets you walk without a penalty if it raises your rates. If what you care about is knowing the price before you sign, Clover wins on the facts we could check: 2.3% + 10c card-present and 3.5% + 10c keyed are printed on its own site, its hardware prices are printed too, and Toast prints neither. The catch on the Clover side is that those published rates only apply if you buy direct at clover.com — a Clover account sold to you by a bank or an ISO is priced by that reseller, and Clover's own customer reviews are the worse of the two.
Feature by feature
Detailed Comparison
Filter Options
Software and hardware cost
| Feature | Toast POS | Clover |
|---|---|---|
| Cheapest way in | $0/month Starter Kit (hardware kit, no upfront cost) Winner | $179/month for 36 months, or $1,799 upfront + $89.95/month |
| Toast's Starter Kit trades the upfront hardware cost for a higher processing rate. Clover's full-service restaurant Starter bundle is priced on clover.com either as a 36-month subscription or as hardware bought outright plus the Restaurant Growth software plan. | ||
| Standard software plan | $69/month (Point of Sale) Winner | $89.95/month (Restaurant Growth) |
| Toast's figure includes the first hardware terminal subscription; additional devices cost more. Clover's figure is the software plan alone, with hardware bought or subscribed separately. | ||
| Published hardware prices | Not published — 'choose your own', quoted per restaurant | Published — $349 compact terminal, $1,799 and $2,648 bundles Winner |
| Clover lists device and bundle prices on its own pricing pages. Toast's pricing page says upfront costs 'vary depending on your specific hardware packages and installation needs'. | ||
| Payroll bundled with POS | $69/month + $9 per employee/month (POS + Payroll bundle) Winner | Optional add-on integration; no published bundle price |
Cheapest way in
Toast POS
$0/month Starter Kit (hardware kit, no upfront cost)
Winner
Clover
$179/month for 36 months, or $1,799 upfront + $89.95/month
Toast's Starter Kit trades the upfront hardware cost for a higher processing rate. Clover's full-service restaurant Starter bundle is priced on clover.com either as a 36-month subscription or as hardware bought outright plus the Restaurant Growth software plan.
Standard software plan
Toast POS
$69/month (Point of Sale)
Winner
Clover
$89.95/month (Restaurant Growth)
Toast's figure includes the first hardware terminal subscription; additional devices cost more. Clover's figure is the software plan alone, with hardware bought or subscribed separately.
Published hardware prices
Toast POS
Not published — 'choose your own', quoted per restaurant
Clover
Published — $349 compact terminal, $1,799 and $2,648 bundles
Winner
Clover lists device and bundle prices on its own pricing pages. Toast's pricing page says upfront costs 'vary depending on your specific hardware packages and installation needs'.
Payroll bundled with POS
Toast POS
$69/month + $9 per employee/month (POS + Payroll bundle)
Winner
Clover
Optional add-on integration; no published bundle price
Best For Your Business
Recommendations based on your business type
Full-service restaurant with table service and a kitchen line
Recommended
Toast POS
Toast is built for exactly this: table mapping, course pacing, kitchen display routing and tips management are native rather than bolted on, and the $69/month Point of Sale plan carries the lower 2.49% + 15c card-present rate.
New restaurant with very little upfront capital
Recommended
Toast POS
Toast's Starter Kit puts hardware in the building for $0/month and recovers it through a 3.09% + 15c rate. Clover's cheapest full-service restaurant path is $179/month for 36 months or $1,799 upfront, which is real money on day one.
Operator who wants the rate in writing before signing
Recommended
Clover
Clover prints 2.3% + 10c card-present and 3.5% + 10c keyed on its own pricing pages. Toast's page says only 'simple, flat rate', which means your rate is whatever a salesperson quotes you — and Toast's own agreement lets it change that rate on 30 days' notice.
Mixed business — a cafe with a retail shelf, or a restaurant group with a services arm
Recommended
Clover
Clover sells and prices restaurant, retail, professional and personal services configurations off the same platform and app market. Toast's stack is restaurant-first, with retail as a secondary product.
Operator who expects to switch systems within two or three years
Neither. Both tie you up. Toast auto-renews yearly and charges the remaining software fees, or $150 a month for the months left, to get out. Clover's clover.com bundles are 36-month subscriptions and it publishes no exit terms at all. If you want the freedom to leave, neither of these is the system to sign.
Toast POS: Best for 2 use cases
Clover: Best for 2 use cases
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about this comparison
It depends on which cost you are looking at. Toast is cheaper on software — $0/month for the Starter Kit or $69/month for the Point of Sale plan, against $89.95/month for Clover's Restaurant Growth plan. Clover is cheaper on card rates, at 2.3% + 10c card-present against Toast's reported 2.49% + 15c. For a restaurant doing meaningful card volume the rate difference will usually outweigh the $20 a month, but you cannot confirm that in advance because Toast will not publish its rate.
Toast prices each restaurant individually. Its pricing page describes payment processing only as a 'simple, flat rate' and lists no percentage. The figures quoted everywhere online — 2.49% + 15c in person on the $69 plan, 3.09% + 15c on the Starter Kit — come from restaurants reporting what they were quoted, not from Toast. Its Merchant Agreement also allows it to change your card rate mid-term on 30 days' notice.
Toast writes it down: section 8.4 of its Merchant Agreement charges either the remaining software subscription fees for the rest of your term, or $150 multiplied by the months remaining if you are on a pay-as-you-go subscription. Clover publishes nothing. Its clover.com bundles are 36-month subscriptions, and third-party guides report that leaving early means paying out the remaining balance, but that is not a figure Clover states.
No, in both cases. Toast states in its pricing FAQ that its services run only on Toast-approved devices. Clover software runs only on Clover devices. Whichever you pick, you are buying or subscribing to that vendor's hardware, and it does not transfer if you switch.
Yes, substantially. The 2.3% + 10c and 3.5% + 10c rates are what Clover charges on plans bought directly at clover.com. Clover is also distributed through banks, ISOs and independent agents, each of which sets its own rates, fees and contract terms on top of the same hardware and software. Two restaurants running identical Clover Stations can be paying very different amounts.
Both settle in one to two business days as standard, and both sell the same escape hatch at the same price: Toast Instant Deposit and Clover Rapid Deposit each charge 1.75% to move the money immediately. Toast notes that restaurants closing after its 9:30pm ET batch cutoff will usually see two business days rather than one.
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