Toast vs TouchBistro

What each one charges in 2026

Two numbers decide the month and neither is on that page. The card rate is not printed at all: TouchBistro describes a cost-plus model and says its payment partners set a custom rate after looking at your credit history and sales volume, so ask for the markup over card-brand cost as a percentage and a per-payment fee. The term is the Initial Term written into your Sales Quote: it renews for a period of the same length unless either side gives 30 days' written notice, and the Merchant Terms of Use (effective 31 March 2026) say you may not end it early — a default leaves you owing the software, hardware and processing fees that would have been payable for the rest of the term, with any hardware incentive repaid in full.

The hardware question has a cheaper answer than it looks, and a sharper edge. The gap between the two plans is $50 a month, which over a 24-month term is $1,200 — so the $69 plan wins only if one station's hardware comes in under that, and TouchBistro prints no hardware price to check it against. The bundle buys timing, not a discount, and the hardware inside it stays tied to the subscription: the same terms let TouchBistro remotely disable iPads supplied under a hardware payment plan, or handed over as a hardware incentive, if you default inside the initial term. Its pricing page and its hardware page also disagree about whether a hardware payment plan exists at all — ask which one applies to you, on the quote.

The website is why anyone lands on this page, and Toast's is inside Growth: an existing customer adds it through a Digital Storefront add-on whose price is not on the pages we read. $578 a month for three years is $21,961, most of it features a shop buying a page does not need — gift cards, loyalty, SMS. That is the question to ask before signing: what happens to the site if I drop the pack, and what is the $8,092 of pack still owed at month 14.

Put the two side by side and the ordering is clear. On software TouchBistro is the cheaper register: $6,084 for three years with the hardware inside and ordering added, against $9,037 for Toast Core — a $2,953 difference — and $5,484 if you take the $69 plan and buy one station's hardware at our ~$1,200 estimate. On hardware ownership and disclosure Toast is the cleaner: a kit you own, a card rate in print, a two-year term with an exit you can calculate. What neither does is hand you the page: Toast rents one inside $578, and TouchBistro does not sell one — its own online-ordering FAQ says it cannot update your website, only give you the code for an Order Now button.

Then the add-ons close the gap. A full-service room that wants reservations (reported $229), loyalty ($99), gift cards ($25) and marketing ($99) on top of the $69 plan and its ordering is at $472 a month — $16,992 over three years, which is 82% of Toast Growth's $578 and has no website in it. That is the iPad illusion in one line: the screen looks like the cheap way in, and the subscription it carries ends up in the same order of magnitude as the pack it was supposed to beat.

The iPad illusion, and the three traps under it

An iPad POS looks like the cheap way in because the screen is familiar and the subscription starts at $69. None of these three things is hidden — every one is in TouchBistro's own terms — but none of them fits on a pricing card.

The tell is the same on both sides of this page. Toast will host your site and stop when the subscription does; TouchBistro will not host it at all. Either way the page in the Instagram bio is a separate purchase, and the one we sell is a file — the HTML, the CSS and the images — that points at no account and survives a change of register.

Side by side

Two registers with the same shape and different footnotes — and the page that belongs to neither of them.

TouchBistro: touchbistro.com/pricing read 11 November 2026 — Point of Sale $69 a month with hardware required and hardware, payment processing and additional fees applying; Essentials Bundle $119 a month with restaurant-grade hardware, integrated payments, processing and additional fees applying; add-ons listed without prices; hardware financing offered for venues with two or more terminals. touchbistro.com/online-ordering, read the same day: no commission, available in the US and Canada, integrates only with the TouchBistro POS, and "TouchBistro is not able to update your restaurant's website directly, but will provide you with the code for your Order Now button." The Merchant Terms of Use (effective 31 March 2026) — term and renewal, no early termination, the default calculation, the iPad disablement, 2% a month late interest and Ontario arbitration — as summarised by maple.inc/blog/touchbistro-pos-pricing on 26 September 2026. The $50 online ordering, $229 reservations, $99 loyalty, $99 marketing and $25 gift card figures are third-party price lists published in October and November 2026, marked reported. Toast: pos.toasttab.com/pricing for the approved-hardware wording and the two-year agreement, read 11 November 2026; the Traditional Starter Kit prices from Toast's checkout as published on 7 November 2026 by expresso.io/blog/toast-pricing; the exit formula from Toast's Merchant Agreement (last updated 10 September 2025) as summarised by Orbix POS on 21 October 2026. The $1,200 hardware figure is our estimate for one station, anchored on the $50 monthly gap between TouchBistro's two plans over 24 months. Prices are US list, before tax.

Which package does this job?

The page and the menu are the Local Pack — for a shop that has already bought the register, or is about to, and still has no website of its own. Keep whichever till you sign for; take the page off a monthly bill.

Payment is taken by Polar Software, Inc., our merchant of record, on their checkout page — we never see your card. By ordering you agree to our terms and refund policy. The files are yours to keep and reprint.

Questions this comparison raises