Toast vs. Clover 2023: Which POS System Wins?

If you’re stuck between Toast vs Clover Point of Sale (POS systems), our research found that Clover is the best choice. While both POS systems offer an excellent restaurant toolkit and 5/5 business management features, Clover offers a wider variety of plugins and its own industry-leading CRM system — making it a shoo-in for larger businesses that prioritize customer retention.

Toast is still a solid option though, especially for smaller businesses with complex inventories. The Android-only POS offers a great free plan, the best stock management tools of any system we’ve reviewed, and its restaurant features give our POS front-runner, Square, a run for its money.

Scroll down to see how Clover and Toast weigh up when it comes to features, value offerings, support tools, and more. Or, if it’s quick quotes you’re after, our free POS comparison tool can offer you custom prices in minutes.

In this guide:

• Toast vs Clover: Battle of the POS System
• Best Value for Money: Toast
• Best for Business Features: Clover
• Best for Help & Support: Clover
• How Do Toast & Clover Compare to the Competition?
• Our Research and Testing: How Do We Score Toast & Clover?
• Verdict: Which POS is The Best?
• Frequently Asked Questions

We pride ourselves on making thorough, research-informed verdicts at Tech.co. When reviewing POS systems, we consider a broad range of touchpoints, from industry-specific features to business management and growth capabilities. This ensures our recommendations are as well rounded as possible. Jump to our research and testing section to learn about this process in greater detail.

Toast vs Clover: Battle of the POS Systems

Both POS systems fair well in our testing: Clover receives a hospitality score of 4.5/5, and Toast trails slightly behind with a score of 4/5.

Clover’s competitive retail and CRM features make it accessible to a wider selection of businesses — especially those focusing on growth and development. Its steep entry price of $60 per month for stores and $90 for restaurants could deter businesses with smaller budgets. On the other hand, Toast is only suitable for Android-compatible hospitality businesses, but its restaurant features are some of the best on the market.

Here’s a breakdown of some of our main research findings:

• Toast’s POS is Android exclusive, while Clover is compatible with Android and iOS devices.
• Clover offers both a retail and restaurant-specific POS, while Toast is reserved for food and drink businesses only.
• Toast offers a free plan and Clover only offers a 30-day day free trial.
• Clover’s extensive CRM program is included in the package while its only available as an add-on with Toast.
• Toast and Clover both receive full marks (5/5) for stock management, but Toast is better for businesses with large or complex inventories.
• Clover offers stronger help and support tools, but both POSs fall short in this area, with Clover securing a support score of 3/5, compared with Toast’s dismal 1/5.
• Toast’s ‘Test Mode’ is the best training mode we’ve reviewed, while Clover only offers training articles.

For more information about this provider, check our Toast POS review here.

To learn more about this POS system and its different pricing tiers, read our Clover pricing review.

Best Value for Money: Toast

With a near-perfect price score of 4.8/5, our research suggests Toast is much better value than Clover, which only secures a price score of 3/5.

Except for Clover’s Professional Services package, which only costs $14.95 per month, both providers offer fairly similar pricing packages. Clover offers nine different plans for hospitality and retail businesses, with prices ranging from $60 to $290 per month. In contrast, Toast offers four paid restaurant plans and its prices start at $69 per month and enterprise options are available, too.

Clover only offers combined hardware and software packages, which somewhat justifies its higher price tag. What’s more, Clover’s transaction rates are slightly more affordable. Its card-present transactions cost between 2.6% 10¢ to 2.3% + 10¢, compared with Toast’s pricier rates that range from 2.99% + 15¢ to 3.5% + $0.15.

However, unlike Clover, Toast’s Pay-as-you-go Starter Kit lets businesses get started absolutely free, making it one of the most cost-effective POS systems we’ve reviewed.

To see how the provider’s restaurant-focused plans compare side by side, check out our comparison table below:

Toast vs Clover: Pricing and Features Comparison

Which has the best free plan?

Unlike Clover, which lacks a free version, Toast offers a generous free plan, letting businesses get started on the POS without shelling out monthly fees. Toast’s free Starter Kit offers every feature vendors need to get off the ground as well, from order and table management and reporting to round-the-clock customer support. Alternatively, if you’re intent on trying out Clover’s software before you buy, you can trial the POS for 30 days with its free demo.

As surging inflation rates continue to squeeze food and drink businesses across the US, free POS plans have never been more attractive. However, it’s important to point out that free options do tend to lack advanced capabilities that you may require as your business grows. Free plans typically charge steeper transaction rates than paid packages, often making them a pricier alternative in the long run.

Best for Business Features: Clover

While Toast takes the edge for restaurant features —with a POS scoring 4.9/5 in the category compared to Clover’s still impressive score of 4.6/5 — our research suggests that Clover’s toolkit is stronger overall. This is because Clover’s CRM and wider business development features are more advanced, making the system more useful for a broader array of businesses.

With a 4.5/5 score for business development, compared to Toast’s 4/5, Clover offers the best CRM system we’ve researched. The engagement solution automatically records customer data onto a database and gives buyers multiple ways to access perks. The POS even boasts its own loyalty app, Clover Rewards, which is a huge win over Toast, as the provider doesn’t even include CRM features in its paid packages.

Both point-of-sale systems offer an online mode, useful bill splitting, receipt customization, and table management features, but Toast actually has stronger till features overall, securing a research score of 4.3/5 in the category, compared to Clover’s 4/5. This is largely due to Toast’s outstanding dedicated training mode ‘Test Mode’, which allows restaurant managers to train their staff without interfering with sales data.

When it comes to running a restaurant, food is the biggest variable cost and finding a POS with advanced inventory capabilities is an effective way to reduce waste and look after your bottom line. Fortunately, both Clover and Toast boast a five-star rating for stock handling features, making them both solid options for businesses with large or complex inventories. In fact, Toast has the best restaurant inventory management tools of any other POS we’ve researched, possessing a number of advanced capabilities from food cost reports to real-time updates.

However, unlike Toast, Clover’s inventory features cater to both restaurant and retail stocks, allowing just about any vendor to benefit from them. Clover’s unique Items with Variants tool makes it much easier for all businesses to deal with product modifications because the system lets vendors attach a distinct price, cost, SKU, and item code to each product variant.

Since Toast and Clover’s features excel in different areas, the value they’ll bring to your business will depend on your needs and industry specialism. Hospitality businesses with specific inventory requirements will probably benefit more from Toast’s toolkit, but most other vendors will gain more from Clover’s well-rounded feature package.

How Do Toast & Clover Compare With the Competition?

With a score of 4.5/5 in our restaurant category, Clover is one of the best hospitality-focused point-of-sale systems we’ve reviewed, second only to our best POS system for small businesses, Square which secures a score of 4.7/5. Toast is the ninth strongest restaurant POS we’ve reviewed and this is largely due to the provider’s lackluster support options. It lags behind the well-balanced solutions, like Zettle, EPOS Now, and TouchBistro.

To learn more about how Toast and Clover stack up against their competition, read our guide to the best restaurant POS systems, or take a look at their top alternatives below:

Our Research and Testing: How Did We Score Toast & Clover?

The right POS system has the potential to streamline almost every area of a business. We understand this better than anyone at Tech.co, and this is why we go to great lengths to make sure our recommendations are thorough and well-informed.

When researching Toast and Clover, we focused on six major categories of interest: till features, business management, inventory management, business development, price, and help and support. After analyzing how the point-of-sale systems fair against each of these metrics, we awarded them a score out of five for each category, as well as an overall five-star ranking. These scores help us determine their strengths in relation to other systems and their suitability for different types of businesses.

We also conduct user testing to assess the usability of each system and use a different research framework for restaurant and retail-specific POS systems. B doing this, we are able to determine their strengths across industries. Lots more goes into how we rank and review our products and services, so read our full research breakdown to learn more.

Frequently Asked Questions