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Restaurant EPOS · UK · A to Z, no ranking · facts read 4 November 2026

Restaurant EPOS systems in the UK: what to check, and what each supplier says it does

There is no best EPOS for every restaurant. There is the one whose contract, hardware, card payments and bookings fit the way you trade. This page gives you the six things to check, answers each from the suppliers' own pages, then describes each system in alphabetical order, ours included, with where ours is the wrong choice.

Skip to the systems

Every fact about another company comes from its own pages, read on 4 November 2026 and linked at the foot of this page. We print none of their prices.

Four ways a restaurant EPOS is sold

Before any feature list, the way a supplier sells decides most of what you sign: who owns the hardware, how long you are committed, and whose card fees you pay.

A bundle you buy, tied to their payments

Hardware and software bought together up front, sometimes financed, where the price you are quoted depends on also taking the supplier's own card payments for a set term.

A monthly plan on tablets

Software by subscription, in tiers, on iPads or the supplier's own devices, with card payments built in. What separates the tiers is usually the number of devices and which modules are included.

A till from a local dealer

Software from a developer, sold, installed and supported by an authorised partner near you, who quotes for the whole job. Often installed on the premises, and built to keep trading through an outage.

A card company that connects to your till

Card machines first, linked to the EPOS you already have. Some of these companies sell table bookings as well, reading your tables from that EPOS.

Six things to check, answered from each supplier's pages

Each card asks one question, then gives what each supplier's own pages said on 4 November 2026, in alphabetical order. Where a page did not say, we say so; ask in the demo. The longer list of questions to take into a demo is in our guide to choosing a restaurant EPOS.

1. How long am I signed up for?

Ask for the first term, whether it renews by itself, and how many days' notice ends it.

akru: Zonal says there are no contract lock-ins. Epos Now: the discounted bundle price requires a 12-month payments-and-support subscription. ICRTouch: the local partner sets the terms; the pages opened do not state them. Lightspeed: monthly plans can be cancelled at the end of the month; annual plans run to the end of their term. Square: no long-term contract, and plans change at any time. Toast:its UK merchant agreement runs for the first term set in your order, then renews for a year at a time unless either side gives 30 days' notice before the term ends.

2. Whose hardware, and how is it paid for?

Ask whether the iPads and printers you own will do, and whether the kit is bought, financed or included.

akru: installed from an app, without an engineer visit. Epos Now: hardware-and-software bundles bought up front, with financing offered. ICRTouch: supplied and installed by the partner who quotes. Lightspeed: iPads with handhelds for the table, its tiers set by the device licences included. Square: hardware sold separately, or your existing iPads and printers. Toast:up-front costs for its hardware and installation, and it advises against using the venue's own.

3. What keeps working when the internet drops?

Ask which of these survives an outage, and for how long: taking an order, the kitchen, taking a card.

akru: ask Zonal directly. Epos Now: its restaurant page describes an offline mode. ICRTouch: TouchPoint keeps trading, with sales, table payments, bill splitting and kitchen printing, and backs the data up when the connection returns. Lightspeed: keeps working and syncs when the connection is back. Square: needs a connection; with compatible hardware, cards can be taken offline for up to 24 hours, with exceptions it lists. Toast: an offline mode for orders and payments.

4. Are table bookings in the till, an add-on, or a partner's?

Ask where a booking lives, and whether it lands on a real table in the plan the floor staff use.

akru: Zonal sells bookings as a separate product; the akru page is about the till. Epos Now: reservations, deposits and reminders built into the till, free for its payments customers, with a live floor view of free, booked and seated tables. ICRTouch: TouchReservation, an add-on for online bookings, table allocation and deposits. Lightspeed: Lightspeed Reservations, a paid add-on on every tier. Square: through reservation partners. Toast: Toast Tables, reservations and a waitlist connected to the POS, with Reserve with Google and guest profiles; the UK pricing page does not list it in the plans.

5. Is the price tied to their card payments?

Ask whether you can bring your own card provider, and what the software costs if you do.

akru: priced as POS and payments together, estimated from your card turnover. Epos Now: its own card payments, one rate for the main schemes and another for opted-in Amex, JCB and UnionPay. ICRTouch: integrated with several named card providers, among them Dojo, Elavon, Barclaycard, Opayo and Tyro. Lightspeed: integrated payments, at a standard rate on the entry tier and a custom rate above it. Square: processes the cards itself, at rates that differ for in-person, online and keyed-in payments. Toast: card payments at a flat rate per transaction.

6. Who installs it, and who supports it?

Ask who sets the system up, who you ring on a Saturday night, and whether that is the same company.

akru: Zonal says a venue installs it from an app and can be up and running in under an hour, with no engineer visit. ICRTouch: its Authorised Partners supply, install and support the system. Toast: installation is an up-front cost that varies by package. Epos Now, Lightspeed and Square: ask each of them who installs the system and who answers on a Saturday night.

The systems, A to Z

Alphabetical, so a card's place says nothing about its merits; those depend on your answers above.

akru, from Zonal

What it is. The POS that Zonal, the UK hospitality EPoS company behind the Aztec EPoS for multi-site groups, built for independent pubs and restaurants. Zonal Retail Data Systems Limited, Edinburgh.

What its page describes. An app-based till with a live floor plan on every device where tables can be moved and merged, pick-up orders, promotions by day and time, tips and service charge kept apart from sales, allergy details in the order, and live reporting; several locations from one account at no extra cost.

Tends to suit an independent pub or restaurant that wants to set up its own till quickly, without a lock-in, and is happy for the price to follow its card payments. UK.

Epos Now

What it is. A UK EPOS company from Norwich selling hardware-and-software bundles for retail and hospitality; the UK register lists EPOS NOW (UK) LTD at its Norwich address.

What its page describes. A restaurant till with a live floor view, a kitchen display as a monthly app, table bookings with deposits and reminders in the till, online ordering, stock down to the ingredient with automated purchase orders, an offline mode, its own card payments and an app store of integrations, a staff-rota app among them.

Tends to suit a restaurant that wants one supplier for the till, the card payments and the bookings, and is comfortable buying the kit up front. UK, and an Irish site with euro prices.

ICRTouch

What it is. A UK EPoS developer from Sandown on the Isle of Wight, whose TouchPoint till is sold, installed and supported by local Authorised Partners. It traces its roots to cash registers in the 1980s.

What its pages describe. A graphical table plan across floors and areas; trading, table payments and bill splitting that carry on without internet; and modules around the till for handheld ordering, ordering from the guest's own phone, a kitchen display, stock counts, online reservations and a web back office with staff clock-in. Staff management comes through integrations.

Tends to suit a venue that wants a dealer it can call nearby, a till built to trade through an outage, and a choice of card provider. Priced by the partner's quote. UK.

Lightspeed Restaurant

What it is. A cloud restaurant EPOS on iPad with handhelds, from Lightspeed Commerce Inc. of Montréal.

What its pages describe. Order taking and payments, a kitchen display and QR ordering (in the upper tiers, add-ons on the entry tier), stock with recipes, low-stock alerts and waste, an offline mode, and integrations with hotel systems, delivery platforms and accounting. Table reservations are a paid add-on.

Tends to suit counter- and bar-led venues that want an iPad till with a wide set of integrations. UK; we found no Irish site.

Lightspeed Restaurant compared with Slotina

Square for Restaurants

What it is. A restaurant POS on iPad and Square's own devices, with its own card payments, from Square, owned by Block, Inc.; Squareup Europe Ltd in the UK and Squareup International Limited in Ireland.

What its pages describe. A free plan with no monthly fee where only processing fees are paid, and paid plans per location; table management on every plan, floor plan customisation and coursing in the paid ones; a kitchen display; online ordering and kiosks; stock through a paid partner add-on; time tracking, with fuller scheduling in the paid plans; reservations through partners.

Tends to suit a restaurant that wants to start with no monthly fee and no long-term contract, on hardware it may already own. UK and Ireland.

Square for Restaurants compared with Slotina

Toast

What it is. A US restaurant platform sold in the UK by Toasttab UK Ltd of Altrincham: a cloud POS on its own hardware, with handhelds for the table.

What its pages describe. Monthly plans in pounds that differ by the devices and products bundled (the kitchen display and handhelds come with Essentials), an offline mode for orders and payments, integrated card payments, online ordering, Toast Tables for reservations and a waitlist, payroll, and marketing tools such as loyalty, gift cards and e-mail.

Tends to suit a busy restaurant that wants one platform on purpose-built hardware and is ready for a fixed first term that then renews yearly. UK, and an Irish site.

The card company you will meet at the counter: Dojo

Dojo, the trading name of Paymentsense Limited in London, is a card-payments company: card machines, Tap to Pay on iPhone, payment links and next-day transfers of takings. Its integrated-payments page connects the card machine to the EPOS you already have, from a long list of partner providers, and its pages describe no till of Dojo's own.

It also sells Dojo Bookings: online bookings and walk-ins in one place, a virtual queue by QR code, booking deposits and guest profiles, priced by quote after sign-up. Its developer documentation has Bookings read the tables and their availability from your EPOS. It suits a restaurant that is happy with its till and wants its card machines and its bookings from one company. Its Irish site sells card machines only.

Dojo Bookings compared with Slotina

And Slotina, including where it does not fit

Slotina is a restaurant system that starts at the door: a booking page at your own address, a floor plan drawn to scale, and a host-stand screen for walk-ins, phone bookings and the waiting list. The order by seat and course, a kitchen display that has each dish on its station's screen within 5 seconds, the bill split by dish, by seat or evenly, and card payments with Tap to Pay on a phone or from the table's QR code run in the same system, with stock, the rota and the sales reports. It runs in a web browser on any tablet or phone, and in the restaurant mode of Slotina's app. £99 a month per location for the first 100 paying restaurants in the UK, then £149, plus VAT where applicable, month to month. In Ireland, €179 a month per location, in euro.

  • The early-access list is open, and it is told the opening day first.
  • Not for you if your EPOS, card machine, delivery platforms or accounting software must stay and be connected: Slotina connects to none of them.
  • Not for you if you want a countertop card terminal or kiosks: cards are taken with Tap to Pay on a phone, or paid by the guest from the table's QR code, into your own Stripe account with no Slotina commission.
  • Not for you if the whole till must keep trading through an outage. The app keeps the waiter's rounds and sends them, in sequence, once the connection is back, but card payments and the kitchen display need the connection.

Slotina's ordering and bill, in detail · The kitchen display · What the price includes · Early access

Where to go from here

Questions about restaurant EPOS systems

Which is the best EPOS system for a small restaurant in the UK?

The one whose contract, hardware and card payments fit how you trade, which is why this page does not rank. A café that wants no monthly fee, a dining room that lives by its bookings and a pub that needs a dealer it can call will each be best served by a different kind of supplier.

Do I need an EPOS with table bookings built in?

Only if bookings decide your evening. Some tills here build reservations in, some sell them as an add-on, and some bring them in through a partner; what matters is that a booking lands on a real table in the plan your floor staff use.

Which of these EPOS suppliers sell in Ireland?

Epos Now, Square and Toast have Irish sites. Dojo's Irish site sells card machines and does not mention Bookings, we found no Irish site for Lightspeed, and for akru and ICRTouch we read the UK pages only. Slotina is priced for Ireland in euro.

Why does this page show no prices or star ratings?

Because this site prints no other company's prices and scores nobody. Several of these suppliers quote rather than publish, the published ones change, and each one's own pricing page is linked below.

Sources, read 4 November 2026

Every fact about another company on this page comes from these pages, each opened on 4 November 2026.

akru (Zonal)

Dojo

Epos Now

ICRTouch

Lightspeed Restaurant

Square for Restaurants

Toast