Square vs. Toast vs. Clover: Choosing the Right Restaurant POS in 2025

Choosing a POS system is one of the most consequential technology decisions a restaurant makes. The right system saves your staff hours every week and gives you real data to run your business. The wrong one becomes a daily source of friction and surprise fees.

We've set up and supported dozens of POS systems across South Florida restaurants. Here's our honest breakdown of the three most common platforms in 2025:

Square for Restaurants

Best for: Fast casual, counter service, food trucks, and smaller full-service restaurants getting started.

Square's strength is simplicity. It's easy to set up, the hardware is affordable, and the free tier covers basic ordering for restaurants just getting started. The Plus plan ($60/mo) adds table management, course firing, and more robust reporting.

Square integrates seamlessly with online ordering, payroll, and inventory. As a certified Square partner, Boom Media handles setup, training, and ongoing support.

Pricing: Free tier available. Plus: $60/mo per location. Processing: 2.6% + 10¢ in-person.

Pros: Easy setup, great hardware, strong integrations, free starter plan.

Cons: Less robust than Toast for large full-service operations, limited offline functionality.

Toast

Best for: High-volume full-service restaurants with complex operations.

Toast is the enterprise choice. It handles complex table management, multi-location operations, advanced labor management, and kitchen display systems with serious depth. The tradeoff is cost and complexity.

Toast hardware is proprietary — you're locked in. Processing fees are built into the contract and can be higher than Square for lower volume restaurants.

Pricing: Starter: $0/mo (higher processing fees). Point of Sale: $69/mo. Build Your Own: custom pricing.

Pros: Most powerful restaurant-specific features, excellent KDS integration, strong enterprise support.

Cons: Higher cost, proprietary hardware lock-in, steeper learning curve.

Clover

Best for: Restaurants that want flexible hardware and a large app marketplace.

Clover's main advantage is its app marketplace — thousands of integrations available. The hardware is sleek and well-designed. But Clover is sold through resellers (often banks) with varying fee structures, so pricing can be opaque.

Pricing: Varies by reseller. Typically $14.95–$84.95/mo depending on plan.

Pros: Great hardware design, flexible app ecosystem, works for multiple business types.

Cons: Inconsistent pricing through resellers, less restaurant-specific than Toast or Square.

Our Recommendation

For most South Florida restaurants — fast casual through mid-size full service — Square for Restaurants hits the best balance of price, ease, and capability. For high-volume, complex full-service operations with dedicated floor managers and multiple terminals, Toast earns its cost.

Boom Media is a certified Square partner. We handle free hardware setup, staff training, and ongoing support for all our Square clients.