Top 5 Restaurant POS Systems in the UK
Top 5 restaurant POS systems in the UK
For most UK restaurants, Flipdish is the best POS. It handles counter sales, online ordering, kiosks, payments and marketing on one platform, and it was built for food businesses from the start rather than adapted from a retail till.
The ranking below covers five systems you can realistically buy in the UK in 2026. They're judged on four things: which ordering channels they cover, how well they cope with more than one site, how deep the integrations go, and what you pay once everything is switched on.
What a restaurant POS has to do now
A till takes payments. A restaurant POS in 2026 also has to catch orders from everywhere else. At a minimum it should:
- take orders at the counter, at tables, on kiosks, through your website and from delivery apps
- send them to the kitchen without anyone retyping them
- keep the menu identical on every channel, edited in one place
- report across all your locations
- connect to payroll, stock and accounting software
If the POS only covers in-person orders, you end up with a second system for online ordering, a third for delivery apps and probably a fourth for loyalty. Each one needs training. Each has its own menu to update. Every handover between them is a chance for a wrong order to reach the kitchen.
1. Flipdish - best overall for UK restaurants
Flipdish comes first because counter, online, kiosk and phone orders all run through one system and share one set of data. Nothing has to be bolted on to get there.
POS and in-venue ordering
The Flipdish restaurant POS covers counter service, table service and quick service. Orders go straight to the kitchen display system, so there are no paper tickets to lose or misread. Modifiers, combos and menu variants all live on one screen.
Online ordering and direct channels
Every Flipdish restaurant gets a branded ordering website and a mobile app. Those orders appear on the same kitchen screen as counter orders. An order from your own website costs you less than one from a marketplace, and you keep the customer's details.
Marketplace orders
If you also sell through Just Eat, Uber Eats or Deliveroo, Flipdish pulls those orders into the same POS screen. Change a price or hide a sold-out dish in Flipdish and it changes on every marketplace too. You can put the spare tablets in a drawer.
Self-service kiosks
Flipdish kiosks take pressure off the counter at busy times and tend to lift the average order, because the upsell prompts are built in and every customer sees them. A kiosk runs from the same menu as the POS, so availability, pricing and promotions match. Kiosk orders go to the same kitchen display as everything else.
AI phone agent and marketing
The AI phone agent answers calls, takes the order and sends it to the kitchen. Nobody on your team has to pick up the phone in the middle of a lunch rush. The AI marketing platform sends re-engagement campaigns based on how each customer has ordered before.
Payments
Flipdish Pay processes card payments at the counter, on kiosks and online. Since payments and POS are the same platform, end-of-day reconciliation happens without anyone matching figures between two systems.
Multiple locations
Head office can set menus, prices, promotions and reports for the whole group, and each manager still gets a view of their own site. This is where Flipdish pulls furthest ahead of single-site systems, and it matters most for franchises.
| Feature | Flipdish |
|---|---|
| Restaurant-specific POS | ✓ |
| Own website + app ordering | ✓ |
| Marketplace aggregation | ✓ |
| Self-service kiosks | ✓ |
| Integrated payments | ✓ |
| Multi-site management | ✓ |
| AI phone ordering | ✓ |
| Loyalty and marketing | ✓ |
Pricing is at flipdish.com/pricing.
2. Lightspeed Restaurant
Lightspeed Restaurant is a cloud POS aimed at full-service restaurants and hospitality venues where most of the business is dine-in. Its floor plan and table management are strong. Split bills, cover counts and server assignment all work well, which is what a busy dining room needs.
The gap is everything outside the dining room. Lightspeed has no native online ordering and no kiosk product, so selling direct means connecting a third-party platform. Marketplace orders come in through integrations too. One site doing mostly table service can live with that. A group running several sites and several channels will spend more time configuring Lightspeed and more money on add-on tools than it would with Flipdish.
3. Square for Restaurants
Square suits small independents and cafés that are just getting going. There's a free tier, the hardware is cheap and you can be taking orders quickly.
It runs out of road at scale. The kitchen display is a paid add-on. Multi-location management is limited. Online ordering works, but it's less polished than a dedicated restaurant ordering platform, and the reporting is thinner than a growing restaurant tends to want.
Square makes sense on day one. Once volume picks up, most operators end up looking for something with more in it.
4. Epos Now
Epos Now is a UK-based EPOS provider that sells to both hospitality and retail. The base product is affordable and does the basics, and anything extra comes from an add-on app marketplace.
That's where the bill grows. Online ordering, integrations and better reporting are each an add-on, and the monthly cost climbs with every one. Support is the other thing to check before signing, since complaints about it turn up in UK operator reviews. The hospitality side also lacks the restaurant-specific depth of Flipdish, mainly for multi-site management and direct ordering.
5. Toast
Toast is the biggest restaurant POS in the United States. It's a mature, restaurant-only product with solid POS, kitchen display and online ordering, and it's moving into the UK.
The UK rollout is still in progress. Local integrations, UK payment processing options and on-the-ground support are less developed than at providers that have been here for years. Check what's available in your area, and who you'd phone when something breaks on a Friday night, before you commit.
Comparison table
| System | Restaurant-specific | Own ordering channels | Kiosks | Marketplace aggregation | Multi-site | UK-based support |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Flipdish | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Lightspeed | ✓ | Via third party | Via third party | Via third party | Partial | ✓ |
| Square | Partial | Basic | No | No | Limited | ✓ |
| Epos Now | Partial | Via add-on | No | Via add-on | Limited | ✓ |
| Toast | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Developing |
Which one fits which restaurant
One site, mostly dine-in, no plans to sell online: Lightspeed is a reasonable pick for that. A single café or takeaway on a tight budget: Square gets you started cheaply, though you may outgrow it. A small hospitality business that wants a UK supplier and a low entry price: Epos Now, as long as you price the add-ons before you sign.
If you sell through several channels, run more than one site, or want to cut your marketplace commission, Flipdish is built for that. Toast belongs on the list for operators who already know it from the US, but check UK availability first.
What does a restaurant POS cost in the UK?
There are three common ways to pay.
A monthly subscription is a fixed fee per terminal or per location. It usually runs from around £50 to several hundred pounds a month, depending on features and size.
Some providers take a percentage of each transaction instead of a flat fee. That looks cheap when you're small and gets expensive as you grow, because the fee grows with every pound you take.
Others sell the hardware outright and charge a separate software fee on top.
Whichever model you pick, add up the whole stack before comparing. A POS that looks cheap but needs a separate online ordering platform, a kiosk subscription and an integration fee for each delivery app will often cost more than one platform that includes all of them. Flipdish publishes its pricing at flipdish.com/pricing.
Questions to ask before you choose
- Does it handle every channel you sell through? Counter, online, kiosk and phone should not each need their own system.
- Do orders from all channels reach the same kitchen display?
- How does menu management work across sites? Ask them to show you one change updating everywhere at once.
- What happens when the internet goes down? Ask whether it keeps taking orders offline, and what syncs afterwards.
- What does support look like in practice? A local team you can phone is different from a ticket queue.
- What is the real total cost? Count the POS, online ordering, kiosk software, payment processing and every integration you need.
Ask for a demo using your own menu, with your own modifiers. A system always looks good with a demo menu of six items.
Why direct ordering matters as much as the POS
The most common mistake in POS buying is looking only at what happens inside the restaurant and ignoring the orders that come from outside it.
Every order through Just Eat, Uber Eats or Deliveroo carries a commission, typically 15 to 30% of the order value. On a £20 order that's £3 to £6 gone before you've paid for the food or the rider's wait. An order placed on your own website or app costs a fraction of that. A restaurant POS system that also runs your direct channels can pay for itself just by moving some of those customers off the marketplaces.
Flipdish is built around this. The POS and the ordering platform are one product, and every channel feeds one dashboard.
For independent comparisons and more restaurant technology reviews, see restauranttech.co.uk.
Get started with Flipdish
Flipdish works with independent restaurants, QSRs, takeaways, cafés and multi-location groups across the UK and Ireland.