If you are searching for the best restaurant POS in Australia, you have probably already seen a dozen "top 10" lists. Most are written by vendors or by sites paid per referral. We are a vendor too, so instead of a ranking, here are the questions that actually separate a good fit from an expensive mistake.
What is the best restaurant POS in Australia?
There is no single best restaurant POS in Australia. There is a best fit for your venue, and it comes down to six things: what happens when the internet drops, how orders reach the kitchen, how delivery orders come in, how stock and food cost are tracked, what hardware it runs on, and how you pay for it.
A small cafe that wants card payments and a POS from one company will be happy with something different from a busy takeaway taking a hundred Uber Eats orders a night, or a pub group with five venues. This guide walks through the criteria first, then describes the well-known options in neutral terms, then tells you honestly where SureTill fits and where it does not.
Which criteria should you judge a restaurant POS on?
Judge it on how it behaves on your busiest night, not on the length of its feature list. These are the six questions we would ask as owners.
| Criterion | What to ask | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Offline behaviour | With the router unplugged, can staff still take orders, send them to the kitchen and close bills on every terminal? | An NBN dropout on a Friday is the most expensive hour of your month. |
| Kitchen workflow | Can each item route to its own station (grill, fryer, bar) as a printed docket or on a kitchen display? | Wrong or missing dockets cost more than any subscription. |
| Delivery orders | Do Uber Eats and other app orders come straight into the POS, or do you need tablets or a middleware service? | Retyping orders from a tablet is slow and error-prone. |
| Stock and food cost | Does selling a dish deduct its recipe ingredients, with wastage and low-stock alerts? | Food cost is where most margins quietly disappear. |
| Hardware | Is it tied to iPads or its own hardware, or can it use Windows, Android and your existing thermal printers? | Hardware lock-in decides your real start-up cost. |
| Pricing model | Monthly per terminal or venue? Paid add-ons? Is payment processing bundled? Any cut of sales? | The headline price is rarely the price you pay in year two. |
Weight these for your venue. A cafe with one counter cares most about speed and payments. A kitchen-heavy restaurant cares most about routing and food cost. A delivery-heavy takeaway cares most about how app orders arrive.
Which restaurant POS systems do Australian venues commonly use?
The names you will see most often are Square, Lightspeed (which now includes Kounta), Abacus, H&L and Loyverse. Each has a clear audience. The descriptions below are neutral and deliberately general: features and prices change, so check current pricing and features on each vendor's site before you decide.
| System | Widely known for | Worth checking |
|---|---|---|
| Square for Restaurants | Cloud POS from Block with card payments built in; popular with cafes and quick-service venues; runs on iPad and Square hardware | Which features need paid tiers; how its offline payments option works; how delivery orders come in |
| Lightspeed Restaurant | Cloud iPad POS used by cafes, restaurants and bars; Kounta is now part of Lightspeed; large integrations marketplace | Which plan includes the features you need; what works offline; integration costs |
| Abacus | Australian iPad-based hospitality POS used by cafes, restaurants and bars | Offline behaviour; delivery integrations; hardware requirements |
| H&L | Long-established Australian hospitality POS, common in pubs, clubs and multi-venue groups | Fit for a smaller single venue; hardware and support model |
| Loyverse | Free POS app with paid add-ons, popular with small cafes and takeaways; runs on phones and tablets; separate kitchen display app | Which add-ons you will need; depth of ingredient-level stock; delivery connections |
All of these are real products used by real venues every day. If one of them already works for you, the bar for switching should be high. The point of the criteria above is to make the trade-offs visible, not to declare a winner.
Where does SureTill fit?
SureTill fits venues where an internet dropout or a delivery rush would hurt most: kitchen-heavy restaurants, takeaways and bakeries that want the kitchen and stock to keep running whatever happens to the NBN.
Against the six criteria, this is what SureTill is built around:
- Offline-first. It runs on a server inside your restaurant, with a local database. Billing, kitchen dockets, the KDS and stock deduction keep working with no internet, then sync to a local server and an optional cloud copy.
- Kitchen routing. Kitchen order tickets route per station, to thermal printers over USB, LAN or Bluetooth, or to a kitchen display.
- Uber Eats built in. SureTill integrates with Uber Eats through the official Uber Eats API. Orders land in SureTill and print to the kitchen; you accept, reject and mark ready from the POS, and manage the Uber Eats menu and prices there. No separate tablet is needed.
- Recipe-based stock. Ingredients deduct when the order goes to the kitchen, with unit conversion, wastage, batches and expiry, and low-stock alerts. See inventory.
- Hardware you choose. Windows, Linux and Android terminals, standard ESC/POS printers. Self-hosted, or with a cloud mirror.
- Simple pricing. A one-time setup and training fee plus a flat monthly fee. No cut of your sales. Call for a quote.
It runs in production today in Melbourne at Meadow Heights Lebanese Bakery, and in Lahore at Flavourz, a three-branch restaurant, cafe and lounge doing more than 1,000 orders per branch per day. It was built by a restaurant owner, which is why the kitchen side gets so much attention.
When is SureTill not the right choice?
Be clear-eyed about the trade-offs. SureTill is not the right pick for every venue, and we would rather say so up front.
- You want payments and POS from one company on one bill. Square and similar systems bundle card processing. With SureTill, ask us about your payment terminal.
- You need a big local team at your door. We provide remote setup and support over WhatsApp and phone, with setup help. We do not have an Australian office.
- You are a large pub or club group with gaming, membership and venue-wide systems that a specialist hospitality vendor already covers.
- You rely on a long list of third-party add-ons from an app marketplace. Check that what you need exists before switching anything.
How should you shortlist and test a restaurant POS?
Pick two or three systems against the criteria, then make each one prove itself in a live demo using your own menu.
- Load five of your real dishes, with modifiers, and send them to the kitchen.
- Unplug the internet and repeat. Then plug it back in and check nothing is duplicated.
- Send a test delivery order through and watch where it lands.
- Sell a dish and check the ingredients came off stock.
- Get the total cost for year one and year two in writing, including hardware, add-ons and payment fees.
If you want help working out your food cost before you change anything, our free food cost calculator does the maths per plate.
Book a free 30-minute demo. We will unplug the internet mid-order and keep going. Bring your hardest questions.
Book a free demoFrequently asked
What is the best POS system for a restaurant in Australia?
It depends on your venue. Judge each option on offline behaviour, kitchen routing, how delivery orders arrive, recipe-based stock, hardware and the full pricing model. A small cafe, a busy takeaway and a pub group will each land on a different answer.
Is Square or Lightspeed better for restaurants?
Both are established cloud POS systems used by many Australian venues. Square bundles card payments and suits smaller cafes and quick-service venues; Lightspeed is widely used by cafes, restaurants and bars and has a large integrations marketplace. Check current features and pricing on their sites.
Which restaurant POS works without internet?
Many systems offer an offline mode that covers some actions. An offline-first POS such as SureTill runs a full backend on a server inside the restaurant, so billing, kitchen tickets, the kitchen display and stock deduction keep working with no internet.
Does SureTill integrate with Uber Eats?
Yes. SureTill integrates with Uber Eats through the official Uber Eats API. Orders land in SureTill and print to the kitchen, and you accept, reject and mark them ready from the POS without a separate tablet.
How much does SureTill cost in Australia?
Pricing is by quote: a one-time setup and training fee plus a flat monthly fee, with no cut of your sales. Call or WhatsApp for a quote and a free demo.
Competitor descriptions are general and based on publicly available information at the time of writing; check current features and pricing on each vendor's site. All trademarks belong to their owners, and SureTill is not affiliated with any vendor named here.