A register and payment system change touches the busiest five minutes of the night. A feature list matters less than whether servers, kitchen staff, managers, online orders, and closeout agree.

• A demo that skips Friday-night volume.
• Online orders retyped into the kitchen.
• Hardware, payment, support, or contract terms left out of the quote.
• No documented offline or outage procedure.

• Map dine-in, bar, takeout, delivery, and closeout.
• Run the ten ugliest orders in each demo.
• Compare the complete quote and contract, not a headline price.
• Test offline steps and train staff before cutover.

Need a short way to frame the choice before you run a service test? Read the quick owner answer.

• Square’s restaurant page says hardware is not included with the subscription. It says you may be able to reuse iPads, kitchen printers, receipt printers, cash drawers, and routers.
• Toast’s pricing page says its services only run on approved Toast hardware. Toast can change which devices it approves.

List every printer, cash drawer, tablet, and handheld you own today. Ask each vendor, in writing, which ones stay, which ones go, and what each device can do if you leave.

• Toast says cash and card payments still work in offline mode. Gift cards, loyalty redemptions, house accounts, and a few other payment types do not. Toast makes you responsible for declined, expired, or disputed offline payments, and strongly recommends getting devices back online within three days, preferably within 24 hours.
• Toast devices can’t sync with each other offline, so an order taken on one terminal won’t show on the others. Toast recommends each employee stay on one device while offline. If the kitchen uses screens, Toast recommends a backup printer for the tickets those screens would show.
• Square’s help center says Square Register, Terminal, and Handheld must upload offline payments within 72 hours, and highly recommends doing it within 24. Square’s card readers and stands stop taking offline payments after 24 hours until you reconnect. Pending offline payments expire after 72 hours and cannot be recovered. Square’s restaurant page uses the stricter 24-hour figure, so plan around 24. Square makes you responsible for expired, declined, or disputed offline payments. Square Gift Cards, Afterpay, Cash App Pay, Tap to Pay on a phone, and typed-in card numbers do not work offline, and older Square contactless readers (1st generation, v1 and v2) cannot take offline payments at all.

Ask both which payment types stop working offline. Then test it in both demos. Unplug the cable that brings internet into the modem and leave the router and Wi-Fi on, the way a real outage looks. Fire a course, split a check, and try a gift card. Reconnect and see what went through. In a real outage, do not delete or reinstall the app or reset a device that holds offline payments; Square adds signing out and switching modes or locations. Both say that can wipe those payments for good. If outages happen now, first check whether it is the internet or the Wi-Fi.

• Square’s restaurant page says its plans have no locked-in contracts. If you leave for another processor, Square’s help center says it can transfer your saved customer cards. Square says the transfer can take up to two weeks. The new processor must be PCI DSS Level 1 compliant. PCI DSS is the card industry’s security standard.
• You can export the customer list in Square Dashboard under Customers > Customer directory > Directory, then Import / Export.
• Toast’s help center says there is no single export of all your Toast data. Instead, you download reports from Toast Web, six months at a time, for up to the last 48 months. Toast says your data stays accessible for 60 days after you close the account.

Ask Toast for the full merchant agreement and its term before you sign. Ask Square which plan the quote assumes. Either way, pull a sample export in the first week, not the last.

If your current system gets through a full Friday and closes clean, a switch may not be worth the retraining. Fix the network and the menu setup first. Running a bar instead? See Toast vs. Clover for a bar.

We help restaurants document the flow, compare the real terms, set up the network, and connect the customer path. We do not sell either register and payment system.

Get a plain-English second opinion

Product features and rules can change. Use the linked source as the current word.

• Square for Restaurants — Official restaurant register and payment system feature source.
• Toast platform overview — Official restaurant process and product source.
• Square: Process offline payments — Official preparation, limits, and risk guidance.
• Square Support: Export card on file to third-party payment processors — How saved customer cards and the customer list leave Square. Checked October 19, 2026.
• Toast: Restaurant POS pricing and FAQ — Toast’s FAQ on whether you can use your own hardware. Checked October 19, 2026.
• Toast Platform Guide: Offline payments overview — Which payments work offline on Toast, and offline best practices. Checked October 19, 2026.
• Toast Support: Can I download a backup of all of my Toast data? — How to save Toast data before leaving, and how long it stays available. Checked October 19, 2026.
• Toast Platform Guide: Offline card payments — Offline card limits and decline risk. Checked October 19, 2026.