A Toronto original and a US arrival
TouchBistro was founded in 2010, and its privacy notice gives a Toronto address on Richmond Street West. It began as an iPad app for restaurants and still describes its POS as built just for restaurants. Toast is a US company. It announced its Canadian launch from Toronto on April 4, 2023, and called Canada its first market outside the United States.
The two sell in different ways. TouchBistro prints starting prices and lets a single restaurant add pieces as it grows. Toast sells point of sale, payments and hardware as one package, and you see the numbers after a sales call.
Plans and monthly fees
TouchBistro shows three bundles on its pricing page. Point of Sale starts at $69 a month and covers the full POS software: menu management, reporting, floor plan and table management, staff management and tableside ordering. Hardware is required and isn't included, and neither are payments. The Essentials Bundle starts at $119 a month and adds integrated payments and restaurant hardware. Custom Setup is quoted. Kitchen display, inventory, online ordering, reservations, loyalty and gift cards are all add-ons priced by quote. When we checked on October 30, 2026, TouchBistro was offering three months free for a limited time, without the terms on the page.
Toast doesn't give you a figure to read. Its Canadian site and pricing page returned HTTP 403 to our automated check on October 30, 2026, just as they did on September 19, 2026. Prices shown in search listings could not be confirmed on Toast's own pages, so we don't repeat them. Treat Toast as quote-based: you book a call, describe your restaurant and get a number back. Our Toast pricing guide lists what to ask for.
Card processing
Neither company prints its rates. TouchBistro includes integrated payments in its Essentials and Custom bundles, and its footnote says payment processing and additional fees apply. Its FAQ says it works with a range of payment processors, integrated or standalone, so on the Point of Sale plan you can keep a processor you already have.
Toast runs its own payment processing, and the rate is part of the quote, so a software figure on its own wouldn't tell you what Toast costs. With either vendor, ask for the in-person credit rate, the Interac debit rate, any per-transaction fee and any monthly minimum, all in writing. Then work out the effective rate each would charge on a recent month of your own card sales: total fees divided by total card volume.
Hardware
TouchBistro's Point of Sale plan says hardware is required. The Essentials Bundle includes restaurant hardware in the monthly price, and TouchBistro offers financing for venues with two or more terminals. It also sells TouchBistro One, a single device for orders and payments, by quote. No hardware prices are printed.
Toast supplies its own hardware and quotes it together with the software and payments. We could not read hardware prices or financing terms on Toast's pages. Ask both for an itemized hardware quote, whether the hardware is bought, financed or bundled into the monthly figure, and what happens to it if you leave.
Contracts and support
Neither vendor prints its contract terms where we could read them. Before you sign with either, ask in writing how long the term is, whether it renews on its own, and what it costs to leave early.
TouchBistro lists 24/7 support by phone and email, holidays included, at no extra cost. We could not read Toast's support terms, so ask what hours are covered and whether support costs extra on your plan.
French and Quebec
TouchBistro announced French and Spanish versions of its app in April 2016, and its privacy notice is published in English and French. Its pricing page says nothing about Quebec.
When Toast launched in Canada it said availability may vary by province. We could not read Toast's current Canadian feature or language pages. A Quebec restaurant should ask both for a demo in French and a written answer on how each works in Quebec today.
Who each one suits
TouchBistro suits a single full-service restaurant that wants a restaurant-only POS with tableside ordering, 24/7 support from a Toronto company, and the option to start on software alone and add payments, hardware and the kitchen later.
Toast suits a restaurant that wants one vendor for its point of sale, payments and hardware, is happy to negotiate a bundled quote, and has the volume to make that negotiation worth having. It is strongest with full-service and multi-unit operators.
Where Waitery fits
TouchBistro began as an iPad app for restaurants, and Toast came to Canada from the US. Waitery is the next generation of restaurant tech, built in Canada and only for restaurants. It is a QR-first restaurant POS from Mississauga, Ontario: guests scan a table QR code and order with no app, servers take orders and payments on handhelds, and tickets go to a kitchen display with station routing and no per-screen fee. The guest menu, kitchen and receipts work in English and French.
Waitery publishes its price in Canadian dollars: one plan at $14 CAD per location per month, on our pricing page, with no setup fee. Like Toast, it supplies its own modern smart POS hardware and integrated payments, so one company answers for the whole setup. Hardware can be rented monthly or bought outright, and processing is quoted per restaurant during the demo. For the detail, read Waitery vs Toast and Waitery vs TouchBistro, take the restaurant POS tour, or see every POS comparison. TouchBistro's plans are broken down further in our TouchBistro pricing guide.
This comparison uses the vendors' own public pages on the dates shown. Toast's Canadian launch details come from its April 4, 2023 newsroom release. Toast prices, contract terms and hardware costs were not readable on its pages, which is why none appear here. Prices and plans change, so confirm them with Toast and TouchBistro before you decide. Toast and TouchBistro are trademarks of their owners; Waitery is not affiliated with or endorsed by either company.