Restaurant POS in Australia: Square vs Lightspeed vs the Oolio Brands vs Pratham
Every vendor’s comparison page — ours included — has an obvious conflict of interest. So this one plays it straight: what each system is genuinely good at, what the public record says, and how to verify every line yourself. Prices below were checked on 19 August 2026 and change often; treat them as the shape of each offer, not a quote. If a claim here looks wrong or outdated, tell us and we’ll correct it.
Square (squareup.com/au)
The easiest start in the market: a $0/month software tier, published flat processing (1.6% for in-person payments at the time of writing) and hardware you can buy off the shelf. For market stalls, pop-ups and simple counters, Square is genuinely the right answer, and its pricing transparency deserves the credit it gets.
The trade-offs are structural rather than cosmetic. Payments can only run through Square — there’s no integrating a Tyro, ANZ Worldline or Nuvei terminal, and no least-cost routing choice. Square’s own documentation describes offline payments as capped (a $100 default limit) and requiring sync within 24–72 hours before they expire. And reviewers on Australian review sites have repeatedly reported held funds and account deactivations — worth reading current reviews yourself before relying on next-day settlement. Advanced table-service workflows are also thinner than the hospitality specialists’.
Lightspeed (lightspeedhq.com/au, formerly Kounta)
The strongest fit on this list for multi-site operations and complex inventory, with published restaurant plans from $79/month. Budget for the add-on stack, though: at the time of writing, online ordering (+$59), inventory (+$99), reservations (+$69), a kitchen display (+$40 per screen), extra registers (+$39) and even raw API access (+$169) are priced separately on Lightspeed’s own AU pricing page — so a working venue’s real monthly cost commonly lands well above the sticker.
On payments, the public record matters: in litigation brought by Tyro, the NSW Supreme Court found Kounta had breached its obligations in steering merchants toward Lightspeed’s own payments product, with a reported $10 million settlement. Some merchants have also reported extra fees for keeping third-party EFTPOS. If keeping your choice of payment provider matters to you, ask Lightspeed directly what it costs to stay with your current one.
The Oolio brands: Impos, OrderMate and SwiftPOS
Three familiar Australian names, one owner — all now part of Oolio Group, a private-equity-backed roll-up, with Oolio Pay as the house payments layer. Each has real strengths: Impos’s fine-dining pedigree and guides, OrderMate’s Melbourne history, SwiftPOS’s genuine scale in clubs and stadiums.
What a buyer should weigh: none of the three publishes pricing (all are quote-only), and consolidation raises the usual roll-up questions — which brands survive, and what migration looks like for customers of the ones that don’t. Two questions worth asking any Oolio brand in a demo: which of your products are being sunset, and can I keep my current EFTPOS provider without penalty?
Idealpos
Thirty years of history, the widest vertical spread here — including gaming-machine integration for pubs and clubs, and true retail — and it remains independent. Pricing is quote-only, its public content runs more to release notes than guidance, and reviewers have noted setup complexity. A solid fit for venues that want a dealer-installed system with deep club/gaming support; if that’s you, shortlist it.
Pratham POS (us — read with that in mind)
Melbourne-based and independent. $0/month software with an eligible payment bundle and a published pricing structure; integrated EFTPOS with your choice of Tyro, ANZ Worldline or Nuvei — no penalty for choosing; a cloud platform with a true built-in offline mode, so you keep taking orders, selling and printing through an outage; QR table ordering and commission-free online ordering in the same platform; no lock-in contract; 24/7 Australian support on 1300 941 886.
The honest trade-offs: we’re a younger brand than everyone above, our third-party integration marketplace is smaller than Lightspeed’s, and if you need gaming-machine integration for a club, Idealpos or SwiftPOS is the better call today.
How to use this page
Take our Buyer’s Scorecard to a demo with any of us — its seven questions apply to every vendor on this list, including Pratham. Current pricing always lives on each vendor’s own site; this comparison was reviewed on 19 August 2026 and is re-checked periodically.
