As of 30 Oct 2026, the panel rates Lightspeed Restaurant 2.5/5 and Tillhub 2.5/5 in POS & Checkout Systems. Weighted by what each judge cares about, 4 of the 6 judges pick Lightspeed Restaurant and 2 pick Tillhub. Lightspeed Restaurant scores higher on 4 of 7 criteria (Accounting handoff, DATEV & data export, Pricing transparency, Checkout, receipts & hardware, plus 1 more). Tillhub scores higher on 2 of 7 criteria (European sovereignty and Fiscal compliance (TSE, DSFinV-K, RKSV)). Provenance — Lightspeed Restaurant: Rest of world; Tillhub: EU origin, foreign-owned. Ratings are the AI panel’s opinion, formed from public evidence: how scores are made.
The benches split rather than decide. Lightspeed Restaurant is ahead on accounting and portability, 6.7 versus 4.0 with six leaning its way; on pricing transparency, 5.2 versus 4.3 with five leans; and on checkout and hardware, 6.7 versus 6.3 with two leans and four ties. Tillhub is ahead on sovereignty, 5.8 versus 3.8 with six leaning Tillhub, and on fiscal compliance, 5.7 versus 4.7 with five leans and one tie. Payments and fees sits close at 4.3 versus 4.0, one lean and five ties; operations and locations is level at 6.8 to 6.8, one lean each way. The published weighted totals split two and two: the tax adviser, 5.7 to 5.3, and the fee-conscious merchant, 5.3 to 4.9, favor Lightspeed Restaurant; the operations manager, 5.2 to 5.1, and the skeptic, 5.1 to 4.7, favor Tillhub. No overall winner emerges; the split is the finding.
Choose Lightspeed Restaurant if
You keep books through DATEV: Lightspeed Restaurant documents daily automated single records in DSFinV-K format into DATEV Kassenarchiv online and DATEV Kassenbuch online, and six judges lean Lightspeed Restaurant on accounting and portability, 6.7 versus 4.0.
You compare published plan prices before a sales call: five judges lean Lightspeed Restaurant on pricing transparency, 5.2 versus 4.3.
Your counter hardware is already Epson, Star, Safescan, Zebra or Verifone: the named catalogue and an offline mode whose limits are written down sit behind the checkout and hardware lead of 6.7 versus 6.3.
Your review panel includes a tax adviser: that judge's weighted total puts Lightspeed Restaurant ahead, 5.7 to 5.3.
Your compliance checklist requires a listed owner: the sovereignty attribute records Lightspeed Restaurant's ownership as listed.
Choose Tillhub if
You need to know where your data sits: the captured pages state storage immutable on two redundant servers in Germany, and six judges lean Tillhub on sovereignty, 5.8 versus 3.8.
You want TSE included in the till price: Tillhub publishes 'POS Go ab 30 € pro Monat inklusive TSE', and five judges lean Tillhub on fiscal compliance, 5.7 versus 4.7.
Your operations manager signs off the purchase: that judge's weighted total has Tillhub ahead, 5.2 to 5.1.
You read the panel's skeptic as your proxy: that judge's weighted total favors Tillhub, 5.1 to 4.7.
Read this comparison as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.
The Café Owner
Runs a café with twelve tables, a counter and a terrace in summer, and closes the till herself at eleven at night. Wants an iPad till the student staff learn in one shift, orders that reach the kitchen printer, split bills and tips without arithmetic, a till that keeps selling when the Wi-Fi drops, a TSE she does not have to think about, and a monthly cost she can still read in the second year.
Lightspeed Restaurant
This judge's pick
Tillhub
Criterion by criterion
Checkout, receipts & hardware
Lightspeed Restaurant
The till runs on iPads with a named hardware list — Epson and Star receipt printers, an Epson kitchen printer, Safescan drawers, a Zebra label printer, a SocketScan scanner — and the offline mode is written down with its limits: sales carry on, data is cached locally and syncs to the cloud when the line returns, master data and cloud reporting need internet, and X- and Z-closings still work on the local network; bill splitting and guest tip selection are stated. We found no public information on a customer display, scales, or hardware rental and purchase terms.
Tillhub
The till runs as an iPad app and on the Android POS Go that puts the till, card reader, barcode scanner and receipt printer in one device; receipts go out printed, by e-mail or QR code, returns are booked with cancellation rights set per employee, the customer display can carry my own branding, and selling continues through short internet outages with automatic cloud sync afterwards. For my café the table plan, wireless ordering and tip function are documented; we found no public information on split bills, a published hardware compatibility list, or how long and with which payments the offline mode works.
Card payments & fees
Lightspeed Restaurant
The payments page names Lightspeed Payments with two compatible terminals (e285 and V400m), tap to pay on a phone, tips and splitting at the table, payouts on demand within hours including weekends, and automated matching against the day's takings. No fee per card type and no terminal cost appear anywhere I read, and I found no public information on girocard specifics or on bringing my own acquirer to this till.
Tillhub
Mobile and stationary Unzer card terminals connect fully to the till, EC, credit card and mobile payments are named, the all-in-one device passes the amount to the reader without retyping, and every transaction shows live on the UnzerOne dashboard. But the transaction and base fees are only described as low without any figures, and payout timing and whether I could use another acquirer's terminal are not described.
Fiscal compliance (TSE, DSFinV-K, RKSV)
Lightspeed Restaurant
A certified cloud TSE is stated to secure every transaction — cash, vouchers, EC and credit card — with a signature on each sale, single records transfer daily and automatically in DSFinV-K format to DATEV Kassenarchiv online and on into DATEV Kassenbuch online, and X- and Z-closings run even offline on the local network. The TSE provider and its BSI certificate are not named, and I found no public information on what happens if the TSE fails, on GoBD ten-year storage, on help with the registration, or on a procedure documentation.
Tillhub
Every system comes with fiskaly's cloud TSE, which the BSI officially certified, receipts are signed and archived automatically and kept ten years in the cloud; GoBD and KassenSichV conformity are claimed, daily closings take a click, and a one-click export is offered for the tax auditor. We found no public information naming the DSFinV-K export, a procedure documentation template, help with the registration under § 146a, or a second country's fiscal rules.
Inventory, tables, staff & locations
Lightspeed Restaurant
For a café with tables and a kitchen this reads well: recipes, suppliers, purchase orders with automatic reordering and minimum stock levels, a kitchen display with stations, timestamps and its own offline mode plus a LAN kitchen printer, QR and kiosk self-ordering, and multi-location management with central inventory and benchmark reporting. I found no public information on staff logins with roles or a log of cancellations and voids per employee.
Tillhub
This fits my twelve tables: a room and table plan, wireless ordering, a tip function and reservations, plus a mobile waiter ordering system; behind the sale there is central stock across all branches with supplier management, digital stocktaking and goods receipts, per-employee rights with a cash count at shift change, and over sixty real-time statistics with reports by product, employee and branch. We found no public information on a kitchen display or kitchen printer, or on QR self-ordering.
Accounting handoff, DATEV & data export
Lightspeed Restaurant
The DATEV handoff is the strongest part of the whole offering: single records go daily and automatically in DSFinV-K format to DATEV Kassenarchiv online and DATEV Kassenbuch online, product categories, accounts and payment methods are mapped automatically, a MeinFiskal archive sync exists, and a direct API and partner API are offered. I found no public information on a full export of articles, customers and sales when the contract ends, or on webhooks.
Tillhub
A genuine DATEV handoff monthly or quarterly for my Steuerberater, plus exports as CSV, Excel or PDF of sales, stock and staff reports with automatic report delivery, and daily closings export-ready for the accountant. We found no public information on booking with revenue accounts and tax rates, a documented API or webhooks, or a complete export of articles, customers and fiscal journals when the contract ends.
European sovereignty
Lightspeed Restaurant
The legal notice names Lightspeed POS Germany GmbH in Berlin with a commercial register number and VAT ID, and infrastructure certifications (SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001, PCI DSS) are stated for third-party multi-tenant infrastructure providers. I found no public information on where the till data is hosted — the German site only refers to an English-language subprocessor list — nor on the parent's ownership, the contracting entity's jurisdiction, or a data processing agreement.
Tillhub
The contract is with UTill Commerce GmbH in Hamburg and my data sits immutably on servers in Germany — two of them for redundancy — with the cloud TSE from fiskaly and the payment side inside the Unzer group since 2022. The privacy policy names its analytics subprocessors with locations, Hubspot and Doubleclick by Google in the USA (citing an EU-US Privacy Shield certification) and wiredminds in Germany, and ISO 27001 is claimed for the development process; we found no public information on a published data processing agreement, and hosting is stated as Germany without a named infrastructure provider.
Pricing transparency
Lightspeed Restaurant
Basic, Core and Pro are published at 89 € /mo, 159 € /mo and 249 € /mo with €49 for each additional licence, monthly plans cancel to the month's end while annual plans run to term, and the monthly cost is stated to include software, updates, support and first setup. Hardware is expressly not included and carries no prices here, I found no public information on TSE fees, card fees or add-on prices — the kitchen display and accounting pages each point to a separate price page — and the pages read give different plan names, Essential and Premium on the inventory page against Basic, Core and Pro on the pricing page.
Tillhub
Two starting prices are public — 'POS Go ab 30 € pro Monat inklusive TSE' and 'iPad Kassen ab 69 € pro Monat' — along with a free fifteen-minute demo, so I can at least read the entry point with the TSE inside one plan. But the card fees are only called low with no numbers, and hardware, setup, support plans, minimum term and what extra tills or branches cost are not priced publicly, so I cannot compute what the second year really costs.
Sovereignty, side by side
Dimension
Lightspeed Restaurant
Tillhub
Legal entity
Not determined
Not determined
Hosting location
Not determined
Not determined
Hosting options
Not determined
Not determined
Open source
Not determined
Not determined
Data processing agreement
Not determined
Not determined
Transfer impact assessment
Not determined
Not determined
Facts, side by side
Only facts both products carry under the same definition — anything else would not be a fair row.
Which is better, Lightspeed Restaurant or Tillhub?
As of 30 Oct 2026, the panel rates both 2.5/5. Weighted by what each judge cares about, 4 of the 6 judges pick Lightspeed Restaurant and 2 pick Tillhub. Which one fits depends on the criteria that matter to you; the table on this page shows both side by side, and each judge’s reading has its own page. Both were scored by the same AI bench under the same rubric, from public evidence only, as the methodology describes.
Is Lightspeed Restaurant or Tillhub European?
Lightspeed Restaurant is not European by provenance (Rest of world). Tillhub is European (EU origin, foreign-owned). Provenance is read from each company’s own legal pages: who builds it and who owns it.
Where do Lightspeed Restaurant and Tillhub store customer data?
Per the vendors’ own pages as captured — Lightspeed Restaurant: its pages as captured do not say. Tillhub: Default not stated; pages mention Germany.