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 Fee-Conscious Merchant
Sells ice cream from a shop in spring and summer and from a market stall at Christmas, mostly in amounts under five euros, and more of them by card every year. Wants the fee per girocard and credit card payment on the price page, a terminal he can choose rather than the one the till insists on, hardware that runs off a battery, no monthly fee in the closed months, and the real cost of "free".
Lightspeed Restaurant
This judge's pick
Tillhub
Criterion by criterion
Checkout, receipts & hardware
Lightspeed Restaurant
Sales run on iPads with a long published hardware shelf — Epson and Star receipt printers, a Zebra label printer, Safescan cash drawers, a barcode scanner, kitchen screens and battery-driven Verifone and mobile terminals, exactly what a market stall wants — and the offline mode is written down with its limits: sales continue and sync later, while master data and cloud reports need a connection and X/Z closings run over the local WLAN. We found no public information on digital customer receipts, a customer display, or the purchase or rental terms for the hardware itself.
Tillhub
The till runs on named devices — an iOS app on the iPad and the Android POS Go that packs scanner, receipt printer and card reader into one mobile device with Wi-Fi and 4G — with receipts printed, emailed or shown as a QR code, returns and per-employee cancellation rights, a customer display and a stated offline mode. The offline mode is stated without its limits, and for a hardware compatibility list and purchase or rental terms we found no public information.
Card payments & fees
Lightspeed Restaurant
Lightspeed Payments is the named embedded acquirer, with Verifone V400M and e285 terminals — both battery-driven, one with printer — plus tap-to-pay on a phone, tips and bill splitting at the table and on-demand payouts within hours, but we found no public information on the fee per girocard or credit card transaction, and for five-euro cones that one number is the whole budget. The up-to-1000-euro switching bonus with its 25.000,00 € processing minimum is a contract condition, not a price, and we found no public information on running another acquirer's terminal with this till.
Tillhub
Card terminals come from Unzer, the group Tillhub joined in 2022, in mobile and stationary form and fully integrated, with cash, EC, credit card and mobile payments accepted and a live transaction view on the UnzerOne dashboard. But for a fee per girocard or credit card payment and for payout timing we found no public information — the pages only call the transaction and base fees 'günstige', without figures, and for a scoop sold by card that gap decides everything.
Fiscal compliance (TSE, DSFinV-K, RKSV)
Lightspeed Restaurant
A certified cloud TSE with an encrypted signature on every transaction covering cash, voucher, EC and card sales, X- and Z-closings, and daily single records going to DATEV Kassenarchiv online in DSFinV-K format — that part is documented. We found no public information naming the TSE provider or its BSI certificate, even though the vendor's own page stresses how much that certification matters, nor on the ten-year GoBD archive, help with the § 146a AO registration, or a Verfahrensdokumentation template.
Tillhub
The cloud TSE comes from fiskaly with its BSI certification named, receipts are automatically signed and archived, daily closings are a button press, digital receipts are archived for ten years, and there is a one-click export 'mit allen relevanten Daten für Steuerprüfer'. We found no public information naming the DSFinV-K export itself, help with the registration under section 146a AO, a procedure documentation template, or any second country's fiscal rules.
Inventory, tables, staff & locations
Lightspeed Restaurant
Stock runs deep — suppliers, purchase orders, minimum-stock reordering, recipes and waste management — beside a kitchen display with stations, per-item status and timestamps, QR and online ordering, shift planning and unlimited locations with central inventory in one back office. We found no public information on staff logins with roles and rights or a per-employee log of cancellations, which is the piece a cash-handling owner wants in writing.
Tillhub
Stock with supplier management and digital inventory counts runs centrally across branches, price books change prices by period or location, staff get individual permissions with per-employee sales analytics and storno rights, gastro gets table plans, radio ordering and tips — and sales from shop, pop-up and market stall come together in one closing, which is exactly my year. We found no public information on a kitchen display, QR self-ordering, recipes, or a per-employee log of voids.
Accounting handoff, DATEV & data export
Lightspeed Restaurant
The DATEV handoff is real and automatic: daily single records in DSFinV-K format into DATEV Kassenarchiv online and on into the Kassenbuch, automatic mapping of product categories, accounts and payment types, adjustments re-transmitted as new transactions, Sage payroll alongside, and a direct API available as an add-on on all plans. We found no public information on webhooks or on a complete export of articles, customers and sales when the contract ends.
Tillhub
A DATEV export is named and runs monthly or quarterly, available 'jederzeit für deinen Steuerberater', beside CSV, Excel and PDF exports, scheduled reports and stock lists as Excel/CSV. We found no public information on an API or webhooks, other named integrations, whether card payouts and fees are reconciled, or a full export of articles, customers and sales when the contract ends.
European sovereignty
Lightspeed Restaurant
The Impressum gives a German contracting entity, Lightspeed POS Germany GmbH in Berlin with a register number, the payments contract for Germany runs with Lightspeed Netherlands B.V., and certifications such as SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001 and PCI DSS are stated for the infrastructure. But the infrastructure sits with unnamed multi-tenant providers, the subprocessor list is only referenced on an English page whose contents were not captured, and we found no public statement of where till, TSE and payment data are hosted.
Tillhub
The contracting entity is the German UTill Commerce GmbH in Hamburg with its commercial register number, all data sits on servers in Germany with redundancy and immutable storage, and the cloud TSE is fiskaly, BSI-certified — a European chain for a German tax office. The privacy policy names website analytics providers including the US firms Hubspot and Doubleclick, ISO 27001 is claimed for the development process, and Tillhub has been part of the Unzer group since 2022; for the infrastructure provider, a published data processing agreement and certification scope beyond the development process we found no public information.
Pricing transparency
Lightspeed Restaurant
Three plan prices stand in public — 89 €, 159 € and 249 € per month with 49 € for every further licence — monthly contracts cancel at month's end while an annual one runs to its end, and the monthly price covers software, updates, support and initial setup. But we found no public information on the fee per card payment, the TSE price or the hardware prices; the kitchen-display prices sit on a separate page, and the captured pages give different plan names for the same till — Basic, Core and Pro on the price page against Essential and Premium on the inventory page.
Tillhub
Two public starting prices exist — POS Go 'ab 30 € pro Monat inklusive TSE' and iPad Kassen 'ab 69 € pro Monat' — plus a free demo, and there the computability ends: the transaction and base fees are only called 'günstige' with no figures, and for how cost scales with extra tills or locations, hardware, setup, support tiers, minimum term and VAT treatment we found no public information. I cannot work out what a season of small card sales will cost me from these pages alone.
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.