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 Hospitality Operations Manager
Runs operations for a group of eight restaurants in three cities with two hundred staff. Wants one menu and price list pushed to every site with local exceptions, staff rights that stop a waiter voiding his own bills, reports that compare sites by the hour, and a works council and data protection officer who can sign off what the till records about employees and loyalty guests, and where it is hosted.
Lightspeed Restaurant
Tillhub
This judge's pick
Criterion by criterion
Checkout, receipts & hardware
Lightspeed Restaurant
The hardware page names a full working kit — Epson and Star receipt printers, an Epson kitchen printer, Safescan cash drawers, a Verifone V400m terminal, a 2D scanner, a Zebra label printer, iPad stands and tableside charging — and the offline mode comes with its limits stated (master data and cloud reports need internet, X and Z closings run on the local WLAN). We found no public information on a customer display, scales, or the purchase or rental terms for the hardware, so I stop below the top band.
Tillhub
Two device families are documented — an iOS till app on the Apple iPad and the Android POS Go with integrated scanner, receipt printer and card reader — extendable with receipt printers, barcode scanners, customer-facing displays and iPad stands, and receipts are printed, emailed or shown as a QR code, the channels the TSE page presents alongside the German receipt obligation. An offline mode is stated with automatic cloud synchronisation on reconnection, though its limits are not described. The gastronomy features I need are named — table plan, reservations, wireless ordering, tips — but I found no public information on split bills or on hardware rent-versus-buy terms.
Card payments & fees
Lightspeed Restaurant
The payments pages show a genuinely integrated flow: Lightspeed Payments taking credit, debit and mobile payments on named terminals (e285, Verifone V400m), tap to pay on an iPhone or Android, tips on card, bill splitting at the table, and on-demand payouts within hours including weekends. We found no public information on transaction fees by card type, terminal cost, or whether I could run my own acquirer instead, which is exactly what I need to budget card costs across eight restaurants.
Tillhub
Card acceptance runs through Unzer terminals, mobile and stationary, fully integrated into the till with cash, EC, credit card and mobile payment named, a live transaction dashboard, and all Unzer card readers connectable to the Tillhub till. The captured pages call the transaction and base fees low but give no figures, and I found no public information on payout timing, terminal costs, tips and split payments on the terminal, or using an acquirer or terminal other than Unzer's. For eight restaurants across three cities I cannot compute what payments would cost us from what is published.
Fiscal compliance (TSE, DSFinV-K, RKSV)
Lightspeed Restaurant
A certified cloud TSE is claimed with KassenSichV conformity, an encrypted signature on every transaction covering cash, vouchers, EC and credit card, X and Z closings, and single records in DSFinV-K format transferred daily into DATEV Kassenarchiv online and DATEV Kassenbuch online. We found no public information naming the TSE provider or its BSI certificate, on GoBD ten-year storage, a Verfahrensdokumentation template, help with the registration under § 146a AO, or Austrian RKSV.
Tillhub
A cloud TSE from fiskaly, certified by the BSI, is named for all systems, receipts are automatically signed and archived, KassenSichV and GoBD conformity are stated across pages, and daily closings with a ten-year digital archive of every receipt are documented — that covers the German basics for my group. The retail page offers a one-click export with all relevant data for tax auditors, but I found no public information naming the DSFinV-K format for a Kassennachschau, a procedure documentation template, help with registration under § 146a AO, or Austrian RKSV.
Inventory, tables, staff & locations
Lightspeed Restaurant
Inventory goes deep — suppliers, purchase orders, minimum stock with automated reordering, recipes and waste management — and the kitchen display with stations, per-item status and its own offline mode plus QR ordering, pay at table and multi-location management with central inventory and benchmark data cover the floor and the group view. We found no public information on staff logins with granular roles, a per-employee log of voids and cancellations, cash differences per employee, or a central menu and price push with local exceptions, which is precisely what my eight sites run on.
Tillhub
This is close to what I run day to day: all branches managed in one app, central stock across branches with supplier management and digital inventory counts, price books that change prices automatically by time period or per branch, live cross-branch dashboards from any browser, and over sixty real-time statistics. Staff get individual access rights, storno permissions per employee, per-employee sales analyses and a cash count at shift change — my waiter cannot void a bill without the right. Tables, reservations, wireless ordering and tips are named for gastronomy, though I found no public information on a kitchen display, guest self-ordering, recipes or stock transfers between branches.
Accounting handoff, DATEV & data export
Lightspeed Restaurant
Lightspeed Accounting automates the day-end booking transfer with automatic mapping of product categories, accounts and payment types, refunds resubmitted as new transactions, a tax advisor login, and daily DSFinV-K single records into DATEV Kassenarchiv online and DATEV Kassenbuch online; a documented API is an add-on on all plans and payroll time data flows to Sage. We found no public information on card payouts and fees booked separately for reconciliation, webhooks, or a full export of articles, customers and sales when the contract ends.
Tillhub
A DATEV-conformant handover to the tax advisor is offered monthly or quarterly, alongside CSV, Excel and PDF exports of sales, stock and staff reports, a one-click export for tax auditors and a prepared export for the accountant from the daily closing. I found no public information on a documented API or webhooks, booking with revenue accounts and tax rates, DATEV Kassenarchiv online or Unternehmen online, or a full export of articles, customers and fiscal journals when a contract ends.
European sovereignty
Lightspeed Restaurant
German customers contract with Lightspeed POS Germany GmbH in Berlin and Lightspeed Payments runs through Lightspeed Netherlands B.V., with infrastructure providers audited against SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO 27001. We found no public information on where my sales, staff and loyalty-guest data are hosted — only that infrastructure sits with unnamed multi-tenant third-party providers — nor on the names and locations behind the referenced subprocessor list or a data processing agreement, so my DPO and works council cannot sign this chain off from these pages.
Tillhub
The contracting entity is UTill Commerce GmbH in Hamburg with a Hamburg commercial register number, hosting is stated as encrypted on redundant servers in Germany with all data stored immutably there, and the cloud TSE comes from fiskaly with BSI certification — the core of the chain my data protection officer must sign off is at least locatable. Since 2022 the vendor has been part of the Unzer group, and website analytics run through US services named as Google Doubleclick and Hubspot; I found no public information on a published data processing agreement, the full subprocessor list behind the till itself, or certification beyond ISO 27001 for the development process.
Pricing transparency
Lightspeed Restaurant
The pricing page publishes Basic at 89 € /mo, Core at 159 € /mo and Pro at 249 € /mo with every further license at €49, monthly contracts cancelable at month's end and annual ones only at term end, plus free 24/7 support and initial setup included in the monthly cost. We found no public information on the TSE fee, hardware prices, card transaction fees, or the price of the many features marked as add-ons that may incur fees, so I cannot compute the real annual cost for eight sites with two hundred staff.
Tillhub
The pricing page shows two public starting points — POS Go ab 30 € pro Monat including the TSE and iPad Kassen ab 69 € pro Monat — plus a free demo. The transaction and base fees are described only as low with no numbers, and I found no public information on hardware prices, extra tills, setup costs, support plans, minimum term or how the starting prices scale with branches. I cannot compute the annual cost for my eight restaurants from the captured 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.