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 Retail Shop Owner
Owns a stationery and gift shop with a second branch across town and about four thousand articles, many in several colours. Wants barcodes scanned at the till, stock that shows what the other branch still has, transfers between the two shops, suppliers and reorders in the same back office, vouchers that work in both branches, and the month's sales handed to the tax adviser without a USB stick.
Lightspeed Restaurant
This judge's pick
Tillhub
Criterion by criterion
Checkout, receipts & hardware
Lightspeed Restaurant
The till runs on an iPad, the hardware page lists named receipt and kitchen printers, cash drawers, a 2D barcode scanner and a Zebra label printer — exactly the kit my four thousand articles need — and offline operation is documented with its limits: master data maintenance and cloud reporting only work online, while X- and Z-closings stay possible in the local WLAN, with data syncing to the cloud once the line returns. Split bills and guest tip selection are described. We found no public information on a customer display, scales, digital guest receipts, or purchase and rental terms for the hardware, which keeps this in the middle of the scale.
Tillhub
The till runs as an app on the Apple iPad and as an Android all-in-one device with integrated scanner, receipt printer and card reader, with receipt printers, barcode scanners, customer displays and card terminals listed as extensions; receipts go out printed, by email or as a QR code, and returns, per-employee cancellation rights, automatic discounts and a stated offline mode with automatic re-sync are all documented. We found no public information on split payments, cash drawers, scales, model-level hardware compatibility lists, or the limits of offline selling such as how long it lasts and which payments still work.
Card payments & fees
Lightspeed Restaurant
Lightspeed Payments is named as the embedded processor taking credit, debit and mobile payments, with tap-to-pay on a phone, tips on the card, pay-at-table on the e285 and v400m, and on-demand payouts within hours even at weekends. But no transaction fee by card type is published anywhere I read, terminal costs are not shown, and the only documented switching detail is a time-limited bonus of up to 1000 Euro for customers processing at least 25.000,00 € of card volume — that tells me nothing about what a normal month costs me. For the restaurant till we found no public information on using a terminal or acquirer of my own choice.
Tillhub
Card acceptance is anchored in the Unzer group: Unzer terminals connect to the till, the POS Go device has a fully integrated reader, cash, EC, credit card and mobile are the named payment methods, and the UnzerOne dashboard shows live transactions. The transaction and base fees are only described as "günstige Transaktions- und Grundgebühren" with no figures, and we found no public information on payout timing, terminal costs, or whether a merchant may use a different acquirer, so I cannot compute what my card takings would cost me.
Fiscal compliance (TSE, DSFinV-K, RKSV)
Lightspeed Restaurant
A certified cloud TSE is claimed as fully finance-office compliant, signing every transaction and recording cash, voucher, EC and card revenues, and X- and Z-closings are documented — the daily automated transfer of single records in DSFinV-K format into DATEV Kassenarchiv online and on into the DATEV cash book covers the audit basics my tax adviser needs. We found no public information naming the TSE provider or its BSI certificate, and none on the receipt obligation, GoBD ten-year storage, help with the section 146a registration, or a procedure documentation template.
Tillhub
The cloud TSE from fiskaly is named and described as officially BSI-certified, receipts are automatically signed and archived, the receipt obligation and KassenSichV are addressed, daily closings can be created and exported at the push of a button, and ten-year digital archiving plus a one-click export for tax auditors are stated. We found no public information naming the DSFinV-K export, help with the section 146a registration, a procedure documentation template, behaviour when the TSE fails, or a second country's fiscal rules.
Inventory, tables, staff & locations
Lightspeed Restaurant
Inventory runs in the same back office with suppliers, purchase orders against minimum stock levels, automatic reordering at set times and recipes, and the platform is described as suitable for unlimited locations with central stock management and real-time insight into every site — close to what my two branches need. The kitchen display with stations, timestamps and offline mode plus QR and self-ordering are richly documented, though they are restaurant matters to me. We found no public information on stock transfers between branches, granular staff rights with per-employee void logs, or cash differences per employee.
Tillhub
This is the strongest area for a two-branch retailer like me: stock of all branches managed centrally with automatic updates on every sale, digital goods receipts and inventories, integrated supplier management, price books that change prices by branch or time period, individual access rights, cash checks at shift change, per-employee sales analytics and live insight into all locations from any browser. We found no public information on stock transfers between branches, article variants such as colours, or purchase orders to suppliers, which are exactly the gaps I would need answered before committing.
Accounting handoff, DATEV & data export
Lightspeed Restaurant
This is the criterion dearest to me: single records transfer daily in DSFinV-K format into DATEV Kassenarchiv online and on into DATEV Kassenbuch online, manual CSV exports are explicitly retired, product categories, accounts and payment types map automatically, cash archives can be built per location or consolidated, and my external tax adviser can be invited in — no USB stick. Direct API access is a paid add-on on all plans with documentation available, and Sage payroll takes working hours from the time tracking. We found no public information on webhooks, a developer portal, separate booking of card payouts and fees, or a full export of articles, customers and sales when the contract ends.
Tillhub
A DATEV-conform handover to the tax adviser is documented monthly or quarterly, closings are prepared as an export for the accountant, and sales, stock and staff reports export as CSV, Excel or PDF with automatic scheduled delivery, so my month-end handover without a USB stick looks solved. We found no public information on revenue accounts and tax rates within the export, a documented API or webhooks, or further named accounting and shop integrations.
European sovereignty
Lightspeed Restaurant
The German legal notice names Lightspeed POS Germany GmbH in Berlin with commercial register number HRB 138363 B, the payments contract runs with Lightspeed Netherlands B.V., and ISO 27001, SOC 2 Type 2 and PCI DSS certifications are stated for the infrastructure providers. But hosting is described only as third-party multi-tenant infrastructure with no location given, and the German page only points to an English subprocessor list whose contents were not captured, so locations of the chain stay unknown. We found no public information on a published data processing agreement.
Tillhub
The contracting entity is a Hamburg GmbH with register number, data sits on two redundant servers in Germany stored immutably, the TSE comes from the BSI-certified provider fiskaly, payments run through the group's Unzer, and ISO 27001 development certification is claimed, while the privacy policy names analytics subprocessors including Doubleclick by Google and Hubspot in the USA. The recorded provenance notes the company joined Unzer in 2022, majority-owned by a US private-equity firm, the actual hosting infrastructure provider is not named, and we found no public information on a published data processing agreement.
Pricing transparency
Lightspeed Restaurant
The three plans are public — Basic at 89 € /mo, Core at 159 € /mo, Pro at 249 € /mo — with every further licence at €49, monthly plans cancellable at month's end and annual plans running to term, which lets me scale the second till on paper. Hardware is explicitly not included in the prices, the kitchen display and accounting prices sit on separate pages, and most add-ons only note that additional fees may apply. We found no public prices for the TSE, hardware, or card transaction fees, so my real annual cost across two tills and two card volumes is not computable from these pages.
Tillhub
The pricing page publishes starting prices — "POS Go ab 30 € pro Monat inklusive TSE" and "iPad Kassen ab 69 € pro Monat" — so the TSE is included at the entry price, and a free fifteen-minute demo is offered. Card fees are only called low with no numbers, and we found no public information on hardware prices, setup, support plans, minimum term or VAT treatment, so I cannot compute my real annual cost for two tills across two shops.
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.