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 Skeptic
Has seen a "free" till paid for twice over in card fees, printers that work with one vendor's software only, a TSE charged by the year on top of the licence, and a cancelled contract that left ten years of fiscal journals behind a login. Reads "100 % finanzamtkonform" with no TSE provider named and "DATEV-ready" with no export format — and asks what leaving would cost.
Lightspeed Restaurant
Tillhub
This judge's pick
Criterion by criterion
Checkout, receipts & hardware
Lightspeed Restaurant
An iPad and iPhone till with a named hardware catalogue (Epson, Star, Safescan, Zebra, Verifone) and an offline mode whose limits are honestly stated — master data and cloud reports need internet, X- and Z-closings run on the local network. But the hardware splits into two worlds ("nur mit Gastrofix kompatibel" versus "nur mit Restaurant (K Series)"), no hardware prices or rental terms are published, and we found no public information on returns and cancellations, a customer display, or scales.
Tillhub
Two named platforms exist — an iOS till on the Apple iPad and the Android-based POS Go with scanner, receipt printer and card reader built into one device — extendable with receipt printers, barcode scanners, customer displays and iPad stands, receipts delivered printed, by email or QR code, plus a customer display and an offline mode with automatic cloud re-sync. The offline mode carries no stated limits, and we found no public information on a device compatibility list, scales, or terms for buying or renting hardware — so comfortably above the basics, but not open, documented hardware.
Card payments & fees
Lightspeed Restaurant
Integrated payments with named terminals (e285, V400m), payouts on demand within hours, tips and splitting at the table — but not one transaction fee, terminal fee or girocard rate is published anywhere, and the payments contract runs with the vendor's own entity, which offers up to 1000 Euro to buy out the previous provider's contract. The "über 100 Zahlungsgateways" and "keine Gebühren für externe Zahlungsanbieter" statements sit on the eCom online-shop page, not on the restaurant till's.
Tillhub
Cards run through Unzer terminals from the vendor's own parent group, mobile and stationary, said to attach seamlessly to the till, with cash, EC, credit card and mobile listed and live transactions on the UnzerOne dashboard. But the only fee statement anywhere is "Günstige Transaktions- und Grundgebühren" — no figures per card type, no payout timing, and we found no public information on using a terminal or acquirer of one's own. A till priced low and settled in unnumbered card fees is a pattern I have paid for before.
Fiscal compliance (TSE, DSFinV-K, RKSV)
Lightspeed Restaurant
"Vollständig finanzamtkonform dank zertifizierter Cloud-TSE" with no TSE provider named and no BSI certificate — precisely the sentence I read with a magnifying glass. What is documented holds up: daily automated DSFinV-K single records into DATEV Kassenarchiv online and DATEV Kassenbuch online, a TSE signature on every transaction, and X-/Z-closings even offline; we found no public information on a Verfahrensdokumentation, on what happens when the TSE fails, on ten-year GoBD storage, or on the fiscal journal after the contract ends.
Tillhub
The cloud TSE comes from fiskaly and is stated as officially BSI-certified, receipts are automatically signed and archived, the Belegausgabepflicht is explained and satisfied on paper or digitally, daily closings are one click, and receipts are archived ten years in the cloud. What the pages never name is DSFinV-K — only a one-click export "mit allen relevanten Daten für Steuerprüfer" — and we found no public information on a Verfahrensdokumentation template, help with the § 146a registration, what happens when the TSE fails, or any country's fiscal rules beyond Germany.
Inventory, tables, staff & locations
Lightspeed Restaurant
Stock with suppliers, purchase orders, recipes and waste, a kitchen display with stations and preparation timestamps, QR and online ordering, and multi-site management with central inventory and real-time cross-site insight. What I miss as an operator: we found no public information on staff logins with roles and rights, on per-employee logs of cancellations and voids, or on cash differences per employee.
Tillhub
Multi-branch stock with supplier management, digital goods receipts and stocktakes is run centrally, price books switch by time or location, staff rights run down to who may void a receipt, hospitality gets table plans, reservations, tipping and the Orderpro mobile waiter system, and over sixty live statistics span the sites. We found no public information on a kitchen display or kitchen printer, QR self-ordering, purchase orders or stock transfers between branches — which is what serious chain operations live on.
Accounting handoff, DATEV & data export
Lightspeed Restaurant
The DATEV handoff is real and specific — daily automated DSFinV-K transfer to DATEV Kassenarchiv online, auto-mapping of product categories, accounts and payment methods, every adjustment resubmitted as a new transaction, plus MeinFiskal and Sage payroll. But direct API access is an add-on on all plans, we found no public information on webhooks, and nothing states what export of articles, customers, sales or the fiscal journal a merchant receives when the contract ends.
Tillhub
A DATEV handover exists, monthly or quarterly, alongside CSV, Excel and PDF exports of sales, stock and closings — that much is published. We found no public information on revenue accounts and tax rates in the booking data, an API or webhooks, integrations with named shop or scheduling tools, or a full export of articles, customers, fiscal journals and receipts after the contract ends; ten years of Belege behind a cancelled login is precisely what I look for and do not find answered.
European sovereignty
Lightspeed Restaurant
A German GmbH with a register number signs, payments run through Lightspeed Netherlands B.V., and SOC 2 and ISO 27001 are claimed — but for unnamed "Infrastrukturanbieter"; hosting location, the cloud TSE provider and the subprocessors are not shown, and the German subprocessor page is a pointer to an English list. Till data is financial and fiscal at once and must stay readable for the tax office for ten years, and most of that chain is unnamed here.
Tillhub
The contracting entity is UTill Commerce GmbH of Hamburg, storage is stated as immutable on servers in Germany with a redundant second server, the TSE comes from fiskaly and payments from the group's own Unzer — an EU chain on its face, though the group joined in 2022 is majority-owned by a US private-equity firm. The hosting infrastructure itself is not named, we found no published data processing agreement, and the subprocessor disclosure covers website analytics — Google Doubleclick and Hubspot, both US — rather than the POS data chain; the security claims are a "ISO IEC 27001 zertifizierten Prozess" and an "ISO-27011 Zertifizierung" without scope.
Pricing transparency
Lightspeed Restaurant
Three plans published at 89 €, 159 € and 249 € per month with additional licenses at 49 € — a real starting point, and the cancellation terms are stated (monthly to month's end, annual with no early exit). But the TSE, hardware, card transaction fees and every add-on ("es können zusätzliche Gebühren anfallen") are unpriced, the captured pages give different plan names (Basic/Core/Pro versus Essential/Premium), and VAT treatment is not stated.
Tillhub
Two public starting prices exist — "POS Go ab 30 € pro Monat" including TSE, "iPad Kassen ab 69 € pro Monat" — and computability ends there. The card fees are called "Günstige Transaktions- und Grundgebühren" with no figures, remote installation is described only as cheaper than on-site service, and we found no public prices for hardware, setup or premium support, no scaling rule per till or location, and no minimum term or notice period. No buyer can total a year of this till from the public pages.
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.