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POS & Checkout Systems

Lightspeed Restaurant

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Panel rating · 6 judges · How to read the stars

Category median

Sovereignty: not determined

0–5 in half steps. 5 means the rubric's top anchor is met on the evidence.

by Lightspeed Commerce Inc. · www.lightspeedhq.de

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Lightspeed Restaurant: AI-assisted analysis on whats-best.ai Lightspeed Restaurant: AI-assisted analysis on whats-best.ai (dark)

Add ?theme=dark to the image address for dark backgrounds. The badge shows the category and the month of the latest evaluation, and EU-Made where that is the product’s provenance. It never shows a score.

Lightspeed Restaurant at a glance

Vendor
Lightspeed Commerce Inc.
Headquarters
Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 29 Oct 2026
Data hosting
Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 29 Oct 2026
Free plan
Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 29 Oct 2026
Panel verdict
The AI panel rates Lightspeed Restaurant 2.5/5, the mean of 6 judges. Judges scored Lightspeed Restaurant strongest on operations and locations, accounting and portability and checkout and hardware, each clustering at 6 to 7. how scores are made
As of
Vendor pages captured 29 Oct 2026; evaluated by the panel 30 Oct 2026. all sources

Lightspeed Restaurant alternatives, European ones first →

Read this page as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.

The Café Owner

Weighted verdict

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.

Same scores as the panel view — this lens weights them the way this judge cares.

Scored by The Café Owner

Panel median The Café Owner This judge’s scores over the panel median. Each label opens its reasoning below.
Scores per criterion, in stars out of 5
Criterion Panel median The Café Owner
Checkout, receipts & hardware 3.5 of 5 3.5 of 5
Card payments & fees 2 of 5 3 of 5
Fiscal compliance (TSE, DSFinV-K, RKSV) 2.5 of 5 2.5 of 5
Inventory, tables, staff & locations 3.5 of 5 3.5 of 5
Accounting handoff, DATEV & data export 3.5 of 5 3.5 of 5
European sovereignty 2 of 5 1.5 of 5
Pricing transparency 2.5 of 5 3 of 5

Checkout, receipts & hardware

How this is scored

How a sale is rung up and what it runs on: a fast till on tablet, phone or dedicated terminal, articles, modifiers and discounts, split bills and tips, receipts printed or sent digitally (QR code, email, a digital Bon), returns and cancellations, a customer display, which hardware is supported or sold (receipt printers, cash drawers, scanners, scales), and whether the till keeps selling when the internet is down.

0 — Not a till; sales cannot be rung up or receipts issued in the product.

3 — Sales rung up on one device with a printed receipt; digital receipts, supported hardware and offline operation are basic or not described.

5 — A till app on named devices (iPad, Android or Windows) with articles, modifiers, discounts and split payments, receipts printed or sent digitally, returns and cancellations, a list of supported printers, drawers and scanners, and an offline mode stated.

8 — Several device types and own or third-party hardware with a published compatibility list, offline mode with its limits stated (how long, which payments, how sync resolves), digital receipts meeting the receipt obligation, customer display, scales and barcode labels supported, and hardware rentable or bought with the terms stated.

10 — A till that never stops a sale: offline operation documented including card payments and fiscal signing, hardware open to standard devices rather than locked to the vendor, receipt layouts that meet the legal minimum content in each named country, and a stated uptime or a status page with incident history.

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The Café Owner

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. 9 10 1

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Card payments & fees

How this is scored

How the till takes card and mobile payments and what that costs: an integrated terminal and the acquirer behind it named, girocard, credit cards, Apple Pay and Google Pay, tap to pay on a phone, the fee per transaction by card type, monthly terminal fees, payout timing, and whether the merchant may use a terminal or acquirer of their own choice instead. A "free" till paid for by card fees counts here.

0 — No card payment of any kind can be recorded at the till.

3 — Card payments recorded at the till, by an integrated terminal or by typing the amount into a separate one; the acquirer, the fees and the choice of terminal are basic or not described.

5 — An integrated card terminal with the payment provider named, girocard, credit cards and mobile wallets accepted, the transaction fee published for the main card types, payouts with their timing stated, and the amount passed to the terminal without retyping.

8 — Fees per card type and terminal cost published, tap to pay on a phone, tips and split payments on the terminal, several integrated acquirers or terminals to choose from (not only the vendor's own), the regulated payment institution named, and card payments reconciled to the daily closing.

10 — Payments without lock-in: the till works with any of several named acquirers on equal terms, fees for every card type, currency and chargeback published, the merchant's contract with the acquirer separable from the POS licence, and a change of acquirer documented without changing the till.

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The Café Owner

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. 3 11

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Fiscal compliance (TSE, DSFinV-K, RKSV)

How this is scored

Whether the till survives a cash audit: for Germany a certified technical security device (TSE) with its provider and BSI certificate named, hardware or cloud, the DSFinV-K export for the Kassennachschau and the tax audit, the receipt obligation (Belegausgabepflicht), the Kassenbuch and daily closing (Z-Bericht), GoBD-compliant storage for ten years, and help with the § 146a AO registration; for Austria the RKSV signature and FinanzOnline registration; for other countries their named fiscal rules (NF525, Fiskaltrust and similar).

0 — No fiscal function at all; the product is not a cash register in the legal sense, or states that it does not meet the fiscal rules of the markets it sells into.

3 — The till is called compliant ("finanzamtkonform", "KassenSichV-ready") without naming the TSE, the export formats or the closing; the details are basic or not described.

5 — A TSE included or offered with its provider named (hardware or cloud), the DSFinV-K export available, receipts carrying the TSE signature, a daily closing and cash book, and the receipt obligation met on paper or digitally.

8 — TSE provider and BSI certification named with what happens when the TSE fails, DSFinV-K and the GoBD archive for ten years stated, the § 146a AO registration supported, a procedure documentation (Verfahrensdokumentation) template offered, and the fiscal rules of at least one further country (Austrian RKSV or another) named and met.

10 — Audit-proof across markets: fiscal compliance documented per named country with certificates published, the procedure documentation maintained by the vendor, the fiscal journal exportable after the contract ends, and the vendor's handling of a Kassennachschau (what the auditor gets, from whom, how fast) described.

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The Café Owner

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. 1 2 9 15

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Inventory, tables, staff & locations

How this is scored

What the till runs beside the sale: stock and articles with variants, suppliers and purchase orders, recipes or ingredients for hospitality, tables, courses and a kitchen display or kitchen printer, self-order and QR ordering, staff logins with roles and rights, cash differences per employee, reports by product, staff and hour, and several branches or sites managed from one back office.

0 — No articles, stock, staff or reporting beyond the single sale.

3 — An article list and a sales report; stock, staff rights, tables and several locations are basic or not described.

5 — Article and stock management with variants or modifiers, staff logins with roles, reports by product, employee and period, and for hospitality tables and kitchen printing or a kitchen display; several locations or tills under one account.

8 — Stock with suppliers, purchase orders and inventory counts or recipes, a kitchen display and QR or self-order, granular staff rights and a log of cancellations and voids per employee, central articles and prices pushed to several branches, and cross-site reporting.

10 — Multi-site operations run through the product: stock transfers between branches, central menu and price management with local overrides, franchise or group structures, forecasting from sales history, and every change to an article, price or void attributed and exportable.

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The Café Owner

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. 13 14 9 10

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Accounting handoff, DATEV & data export

How this is scored

What reaches the books and what leaves with the merchant: an export to DATEV (DATEV format, DATEV Kassenarchiv online, DATEV Unternehmen online) and to named accounting tools, booking with revenue accounts and tax rates, card payouts and fees reconciled, an API and webhooks, integrations with shop, booking or staff tools, and a complete export of articles, customers, sales and fiscal journals when the contract ends.

0 — No export of any kind; the day's figures have to be retyped.

3 — A CSV or PDF report of sales; booking data, named integrations and a full export are basic or not described.

5 — A DATEV export or another named accounting export with revenue accounts and tax rates, several integrations listed, a documented API, and sales and articles exportable.

8 — DATEV Kassenarchiv online or DATEV Unternehmen online named, card payouts and fees booked separately for reconciliation, a public API with webhooks and a developer portal, integrations with named shop, booking and staff-scheduling tools, and a full export of articles, customers and sales stated.

10 — Nothing stays behind: a complete export of all records including the fiscal journal and receipts in documented formats, access to past data after cancellation for the retention period stated, a migration path from and to other named systems, and the API covering every object the back office shows.

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The Café Owner

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. 15 4 5

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European sovereignty

How this is scored

Who the contracting entity and the parent company are, where sales, customer and employee data are hosted, and who the subprocessors are (hosting, cloud TSE, payment processing, receipt delivery, email, analytics). Independently sourced by the sovereignty pipeline; POS data is financial and fiscal at once, holds staff logins and customer cards, and has to stay readable for the tax office for ten years, so the whole chain counts, not only the database.

0 — Non-EU vendor and contracting entity, hosting unstated, subprocessors unnamed, and no data processing agreement offered.

3 — A privacy policy and a data processing agreement exist, but hosting location is unstated or non-EU and the subprocessors are not listed.

5 — EU hosting available and an EU contracting entity or EU representative, but parts of the chain (cloud TSE, payment processing, email, analytics, support) run through non-EU providers without a stated safeguard.

8 — EU hosting on named infrastructure, EU contracting entity, TSE provider and payment institution, subprocessors listed with their locations, a data processing agreement published, and security certifications (ISO 27001, SOC 2) stated.

10 — Sovereign end to end and evidenced: European ownership, entity, TSE, payment institution, hosting and every subprocessor, data export and deletion documented, and certifications published with their scope rather than implied.

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The Café Owner

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. 6 1 10 8 7

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Pricing transparency

How this is scored

Whether a buyer can compute the real annual cost from public pages alone: licence per till or per location, which modules (tables, kitchen display, stock, extra tills, DATEV export) cost extra, the TSE and its yearly fee, hardware to buy or rent, card terminal fees and transaction fees, setup and installation, support plans, minimum term and notice period.

0 — No public prices at all; every customer is a sales call or a dealer quote.

3 — A starting price or a free tier exists, but how cost scales with tills, locations, modules or hardware is unclear.

5 — Plans are public with their price per till or location and main inclusions, but at least one commonly needed piece (the TSE, extra tills, hardware, card fees, setup) is unpriced or "on request".

8 — Every plan priced publicly with its scaling rule, the TSE, hardware and add-ons priced, card fees and terminal costs listed, setup and support priced, minimum term and VAT treatment stated.

10 — Complete price computability: annual cost derivable for a given number of tills, locations, modules and card volume, with every add-on, hardware, TSE, setup, support and payment fee and the cancellation and data-return terms published.

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The Café Owner

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. 5 9 13 14 4

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European sovereignty — proven facts

0 of 6 dimensions proven

Built only from facts shown on the vendor's own pages. A dimension we could not prove is left open, not scored as zero.

Hosting location Not determined — uncited Report an error
Hosting options Not determined — uncited Report an error
Open source Not determined — uncited Report an error
Data processing agreement Not determined — uncited Report an error
Transfer impact assessment Not determined — uncited Report an error

Questions about Lightspeed Restaurant

Is Lightspeed Restaurant European?

No. whats-best.ai classifies Lightspeed Restaurant as Rest of world.

Where does Lightspeed Restaurant store data?

Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 29 Oct 2026.

Does Lightspeed Restaurant have a free plan?

Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 29 Oct 2026.

What are the best alternatives to Lightspeed Restaurant?

As of 3 Nov 2026, the panel rates ready2order (3.5/5), Square (3/5) and Gastronovi (3/5) highest among the other 18 POS & Checkout Systems products evaluated. Ratings that look equal are rounded to half stars; the order uses the unrounded rating, then the name. The highest-rated European alternative is ready2order (EU-Made). Ratings are the AI panel’s opinion, formed from public evidence: how scores are made. The full list, with European products first: Lightspeed Restaurant alternatives.

Where this could be wrong

What we left out

A claim that does not survive our checks costs us the claim, not the page. This is what was taken off this one.

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Sources (16)

The pages every claim on this page was read from — each one checked, dated, and kept verifiable.

  1. 1 Vendor homepage (restaurant till) www.lightspeedhq.de Checked 29 Oct 2026 Details →
  2. 2 Features page (cloud TSE) www.lightspeedhq.de Checked 29 Oct 2026 Details →
  3. 3 Features page (payments) www.lightspeedhq.de Checked 29 Oct 2026 Details →
  4. 4 Features page (accounting) www.lightspeedhq.de Checked 29 Oct 2026 Details →
  5. 5 Pricing page www.lightspeedhq.de Checked 29 Oct 2026 Details →
  6. 6 Legal notice www.lightspeedhq.de Checked 29 Oct 2026 Details →
  7. 7 Privacy policy www.lightspeedhq.de Checked 29 Oct 2026 Details →
  8. 8 Subprocessor list www.lightspeedhq.de Checked 29 Oct 2026 Details →
  9. 9 Checkout, receipts & hardware — found from sitemap www.lightspeedhq.de Checked 29 Oct 2026 Details →
  10. 10 Checkout, receipts & hardware — found from sitemap www.lightspeedhq.de Checked 29 Oct 2026 Details →
  11. 11 Card payments & fees — found from sitemap www.lightspeedhq.de Checked 29 Oct 2026 Details →
  12. 12 Card payments & fees — found from sitemap www.lightspeedhq.de Checked 29 Oct 2026 Details →
  13. 13 Inventory, tables, staff & locations — found from sitemap www.lightspeedhq.de Checked 29 Oct 2026 Details →
  14. 14 Inventory, tables, staff & locations — found from sitemap www.lightspeedhq.de Checked 29 Oct 2026 Details →
  15. 15 Accounting handoff, DATEV & data export — found from sitemap www.lightspeedhq.de Checked 29 Oct 2026 Details →
  16. 16 Accounting handoff, DATEV & data export — found from sitemap www.lightspeedhq.de Checked 29 Oct 2026 Details →