Square vs Lightspeed vs Kounta: Best POS System for Australian Cafes and Restaurants 2026

Picking a POS system sounds simple until you’re actually doing it. Most comparison guides were written with US or UK operators in mind, the GST, BAS, Modern Award rates, and Single Touch Payroll requirements that shape every Australian hospitality business barely get a mention. This one is written for here.

The three systems that come up most often for Australian cafes and restaurants are Square, Lightspeed Restaurant (formerly Kounta), and the original Lightspeed platform. They’re not interchangeable. Each was built for a different kind of venue at a different price point, and choosing the wrong one costs you in workarounds, missing features, or monthly fees you’ll never use.

Here’s how they actually compare.

Quick comparison

Square for Restaurants

Square’s free plan is the most genuinely useful entry point in the market. For a cafe doing under 200 transactions a day, the free tier covers table-based ordering, a basic floor plan, kitchen ticket printing, and EFTPOS via Square Terminal or Square Reader. Transaction fees are 1.6% for in-person card payments, which is competitive for lower volumes. There’s no monthly fee until you want the advanced features.

The Plus plan (around $109/month per location) adds multi-location support, advanced reporting, and more detailed floor plan tools. Square integrates with Xero for accounting and GST reporting, which handles BAS prep reasonably well. For STP payroll, you’ll connect Square’s sales data to Deputy or Tanda, Square doesn’t do payroll itself, but it exports the hours and wage data those platforms need.

AU-specific note: Square added tipping prompts for AU, a relatively recent change given Australians historically resisted digital tipping. The setting is optional, so venues can turn it off. GST is applied correctly and shows on receipts as required by the ATO.

Offline mode: Square handles offline properly. Tap-and-go payments queue when connectivity drops and process when restored. This matters for venues in areas with patchy internet or during the occasional NBN outage.

Where Square falls short: Once you’re running more than one location, or you need detailed ingredient-level inventory tracking, Square starts to feel thin. Complex menus with modifiers across multiple sites can get unwieldy. It’s also US-headquartered, so AU support hours aren’t always ideal for a Friday-night service problem.

Best for: New cafes, food trucks, pop-ups, and single-site venues wanting a solid free POS with room to grow.

Lightspeed Restaurant (formerly Kounta)

Kounta was built in Sydney and was the dominant Australian-native hospitality POS for most of the 2010s. Lightspeed acquired it in 2019, and the platform is now sold as Lightspeed Restaurant in the AU market. The underlying architecture remains the AU-native product, it was built around the way Australian venues actually operate, with penalty rates, split bills, and HIGA compliance baked into the design from day one.

Lightspeed Restaurant handles multi-course ordering, complex modifier stacks, table management, and kitchen display routing well. It connects natively with Tyro EFTPOS, which is the integration most established AU venues care about, it removes the manual reconciliation between your POS and payment terminal that still trips up venues running Square or a generic terminal.

GST and BAS: Reporting is GST-aware throughout, and the accounting integrations (Xero, MYOB) make BAS prep straightforward. Sales data flows to Xero with the correct GST codes applied, so your bookkeeper isn’t cleaning up tax classifications manually.

STP payroll: Lightspeed Restaurant integrates with Deputy, Tanda, and Employment Hero. Labour scheduling in Deputy can pull cover data directly from the POS, you can see projected covers for the next shift and staff accordingly. That kind of integration is genuinely useful for venues trying to keep labour cost as a percentage of revenue under control. See our Employment Hero vs Tanda comparison for detail on which rostering platform suits hospitality best.

Where Lightspeed Restaurant fits: Cafes and restaurants that have grown past the free-tier phase, are running table service with floor plans, or have multiple locations. The platform is priced around $119/month per site, not cheap, but reasonable against the labour cost of managing split bills and complex ordering manually. Multi-site groups get dedicated account management and volume pricing.

Best for: Established cafes and restaurants, multi-site groups, and anyone already using Tyro EFTPOS who wants native integration.

Lightspeed (full platform)

Lightspeed’s broader hospitality platform targets mid-market and enterprise venues: full-service restaurants, bars, hotels, and multi-concept groups with more complex inventory and reporting needs. It’s the same brand as Lightspeed Restaurant but a different product tier, think ingredient-level inventory management, detailed cost-of-goods reporting, and more granular analytics.

Inventory is where this platform genuinely earns its cost. You can track stock at the ingredient level, each pour of spirits, each 250g of coffee, which matters for venues where wastage and theft are significant P&L items. The reporting covers cost-of-goods-sold at the menu item level, so you can see which dishes are actually profitable after ingredient cost.

Integrations: Xero, MYOB, and QuickBooks are all supported. The accounting sync handles GST correctly. For STP, the same Deputy and Tanda integrations apply as with Lightspeed Restaurant.

Where the cost is justified: A 60-seat restaurant running $50K+ monthly revenue, where a 2% improvement in food cost percentage pays for the platform multiple times over. It’s harder to justify for a 20-seat cafe where the inventory depth is less relevant.

Best for: Full-service restaurants, bars, and venues where food cost management and detailed analytics drive measurable ROI.

Head-to-head by venue type

Small cafe (1–2 locations, under $1M revenue)

Square wins here. The free plan covers the basics, EFTPOS, receipts, basic reporting, Xero sync. Moving to the Plus plan is a straightforward decision if you add table service. The 1.6% transaction fee stings slightly at volume, but for a cafe doing $15K/week, that’s $240 in fees, comparable to a monthly software subscription elsewhere.

Lightspeed Restaurant is technically capable for this venue type but probably oversized. You’re paying for has you won’t use.

Full-service restaurant (table service, $1M+ revenue)

Lightspeed Restaurant is the stronger choice. The native Tyro integration, floor plan tools, and multi-course ordering handle the service complexity better than Square’s Plus tier. The BAS and STP integrations are cleaner out of the box, and the AU-native support team understands the compliance context.

For venues with serious inventory concerns, a 70-seat restaurant managing multiple suppliers and food cost by menu item, the full Lightspeed platform is worth the additional cost.

Bar or venue (late licence, complex tab management)

Lightspeed Restaurant or the full Lightspeed platform. Tab management, open-table ordering, and multi-terminal setups across a bar and dining area all need a platform that was designed for service complexity. Square’s restaurant has handle simpler bar setups but can get messy with split tabs across large parties and multiple terminals.

The payment processor piece matters here too, see our guide to payment processors for Australian restaurants for how EFTPOS integration works with each POS option.

AU compliance: what to check before you sign up

Every POS shortlist for an Australian venue should answer these questions before you commit:

• GST: Does the POS apply GST correctly to all taxable items and exclude it from GST-free items (like basic foods)? Does it export GST amounts separately in the accounting sync?
• BAS prep: Does the Xero or MYOB integration produce a clean GST ledger that your accountant can use for BAS without manual cleanup?
• STP: Which rostering/payroll platforms does it connect to, and do those platforms support STP Phase 2 direct ATO filing?
• Modern Awards: The POS itself doesn’t interpret awards, that’s the payroll platform’s job, but the labour cost reporting needs to pull from award-correct hours and rates.
• Tipping: Is tipping configurable? Australian venues increasingly enable it but want control over the default setting and tip-split reporting.

All three platforms covered here handle GST correctly and have accounting integrations that work for BAS. The STP piece depends on which rostering platform you’re connecting, Tanda and Deputy both support STP Phase 2, and both integrate with all three POS systems listed here.

Our verdict

Small cafe or new venue: Square. The free plan is a real product, not a loss-leader with a paywall in front of everything that matters. Start here, move up when you need to.

Established restaurant or multi-site group: Lightspeed Restaurant. The AU-native heritage, native Tyro integration, and hospitality-specific feature set justify the cost for venues past the starter phase. The Kounta acquisition meant Lightspeed inherited a platform that was actually built for Australian hospitality, that still shows.

Complex venue, serious food cost focus: Lightspeed (full platform). If ingredient-level inventory and detailed margin reporting are operational priorities, the full Lightspeed platform pays for itself. For most venues, Lightspeed Restaurant is sufficient.

There’s no single right answer across all scenarios. The right POS is the one that matches your service model, your volume, and your existing software stack, not the one with the longest feature list.

More on AI for hospitality: Hospitality & Food Service Hub →

Sources

• Square for Restaurants AU
• Lightspeed Restaurant AU
• Lightspeed acquires Kounta (2019)
• ATO, Single Touch Payroll
• ATO, BAS lodgement
• Fair Work, Hospitality Industry General Award
• Tyro hospitality EFTPOS integration
• Photo: Nico Smit via Unsplash

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