A Petpooja alternative built around your own orders

It depends on how your restaurant works. Petpooja is a billing and restaurant management platform that says it serves more than 100,000 restaurants. It lists fast counter billing and direct Zomato and Swiggy integration on one screen. Many owners choose it for those reasons, and it is a sensible choice if most of your orders come through aggregators.

AirQR starts from the guest's phone and from orders that come straight to you. The QR menu, QR ordering with UPI payment at the table, takeaway tokens and your own online ordering link are part of the same system as your POS, kitchen display and GST reports. It suits cafés, restaurants, bars and cloud kitchens that want more of their orders to be their own.

Neither is right for everyone, so this page lists what each does, what Petpooja publishes about its prices and where each may suit you better. Every fact about Petpooja comes from its public website or public review sites, listed at the bottom with the date we checked. If you are weighing more than two options, our buyer's guide to restaurant POS software in India covers Petpooja's other competitors too.

This is the biggest difference in emphasis between the two. Petpooja lists direct Zomato and Swiggy integration, so aggregator orders arrive on the same screen as your other orders and can be reconciled against the aggregator's payout sheets. That is genuinely useful for running a busy delivery business. Those orders are still placed through the aggregator, and the aggregator's commission still applies to them.

AirQR focuses on the other channel, your own. Guests order takeaway, pickup or delivery from your own link or a QR code on your bags and bills, and AirQR charges 0% commission on those orders. Guests pay you directly, by UPI to your own account or in cash, and AirQR records the payment without collecting it, so there is no gateway fee from AirQR. You keep the margin, and you keep the guest's name and phone number so you can invite them back.

Aggregators do something your own link cannot. They bring discovery, meaning people who have never heard of you. Many restaurants use both, the apps to be found and their own link for regulars. If you choose AirQR, you keep handling Swiggy and Zomato orders through the aggregator, because AirQR does not bring them into its bills. Our guide to zero commission online ordering explains how owners split the two.

On Petpooja's own table, QR ordering and the kitchen display sit in the Operations Manager bundles. So a restaurant that wants billing, QR ordering and a kitchen display looks at the Operations Manager Growth price, shown above as Rs 20,000 ex tax. Whether that is a monthly or yearly amount is not stated on the page, which makes a direct price match hard.

AirQR shows its plan prices publicly on the pricing page, and every account starts with a 28-day free trial of everything. We will not claim that one is cheaper than the other. Which costs less depends on the billing period Petpooja quotes you, the number of outlets and the features you actually switch on.

A fair way to compare is to write down the same list for both, such as billing, QR ordering, kitchen display, online ordering, GST reports and support. Then ask each company for the full price in writing, including tax, hardware and any add-ons. Our guide to restaurant POS cost in India shows what to include.

Petpooja publishes a cancellation and refund policy. In summary, you can cancel anytime. If you cancel within 15 business days of signing up you get a full refund minus the value of benefits used, and later refunds depend on the plan type and unused period. Read the current policy on its website before you sign.

With AirQR the owner requests cancellation from Plan and billing, keeps full access until the paid period ends, and can download the data for 30 days afterwards. See exporting your data. To move to AirQR, upload your menu as a spreadsheet, PDF or Word file, or photograph it, and check the result. The steps are in import your menu.

Petpooja is a trademark of its owner. AirQR is not affiliated with Petpooja. Details about Petpooja come from its public website and public review sites on the date shown. If anything here is out of date, write to support@airqr.in and we will correct it.