Best restaurant POS software in India, a buyer's guide

There is no single best restaurant POS software in India. A café that sells at a counter, a bar that runs tabs, a cloud kitchen that lives on Swiggy and Zomato and a chain with a central kitchen need different things. The best choice is the one whose strengths match your biggest needs and whose costs you can see clearly.

In plain words, a restaurant POS is the system that takes orders, prints kitchen tickets and bills, takes payment and reports on sales. If you are new to it, start with what a restaurant POS is. Many owners call it billing software or a billing machine, and the same checks apply.

A note on who is writing. AirQR wrote this guide, so we are not neutral. We have tried to be fair by using only what each company says on its own public pages, naming the date we checked, and saying where AirQR is not the right fit. Please read the vendors' pages and ask for demos yourself.

Petpooja says it serves more than 100,000 restaurants. It brings Zomato and Swiggy orders into its billing, and reviewers on Capterra often mention simple billing, strong aggregator handling and support that answers. QR ordering, the kitchen display and CRM sit in bundles priced above its Base Plan, and its prices are shown as indicative with the period not stated. For a full side-by-side, read AirQR vs Petpooja.

Restroworks, formerly Posist, speaks mostly to chains and enterprise restaurants, with central kitchen and supply chain features. DotPe sells to food, retail and services together, with an online store builder. Neither shows prices publicly, so a demo is the way to learn the cost.

UrbanPiper is best known for Hub, which sits between aggregators and your POS so that Swiggy and Zomato orders arrive in one place. It also lists its own POS, Prime, and Meraki for a restaurant's own ordering website and app. If you already have a POS and your problem is aggregator orders, Hub may be the part you need.

Restrofi publishes monthly prices per outlet and includes QR ordering and a kitchen display in its plans. AirQR is the product we make. It is built around the guest's phone and your own ordering channel, with a designer QR menu, QR ordering with UPI at the table and takeaway and online ordering from your own link with 0% commission from AirQR, plus the POS, kitchen display, inventory, reservations and GST reports.

AirQR fits restaurants, cafés, bars and cloud kitchens that want more guests to order and pay from their phone, and more online orders to come straight to them. It runs in the browser on a laptop, tablet or phone, prints to standard thermal printers and has a POS that keeps taking orders when the internet drops. A new account gets a 28-day free trial of everything, and plans are on the pricing page.

It may not fit if most of your orders arrive through Swiggy and Zomato and you want them on your billing screen. AirQR focuses on your own ordering channel and does not bring aggregator orders into its bills. Aggregators still bring discovery, and many restaurants use both, the apps to be found and their own link for regulars. If aggregator orders on one screen matter most, look at platforms that list direct aggregator integration, or add an integration layer to your POS. See zero commission online ordering for how owners split aggregator and direct orders.

AirQR also does not tell you which GST rate to charge. It prints what you set up, and your CA decides the rate and scheme.

Lock-in is easy to miss during a demo. Ask how the contract ends, what refund rules apply and what happens to your data. Petpooja, for example, publishes a cancellation and refund policy that depends on the plan type and how long you have used it, so read the current text before you sign.

With AirQR the owner requests cancellation from Plan and billing and keeps full access until the paid period ends. The data can be downloaded for 30 days afterwards, as a full backup, orders, guests, GST and Tally files. See exporting your data. Whatever software you choose, do a test export in the first week.