Toast online ordering: what it costs a restaurant in 2026

Toast Online Ordering is an add-on to a Toast POS plan, sold as part of its Digital Storefront suite, and Toast does not publish the add-on’s monthly price or its online card rate. You get both in a quote. Toast takes no commission on orders. What it does publish is delivery: Toast Delivery Services costs $6.99 per order under 6 miles through Uber Direct, plus a $2.00 regulatory fee in California. On 100 California deliveries a month, that comes to $899 before card processing.

What does Toast Online Ordering cost?

These are the prices on Toast’s own pages on October 21, 2026.

Toast’s pricing chart marks every Digital Storefront row as “Available with add-on; additional fees may apply”, including on the $0 Starter Kit. Existing Toast customers add online ordering from their account, and everyone else is sent to a demo or the pricing page.

Toast says card-not-present payments, which include online orders, cost more to process than in-person ones, and it sets your rate in the quote. On $12,000 a month of online orders, each percentage point of that rate is $120, and each 10¢ per order on 400 orders is $40.

What does Toast Delivery Services charge per delivery?

Toast Delivery Services sends your own orders out with Uber Direct or DoorDash Drive drivers. Toast takes the fee, the driver tip and a $1.49 Toast service fee out of your daily card payout, so there is no separate bill. Toast’s worked example puts the $1.49 inside the $6.99 total for an Uber Direct order under 6 miles.

The default delivery radius is 10 miles. Capping it at 6 miles takes a request: one Toast support article says to ask Toast, another says to ask the delivery provider. If an Uber driver has already been assigned when you cancel, you pay a $5.00 cancellation fee, and once the driver has picked up the order you pay the full delivery fee. Re-dispatching an order charges the delivery fee and tip again.

You can pass part of the delivery fee on to guests or set a minimum order for delivery. Every dollar you pass on takes $100 off a month of 100 deliveries.

What does a month cost?

Say a California restaurant takes 400 online orders a month at $30, or $12,000. 300 are pickup and 100 are deliveries under 5 miles through Toast Delivery Services. Driver tips come out of your payout too, but the guest paid them, so we leave them out.

The same restaurant outside California, New York City and Seattle pays $699 or $749 in delivery fees. Everything Toast quotes rather than publishes comes on top of these totals.

Is Toast’s flat delivery fee cheaper than DoorDash?

DoorDash’s Marketplace charges a commission on each delivery order’s subtotal: 15% on Basic, 25% on Plus and 30% on Premier, card processing included. Pickup orders are 6% on every plan, and orders through DoorDash’s own Online Ordering pay no commission, only a processing fee. On 100 deliveries at $30 that is $450, $750 or $900.

A flat fee wins on larger orders. Against DoorDash Plus at 25%, Toast’s $8.99 California fee breaks even at a $35.96 order, and $6.99 elsewhere breaks even at $27.96. Against Premier at 30%, the break-even points are $29.97 and $23.30. DoorDash Basic at 15% stays cheaper than Toast’s California fee on any order under $59.93.

Those break-even points leave out the card rate, which a Toast delivery pays on top and DoorDash’s commission already covers. They also treat the orders as equal, though a Marketplace order comes from a guest who found you in the DoorDash app, and a Toast delivery is an order the guest already placed with you. Our breakdown of DoorDash fees for restaurants has the rest of DoorDash’s plans.

What is the difference between Toast Online Ordering and Toast Local?

Toast Online Ordering is your own ordering page. Toast Local, the app formerly called Toast Takeout, is Toast’s shared app where guests find restaurants that use Toast. Any restaurant on the Digital Storefront suite with Toast Local switched on shows up for guests within 10 miles, with open restaurants listed closest first.

Toast Local costs nothing extra. Toast’s FAQ says the only fee is your agreed online card rate, the “keyed-in transaction rate”, and that Toast has “no plans to charge any fees associated with Toast Local.” You can turn the listing off in Toast Web.

Do guests pay a Toast fee on online orders?

None of the Toast pages we read on October 21, 2026 lists a fee that Toast charges guests. In 2023 Toast added a 99¢ order processing fee for guests on online orders of $10 or more and removed it days after it went nationwide, after a widespread backlash.

Your guests may still pay fees you set. Toast’s chart includes surcharging on every plan, and you can pass part of the delivery fee on to them. Our guide to restaurant service fees covers the California rules for fees your guests pay.

What should you ask for in a Toast quote?

• The monthly price of Digital Storefront Essentials, and of Pro if you want Toast to host your website.
• The card-not-present rate for online orders, as a percentage plus any per-order fee.
• Whether the Starter Kit’s no-upfront-cost pricing applies to you. Toast limits it to new customers and single locations.
• The contract term and any early cancellation fee.
• Which add-ons you need for loyalty (Marketing Essentials) and for ordering at the table (Mobile Order & Pay).

With those two numbers, the add-on price and the online rate, you can put the quote next to the published totals above, or next to Square’s, which our Toast vs Square comparison works through.

Where Expresso fits

Expresso is not a POS, and it has no delivery. If you run Toast and deliver, Toast Delivery Services is the simpler route, because Expresso cannot send drivers.

Expresso takes pickup, curbside, scheduled and table orders from your own link and rings them on a kitchen tablet ($149 once), beside whatever POS you use. There is no monthly fee and no contract. The restaurant pays card processing of 3.2% + 30¢ on the order total, and guests pay a 2.5% convenience fee on the food subtotal, shown at checkout. On the 300 pickup orders at $30 above, before tax and tip, that is about $385 a month to you and $225 in guest fees, with every price published. Expresso has promo codes but no loyalty program. Our comparison of online ordering systems prices the other options.