Toast online ordering fees in 2026: what a restaurant actually pays

By the Nomback team, who build ordering apps for independent restaurants. Updated October 20, 2026. Sources

Toast charges no commission on online orders. What you pay is the monthly software (Toast's POS plan at $0 on pay-as-you-go or about $69, plus roughly $75 a month for online ordering), card processing on every order, and if you use Toast Delivery Services, $6.99 to $9.99 per delivery plus a $1.49 Toast fee, taken out of your payouts. Toast does not print its processing rates; reviewers who have seen contracts put online orders at about 3.5% + 15 cents, so a $40 online order costs about $1.55 to process. The 99 cent fee Toast added to guests' orders in June 2023 was removed the next month after owners pushed back.

Does Toast take a commission on online orders?

No. Toast's online ordering page says "no commissions, no hidden fees" (Toast). Orders placed on your Toast ordering page or in the Toast Local app (the app formerly called Toast TakeOut) carry the same card fees as the rest of your Toast online orders and nothing on top (Toast Local FAQ). That is the main difference from DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub, which keep 15% to 30% of each delivery order (all three compared).

How much does Toast online ordering cost per month?

Toast no longer prints a number for online ordering on its own site. Its pricing page says plans start at $0 a month on the pay-as-you-go Starter Kit, where you pay a higher processing rate instead of a subscription, and that additional devices cost extra (Toast pricing). Reviewers who have gone through the sales process report the standard Point of Sale plan at about $69 a month and the online ordering add-on at about $75 a month, so around $144 a month before hardware and processing (NerdWallet). Treat those two figures as reported, not published: Toast quotes each restaurant, and contracts commonly run two to three years.

Item	Toast	Source
POS software	$0 pay-as-you-go, or about $69 a month	Toast pricing page; NerdWallet
Online ordering add-on	About $75 a month	Reported, not on Toast's page
Commission	None	Toast online ordering page
Online card processing	About 3.5% + 15¢ (pay-as-you-go 3.09% to 3.69% + 15¢)	Reported, not on Toast's page
Inactivity fee	$85 a month may apply on pay-as-you-go	Toast fee FAQ

What does a $40 Toast online order cost the restaurant?

About $1.55 in processing at 3.5% + 15 cents, so you keep $38.45 on a pickup order. On DoorDash's 25% Plus plan the same order leaves you $30. Over 600 orders a month that is $930 in card fees on Toast against $6,000 in commission on DoorDash. The gap is why Toast, Square and every other POS company now push their own ordering: the card fee is the only per-order cost (commission-free ordering explained).

What does Toast Delivery Services cost?

Toast doesn't run drivers. It books Uber Direct or DoorDash Drive for you and bills you per delivery, withheld from your daily card payouts (Toast help). The published rates as of October 2026:

Courier	Per delivery	Plus Toast's fee
Uber Direct, under 6 miles	$6.99	$1.49
Uber Direct, 6 to 10 miles	$8.74 to $9.99	$1.49
DoorDash Drive, within 5 miles	$7.49, then 50¢ a mile to 10 miles	$1.49

California adds $2, New York City about $3 and Seattle about $5 per delivery. By default Toast adds a $3.99 delivery service charge to the guest's order, which you can change, and Uber Direct pre-selects a 20% driver tip that goes entirely to the driver (Toast billing overview). So on a short Uber Direct delivery you pay $8.48, the guest covers $3.99 unless you raise it, and you absorb $4.49. Cancelling after a driver is assigned costs $5 on Uber Direct; after pickup you pay the full fee on either courier.

What happened to Toast's 99 cent fee?

In June 2023 Toast started adding a 99 cent "order processing fee" to guests' online orders of $10 or more (Restaurant Dive). Owners objected to a fee on their customers that they hadn't agreed to, and on July 19, 2023 Toast's CEO wrote that "we made the wrong decision" and removed it (Toast). As of October 2026 Toast adds no fee of its own to guest orders. Any service charge the guest sees on a Toast order was set by the restaurant.

Is Toast online ordering worth it?

If you are already on Toast, usually yes: it is cheaper per order than any marketplace and the order lands on your own POS. What you don't get is a reason for regulars to come back on their own. Toast Local lists you in a shared app alongside every other Toast restaurant within 10 miles, the ordering page is a website, and loyalty is a separate paid module. If you are not on Toast, buying the POS to get the ordering means a multi-year contract and hardware, so compare it against a standalone ordering app first (ordering systems compared).

Toast online ordering vs an app of your own

Nomback is $99 a month with a $399 setup, no contract, no commission and no per-order fee beyond Stripe's 2.9% + 30 cents (pricing). It is an iPhone and Android app listed under your restaurant's name, with a stamp card and push deals inside it, and delivery through DoorDash Drive at a flat fee when you want it. Orders print in the kitchen; on Clover they land on the register already paid (how the Clover connection works). A Toast restaurant can run both: Toast for the counter, your own app for the regulars.

600 online orders a month at $40, side by side

Original Nomback calculation from the figures above, October 2026. Pickup orders, before tax and tip. Toast's software and processing figures are reported rather than published, so treat them as estimates.

Channel	Monthly software	Per-order cost	Month total	Restaurant keeps
Toast online ordering	About $144	About $1.55 processing	About $1,074	$22,926 (95.5%)
Nomback app	$99	$1.46 processing	$975	$23,025 (95.9%)
DoorDash pickup (6%)	$0	$2.40 commission	$1,440	$22,560 (94%)
DoorDash Plus delivery (25%)	$0	$10 commission	$6,000	$18,000 (75%)

Restaurants typically clear 3% to 5% profit (Toast), so the $4,900 a month between a commission-free channel and DoorDash Plus is often more than the restaurant's whole profit. Run your own numbers in the commission calculator.

Want your own app without the per-order math? Nomback is $99 a month and $399 to set up, no commission and no per-order fee, with a stamp card built in. Type your restaurant's name into the 10 second demo to see it.

Sources

Prices and fees were checked on October 20, 2026. They change, so check the source before you decide.