Best AI Phone Agent for Toast Restaurants
Five agents that feed a Toast kitchen, scored on price, reservations, limits, and payment. Kovo wins the rubric; Loman wins if you need any card in the call.
On this page
Toast holds the menu, the modifiers, and the kitchen display. The one part of a phone order it cannot do is answer the phone. Five agents fill that gap, and they are not close on price, reservations, or control.
We sell one of them. It wins our rubric, and the rubric is printed below so you can check the arithmetic.
TL;DR:
- Kovo scores 93/100 on our rubric: $99 for 750 connected minutes, reservations included, owner-set limits, and no overage.
- Loman scores 80 and is the pick when any caller has to pay with any card inside the call, or the booking must land in OpenTable.
- Hostie (58), Kea (54), and Slang.ai (51) are viable for narrower jobs; Slang.ai at $450–$600 per location is the most expensive per call.
- Every vendor here can read a Toast menu. Only some write a ticket the kitchen display can build; ask for the KDS ticket, not the transcript.
- At 900 four-minute calls, Kovo Unlimited is $299 against Loman's $199 flat and Hostie's $399 order-taking tier.
The rubric, and why these weights
We sell Kovo. The weights and the inputs are printed so the ranking can be checked.
Ranking phone agents by "AI quality" is unmeasurable and every vendor wins it. Ranking by what a restaurant pays for is checkable.
| Weight | Criterion | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| 25% | Price per answered call | Published plan divided by included minutes |
| 20% | Reservations included | A book the phone can write to, at no platform fee |
| 15% | Owner-controlled order limits | Items, per-item, optional value, routing |
| 15% | Payment that closes on the call | Card charged before the caller hangs up |
| 10% | POS depth | Systems you actually run |
| 10% | Channels on one brain | Phone and website chat sharing a menu |
| 5% | Setup | Live without a scheduled onboarding |
Each vendor is scored 1–5 per row against public information checked in October 2026, then weighted.
The ranking
| # | Product | Score | Price | Reservations | Card on the call | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kovo | 93 | $99 / $299 | Own book, included | Known card on the line; link for a first-timer | A Toast takeout line that wants the lowest cost per answered call |
| 2 | Loman | 80 | From $199 | OpenTable write-back | Any card, captured in the call | A shop where every caller must pay, or the book is OpenTable |
| 3 | Hostie | 58 | $199 / $399 | OpenTable, Resy | Not documented | A full-service room that wants one inbox |
| 4 | Kea | 54 | Quote | Limited | Not documented | A custom build with a quote |
| 5 | Slang.ai | 51 | $450–$600 | Reservation requests | None | Questions and reservations, not orders |
Kovo wins on price, an included book, owner-set limits, and chat. Loman wins the payment row outright and ties on reservations when the shop is on OpenTable. The other three are narrower products at higher prices per call.
Kovo — 93/100
Kovo answers the phone, takes the order the way the caller says it, reads it back, and writes the ticket to Toast. It also answers a website chat on the same engine and books tables in its own reservation book, included in the plan.
The payment row is where the score is not perfect. A card the shop already holds is charged off-session while the caller is on the line; a first-time caller gets a Stripe link with the line held open, and paying vaults the card for next time. Loman takes any card, first call or fifth, and for a shop with mostly new callers that is a real advantage.
Price is the other half: $99 for 750 connected minutes, $299 for 5,000, and calls forward to your own phone at the cap instead of billing an overage. The Toast ticket path is the row to test, and the menu sync mechanics explain why a stale catalog is the failure that costs a Friday.
For a shop with a complex menu, the difference between reading a Toast catalog and writing a ticket the kitchen can build is the whole purchase. That is the row to inspect on the demo, and it is worth more than any claim about voice quality, which no vendor on this list publishes a method for.
Loman — 80/100
Loman closes the whole call: order, modifiers, card captured inside the conversation, OpenTable booking, ticket into one of nine published POS integrations, from $199 with no per-minute fees.
If a caller has to be charged before they hang up and they have never called before, Loman is the only product on this list that does it. If the reservation has to land in OpenTable, same answer. What it does not win is price per answered call at low volume, an included book, owner-set limits, or chat.
Hostie — 58/100
Hostie is a guest communications layer: reservations, guest questions, and one inbox for calls, texts, and email, at $199 base with order taking documented on the $399 tier.
For a full-service Toast restaurant where the phone is mostly tables and questions, the inbox is a real product. Order taking is the tier to price, and the card path is not publicly documented, which is why the payment row scores low rather than winning.
Kea — 54/100
Kea takes orders and is sold on a quote. A quote can be the cheapest all-in number here or the most expensive, and you will not know until a sales call.
Ask for the monthly number at your call volume in writing, including per-location and per-minute components, then compare it to $99 and $299. If it lands near Kovo with card-in-call, it deserves the demo.
Slang.ai — 51/100
Slang.ai answers questions and reservations well, and sends callers who want to order to an online ordering system, at $450–$600 per month per location.
At that price it is the most expensive product here per answered call, and the one least suited to a takeout line. For a reservation-heavy room that mostly needs the phone answered politely, that is a fair trade; for a Toast kitchen whose calls are orders, it is the wrong shape.
The test call
Do this on every shortlisted vendor, on your own menu:
- A plain item. Does it reach the Toast KDS?
- An item with two modifiers. Do they land in your Toast groups?
- A half-and-half or a required combo. Does the structure survive?
- An unavailable item. Was it offered anyway?
- An order past your limit. Was it routed to you, or refused with a reason?
- A card order. Did the ticket wait for payment, or print?
Twenty minutes of that beats any demo script, and it is the only way to check the POS row of the rubric.
FAQ
Which AI phone agent is best for a Toast restaurant?
Kovo scores highest on our rubric (93/100) because it is the cheapest per answered call at $99 for 750 minutes, includes reservations in its own book with no platform fee, and lets the owner set the order limits. Loman is the better pick if any caller must pay with any card inside the call, because it captures the card on the line while Kovo charges a card the shop already holds and links a first-time caller.
How are the scores calculated?
Seven weighed criteria: price per answered call (25%), reservations included (20%), owner-controlled order limits (15%), payment that closes on the call (15%), POS depth (10%), channels on one brain (10%), and setup without a scheduled onboarding (5%). Each vendor is scored 1 to 5 per criterion against published information checked in October 2026. The weights and the inputs are in the box above the table.
Do all of these write into Toast, or just read the menu?
That is the row to test. Kovo reads the Toast catalog and writes the finished order to the kitchen display, with a $0.00 test ticket to prove the path. For each other vendor, ask for the KDS ticket rather than the transcript, then confirm whether modifiers land in your Toast groups or arrive as one note.
What does each cost at 900 calls a month?
At four-minute calls, 900 calls is 3,600 connected minutes: Kovo Unlimited is $299 with no overage, Loman publishes from $199 with no per-minute fees, Hostie is $199 base with order taking on a $399 tier, Slang.ai is $450 to $600 per location, and Kea is quote-based. At 300 short calls, Kovo Starter is $99 against Loman's $199.
Can a phone agent 86 an item in Toast?
Kovo does not write back into Toast, which has no per-line note field. What it does have is an owner sold-out toggle that outranks the menu source, and Square and Clover availability survive the pull. A Toast shop should mark the item sold out in Kovo's menu board at the same moment the kitchen marks it, and accept that the next menu refresh is a day away.
Final Thoughts
The best phone agent for a Toast restaurant is the one whose ticket your kitchen can read, at a price your margin can carry. On the rubric above that is Kovo: $99 for 750 minutes, a book included, limits you set, and a ticket on the line.
Loman is the right answer for a different question — any card, any caller, OpenTable — and the table says so. Take the test call with your own menu and score the rows yourself. Take a test call.