Kovo vs Kea: Which Fits Your Restaurant?
Kea sells restaurant phone AI on a quote, with nothing published as of October 2026. Kovo publishes $99 and $299. How to normalize the two and pick on the ticket.
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A quote for restaurant phone AI rarely arrives as one number. It arrives as a base, a per-minute rate, a per-location line, an onboarding fee, and a sentence about what the first month costs when you go live mid-cycle. Kea sells that way: restaurant voice AI with order taking, priced by quote, with no published figure as of October 2026.
That is not a criticism. A scoped build is the right model when a shop's call mix does not fit anyone's plan. A salesperson who asks about your volume before quoting is doing you a favor. The problem is later, when you hold one quote and one price list and try to compare them from memory.
Kovo publishes the number instead: $99 a month for 750 connected minutes, $299 for 5,000. You can read it before a call, and the $0.00 test ticket a trial prints is the demonstration.
TL;DR
- Kovo publishes both plans: $99 for 750 connected minutes and $299 for 5,000, with a call under 10 seconds never billed.
- Kovo writes the ticket to Toast, Square, Clover, Olo, Epson Server Direct Print, or Star CloudPRNT, and a test connection prints one at $0.00.
- Normalize the quote before comparing: multiply the per-minute rate by 3,600, which is 900 calls at four minutes, then add every line that repeats monthly.
- Kea is restaurant voice AI with order taking, sold on a quote, and no price is published as of October 2026, so the only number that counts is the one in writing.
- Take the test call before the quote: a Kovo trial is 14 days with no card.
What each product is
Kovo does one job. It answers the phone, takes the order the way the caller says it, reads it back, and writes the finished ticket to Toast, Square, Clover, Olo, Epson Server Direct Print, or Star CloudPRNT. One store, one line, one subscription, self-serve from signup to a test call.
The menu comes from one source per shop — the POS catalog, or a menu page the listing gave us — and refreshes once a day in the background. An owner's edit to a field survives a source refresh; a source deletion deletes the item. On the call path, the agent only pulls a menu that is more than two days old, so an answered call never waits on a vendor.
Starter is $99 for 750 connected minutes, roughly 300 calls at a two-and-a-half-minute average, and Unlimited is $299 for 5,000. A call under 10 seconds is never billed, and at the cap calls forward to the shop's own phone instead of billing an overage. Payment runs three ways: at the counter, a card the shop already holds charged while the caller is on the line, or a Stripe Checkout link for a first-time caller with the line held open. The full arithmetic sits on the pricing page.
Kea is restaurant voice AI with order taking, sold to shops that want a restaurant-specific build, and priced per quote rather than per plan. That means the product is described in a conversation and the number arrives attached to a scope, which suits a shop whose menu, hours, or call mix would break a template. Kea's public site does not carry a rate card, a minute allowance, or a named POS list as of October 2026. So three things belong in the email before you take the call: what is inside the base fee, what the all-in number is at your own call volume itemized, and who maintains the menu rules after go-live. A menu that drifts is the failure that costs a Friday.
The 30-second comparison
Every cell is either published by the vendor or observable on a live call. Where a vendor publishes nothing, the cell says so and the item goes on your question list.
| Kovo | Kea | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | $99/mo, 750 connected minutes; $299 for 5,000 | Quote-based; no published price as of October 2026 |
| What the call ends with | Order read back, ticket written to the POS | Order taking, per the vendor; ask for the ticket, not the transcript |
| Where the ticket lands | Toast, Square, Clover, Olo, Epson, Star CloudPRNT | Named POS list not published as of October 2026 — confirm yours |
| Card handling | Known card charged on the call; link for a first-time caller | Not publicly listed — confirm |
| Reservations | Kovo's own book; reads and texts a page for OpenTable or Resy | Not publicly listed — confirm in the contract |
| Website chat | Yes, same engine, embeddable | Not publicly listed — confirm |
| Setup | Self-serve: connect ordering, import menu, take a test call | Quote-scoped; timeline and onboarding not published — confirm in writing |
| Plan shape | Fixed: two plans, one store each, no pooled minutes | Negotiated; confirm the per-location and per-minute lines |
| Orders above the limit | The shop's own limits; defaults 10 items and 8 of one item, optional value limit | Not publicly listed — confirm |
The plan shape row decides how the rest of the page reads. A fixed plan is a ceiling you can check. A quote is a scope you have to interrogate.
The number a quote does not give you
Take a shop answering 900 calls a month at a four-minute average. That is not a pessimistic estimate; it is a four-item order, a read-back, one correction, and a question about the wait.
- 900 calls × 4 minutes = 3,600 connected minutes a month.
- 3,600 minutes fits Kovo Unlimited at $299, with 1,400 minutes spare.
- Say a quote lands at $199 a month plus 15 cents a connected minute. That is not Kea's rate — we don't know it — but it is the shape to plug yours into: $199 + (3,600 × $0.15) = $739 a month.
- The gap against $299 is $440 a month, or $5,280 a year.
Two honest caveats before you use that. A quote may already include your minutes, or cover work a fixed plan cannot — a second concept, an unusual menu. If it does, the higher number is buying something.
The other half of the argument is the call you never answer. A QSR Magazine analysis estimates the average restaurant misses about 150 calls a month, and roughly 85% of those callers do not call back, a figure usually attributed to BIA/Kelsey. At $35 to $85 a ticket, 150 missed calls is $5,250 to $12,750 a month. Against that, the difference between $299 and any quote is a rounding error, which is why the decision should happen on the ticket and not the invoice.
Two questions to ask on a quote call
"What is the all-in monthly cost at 3,600 connected minutes, with every repeating line itemized?" Ask for it in an email, not on the call. A base fee, a per-minute rate, a per-location charge, and a support line add up to a number that nobody reconstructs correctly three weeks later. The email is the only version you can hold someone to.
"Show me the kitchen ticket on my POS, on a live call, with a modifier and a correction." Every vendor in this category will tell you it integrates. Only one demonstration settles it: a ticket with "half mushroom" on it, printed where your cooks look. The Toast walkthrough shows what the output should look like before you ask.
The decision, by situation
No scoring rubric, just the situations that show up most often in these calls.
| Your situation | Pick | Why |
|---|---|---|
| One store, a takeout line, and a budget that has to be a published number | Kovo | $99 for 750 connected minutes or $299 for 5,000, with calls forwarded to your phone at the cap |
| Several sites under one negotiated contract, or a call mix no plan fits | Kea | A quote is the right instrument for a scope that has to be written down rather than picked from two plans |
| Party platters and catering calls that need a deposit and a lead time | Kea | Kovo's limits are the shop's to set and can ring the handset, but a $120 platter order still wants a person on the line |
Who should pick Kea
Pick Kea if your volume, your menu, or a contract across several sites does not look like anyone's two-plan template, because a scoped quote is the right instrument for work that has to be written down rather than picked from a list.
Who should pick Kovo
Pick Kovo if the phone is a takeout line, the calls are two to four minutes, and you want to know the monthly number before you talk to anyone. Pick it if the menu already lives in Toast, Square, or Clover's catalog and you would rather import it than describe it. And pick it if you would rather import a menu and take a test call in a day than schedule an onboarding.
The Kovo vs Hostie comparison covers the reservation-led alternative if tables are the reason you are shopping. The Kovo vs Loman comparison is the like-for-like one. The comparison hub lists the rest of the field.
FAQ
What does Kea cost per month?
Kea is sold on a quote, and no price is published as of October 2026, so any number in this article is arithmetic rather than their rate card. Ask for the all-in monthly figure at 3,600 connected minutes, which is 900 four-minute calls, with every repeating line itemized. Kovo publishes $99 for 750 minutes and $299 for 5,000, so the comparison is only meaningful once both numbers are the same shape.
How do I compare a quote to a published plan without an hour with a calculator?
Multiply the per-minute rate by your monthly minutes, add the base, the per-location fee, and the onboarding, then divide by your call count for a cost per answered call. At 900 calls of four minutes, that is 3,600 minutes. Kovo Unlimited is $299 at that volume, and a quote of $199 plus 15 cents a minute lands at $539, which is $240 more a month and $2,880 a year.
Where does the ticket go with each product?
Kovo writes the finished order to Toast, Square, Clover, Olo, Epson Server Direct Print, or Star CloudPRNT, and a test prints a $0.00 ticket. Kea does not publish a named POS list as of October 2026, so ask for your POS by name and a live ticket with modifiers on it. A named integration you can see beats a logo grid every time.
What orders will Kovo refuse?
The limit is the shop's: defaults of 10 items in total and 8 of one item, both editable, plus an optional order-value limit, and zero turns any of them off. Above a limit the call rings the shop handset if the owner asked for that; otherwise the agent says the order is too large to send through and keeps taking what fits. A party-order shop should set its own numbers rather than inherit the defaults, and put the real basket in the quote request you send Kea.
Can either product book a table?
Kovo does, in its own reservation book: availability from the shop's hours and holiday exceptions, one seat per slot, a confirmation text. It does not write a booking into OpenTable or Resy — a shop on either gets the reservation page read out and texted instead. Kea does not publish reservation handling, so treat a verbal yes as a question for the contract.
Final Thoughts
The decision comes down to what a quote is for. If you need a scope written for a shop that does not fit a template, buy Kea and make the numbers comparable. If you need a takeout line at a published price, Kovo's two plans are the shorter path.
Either way, settle it on one call: a pizza with a half-and-half, a correction after the read-back, and the ticket that comes out. Starter is $99, the test prints at $0.00, and the first 14 days are free. Take a test call.