Kovo vs Loman: Card, Book, and Price Compared

A caller who ordered last Friday dials again. Kovo recognizes the number, builds the usual order, reads it back, and charges the card the shop already holds for that caller while they are still on the line. The ticket reaches the kitchen before the caller says goodbye.

That is new. Until this week Kovo could only text a payment link and hope. Loman has been able to take a card inside the call since it launched, which is why so many comparison pages, including our own earlier draft, treated the card as Loman's alone.

TL;DR:

• Both products now close the call with money: Loman captures any card in the call, Kovo charges a card it already holds and links a first-time caller.
• Loman writes bookings into OpenTable. Kovo owns its reservation book and only reads and texts a page for OpenTable or Resy shops.
• Kovo is $99 for 750 connected minutes or $299 for 5,000. Loman publishes from $199 with no per-minute fees, so the winner depends on call length.
• Both cap the ticket: Kovo's limit is the shop's own, defaulting to 10 items and 8 of one item, with an optional value limit; Loman's is configured on onboarding.
• Kovo takes pickup and delivery, with delivery on the shop's own drivers; it does not dispatch to DoorDash, Uber Eats, or Grubhub.

What each product is now

Loman is a restaurant voice agent that closes the whole call: order, modifiers, card captured inside the conversation, OpenTable booking, ticket into one of nine published POS and ecosystem integrations, from $199 a month with no per-minute fees.

Kovo answers the phone, takes the order the way the caller says it, reads it back, and prints the ticket to Toast, Square, Clover, Olo, or an Epson or Star printer — the same Toast path a Toast shop can test in an afternoon. It also answers a website chat on the same engine, books tables in its own book, and charges a card the shop already holds while the caller is on the line. Starter is $99 for 750 connected minutes; Unlimited is $299 for 5,000.

Two years of comparison copy said the difference was the card and the table. That is no longer the clean split. The 2026 split is narrower and more interesting: whose card and whose book.

The 30-second comparison

Published information, October 2026. Vendor claims are labeled as such.

The card: parity for regulars, a gap for strangers

This is the row most shops will decide on, so it deserves precision rather than a verdict.

Loman takes the card in the call. A first-time caller reads their number to the agent, the transaction completes, and the ticket arrives prepaid. That is the strongest version of the capability, and for a shop whose callers are mostly new, it is the reason to buy Loman.

Kovo charges a card it already holds. The card is vaulted when a caller pays a link, and the next call from that number can be charged off-session while the caller is still talking. The ticket reaches the kitchen during the call, not thirty minutes later. A first-time caller still gets a Stripe link, but the line is held open and they hear the payment land, and paying vaults the card for next time.

So the honest comparison is not "Loman has it, Kovo does not". It is repeat callers versus first-time callers. A pizzeria where 70% of calls are regulars gets most of the benefit on day thirty. A shop taking mostly new callers gets it only after a link payment.

Neither product takes a card number over the phone into the recording. Kovo's link is typed on Stripe's page, and the vaulted charge never exposes digits to the agent.

The book: Loman writes into yours, Kovo builds its own

Loman publishes two-way OpenTable booking and appears on OpenTable's voice AI partner list. If your reservation book is OpenTable and the booking has to land in it, Loman is the only one of the two that can do that today.

Kovo now books tables, but in its own book. Availability comes from the shop's hours and holiday exceptions, a seat is written once with a uniqueness constraint so two callers cannot take the same slot, the desk has a booking board, and the caller gets a confirmation text. A shop that runs OpenTable or Resy gets its reservation page read out and texted instead, and the partner cards in the desk say pending, because OpenTable is partner-gated and Resy publishes no booking API.

That is a real difference in kind, not degree. If you live and die by the OpenTable book, buy Loman. If you would rather own a simple book and stop losing the table calls that arrive when the host is seating, Kovo's book is enough — and it costs nothing extra.

The price at your own volume

Loman's flat fee is the argument, so run it against your calls.

At 600 calls of three minutes, Loman is $100 cheaper. At 300 short calls, Kovo is $100 cheaper. Kovo has no overage: at the cap, calls forward to the shop's own phone.

Neither number includes the calls you are not answering. Industry estimates put a missed call at $35 to $85, and what missed calls cost a restaurant runs the monthly arithmetic. Against that, $100 is noise.

The limits, and the delivery gap

Both products stop a ticket at some size. Kovo's limit belongs to the shop: the defaults are 10 items in total and 8 of one item, an owner can change either or add an order-value limit, and turning a limit to zero removes it. Above the limit, the call rings the shop handset if the owner asked for that, and otherwise says the order is too large to send through. Loman configures its limit on onboarding; confirm the numbers rather than assuming ours.

Delivery is not the difference. Both products take a delivery order, and Kovo runs it on the shop's own drivers rather than dispatching to a marketplace. Loman's remaining edge is in the two rows above it: any card captured inside the call, and a booking written straight into OpenTable.

Who should pick Loman

Pick Loman if the booking has to land in OpenTable, if a first-time caller has to be able to pay with a card inside the call, if you need more POS coverage than four systems and two printer protocols, or if delivery addresses are part of your phone order. Pick it if your calls routinely run past four minutes at volume, where the flat fee wins.

That is not a courtesy paragraph. Those are four concrete situations where Loman is the better product, and no amount of ticket-shape comparison changes them.

Who should pick Kovo

Pick Kovo if the phone is a takeout line and the reservation book is not the business. Pick it if you want the lower entry price, a shop-owned order limit, a website chat on the same engine, and an in-call charge for the regulars who already have a card on file. Pick it if you want to test on your own menu without a scheduled onboarding call.

The narrower product is the point: $99 covers 750 minutes, and the comparison hub has the rest of the shortlist if Loman is not the right foil.

FAQ

Final Thoughts

The old version of this page ended with Loman winning the card and the table. That is no longer true, and pretending otherwise would be the kind of comparison that gets found out on a demo call.

The 2026 version is narrower. Loman wins first-time card capture, OpenTable write-back, POS breadth, and delivery. Kovo wins price at low volume, a book you own, chat on the same engine, and a charge on the line for the regulars who make up most of a takeout shop's calls. Decide which of those lists is your restaurant.

Take a test call with your own menu, including a regular's order and a table request, and listen to what the agent does with each. Take a test call.