Kovo vs PolyAI: Which Fits Your Restaurant?
PolyAI sells enterprise voice agents on a contract. Kovo sells a $99 order line to a single store. Compare who can buy each, what the call ends with, and the cost.
On this page
A 240-unit brand and a single taqueria can have the same problem written on their phone bill and no business buying the same product. PolyAI sells to the brand: enterprise voice assistants, contracted per deployment, with an implementation project attached. Kovo sells to the taqueria: $99 a month, self-serve, ticket printed in the kitchen.
That makes this a short comparison, and a useful one. Most pages that put an enterprise platform beside a subscription product pretend they are alternatives. They are alternatives only for the narrow group of buyers who could plausibly sign either contract. It is worth knowing which side of that line you are on before you fill in a demo request.
The line is not about size. It is about who builds, who maintains, and who is on the phone when the flow breaks.
TL;DR
- Kovo is one store, one line, one subscription: $99 for 750 connected minutes or $299 for 5,000, self-serve from signup to test call.
- The ticket decides it: Kovo writes the finished order to Toast, Square, Clover, Olo, Epson, or Star CloudPRNT, and a test prints a $0.00 ticket so you see the output before buying.
- The calls you are not answering are the cost: about 150 missed calls a month at $35 to $85 a ticket is $5,250 to $12,750 that never gets ordered.
- PolyAI is an enterprise voice platform sold on a contract, with customization and an implementation project; no published price as of October 2026.
- If you have one store and no implementation team, the 14-day Kovo trial with no card at signup is the cheaper way to test the idea.
What each product is
Kovo handles the whole phone line. 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.
The menu comes from a single source per shop — the POS catalog, or a menu page the listing gave us — refreshed once a day in the background. On the call path the agent only pulls a menu more than two days old, so an answered call never waits on a vendor. Modifiers, nested choice groups, and half-and-half are handled as menu structure, not free text.
Starter is $99 for 750 connected minutes, roughly 300 calls at a two-and-a-half-minute average. Unlimited is $299 for 5,000. A call under 10 seconds is never billed, no single call bills past 12 minutes, and there is no overage: at the cap, calls forward to the shop's own phone. With cards on, the card the shop already holds is charged while the caller is still on the line, and a first-time caller gets a Stripe link with the line held open, so no card number is spoken to the agent, recorded, or transcribed. Tables go into Kovo's own book.
PolyAI's enterprise contract
PolyAI builds enterprise voice assistants with a strong conversational reputation, sold to large brands and contact centers rather than to single restaurants. Deployments are custom: the conversation, the integrations, and the escalation paths are scoped with the buyer and carried in a contract rather than picked from a pricing page.
Its public material does not publish a rate, a minimum term, or a restaurant POS list as of October 2026. So three questions matter more than any feature table. What is the minimum contract, in months and in units. How long the implementation takes and who owns it once it ships. And whether a one-location operator can buy at all, because PolyAI's public site sells contracts, and plenty of enterprise vendors cannot sell below a threshold a single shop never reaches.
The craft is real. Deep customization at scale is what the company sells, and it is what a brand with a call-center hierarchy and a design budget is paying for. That is a genuine advantage a fixed two-plan subscription does not offer.
The 30-second comparison
Every cell is published by the vendor or observable on a live call. Where a vendor publishes nothing, the cell says so — and that blank belongs on your question list, not in your assumptions.
| Kovo | PolyAI | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | $99/mo, 750 connected minutes; $299 for 5,000 | Enterprise contract; no published price as of October 2026 |
| Who can buy | One store, self-serve, no sales call | Large brands and contact centers; minimum not published — confirm a single site can buy |
| What the call ends with | Order read back, ticket written to the POS | Scoped conversation, per the vendor; scope is part of the contract |
| Where the ticket lands | Toast, Square, Clover, Olo, Epson, Star CloudPRNT | Not publicly listed as of October 2026 — confirm what it writes to, and who builds it |
| Card handling | Known card charged on the line; Stripe link for a first-time caller | Not publicly listed — confirm |
| Reservations | Own book; reads and texts an OpenTable or Resy page | Not publicly listed — confirm |
| Setup | Self-serve: connect ordering, import menu, test call | Implementation project; timeline set in the contract |
| Multi-site shape | One subscription per store; no pooled minutes | Contracted per deployment; scope negotiable |
| Trial | 14 days, no card | Demo-led; confirm terms |
Two rows carry this table. "Who can buy" and "where the ticket lands" decide whether the rest of the page is relevant to you. Neither can be answered by a logo grid.
What an enterprise contract means at one store
Kovo's arithmetic is public, so start there: the pricing page lists both plans and what each minute allowance is worth. A shop answering 900 calls a month at a four-minute average — a four-item order, a read-back, a correction, a question about the wait — needs 3,600 connected minutes.
- 900 calls × 4 minutes = 3,600 minutes, which fits Unlimited at $299 with 1,400 minutes spare.
- 750 minutes on Starter is about 300 calls at two and a half minutes, which is a smaller shop or a shorter call.
- A year of Starter is $1,188. A year of Unlimited is $3,588.
An enterprise contract has a subscription and an implementation project, and the second line is the one a single store cannot amortize across locations. That does not make it expensive — it makes it a different purchase, priced against a project rather than a month. Ask for both lines in writing at your own volume before comparing them to $299.
Against that, keep the number that actually justifies any of this. A QSR Magazine analysis estimates the average restaurant misses roughly 150 calls a month, and about 85% of callers never call back, a figure usually attributed to BIA/Kelsey. At $35 to $85 a ticket, that is $5,250 to $12,750 a month, worked through in what missed calls cost a restaurant. Whichever vendor answers your peak, the case is made there and not on the subscription line.
Two questions to ask before the demo
"Can one location buy this, and what is the minimum contract?" Ask it in the first email. A vendor that cannot sell below a threshold will still take the demo, and you will spend a month learning that at the end instead of the beginning.
"Who owns the conversation after launch?" On Kovo the answer is structural: the agent reads your menu and your hours, and the shop edits its own menu. On a custom build, someone has to own the flows, the prompts, and the changes when you 86 the short rib at 6 p.m. If that person is not on your payroll, price the retainer before you sign. The Toast integration walkthrough shows what the low-maintenance version of that looks like.
The decision, by situation
No scorecard. Three buyers, three answers.
| Your situation | Pick | Why |
|---|---|---|
| One location, a takeout line, and nobody on staff whose job is telecom | Kovo | $99 for 750 connected minutes or $299 for 5,000, self-serve, with the ticket written to the POS you already run |
| A multi-brand group that wants one voice deployed across sites with its own ops team | PolyAI | Deep customization and an implementation engagement across sites is the product |
| A brand with a contact center, custom escalation, and a design budget for the conversation | PolyAI | The conversation is built to spec; Kovo's is a restaurant order line with a fixed shape |
Who should pick PolyAI
Pick PolyAI if you have an implementation team, a call-center hierarchy to route into, and a brand-standard voice that has to be designed rather than imported across many sites under one contract.
Who should pick Kovo
Pick Kovo if you own one store, the phone is a takeout line, and the calls run two to four minutes. Pick it if a scheduled onboarding call is a cost rather than a benefit. Pick it if you would rather see a ticket on your own POS than a deck about scalability.
The Kovo vs Loman comparison covers the closest like-for-like case. The Kovo vs Hostie comparison covers the reservation-led one. The comparison hub has the rest of the field if neither fits.
FAQ
Can a single restaurant buy PolyAI?
PolyAI sells enterprise contracts, and its published material does not describe a self-serve plan or a published price as of October 2026, so the first question for their team is whether a one-location shop can buy at all. Kovo is the opposite model: $99 a month for 750 connected minutes, self-serve from signup to test call, no sales call required. If you answer the phone yourself and cook the food yourself, that difference decides the purchase.
What does an enterprise voice contract cost compared with Kovo's $99?
Nobody publishes the contract number, so ask for it in writing at your volume before comparing. Kovo's arithmetic is public: 900 calls at four minutes is 3,600 connected minutes, which fits Unlimited at $299, and a year of Starter at $99 is $1,188. An enterprise deployment carries an implementation project on top of the subscription, which is the line a single store cannot amortize.
Where does the order go in each product?
Kovo writes the finished ticket to Toast, Square, Clover, Olo, Epson Server Direct Print, or Star CloudPRNT, and a test prints a $0.00 ticket so you can see the output before buying. PolyAI does not publish a restaurant POS list as of October 2026, so ask which systems it writes to and who builds the connection. A demo that ends in a transcript has not answered the question.
Do these two products do the same job for a chain?
Not quite. PolyAI is positioned for large brands and contact centers, with customization sold as part of the engagement. Kovo is one subscription per store: a second location is a second line, a second number, a second menu, and a second subscription, with no pooled minutes. A twelve-site group can run twelve Kovo lines at $99 to $299 each, which is a different shape of deal rather than a better one.
What happens to a call that should go to a person?
On Kovo, handoff happens when the caller presses 0, clearly asks for a person, or the order is over a limit the shop chose to route to its phone, and only if the shop has set a handset number. On a scoped enterprise build, escalation paths are part of the design work, so ask to see them drawn rather than described. Either way, test it yourself: press 0 mid-order and time how long it takes.
Final Thoughts
This page exists because a search for "Kovo vs PolyAI" is a reasonable thing to type and a bad way to frame the decision. One product is a subscription a shop can start today; the other is a deployment a brand staffs. Buy PolyAI if you are deploying across sites and need the conversation built to your brand. Buy Kovo if you are one store with a takeout line and want the ticket in the kitchen this week.
Whichever way you go, test the thing you are buying: place an order on your own menu, add a modifier, then ask for the ticket. Kovo is $99 with a 14-day trial that needs no card, and the test ticket prints at $0.00. Take a test call with your own menu.