Kovo vs Resy: Which Fits Your Restaurant?
Resy owns the reservation book and the diners who find you through it. Kovo answers the handset and books its own table. Where the call ends picks your buyer.
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Watch a host stand on a Friday and count the calls nobody picks up. In a 60-seat room it is easy to find 20 between the first seating and the last, and each arrives while somebody is walking two parties to a table. Resy will not answer any of them; it is a reservation platform, and the handset is a different machine.
That gap is the whole comparison. Resy sells the book and the diners who find you through it. Kovo answers the phone and writes a ticket into the kitchen. One is a demand product, one is an order product, and plenty of restaurants need one without the other.
Price the gap and it stops being academic. Industry estimates put a missed restaurant call at $35 to $85, so 20 unanswered calls a week is $700 to $1,700 a week that never becomes a ticket.
TL;DR
- Kovo answers the phone, reads the order back, prints the ticket to Toast, Square, Clover, Olo, or a receipt printer, and books tables in its own book from $99 a month.
- Resy is a reservation platform owned by American Express, sold on a per-venue subscription with no published per-call price (checked October 2026).
- A reservation is a covered seat you already expected. A phone order is incremental revenue, which is why the two products rarely fight over the same dollar.
- At $35 to $85 a missed call, 20 unanswered calls a week is $700 to $1,700 lost, and the whole subscription question fits inside one of those weeks.
- Kovo starts at $99 for 750 connected minutes, the first 14 days are free, and the plans page shows what 900 four-minute calls do to that number.
What each product is
Kovo is an order line. It answers the handset, takes the order the way the caller says it, reads it back, and sends the finished ticket to Toast, Square, Clover, Olo, or an Epson or Star receipt printer, so the kitchen sees it without anyone retyping.
Payment and tables close on the same call. With cards on, a card the shop already holds is charged off-session while the caller is still on the line, and a first-time caller gets a link with the line held open; no card number is spoken to the agent. It also books tables in its own book: availability from your hours and holiday exceptions, one seat per slot so two callers cannot take the same table, and a confirmation text. The order limit is the shop's too: defaults 10 items in total and 8 of one item, editable, with an optional value limit and zero meaning off.
Starter is $99 for 750 connected minutes, roughly 300 calls at a two-and-a-half-minute average. Unlimited is $299 for 5,000 minutes. Minutes are connected time: a call under 10 seconds is never billed, no single call bills past 12 minutes, and when the month's minutes are used the line hands back to your own phone rather than billing extra.
Resy is a reservation platform, owned by American Express, with its strongest following in restaurants where tables are allocated rather than simply taken. Diners open it to choose where to eat, which means part of what a restaurant buys is demand it did not have to generate itself. That is a real asset and no phone product sells it.
The commercial shape is a platform subscription, quoted per venue (published positioning, October 2026). There is no per-call or per-minute number published to sit next to a phone bill, so the comparison is what each system does with a ringing line. What Resy does with a ringing line is nothing, which is not a criticism: the book, the waitlist, and the cover count are the product, and they are good at it. If you want calls written into that book, the path is a phone vendor that documents Resy as an integration. Verify that against Resy's own partner list, not against a vendor's slide.
Where the two products diverge
The 30-second version. Every cell is published by the vendor or observable on a demo, and every number should be re-checked before you sign.
| Kovo | Resy | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | $99/mo for 750 connected minutes; $299 for 5,000 | Platform subscription quoted per venue; no per-call price published — confirm |
| What the phone call ends with | Order read back, ticket written to the POS | Not publicly listed — Resy is a booking platform, not a phone agent |
| Where the ticket lands | Toast, Square, Clover, Olo, Epson, Star | The reservation book; no kitchen ticket |
| Card handling | Known card charged during the call; link held open for a first-time caller | Not publicly listed — confirm with Resy |
| Reservations | Kovo's own reservation book; a Resy page is read out and texted, and the host keeps the booking | The book itself, plus demand from Resy diners |
| Setup | Self-serve: import the menu, take a test call | Quoted per venue — ask for the timeline in writing |
Three of those rows decide the purchase, and none of them is price: who answers, what the caller gets, and where the answer lands.
The call the reservation book never sees
A booking made on Resy never touches the phone. That sounds like a solved problem until you look at what is left on the line: the caller asking whether the kitchen is still open, the regular who wants a large pepperoni and will not install another app, the party of six who booked online and now wants to add two covers, the table running 20 minutes late.
None of those is a covers decision. All of them arrive during service, when the host is seating and the manager is on the floor. That is the failure a reservation platform cannot fix: the takeout ticket a guest gave up on after four rings, and the regular who books nowhere because he only ever calls.
The reverse failure matters too. A line that cannot see the book is a liability on the same number, because the caller asking for a table for four on Saturday needs an answer. Kovo takes that table, in its own book, one seat per slot, with a confirmation text.
The money at 900 calls a month
Take a room that answers 900 calls a month at four minutes each, which is what happens when callers ask about specials and change their mind once.
- 900 calls × 4 minutes = 3,600 connected minutes, which is Unlimited at $299.
- 750 minutes ÷ 4 minutes = 187 answered calls on Starter, not the 300 the plan page quotes at a shorter average.
- 150 missed calls × $35 = $5,250 a month at the low end.
- 150 missed calls × $85 = $12,750 at the high end.
The 150 is QSR Magazine's estimate of the calls a restaurant misses in a month, not yours. Substitute your own count before you believe the total.
Resy's subscription does not appear in that arithmetic, because it is not a phone line. The two bills sit side by side rather than against each other: one buys the book and the demand behind it, the other the answered handset. Add them, then compare the total to the missed-call number. The missed-call math walks through the same figures from the other direction.
That is the argument for buying both, not for replacing one with the other.
The decision, in three rows
| Your room | Pick | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Covers are allocated, diners find you on Resy, and the book is where the revenue is | Resy | The book and the diner demand are the product, and no phone line sells either |
| Takeout line: pizza, deli, counter service, calls that end in a bag | Kovo | $99 to $299 answers the line and prints the ticket with no onboarding call |
| Full-service room that books tables and takes a steady takeout load | Both, on two numbers | Kovo's own book can hold the tables the phone takes but does not replace Resy's diner demand |
The two questions to ask on either demo
"What happens to the caller who wants to order, not book?" On a Resy-led stack the honest answer is that your staff handles it or the caller is pointed at online ordering. On Kovo the answer should be a read-back and a ticket on your POS, and ask to see both on a live call.
"Who sees the party-size change?" A guest who booked for four and now needs six is a book problem, and a guest who wants the order ready at a different time is a ticket problem. If one vendor claims both, ask which system of record holds the change.
Who should pick which
Pick Resy if
Pick Resy if your tables are the scarce thing, diners find you through Resy, and Saturday is allocated weeks out; the reservation-first phone AI comparison covers the other vendors in that shortlist.
Pick Kovo if
The phone is a takeout line. Pizza, deli, QSR, a counter spot where the calls are orders and hours questions and the caller wants to hear the total. Pick it to be live the same day, if 750 connected minutes is a real month at your call length, and if the ticket has to reach the kitchen without a second person retyping it. The same line books a table into Kovo's own book, so a room with no Resy traffic can drop the second subscription. The comparison hub has the rest of the shortlist if neither of these is your shape.
FAQ
Does Resy answer the phone?
Resy is a reservation platform, not a phone agent. A caller who rings a Resy restaurant reaches the restaurant's own staff, so the host stand answers or the call goes unanswered. If you want calls answered and tables written, that is a separate contract: Kovo answers the line for $99 a month and books tables in its own book, though it does not write into Resy.
Can Kovo book a table?
Yes, in its own book. Availability comes from your hours and holiday exceptions, each slot is written once so two callers cannot take the same table, the desk has a booking board, and the caller gets a confirmation text. What it does not do is write into Resy: a shop on Resy gets its reservation page read out and texted instead, so the Resy book belongs to the host. A reservation-led room on Resy runs two subscriptions, the book plus a $99 line for the calls the book never sees.
What does each cost?
Resy sells a platform subscription quoted per venue, with no per-call price published, so ask for the number in writing (checked October 2026). Kovo is $99 a month for 750 connected minutes, about 300 calls, or $299 for 5,000 minutes. At 900 calls of four minutes each you need Unlimited, and the bill is still $299 with no overage.
Is a missed reservation call as expensive as a missed takeout order?
No, and the difference matters. A missed reservation call costs a covered seat you already had room for, while a missed takeout call costs a ticket of roughly $32 to $48 plus the caller, since about 85% of people who reach no answer do not ring back. The takeout loss is the one an order line can recover.
What happens to an order that is too big for the phone?
The limit is the shop's own: the defaults are 10 items in total and 8 of one item, an owner can change either or add an order-value limit, and zero turns a limit off. Above one, the call rings the shop handset if the owner turned on large-party routing; otherwise the agent says the order is too large to send through and keeps taking what fits. A party order for 60 people still needs a person, so set the limit low and route it to a phone someone is holding.
Final Thoughts
The decision is not Kovo versus Resy. It is whether your problem is the book or the handset, and most full-service rooms have both problems with one budget. Resy keeps the covers straight and brings you diners. Kovo answers the line that Resy never sees, takes the order, prints the ticket, and holds a table in its own book.
If the handset is your gap, close it cheaply first: $99 a month, the first 14 days free, and a test call on your own menu. Take a test call with your own menu.