Kovo vs SevenRooms: Which Fits Your Restaurant?
SevenRooms owns the guest record and the book. Kovo owns the ticket. Compare where the call ends, what prints, and what each costs at your volume.
On this page
A regular has a record in SevenRooms: notes for the corner banquette, a standing Friday at seven, a bottle they always order. Then they call on a Tuesday for takeout, and the order line has never met them. The ticket prints like a stranger's.
At $85 a head for two, twice a month, that regular is $4,080 a year, and the cheapest way to lose them is a phone that cannot tell them from anyone else. Kovo is built to print exactly that. SevenRooms is built to know exactly that. Neither statement is a criticism of the other.
Which matters more depends on one question: is your revenue in the book, or in the bag?
TL;DR
- Kovo is an order line with its own book: it takes the order, reads it back, tickets it to Toast, Square, Clover, Olo, or a printer at $99 a month for 750 connected minutes, and books a table in its own reservation book.
- Unlimited is $299 for 5,000 connected minutes, a call under 10 seconds is never billed, and a single call cannot bill past 12 minutes.
- Kovo's menu imports from your own POS catalog or a menu page, refreshes once a day, and an owner's price edit survives the refresh.
- SevenRooms is a reservation, guest CRM, and marketing platform on a quoted subscription, and its centre is 1 guest record that follows a regular across venues.
- A table taken on the phone lands in Kovo's own book, and the guest record stays where it already lives: in SevenRooms.
What Kovo is
Kovo turns a spoken call into a printed ticket. The caller hears their order read back, and the finished ticket lands in Toast, Square, Clover, Olo, or on an Epson or Star printer, with nobody retyping it.
The menu comes from your own POS catalog or a menu page and refreshes once a day in the background; a three-way merge with tombstones keeps an owner's price edit alive through a source refresh while the source's change to every other field still lands. There is nothing to populate before you take a test call.
Starter is $99 for 750 connected minutes, roughly 300 calls. Unlimited is $299 for 5,000. Anything under 10 seconds is free, a single call cannot bill past 12 minutes, and at the cap the phone forwards to your own line instead of billing an overage.
Kovo books tables in its own book: availability from the shop's hours and holiday exceptions, one write per slot so two callers cannot take the same seat, and a confirmation text. Knowledge is first-party only: the shop's site, menu, FAQs, and hours. Every answer is verified and cached against the source it came from.
What SevenRooms is
SevenRooms is a reservation, guest CRM, and marketing platform. It is the book of record for tables, it accumulates notes, visit history, and tags against each guest, and it gives a group one record per person across venues. Pricing is a platform subscription, quoted rather than posted, and the figure moves with modules and locations.
That guest record is a real asset and it compounds. Twelve months of notes on who drinks what and who always asks for the quiet table is not something a printed ticket can reproduce. A group that markets from the record is buying that, not a phone line.
Two things worth asking before you sign. First, what the per-location fee is once you add a second room, since one record across venues is the whole point. Second, whether the phone vendor you pair with it writes into SevenRooms or only reads from it, because a read-only connection looks identical in a slide deck.
The 30-second comparison
Published information, October 2026. Where a vendor does not document something, the cell says so, and that blank is part of what you are buying.
| Kovo | SevenRooms | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | $99/mo, 750 connected minutes | Platform subscription, quoted |
| What the call ends with | Order read back and ticketed | The booking and the guest record, not a ticket |
| Where the ticket lands | Toast, Square, Clover, Olo, Epson, Star | Not an order system |
| Card handling | A card the shop already holds, charged on the line; link for a first-time caller | Deposits and prepayment: not publicly listed — ask |
| Reservations | Kovo's own book; nothing written into SevenRooms | The reservation book itself |
| Guest history | None stored | The product's centre: notes, visits, tags |
| Setup | Self-serve; live the same day | Not publicly listed — confirm implementation |
The two rows that decide this comparison are where the ticket lands and what the call costs, and both go to Kovo. Reservations and guest history go to SevenRooms, which is what a room with a book of record is buying.
Two questions to ask on either demo
"Does your phone product write into SevenRooms, or only read from it?" Read-only is a common answer and a fine one, as long as you know which one you are getting. The OpenTable voice AI partner page is the same test in a different ecosystem: check the vendor's name on the public list before believing a two-way claim.
"Show me a ticket for a caller who has a note on their record." Either the note appears somewhere in the flow, or the answer is a straight no. Both are workable, and both tell you which system your staff will be reading from at the pass. The Toast order walkthrough shows the ticket you should be comparing the answer against.
What a subscription costs at your volume
SevenRooms is quoted, so the comparison has to start with the number it has to beat. Take 900 calls a month at a two-and-a-half-minute average.
- 900 calls × 2.5 minutes = 2,250 connected minutes, which fits Kovo Unlimited at $299.
- 300 calls × 2.5 minutes = 750 minutes, which is the $99 Starter plan exactly.
- One regular at $85 a head for two, twice a month, is $4,080 a year, which is more than a year of Kovo Unlimited.
Kovo's pricing page runs that minute arithmetic in full. Half the case is on the other side of the ledger: a missed call is estimated at $35 to $85 in lost ticket, and that arithmetic makes a month of either subscription look small at 150 calls. On the SevenRooms side, ask for the subscription at one location, the per-location price at two, and which modules are extra. Then decide what the guest record is worth to you. That is what the difference buys, and it is not the same thing as minutes.
The decision, in three rows
Pick the row that sounds like your phone.
| Your situation | Pick | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Takeout or counter line where every call should end as a POS ticket with modifiers, without retyping | Kovo | Order read-back and a ticket to Toast, Square, Clover, Olo, or a printer, from $99 for 750 minutes |
| Already running SevenRooms, and the phone needs to take takeout orders in the same shift | Kovo alongside it | The order goes to the POS, the book stays where it is, and a person reads the guest note |
| Full-service room or a group where reservations are the revenue and guest history is the marketing engine | SevenRooms | The book and one guest record across venues are the product, and Kovo's book is a separate one |
The second row is where most shops in this comparison actually land, and it is the least discussed.
Who should pick SevenRooms
Pick SevenRooms if the reservation book is the business and the guest record is how you market: a dining room where the regular's history is worth more than any individual ticket.
Who should pick Kovo
Buy Kovo if the phone is your takeout line and each call has to end as a ticket: pizza, deli, QSR, a counter shop where the modifiers have to ride along and nobody should retype them. Pick it if you want to be live the same day and the monthly price to be the monthly price, and if you have no reservation system at all, Kovo's own book comes with the line.
The Kovo vs Sadie comparison covers the receptionist version of this decision, the Kovo vs Hostie comparison the case where the phone itself has to handle reservations, and the comparison index the remaining pairs.
FAQ
Can Kovo write a booking into SevenRooms?
No. Kovo's setup page lists SevenRooms, but there is no booking call behind it, so nothing is written into the book. Kovo books tables in its own book — hours and holiday exceptions, one write per slot, a confirmation text — on 750 connected minutes for $99 or 5,000 for $299. If the reservation has to land in SevenRooms, keep a person or a reservation platform on that call.
Does SevenRooms take takeout orders over the phone?
SevenRooms is a reservation, guest CRM, and marketing platform, and no phone order-taking is described in its public positioning, so confirm that on a demo. Its centre of gravity is the book and the guest record, not a ticket. Kovo is the opposite: it takes an order, plays it back to the caller, and sends the finished ticket to Toast, Square, Clover, Olo, or a printer for $99 a month.
What does each cost at 900 calls a month?
Kovo's plans are $99 for 750 connected minutes and $299 for 5,000, and 900 calls at two and a half minutes is 2,250 minutes, so the answer is $299. SevenRooms sells a platform subscription, and the number on the page moves with modules and locations, so ask for a written quote at one site. Compare both against a $38 recovered order, not against each other's entry tier.
Will the guest note in SevenRooms print on the kitchen ticket?
No. Kovo holds no guest history and stores no review content, so a note about a regular does not travel with the order and the ticket reads like any other. The record stays in SevenRooms, where a person can read it before the bag goes out, and Kovo's two plans are $99 and $299 a month.
What happens to a party of 12 on Kovo?
The limit is the shop's, defaulting to 10 items in total and 8 of one item, with an optional order-value limit and zero to switch any of them off. Above it, the call rings your handset if large-party routing is on and a handset is set; otherwise the agent says the order is too large to send through and keeps taking what fits. A 12-top is still better as a booking than as a ticket, so the caller needs a real number to reach.
Final Thoughts
SevenRooms knows who is on the phone and Kovo knows what they ordered. A shop with a dining room usually needs the first, a shop with a takeout line usually needs the second, and a shop with both is buying two things rather than choosing between them.
The test is one call. Order a half-and-half item, ask how long the wait is, and look at what printed and what the record shows. Kovo answers from $99 for 750 connected minutes, which is long enough to hear your own menu read back. Take a test call with your own menu.