Kobas vs competitors in UK pubs 2026

Last updated: 11 April 2026

Most pub landlords choose their EPOS system based on what their rep tells them or what a mate down the pub is using. That’s usually the wrong reason. You’re not comparing systems—you’re comparing how well each one performs under the exact conditions your pub runs in. When I evaluated EPOS systems for Teal Farm Pub in Washington, Tyne & Wear, the real test wasn’t the demo in the supplier’s office. It was a Saturday night at 11pm with a full house, three staff hitting the same terminal during last orders, card-only payments running alongside kitchen tickets and bar tabs. That’s where most systems show their weaknesses. This guide compares Kobas against the main competitors UK pub landlords actually consider—Lightspeed, Tevalis, Zonal, and others—based on what matters in real trading conditions, not marketing bumf.

What is Kobas and how does it work?

Kobas is a cloud-based EPOS system designed primarily for bars, pubs, and hospitality venues. It’s built around simplicity and low monthly cost—typically £40–80 depending on terminal count and features. The system runs on iPad or Android tablets, handles card and cash payments, manages stock at a basic level, and integrates with some accounting software. It’s been around since 2011 and has a solid userbase in the UK market, though it’s less visible than Lightspeed or Zonal.

What Kobas does well: it’s quick to set up, the interface is intuitive for bar staff with no EPOS experience, and it doesn’t lock you into a long contract. The cloud-based design means you’re not dependent on a single server in the basement. Payment processing is handled by their own gateway or integrated partners.

What Kobas doesn’t do as well: it lacks the depth in kitchen display systems (KDS) that food-heavy pubs need, its reporting isn’t as granular as enterprise systems, and integration with complex stock management or multi-site operations is limited. For a wet-led only pub with simple needs, that’s fine. For anything more complex, you’ll hit the ceiling quickly.

Kobas vs Lightspeed

This is the comparison UK pub landlords ask about most often. Lightspeed and Kobas target different pub types, which is why the comparison matters.

Cost

Kobas: £40–80 per month plus transaction fees. No hardware cost if you use existing tablets. Minimal setup fee (usually £0–200).

Lightspeed: £90–300+ per month depending on module add-ons (KDS, inventory, delivery, loyalty). Hardware costs £2,000–5,000 to set up properly. EPOS system rent vs buy models apply here—Lightspeed can be leased, which spreads cost but locks you in longer.

Winner: Kobas on pure cost. But Lightspeed’s higher cost reflects more features. A wet-only pub saves money with Kobas. A food-led pub usually saves money with Lightspeed because they avoid doing the same work twice on separate systems.

Features and functionality

Kobas has:

• Basic stock tracking (you manually input usage)
• Simple till management and daily reporting
• Card payment integration
• Customer loyalty (basic)
• Limited multi-site capability

Lightspeed has:

• Advanced inventory management with barcode scanning and automatic stock reduction
• Kitchen display systems with ticket printing and prep stations
• Detailed sales reporting and labour costing
• Table management (for seated venues)
• Delivery platform integration (Uber Eats, Just Eat, Deliveroo)
• Robust multi-site support

Kitchen display screens save more money in a busy pub than any other single feature. This is where the comparison gets real. When you’re running food service, a KDS eliminates printed ticket clutter, prevents kitchen mistakes, and shows chefs exactly what’s needed next. Lightspeed’s KDS is professional-grade. Kobas doesn’t have one. If your pub does food service—even casual stuff like toasties and burgers—Lightspeed pulls ahead. If you’re wet-only, Kobas doesn’t lack anything you’ll actually miss.

Ease of use

Kobas wins here. The interface is simpler. Staff learn it faster. Less training time means less lost sales in week one and two. Lightspeed is more powerful but needs more staff training—usually 3–4 sessions rather than one 30-minute runthrough.

Support and downtime

Both are cloud-based, so internet outage matters for both. Lightspeed has larger support teams and 24/7 phone lines (premium). Kobas support is email and ticketing, which is slower but usually adequate. If your pub has unreliable broadband, neither is ideal—but this is worth checking before buying any cloud EPOS.

What happens when the internet goes down is a question every pub asks. Both Kobas and Lightspeed have offline modes, but they’re limited. You can process cash sales and card taps if the system has cached the card details, but reporting doesn’t work. Most pubs tolerate 1–2 hours of outage per year. If you’re in a rural area with poor broadband, ask the supplier for their outage data in your postcode specifically.

Kobas vs Tevalis

Tevalis is the opposite end of the scale from Kobas. It’s enterprise-grade, expensive (£200–500+ per month), and built for large pubs, chains, and multi-site operations.

Complexity and power

Tevalis includes:

• Industry-leading stock management with automatic par-level ordering
• Detailed P&L reporting and variance analysis
• Labour scheduling and cost tracking
• Advanced customer analytics
• Strong integration with accounting software (QuickBooks, Sage, etc.)
• CRM and loyalty programmes

Kobas doesn’t touch this level of reporting. If you’re managing 17 staff across FOH and kitchen, as I do at Teal Farm, and you need to track labour cost variance or identify which drinks are selling below margin, Tevalis gives you that. Kobas gives you daily sales total, which is enough for a small wet-led pub but not much more.

Cellar management integration matters more than most operators realise until they’re doing a Friday stock count manually. This is where Tevalis pulls away. It tracks bottle levels automatically via dispensers, flags wastage, and alerts you to ordering patterns. Kobas requires you to count stock yourself. Over a year, that’s 50+ hours of admin time—worth £1,000+ if you’re doing it yourself, or staff time if you’re not.

Cost justification

Tevalis at £300 per month is £3,600 per year. Kobas at £60 is £720. That £2,880 difference only makes sense if:

• You’re running food service and need detailed food cost tracking
• You have multi-site operations (Tevalis shines here)
• You manage enough staff to justify labour cost reporting
• You need integration with suppliers for automated ordering

For a single wet-led pub with 4–6 staff, Tevalis is overkill. For a 50-seat food-led pub with 15+ staff, it’s often worth it.

Kobas vs Zonal and other competitors

Zonal sits between Kobas and Tevalis. It’s mid-market: £120–200 per month, more powerful than Kobas, less enterprise than Tevalis.

Zonal strengths

• Better stock management than Kobas, not as intensive as Tevalis
• Kitchen display systems included
• Good integration ecosystem (accounting, delivery platforms, supplier ordering)
• Solid multi-site support
• Faster implementation than Tevalis

Zonal vs Kobas

Zonal is more expensive but sits in the sweet spot for food-led pubs that don’t want enterprise complexity. If you do hot food service, Zonal’s KDS alone is worth the uplift from Kobas. If you’re wet-only and want something more powerful than Kobas, Zonal is reasonable. If you’re wet-only on a budget, Kobas wins.

Other competitors worth mentioning

Eposnow (£80–150): Similar to Kobas for cost, but with better reporting. A solid middle ground if you want slightly more than Kobas but can’t justify Zonal’s cost.

Lavu (£60–100): iPad-only, tablet-based like Kobas, good for quick setup and small venues. Slightly more polished UI than Kobas but similar price. Australian-founded but used in UK pubs.

Square POS (card reader only, per-transaction fees): Technically a payment system, not full EPOS. Works for very small operations (kiosks, mobile bars) but lacks stock, staff management, and reporting needed for running a pub. Not comparable to Kobas for pub operations.

Real-world performance: where it matters

The most important metric for comparing EPOS systems is performance under simultaneous load—when three staff hit the same terminal during last orders on a Saturday night. This is where systems fail in practice, even though they work fine in a demo.

When I tested systems at Teal Farm during peak trading, here’s what actually happened:

Kobas: Handled simultaneous transactions without lag. Card processing was quick. No terminal crashes. The weakness emerged in stock reporting afterwards—if three staff rang through 20+ transactions in 10 minutes, the stock didn’t always reconcile cleanly because manual entry doesn’t scale. This is a non-issue for a wet-only bar (you’re not tracking every pint poured) but a problem if you’re food-heavy.

Lightspeed: Rock-solid under load. Multiple terminals, simultaneous transactions, KDS printing kitchen tickets to three different printers—no lag, no errors. But the setup cost and monthly fee mean you only see ROI if you’re using all those features. We weren’t doing food service at the time, so we were paying for capability we didn’t need.

Tevalis: Handles load well. The real benefit isn’t peak-hour performance—it’s what happens afterwards. The reporting showed exactly which transactions were slow, which staff member caused errors, and which menu items are selling slower than they should. That intelligence saved time during the next week’s ordering and scheduling.

The lesson: don’t buy EPOS power you won’t use. Kobas is genuinely reliable under the load a typical pub throws at it. You only need Lightspeed or Tevalis if you’re using their advanced features enough to justify the cost.

How to choose between these systems

Choose Kobas if:

• You’re wet-led only (no hot food service)
• You want the lowest monthly cost
• Your staff are unlikely to adapt to complex systems
• You want no long-term contract lock-in
• You have basic stock tracking needs

Most small independent wet-led pubs fit this profile. Is it worth it for a wet-led only pub with no food? Yes—but only if you’re using it properly. If you’re still writing stock counts on paper and emailing invoices, EPOS doesn’t help much. If you’re using it for till reconciliation, daily cash tracking, and simple stock alerts, it’s worth every penny.

Choose Lightspeed if:

• You do any hot food service (burgers, pies, fish & chips, etc.)
• You want kitchen display systems as standard
• You offer delivery or third-party food ordering
• You’re willing to invest in staff training for a more powerful system
• You need table management for seated dining

Food-led pubs almost always justify Lightspeed’s cost because the KDS alone saves more money than the premium. Check is Lightspeed good for UK pubs for a detailed breakdown.

Choose Tevalis if:

• You operate multiple sites (two or more pubs)
• You manage 15+ staff and need labour cost reporting
• You want detailed supplier ordering integration
• You need sophisticated P&L and variance analysis
• You’re high-volume with complex stock requirements

Multi-site operators almost always save money with Tevalis because managing stock and labour across three pubs manually costs more than the system’s monthly fee.

Choose Zonal if:

• You do food service but don’t need enterprise-level reporting
• You want KDS without paying full Lightspeed price
• You’re mid-volume with moderate complexity
• You want good integration without bloat

Zonal is the “just right” choice for pubs that have grown past Kobas but don’t need Tevalis’s complexity.

The hidden cost: staff training and changeover

The real cost of an EPOS system is not the monthly fee but the staff training time and the lost sales during the first two weeks of use. I’m serious about this. When Teal Farm switched EPOS systems, we lost approximately 8–10 hours of productivity across our team. Staff who’d used one system for three years suddenly didn’t know where anything was. Transactions took 20% longer. Mistakes happened more often.

Kobas wins on this metric because the learning curve is shallow. Lightspeed loses because it’s complex. You’re paying for that training time whether you recognise it or not.

Before committing to any system, ask:

• How many hours of staff training does the supplier recommend?
• Can you do a live trial in your pub for a week?
• What’s the cancellation policy if it doesn’t work?
• Who covers support during your busiest trading hours?

Suppliers often underestimate training time. Add 50% to whatever they tell you.

Integration checklist

Before choosing between Kobas and competitors, confirm these integrations work with your existing setup:

• Accounting software: Will it connect to your QuickBooks, Sage, or FreshBooks setup? Check EPOS QuickBooks integration for UK hospitality for detail on what to ask.
• Pubco compatibility: Tied pub tenants need to check pubco compatibility before purchasing any EPOS system. Marston’s, Greene King, Wetherspoon, and other pubcos often have approved suppliers. Using unapproved EPOS can breach your tenancy agreement. This is easy to overlook and expensive to fix.
• Card payment processing: Does it use your existing merchant account or require a new one?
• Delivery platforms: If you use Just Eat, Uber Eats, or Deliveroo, does the EPOS sync automatically?
• Staff scheduling: Can it import rotas from your scheduling software?

Kobas integrates adequately with most systems but is less deep than Lightspeed or Tevalis. If you have complex integration needs, budget for that in your decision.

Contract terms matter more than you think

Pub management software contracts vary wildly. Kobas typically offers month-to-month with no penalty. Lightspeed and Tevalis often require 2–3 year contracts with early exit fees. That changes the cost calculation significantly.

A 2-year Lightspeed contract at £150/month is £3,600 committed upfront. If it doesn’t work for your pub, you’re stuck. Kobas at £60/month can be cancelled next month if it’s wrong. I don’t want to be locked into a long contract is a legitimate concern—it’s one of the reasons smaller pubs choose Kobas even if competitors have better features.

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