Every comparison of digital menu software has the same problem: one of the vendors wrote it. This one too — yourmenu.app is our product and it sits in the list below. What we can offer instead of neutrality is specificity, including about where we lose. Here are nine providers with their real 2026 prices, what each actually does, and the scenarios where a competitor is the better buy. If you are hunting for the best QR menu software for one restaurant, the answer turns almost entirely on a single question: do you want guests to read the menu, or to order from it? Those are two different products sold under one category name.
What actually separates the providers
Feature tables are close to useless in this market because everyone ticks the same boxes. Seven things genuinely change the day-to-day, and most of them only surface months after you sign up.
- What the QR code encodes. Ask this before anything else. If the code contains your current menu address, then renaming the menu or moving to your own domain can dead-link every printed code, table tent and window sticker you already paid for. A code that stays the same forever is worth more than most feature lists.
- Whether the free tier is real. Free means three different things here: free forever with the core job done, free but capped so tightly you outgrow it in a week, or a trial that quietly ends. Check item limits, scan limits and whether a card is required.
- Allergen tagging. In the EU this is not a nice-to-have — the 14 allergens have to be disclosed for restaurant dishes. Several menu tools in this comparison still do not advertise allergen fields at all.
- Translations, and what kind. AI translation is instant and cheap. Human translation reads better and costs more. Both are legitimate; the right pick depends on how much of your room is international.
- Scan analytics. Knowing how many guests scanned, when and from where tells you whether the table tents are earning their space. Plenty of otherwise decent tools have no analytics at all.
- The real monthly price at your size. Compare the tier that includes what you need, not the headline number. Custom domain in particular sits on wildly different tiers across vendors.
- The language of the interface and the support. If you or your staff work in German or Spanish, an English-only admin panel is a small daily tax on everyone who touches it.
That last point is quietly the biggest sorting mechanism in this market. Some of the strongest products here are English-only; some of the German ones have no English at all.
Two different products wearing one category name
Pure menu builders do one job: your menu, on a phone, current. No basket, no payments, no kitchen printer. Setup is measured in minutes and the monthly cost lands somewhere between nothing and about twenty.
Ordering and POS platforms put a basket on that menu. Guests order from the table, pay by card or wallet, the ticket reaches the kitchen. That is genuinely different machinery: table numbers, order states, payment providers, refunds, staff training. It is right for some rooms and pure overhead for others. A trattoria with four tables outside and a waiter who takes the order anyway is paying for a system nobody will ever open.
So settle that before you compare prices. If you do not want the basket, the ordering platforms will look expensive and complicated — because for you they are.
The pure digital menu software builders
mymenu.de is the barest option here and honest about it. The basic version is described as completely free and without any commitment, there is no publicly listed paid tier, and you get a static QR code per location, multi-location support and an embed for your website. What you do not get: advertised allergen tagging, analytics, translations or ordering. The site is German-only, and support content is limited to an FAQ — there is no blog or guide library. If the requirement is genuinely put my menu behind a code and stop talking about it, that is a fair trade and nobody will ever send you an invoice.
qrmenugenerator.io gives you a free tier capped at one restaurant, 20 products and 10,000 views a month — enough for a small bar with a short card. Pro is $9.90 a month billed annually, or $19 monthly, and adds AI translation, allergen and diet tags, and analytics. That is a lot of feature for the money. The interface is English-only.
QR Carta is the price outlier. Its free plan is perpetual and includes EU 1169 allergen management, which is rare at zero. Premium is €3.95 a month and adds analytics and PDF export. The interface runs in 11 languages and the product is clearly built with the Spanish market in mind. If allergen compliance on the smallest possible budget is the whole brief, it is hard to argue with.
OddMenu sits at $9 to $10 a month with a one-month trial, no perpetual free tier and no analytics. BuonMenu takes a different shape entirely: €300 a year flat, no free tier, strong AI import from PDF or Word, allergens included, no analytics. Flat annual pricing genuinely suits places that would rather sign once a year than watch another subscription tick over.
The ordering and POS platforms
MENURY is the strongest German-language option in this comparison. Basic is described as permanently free and includes the main functions; Premium is €45 a month; a language pack adds €15 a month and delivers human translation into eight languages. The code stays the same, which matters more than it sounds. You also get an ordering system with commission-free payments, reservations, PDF export and multi-restaurant support, and the site runs in German and English. There is no scan analytics. If you want ordering plus translations that read like a person wrote them, in German, MENURY is the better buy than we are — and we would rather say that than pretend otherwise.
MenuTiger is the deepest product in the category. Freemium is $0 with hard limits: one store, ten tables, seven categories and seven items, 200 scans and 250 web orders a month, Stripe and PayPal only. Regular is $17 a month for two stores plus POS, Canva and Zapier. Advanced is $46 with unlimited items and a kitchen display. Premium is $119, and that is where white-label custom domain lives. Annual billing saves around 15%. Payment coverage is broad — Stripe, PayPal, Adyen, Braintree, Apple Pay, Google Pay — the AI menu builder works, multilingual menus are included and the scan analytics are mature. Two honest notes: allergen tagging is not advertised, and the interface is English-only. If order-and-pay at the table is the point, nothing else here goes as deep. If it is not, you are paying for machinery you will never switch on, and a custom domain costs $119 a month instead of $19.
gastronovi is a full POS suite in which the digital menu is a module, sold standalone at €19 a month. Same price as our Premium tier, different logic: it makes sense when you are buying, or already running, the surrounding ecosystem. Bought on its own, you are renting one room in a building you do not live in.
Where yourmenu fits, and yes, it is ours
Disclosure again, because it matters in a piece like this: yourmenu.app is made by us. Here is the narrow thing we do. The QR code encodes a permanent short link rather than the menu address, so renaming the menu, redesigning it or moving to a custom domain never breaks a code that is already printed. You type the menu in, or upload a photo or PDF of the old one and let AI extraction draft the sections, dishes, prices and descriptions for you to review. The menu lives at your-name.yourmenu.app and goes live in minutes.
The free plan is $0 forever: one complete menu, the permanent QR code, allergen tags and instant updates from any device, no credit card. Allergen tagging sitting in the free tier is deliberate — it is a legal requirement, not an upsell. Premium is $19 a month for multiple menus, AI translations you can hand-tune string by string, a custom domain, scan analytics and priority support. All 14 EU allergens plus dietary badges are per dish, multi-currency is there, and marking a dish sold out greys it out live before the next guest scans.
What we do not do: online ordering, payments, POS integration, reservations. Not on a roadmap slide — they do not exist. If you need any of them, one of the platforms above is your answer, not us.
Which one to pick, by scenario
- Menu current, nothing else, at zero cost: mymenu.de if German-only is fine and you need no allergen fields, or our free plan if you want allergen tags and a code that survives a rename.
- Allergen compliance on the smallest possible budget: QR Carta, free tier, EU 1169 management included.
- Order and pay at the table, in English, with POS and a kitchen display: MenuTiger, from $17 a month upward.
- Ordering plus human-quality translations, in German: MENURY, with Basic free, Premium at €45 and the €15 language pack.
- You already run gastronovi at the till: take the €19 module rather than a separate tool.
- One flat annual invoice and a stack of PDFs to import: BuonMenu at €300 a year.
- Several menus, translations you can edit, scan analytics and your own domain — without an ordering system: that is our shape, at $19 a month.
One thing worth doing before you buy anything: print a test code, put it on a table, then change something in the menu the next day and watch how fast the change reaches the phone. Half of these decisions make themselves once you have seen that. Our free plan exists so you can run that test without a card — and if the result sends you to one of the providers above instead, that is a good outcome too.