StockTake Online vs StockTap: which fits a UK pub?

Short version: StockTake Online is a restaurant-first inventory platform, strong on recipes, purchase ordering and multi-site, sold on a call with no public prices and no self-serve trial. StockTap is a wet-led pub tool with weighing-based counts, a public £19 a month founding price and a 14-day trial you start yourself. If you run a kitchen-led group across several sites, they're worth the demo. If you run a pub and want to know your GP% this month, read on.

What StockTake Online actually is

StockTake Online (STO) is a hospitality inventory system aimed mainly at restaurants. Its own feature list is broad: purchase ordering, goods receiving against orders, stock counts by app, recipe and batch management, gross profit reporting, and transfers between sites. All plans come with 24/7 support by phone, chat and email, which is more support than most rivals promise at any price.

Users seem to like it. On G2 it holds 4.8 out of 5, with praise for ease of use, responsive support and POS integration. Twelve reviews is a small base, so hold that score loosely, but the gripes in those reviews are the useful part: limited customisation on reports, syncing delays at peak times, no FIFO controls or shelf-life notifications, and a mobile app reviewers want improved. For a food operation, missing shelf-life tracking is worth noticing.

The pricing page with no prices on it

Here's the bit I always check first, because it tells you who a product is for. STO's pricing page, as of 18 September 2026, lists three plans, Standard, Add-on and Enterprise, and not one number. The price is "customisable" based on locations and features, agreed on a call, with "one cost that covers all your locations". And instead of a trial you can start yourself, STO offers a free personalised demo.

None of that is a scam, it's just an enterprise sales motion. It means your price is a negotiation, your trial is a sales appointment, and you can't find out what it costs at 11pm on a Sunday, which is when licensees actually do this research. I've written before about what pub stocktaking software costs, and the pattern holds: tools built for groups hide the price, tools built for operators publish it.

Where StockTake Online is simply the better fit

Credit where due. If you're running food-led sites, plural, STO does several things StockTap simply doesn't. StockTap has no recipe or batch costing, so if you need every dish costed to the gram, STO covers ground we don't. It handles purchase orders and goods receiving as a workflow; StockTap reads delivery notes and updates cost prices, but it isn't a purchasing system. And STO moves stock between sites, while StockTap works one venue at a time. A three-site gastropub group with a central kitchen should have STO on the demo list, alongside the restaurant-focused options and the multi-site comparison.

Where StockTap fits instead

StockTap was built by a licensee for the wet side of the trade, and the differences follow from that. Counting is weighing-first: put the bottle on the scales and the app turns grams into millilitres, measures and money, with tenths and dipstick methods where speed beats precision. Daily spot checks compare a few lines against the till between full counts. And the commercial terms are the opposite motion to STO's: £19 a month on the founding rate (£39 standard), prices public, 14-day free trial, no card, no call with anyone. The full method comparison across every tool we've reviewed is in the software comparison hub and the 2026 round-up.

Side by side

The decision, plainly

Ask yourself one question: is your problem "cost every plate and move stock around a group", or is it "know what this pub's wet GP% actually is, weekly, without paying a stocktaker"? The first is STO's home ground, book the demo. The second is what StockTap does all day, and you can find out whether it fits by starting the trial yourself tonight, which, given everything above, is rather the point.