What MenuZen is today
MenuZen has two products under one name, and it helps to know which one you are looking at. The homepage, checked on September 29, 2026, now sells digital menu boards: “a single platform to power, manage, and monetize every QSR screen,” priced per screen, per month. The online menu maker, the product most small restaurants mean when they search for MenuZen, lives on its own page. That is the product this page compares.
The online menu maker is a design canvas. You build a menu with templates, images, and layout tools, and “each menu comes with a link, QR code, and embed code.” It is aimed at “restaurants, cafes, bars” and also at marketing teams, agencies, and freelancers who make menus for several places. It shares menus to social media with a “Menu in Bio” link. It is not an ordering app: the FAQ says so directly.
Gaslamp starts from the other end. You pick one of eight designs made for your kind of place and type your dishes, prices, and dietary tags over its sample menu. You do not lay anything out. After that, the work is upkeep: change a price or take a dish off from your phone, and the hosted menu behind the QR code shows it about thirty seconds after you save.
MenuZen and Gaslamp, side by side
Every MenuZen fact below comes from menuzen.com on September 29, 2026. Where MenuZen does not say, the table says Not listed.
| Row | MenuZen | Gaslamp |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Plan page: Lite $12 a month or $115 a year; Grow $30 a month or $289 a year; Enterprise custom. A second pricing page lists Grow at $10 USD a month. The FAQ says Grow “starts at just $20 per month depending on your region.” | $19 a month, or $190 a year. One plan. |
| Free option | Free plan, “Free forever at completion of 7 day trial.” 15 items, 1 live menu, 1 linked user (the other pricing page says 25 items, 2 users). | 30-day free trial, no card. No free plan. Free demo editor without an account. |
| How you build it | A design canvas with templates, images, and premium templates on paid plans. | Pick one of eight designs and type your dishes over its sample menu; the layout is done for you. Logo, accent color, six fonts. |
| Menu size | Paid plans: unlimited items and menus (Lite: 25 items, 2 live menus). | 12 sections of 20 items per menu. Unlimited menus on a paid plan. |
| QR code | A QR code with every menu, on every plan. Whether the code stays the same when the menu changes: Not listed. | One code per menu that never changes. Five styles. |
| Printed QR pieces | Not listed. | Table tent (4×6), window sign (letter), counter card (3×5). |
| FAQ: “does not offer the option to print menus directly from the platform.” | Print-ready PDF of any design on paid plans. | |
| Item photos | Unlimited on paid plans; 1 per item on Free. | On the hosted menu, not the print PDF. |
| Dietary tags | Not listed. | Vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free, spicy, halal, keto. |
| Scheduled prices | “Schedule price changes.” | No. Changes go live when you save. |
| Website embed | Embed code with each menu; “Embed menus on websites” is listed on Grow. | No embed. Link to the hosted menu from your site. |
| Team | Grow: unlimited linked users. “Manage 2 locations or 1,000s with one convenient account login.” | One login per account. No team seats. |
| Ordering | No. Links out to ordering, booking, or a phone call. | No. |
Where MenuZen wins
- It has a free plan. If your menu is fifteen items and you only need a link and a code, MenuZen Free costs nothing after the seven-day trial. Gaslamp has no free plan.
- Lite costs less than Gaslamp. $12 a month on the plan page, or $115 a year, against Gaslamp’s $19 or $190. The catch is 25 items and 2 live menus.
- Bigger menus. Grow lists unlimited items. Gaslamp stops at 12 sections of 20 items per menu, which is tight for a very long wine list.
- More design freedom. A canvas with templates, images, and premium layouts, built for social posts as well as the menu. Gaslamp gives you eight designs and a few controls, on purpose.
- Scheduled price changes, embeds, and a team. MenuZen lists all three. Gaslamp has none of them.
Where Gaslamp wins
- The paper menu. MenuZen’s own FAQ says it does not print menus directly. Gaslamp turns the same edit into a print-ready PDF in the design you chose, so the table and the phone say the same price.
- The pieces that hold the code. Gaslamp makes the table tent, the window sign, and the counter card, ready to print, around a code that never changes. MenuZen does not list printed QR pieces.
- Setup is typing, not a layout job. The design sets every dish for you. You do not place a single text box, and after that the job is changing prices from your phone.
- Built for the phone in your hand at four o’clock. The editor runs in the phone browser with a number keypad for prices and a switch to hide a dish. That is the whole job most days.
- Dietary tags that print. Eight tags on every item, on the hosted menu and the PDF. MenuZen does not list dietary tags.
- One price. $19 a month or $190 a year, for everything. On the day we checked, MenuZen’s own pages showed Grow at $10, $20, and $30 a month, so confirm the number at checkout.
Who should pick which
Pick MenuZen if you want a free menu link and code for a short menu, if you design menus for several places as an agency or a marketing team, if you want scheduled price changes or an embed on your website, or if your menu is longer than 96 items. Its Grow plan does all of that, and the free plan is a real way to start.
Pick Gaslamp if you want the printed menu and the QR menu to come from the same edit, if you want the table tents made for you, and if the person who changes the menu is going to do it on a phone between lunch and dinner. Gaslamp is $19 a month and does not ask you to design anything.
If you are unsure, try both with your real menu. MenuZen has its free plan. Gaslamp has a demo editor you can open on your phone with no account: change a price, switch designs, and see the menu follow.
Moving a menu from MenuZen to Gaslamp
- Open your MenuZen menu link and copy the text, or open a PDF export if you have one.
- Start from that text in Gaslamp. It gets you a head start; tidy up the sections, prices, and tags in the editor.
- Pick a design, add your logo, publish the hosted menu.
- Print the new QR code on the table tents. The old MenuZen code opens the MenuZen menu, so swap the codes on one night, all at once.
That last step is the only real cost of switching, and it is the same for any QR menu tool. It is also why it matters that the code you print next never has to change again. More on that in dynamic vs static QR codes.
What Gaslamp does not do
- No free plan, no scheduled menus, no scheduled price changes.
- No website embed, custom domain, or team seats.
- No ordering, payments, POS sync, or digital menu boards.
- 12 sections of 20 items per menu, and no more than three prices on one item.
The verdict
MenuZen is a menu design tool with a free plan and a lot of layout freedom, and on some days its pricing pages disagree with each other. Gaslamp is a menu you keep right from your phone, in print and behind a QR code that never changes, for one clear price. If design freedom or a free plan is the point, pick MenuZen. If keeping tonight’s menu right is the point, pick Gaslamp. For the rest of the field, see every comparison we have written.