Better regarding what? Profit? keeping network health and safe? or what?
If your question related to profit, it will depend on many things. If you are a miner, of course, PoW will suitable for you. If you can't do mining, PoS may can be your choices or may combine it would be better.
This is a post that compares between PoS, PoW and Cloud mining.
Each seems to have it's purpose and the choice varies on Coin Fundamentals, Upfront Investment, Network Hashrate, Mining Difficulty.
Cloud Mining (assuming sites like Hashflare, Genesis Mining)
* Probably the least desirable and the most risky, but if you can get a cheap contract (lifetime one) then you good in terms of returns.
POS/MN
* Proof of Stake is easiest to setup technically
* Masternode can be a pain to get working.
* For me, you need to be able to get into the coin early to see real benefits, otherwise you're competing to maintain your "network weight" all the time.
* It also requires an investment front up.
* Another aspect that is very important is that MN/POS is not flexible because once you buy into the coin, you're stuck with it until you sell it. This as opposed to hardware (maybe cloud) mining where you still have a choice afterwards.
Hardware
* Hardware is the least risky of the three options.
* You can go the ASIC or the GPU route.
* You own the hardware asset in the end. This is an underrated aspect
* Requires investment, but this is less risky than a POS investment. GPUs can do gaming if crypto fails LOL.
* The yields on hardware mining vary depending on how deep you are in and the difficulty of the blockchain. Personally, I put it as higher than POS/MN generally (except Dash and maybe Linda)
* Hardware is most flexible as you can switch the coin you want to mine (even ASICS).
Rental Based Mining (not listed as an option, assuming sites like Nicehash)
* Slightly more risky than hardware mining because of its nature (sending someone coin to mine on your behalf)
* I think more expensive than Cloud and Hardware. Could be wrong.
* More flexible than cloud/POS because you have choice of rig (and therefore algo)
* Yields a nice return on new coins (early blockchain)