There is no single "best" POS, there is a best pick per merchant type. Square is cheapest to start and strongest for in-person-first businesses. Lightspeed suits complex-inventory specialty retail. Clover carries real hardware and processor lock-in. And if your store is already on Shopify, Shopify POS is the obvious answer, because your register and your website run on one system.
- Software runs from free (Square, Shopify POS Lite) to $89 to $289 a month (Lightspeed Retail tiers).
- The card-processing line, roughly 1.5% to 2.6% plus a fixed fee, is the largest cost once volume is real, not the monthly software.
- Clover hardware is usually locked to the processor that sold it, which is the cost nobody flags at signup.
Here is the uncomfortable thing about every "best POS" article, including this one. Nearly all of them are written by someone with a payments referral deal, so the winner is whoever pays the affiliate. I do not sell any of these systems. I have stood up in-person selling across a portfolio of Shopify brands, signed for POS software per location, and watched the card-processing line grow until it dwarfed every subscription. So read this as an operator's walk-through, then decide on your own numbers.
This is the sibling to my Shopify POS cost breakdown, which answers "what does Shopify POS cost" line by line. This post answers the next question: which of the four big systems should you actually pick? I will score Shopify POS, Square, Clover, and Lightspeed on all-in cost and honest pros and cons, then land on a verdict by merchant type, because the right answer genuinely depends on what kind of business you run.
One promise up front. Every rate and price below links to the vendor's own pricing page or is attributed to my own operating experience. Payment terms change often, and a headline rate can mean different things at different companies, so treat these as the current shape of the market and confirm your exact numbers before you sign.
Read the processing
line, not the sticker
price.
Start where the money actually goes. On every one of these systems, the monthly software fee is the small, predictable line, and the card-processing rate is the big one that grows with every sale you ring up. At a blended 2.5% rate, $100,000 a month in retail sales is about $2,500 in card fees, before you pay a dollar of software. The sticker was never where your cost lived.
That single fact reorders the whole comparison. A system with cheap or free software and a high card rate can cost you far more at volume than a pricier subscription with a lower rate. So when you read a pricing page, find the card-present rate first, then check what it includes: some vendors quote an all-in rate, others quote only their markup over the card networks' interchange fees, and the two are not the same number.
Watch out for one more trap in that line. A published rate like "2.6% plus 15 cents" tells you the software company's take, but your true cost also depends on your average ticket size, your card mix, and whether the processor passes interchange straight through or blends it. Across the brands I have operated, the merchants who negotiated anything negotiated the rate, never the $89, because the rate is where the dollars are. This is the same logic behind reading your whole retail cost stack the way you would read a P&L rather than a price tag, which is the core of the DTC retail velocity playbook.
"The monthly software fee is the line you notice. The card-processing rate is the line that decides what you actually pay."
Keep that lens on as we go system by system. I will give you each one's software cost, its published card-present rate with a link, its hardware entry point, and the honest catch that the pricing page will not volunteer. Then the four-way table pulls it together so you can see them side by side.
The four systems,
scored on what you
actually pay.
Here is the whole field on one screen. The software column is the published monthly price, the rate column is the vendor's stated card-present rate, and the lock-in column is the one that catches people after they have already committed. Read the rate and the lock-in columns first, because those decide your cost and your freedom to leave.
| System | Monthly software | Card-present rate | Hardware entry | Lock-in |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Shopify POS Best for Shopify brands | Lite free · Pro $89/location | ~2.4–2.6% (Shopify Payments) | Tap to Pay free · Terminal $349 | None, month to month |
Square Best free start | Free · Retail Plus $89/location | 2.6% + 15¢ | First reader free · Terminal $299 | None, no contracts |
Clover Sold via resellers | Varies by reseller (~$0–$135) | ~2.3–2.6% + 10¢, reseller-set | Flex ~$599 · Station ~$1,799 | High, tied to processor |
Lightspeed Retail Complex-inventory retail | $89 · $149 · $289 | 1.5% (published, Payments) | iPad kits, sold separately | Annual terms common |
Sources, in order: Shopify POS pricing and Shopify POS hardware; Square Retail and Square pricing; Clover systems; Lightspeed Retail pricing. The lock-in and sync commentary is from my own operating experience across brands I have advised.
The rate column tells its own story. Lightspeed publishes the lowest headline card-present rate at 1.5%, but always confirm whether a quoted rate is all-in or a markup, because a low posted number can sit on top of pass-through interchange. Square and Shopify quote fuller all-in rates. Clover does not publish a single rate at all, because your processor sets it, which is the first sign of where Clover is different.
Square: brilliant
free start, watch
where it ends.
Square is the easiest system in the world to start on, and that is not faint praise. The Square POS app is free, your first magstripe reader is free, there are no monthly software fees on the base plan, and there is no contract. You download it, plug in a reader, and take a card in an afternoon. For a market stall, a new brand, or a cash-light side business, nothing beats that on-ramp. Square publishes a card-present rate of 2.6% plus 15 cents per tap, dip, or swipe (Square pricing).
Where does free end? In two places. First, the base app is deliberately basic, so serious retail features live in Square for Retail Plus at $89 a month per location, which is where you get real inventory tools, vendor management, and better reporting. Second, the hardware climbs fast once you want a proper counter: the contactless-and-chip reader is $49, the Square Terminal is $299, and the Square Register is around $799. None of that is unfair, it is just the point where "free POS" quietly becomes a real bill.
The honest limitation for a brand like yours is ecommerce depth. Square Online is capable, but it is not a serious direct-to-consumer storefront the way Shopify is, so if online is or will be a meaningful channel, running Square in the store means running two systems and reconciling them. Square shines when in-person is the whole business. It gets awkward the moment online becomes half of it, which is exactly the seam that good inventory management for DTC brands is supposed to close.
Square, in one line
Best for the in-person-first business that wants to start today for nothing and does not need a heavyweight online store behind it. If ecommerce is central to your brand, Square's biggest strength, its simplicity, becomes its ceiling.
Clover: nice
hardware, the lock-in
nobody mentions.
Clover makes genuinely good-looking countertop hardware, and the Station, Mini, and Flex devices feel like real point-of-sale machines rather than a tablet in a stand. That is the pitch, and it lands, especially for full-service and quick-service restaurants where the all-in-one unit does a lot. Software plans are modest on paper, commonly in the $0 to $135 a month range depending on the plan and vertical (Clover systems), with hardware like the Flex around $599 and a Station bundle running well over $1,000.
Now the catch, and it is a big one. Clover is usually sold through a bank or a merchant-services reseller, not bought direct on transparent terms. Your processing rate is set by that reseller rather than published, so two merchants on identical hardware can pay very different rates. And a Clover device bought through one processor is often locked to that processor, which means you cannot carry it to a cheaper rate the way you can switch a Square or Shopify reader. That bundling is the cost nobody flags at signup.
Across the merchants I have advised, Clover lock-in is the single most common source of regret in this category. The device is fine. The trap is the account behind it: opaque rates, a multi-year processing relationship, and hardware you cannot easily repurpose if you leave. If you do choose Clover, choose the reseller as carefully as the machine, get the full rate in writing, and read the term. The hardware is the easy part to love and the account is the part that costs you.
Ask three questions before you buy any POS: what exactly is my all-in card rate, in writing; if I leave in a year, can I keep and reuse this hardware; and who sets my rate, the software company or a reseller I have never met? Square and Shopify answer these cleanly. Clover, sold through the reseller channel, is where the answers get slippery, and the slippery answers are the whole point of the model.
Lightspeed: powerful
retail brain, priced
like it.
Lightspeed Retail is the serious specialist's choice, built for stores with deep, complicated inventory: bike shops, apparel with size-and-color matrices, jewelry, sporting goods, anything with thousands of variants and real purchase-order workflows. Its inventory, supplier catalog, and reporting are a genuine step up for that kind of retail. Pricing runs $89 for Basic, $149 for Core, and $289 for Plus a month, each including one register, with annual billing saving up to 18% (Lightspeed Retail pricing).
Lightspeed's pricing page lists a 1.5% card-present rate on Lightspeed Payments, which looks dramatically lower than Square's 2.6%. Read that carefully. A posted 1.5% that sits on top of pass-through interchange is not comparable to an all-in 2.6%, so confirm exactly what the number includes before you treat it as a saving. This is the entire reason section one told you to interrogate the processing line: the same two digits mean different things at different companies.
The honest trade-off with Lightspeed is that you pay for the depth. It is more expensive than Square at the counter, the tiers step up quickly as you add locations and registers, and plans commonly run on annual terms. Its ecommerce arm exists but is not the reason anyone picks Lightspeed. You choose it for the retail brain, the inventory and supplier tooling, when that complexity is the actual problem you have. For a specialty retailer not on Shopify, it is a strong pick. For a Shopify brand, it means running a second platform.
Lightspeed, in one line
Best for complex-inventory specialty retail that is not already on Shopify and needs the deep merchandising tools. Powerful and worth it for that profile, and overkill, plus a second system, for most Shopify brands.
Shopify POS: obvious
only if you already
sell on Shopify.
Shopify POS is the obvious pick under one condition, and that condition is doing all the work: your store is already on Shopify. If it is, POS is not a separate system you bolt on, it is the same catalog, inventory, and customer records your website already uses, now available at the counter. One product edit updates both channels. One customer buys online and returns in store against the same profile. That single source of truth is the entire value, and no competitor can match it for a Shopify brand.
The cost is clean. POS Lite is free on every Shopify plan, and POS Pro is $89 a month per location (about $79 on annual billing), billed per store rather than per register, so you can run as many iPads and readers as you want inside one location on one subscription. The in-person card rate through Shopify Payments runs roughly 2.4% to 2.6% depending on your plan. Hardware starts at nothing with Tap to Pay on iPhone, and the newest countertop unit, the POS Terminal, is $349 (Shopify POS hardware). The full line-by-line math lives in the Shopify POS cost breakdown.
Where is Shopify POS not the answer? Be honest about it. If you run a full-service restaurant with table management, coursing, and kitchen tickets, Shopify POS is not built for that, and Square, Lightspeed Restaurant, or a dedicated restaurant system will serve you better. And if you have no online store, no plan for one, and deep specialty inventory, Lightspeed's retail brain may fit better. Outside those narrow cases, for the roughly nine in ten merchants who sell online or intend to, keeping the register and the website on one platform wins.
That is the part the other systems cannot argue with. Square is a better free start, Lightspeed is a better inventory engine for non-Shopify specialty retail, Clover is a legitimate restaurant device if you accept the account behind it. But if you are a Shopify brand going omnichannel, splitting your store and your counter across two platforms creates exactly the reconciliation work that omnichannel is supposed to remove. The whole thesis of the omnichannel path to $100M is that one system beats two glued together, and POS is where that shows up first.
The verdict, by
merchant type, no
hedging.
There is no universal winner, so here is the pick for each kind of business I get asked about. Find the row that sounds like you. Three of the five land on a Shopify or Square answer, because those two cover the majority of real merchants cleanly.
| If you are | Pick | Why |
|---|---|---|
A single boutique already on Shopify | Shopify POS | One catalog and one customer record across store and web. Free Lite or $89 Pro. |
A multi-location omnichannel brand | Shopify POS | Per-location Pro, shared inventory across every door and the website. No reconciliation. |
A brand-new, in-person-first seller | Square | Free app, free first reader, no contract. The cheapest honest way to start. |
A complex-inventory specialty retailer, not on Shopify | Lightspeed Retail | Deep merchandising, supplier catalog, and variant tools. Worth the higher price. |
A full-service restaurant | Square or a restaurant system | Table and kitchen workflows Shopify POS is not built for. Clover works if you vet the reseller. |
Read the pattern. If online commerce is any part of your business, the deciding factor is not the POS feature grid, it is whether your register and your storefront share one brain. For a Shopify brand, they should, which is why Shopify POS wins those rows without a real contest. Square wins the pure-start case on price and simplicity. Lightspeed wins non-Shopify specialty retail on depth. And a restaurant is the honest exception where none of the retail-first systems is the natural fit.
If you take one thing from all of this, take the ordering: pick the platform your commerce model wants, then read the processing line as the real cost, then treat the monthly software fee as the small, predictable number it is. Do it in that order and you will not overpay, and you will not get trapped by a rate you never got in writing. If you want a second set of eyes on your specific numbers, my door is open at hello@taylorsicard.com. And if the design story behind Shopify's own hardware interests you, the evolution of Shopify POS hardware is a good companion read.
Questions merchants
ask about picking a
POS.
Q: What is the cheapest POS system?
Square is the cheapest to start: the app is free, your first magstripe reader is free, and there are no monthly software or contract fees on the base plan. You pay only the card rate, about 2.6% plus a fixed per-transaction fee in person. Shopify POS Lite is also free on any Shopify plan. The honest catch is that cheapest-to-start and cheapest-at-scale are different questions, because once volume is real, the card-processing line, not the software fee, becomes the largest cost on every one of these systems.
Q: Is Shopify POS better than Square?
If you sell online, or plan to, Shopify POS is better, because it runs on the same catalog, inventory, and customer records as your Shopify storefront, so in-store and online are one system rather than two you reconcile. Square is excellent for a business that is in-person first with little ecommerce, and its free entry is hard to beat. The deciding question is not the POS feature list, it is whether your online store and your register should share one source of truth. For a Shopify brand, they should.
Q: Does Clover lock you into their hardware?
Largely, yes. Clover hardware is proprietary and usually sold through a bank or merchant-services reseller, and a Clover device bought from one processor is often locked to that processor, so you cannot simply carry it to a cheaper rate. That bundling is the cost nobody flags at signup: your processing rate is set by the reseller, not published, and switching means new hardware. Across the merchants I have advised, that lock-in is the biggest reason to think twice about Clover, even when the countertop unit is genuinely nice.
Q: What is the best POS for multiple locations?
For a multi-location retailer that also sells online, Shopify POS is the strongest pick, because POS Pro is billed per location at $89 a month and every store shares one inventory and customer database with the online shop. Lightspeed Retail is the serious alternative for complex-inventory specialty retail not on Shopify, with tiers at $89, $149, and $289 a month. Square handles multiple locations well for in-person-first businesses. The right answer follows your commerce model: if ecommerce matters, keep the register and the website on one platform.
Deciding what goes on the counter?
I have stood up in-person selling across a portfolio of Shopify brands, signed for POS per location, and watched the processing line become the real bill. If you are going omnichannel and want the system that fits your model, not the one with the biggest affiliate payout, let's talk. The form takes two minutes.
Start a conversation Or email hello@taylorsicard.com →