Best POS Systems for Retail in 2026

Shopify POS is the in-store checkout of Shopify Inc., the commerce platform with principal offices in Ottawa and New York. Shopify reported total revenue of US$11.6 billion and gross merchandise volume of US$378.4 billion for 2025; it earns POS revenue through POS Pro subscriptions, charged per month and per location with an annual option, and through sales of POS hardware.

Every paid Shopify plan includes the basic POS, and the POS Pro add-on unlocks the features that a permanent shop needs: unlimited staff logins with roles and permissions, manager approvals, commissions, barcode receiving, quick stock counts, and returns or exchanges at any location regardless of where an item was bought. Inventory syncs in real time between the store, the online shop and other channels, and omnichannel options include in-store pickup, ship-from-store and local delivery. Hardware covers a countertop terminal kit, a Bluetooth tap-and-chip reader and Tap to Pay on iPhone.

The model suits retailers whose online store is on Shopify, because the catalogue, customer records and gift cards are shared. The trade-offs are cost and lock-in: POS Pro is billed on top of the platform plan for each location, and the published card rates assume Shopify Payments, with extra fees for third-party providers. Intuit now recommends Shopify POS to former QuickBooks Desktop POS users.

Square for Retail is the retail edition of the Square point of sale, made by Block, Inc. Block says it started the Square ecosystem in February 2009 to let businesses accept card payments; in 2025 more than 4.5 million sellers used it to process 5.9 billion transactions worth US$250 billion of gross payment volume.

The free plan covers selling, automatic item and SKU creation, discounts, refunds and sales reporting. Plus adds inventory management and stock intake, vendor and purchase-order management, barcode label printing for received items, and cost-of-goods and inventory reporting. Premium adds cross-location returns and fulfilment, transfer orders and 24/7 phone support, and has the lowest processing rates. Merchants processing more than US$250,000 a year can ask about Square Pro custom pricing.

Square's strengths are its low entry cost, consistent hardware range (handheld, terminal, register, stand and kiosk) and the surrounding services from payroll to banking and loans. Processing is mandatory through Square, and the monthly fee on paid plans applies to each location, which raises costs for chains. Phone support on the free plan is limited to business hours, while 24/7 support requires Premium.

Lightspeed Retail is made by Lightspeed Commerce Inc., headquartered in Montréal and listed on the NYSE and TSX under LSPD. The company was incorporated on 21 March 2005 as Xsilva Systems and renamed LightSpeed Retail in 2012; Lightspeed later acquired Vend Limited, and its retail plans are now sold as the X-Series. For fiscal 2026 (to 31 March 2026) Lightspeed reported total revenue of US$1,227.0 million, up about 14%, gross transaction volume of US$98.1 billion and customer locations in more than 100 countries. After a strategic review in February 2025 it made retail in North America one of its two growth priorities.

All three retail plans include one register, integrated payments, inventory management, purchase orders, in-store and online loyalty, advanced sales, staff and inventory reports, a mobile scanner app, landed costs, forecasting and order recommendations, API access and single sign-on. Lightspeed Wholesale and the NuORDER catalogue let retailers order from brands inside the POS. Ecommerce is built in, in a reduced form on Basic.

Lightspeed suits specialty retailers with large catalogues. It is more expensive than free-to-start options, additional registers and locations are charged separately without published prices, and multi-location retailers are directed to sales for a custom plan.

Clover is the cloud-based point-of-sale and business management platform of Fiserv, Inc., a US payments and financial-technology company. Fiserv describes Clover as including the hardware and software small merchants need to accept payments, take orders, schedule pickup and delivery, and manage cash flow and teams, and offers working capital through Clover Capital.

Fiserv reports Clover within its Merchant Solutions business serving small businesses and independent software vendors, and says it is widening Clover beyond restaurants and retail into services, and into markets including Australia, Singapore, Brazil, Mexico, Belgium, Spain and Japan. Fiserv lists Clover and other POS devices among the hardware it sources from vendors.

For retailers, Clover's appeal is that POS hardware, software, payment acceptance and working capital come from one provider. Its main limitation for comparison purposes is transparency: Clover's own pricing page did not display prices, processing rates or contract terms to the reviewer. Retailers should compare the full contract, including early-termination terms and hardware financing, before signing.

KORONA POS is a cloud retail POS sold in the US by COMBASE USA, incorporated in 2011, which describes itself as drawing on the products and experience of COMBASE AG in Germany. The software runs a real-time back office over checkout terminals and is priced per terminal, with unlimited users and sales.

The Core plan covers checkout, the product database, sales reports, manual discounts, gift cards and open API access. Retail, the most-sold tier, adds inventory counts, real-time stock tracking, barcode automation, shelf and price labels, supplier ordering, customer management, promotions and KPI reports. Plus adds ABC analysis, top- and slow-seller reports, multi-location inventory tools, per-store pricing, assortment clean-up, store comparisons and accounting exports. Add-on modules extend it to food service, invoicing, ticketing with entry gates and franchise management.

KORONA's distinctive points are that it is processing agnostic, so a retailer can keep an existing acquirer, and that it offers month-to-month contracts with an unlimited free trial and 24/7 in-house support. The per-terminal model becomes expensive for stores with many lanes, and the Integration module costs US$45 per token per month.

Dynamics 365 Commerce is Microsoft's omnichannel retail application, part of the Dynamics 365 business-applications family. Microsoft lists its core licence as covering omnichannel retail operations, with e-commerce management and headless (custom) commerce experiences licensed as add-ons.

The product targets retail chains that need central control of assortments, promotions and pricing across many stores and channels, and that already run, or plan to run, Microsoft's ERP. Its e-commerce and headless commerce capabilities are licensed as separate tenant-level add-ons, which reflects its enterprise positioning.

Compared with small-business POS products, Dynamics 365 Commerce requires an implementation project, typically through a Microsoft partner, and is licensed per user with annual billing. Microsoft notes that prices are informational and vary by currency and region. For a single shop, the cost and complexity are out of proportion; for chains already standardised on Microsoft, the shared data model is the main argument.

Retail Pro is retail management and point-of-sale software from Retail Pro International (RPI), headquartered in Folsom, California, with a branch in Dubai. The company describes itself as a long-standing global supplier for specialty retail, citing more than 30 years of development, and states a footprint of about 9,000 customers in 130 countries with 159,000 points of sale.

Nayax, the Israeli payments company, completed its acquisition of RPI on 30 November 2023. The announcement described the deal as giving Nayax access to more than 9,000 retailers in over 100 countries and roughly 150,000 POS lanes, and combining Nayax's payments with RPI's POS software.

The current platform, Retail Pro Prism, is used by specialty chains that need configurable promotions, multi-store inventory and localisation across countries; a customer testimonial on the site describes rules-based promotions applied automatically at checkout. RPI sells through a partner network and under a "pay as you grow" subscription model with included updates and online training, but publishes no prices. Retailers should expect a partner-led implementation and should note that the vendor's own pages give slightly different figures for its scale.

Odoo Point of Sale is the shop checkout application of Odoo, the open-source business-software suite. It can be used alone under Odoo's One App Free plan or as part of the full suite, where it shares data with Odoo Inventory, Accounting, eCommerce and other apps.

The POS runs on PCs, tablets and touch-screen terminals and connects to barcode scanners, payment terminals, cash registers and electronic scales. Stock is updated in real time across locations through Odoo Inventory. Loyalty is handled through points by product, order or amount, eWallet credit, customer discounts and pricelists. Offline mode lets a session continue and close without connectivity, with orders syncing when the connection returns.

Odoo is attractive to retailers that want ERP functions such as purchasing, warehousing and accounting at software-only prices, and it can be self-hosted under the Custom plan. The trade-off is configuration effort: getting the most from it usually requires an Odoo partner or in-house expertise, and Odoo.sh hosting costs are not included in Custom plan prices.

Zettle is PayPal's point-of-sale offering for small businesses, presented on its UK site as PayPal POS. The POS app is free and runs on Apple and Google devices, with Tap to Pay allowing contactless payments on a phone without extra hardware.

For retail, the app covers product and inventory management, gift cards, real-time sales reports, staff performance tracking and integrations for selling across channels. Funds typically arrive in the seller's PayPal Business account within minutes, with no fee for transfers to a bank.

In the UK there are no monthly fees or contracts: the seller pays 1.75% per card transaction, including American Express, and buys hardware outright, from £29 excluding VAT for a first card reader, £149 for an all-in-one terminal or £169 for a store kit. The simplicity is the selling point; the limitation is depth. Its pricing page does not list the purchase-order, multi-store transfer or assortment-analysis functions documented by mid-market retail POS vendors, payments must run through PayPal, and pricing and availability are set country by country.

Loyverse offers a free point-of-sale app for small retail and food businesses. The free plan includes the POS, sales analytics for the last 31 days, essential inventory, a loyalty programme, a customer display, a kitchen display, multi-store management and integrations.

Deeper functions are sold as add-ons. Advanced Inventory costs US$25 per store per month, and Employee Management costs US$5 per employee per month. Annual billing gives two months free, and each add-on has a 14-day trial without a credit card.

Loyverse's model makes it one of the cheapest ways to run a small shop with stock tracking and loyalty. The free tier's 31-day analytics window and the separate charges for staff and inventory functions mean costs rise as a business grows, and the vendor publishes little information about itself on its pricing page. It works with third-party payment terminals rather than requiring its own processing.

POS Nation, operated by POS Retail Software LLC, sells complete point-of-sale systems to independent retailers and says it has been in business since 2001, matching more than 10,000 small retailers with a POS. Its core markets are liquor stores, grocery and markets, tobacco shops, convenience stores, mobile phone retailers and repair shops, and boutiques.

The software is offered in three tiers. Starter is aimed at small stores. Growth adds employee management, auto-ranking of products, mix-and-match discounts, customer loyalty, intelligent ordering and SMS reports. Premium adds multi-site transfers, SMS marketing, Pointy integration for showing local stock online, customer reviews at the point of sale, webcam integration and tasks. A Dual Pricing module can pass card fees on to customers where permitted.

POS Nation states there are no setup or implementation fees. Its pricing page, however, did not show complete prices for all tiers when reviewed: the Starter tier showed US$49 and US$69 a month without clarifying which applies to which billing period, and Growth and Premium prices were blank. Hardware bundle prices and processing terms were also not published.

Epos Now was founded by Jacyn Heavens, who set out to change the POS market in 2011, and grew from Norwich in the UK. It has head offices in Orlando, Florida; Norwich; and Coolum Beach, Queensland, and says more than 80,000 business locations in more than 70 countries use its systems.

The company sells POS hardware with its cloud software for retail and hospitality, including a countertop system with payments, a software-only Micro option that runs on the merchant's own device, a portable Pro+ and a dual-screen Duo, plus card machines named Air, Pro+ and Link.

Its US pricing page was dominated by time-limited promotions when reviewed, such as a complete POS system at US$499 (marked down from US$1,099) and a countertop bundle at US$599, with conditions not stated on the page. Monthly software fees, processing rates and contract terms were not published there. Buyers should obtain a written quote covering software, processing and cancellation terms before committing.

eHopper is a New York-based point-of-sale provider that says it has served merchants for nearly 15 years. It sells software licences that run on its own all-in-one terminals, Android tablets and Windows PCs, and works with eHopper's processing or outside providers.

The entry plan, Essential Plus, is limited to one licence, 1,000 products and 1,000 transactions a month, with inventory, customer and modifier management and basic reports. Freedom, aimed at retail, quick-service and services, removes the product and transaction caps and adds loyalty, cash discount and surcharge handling, EBT, inventory matrices, store transfers, purchase-order receiving, barcode management, low-stock alerts and a QuickBooks integration. OmniChannel adds an online ordering website and table management.

eHopper's prices are among the lowest for paid POS software, and EBT support makes it relevant to small grocery and convenience stores. Its pricing page relies heavily on limited-time discounts, gift-card accounts cost extra, and phone support is included only on the OmniChannel plan, up to one hour a month.