Lightspeed Retail alternatives: 14 point of sale tools compared
People looking for a Lightspeed Retail alternative are usually paying for a retail system whose price grows with every register and location, and some find the card rate is tied to Lightspeed Payments. Others sell food and drink and want a till built for tables, or sell mostly online and want the till to follow the web shop. They move to a platform where the POS is bundled with an e-commerce plan, to a cheaper per-transaction reader, or to a restaurant or ERP-based till.
Short answer: Looking for a replacement for Lightspeed Retail? Shopify POS, Square and ready2order come first in our point of sale ranking. Our rule for order: vendors outside the big brands go first, and the largest names are not placed in the top three. Start with Shopify POS if the web shop earns as much as the counter and you want one catalogue behind both. All 14 alternatives below are ranked products from Best POS System in 2026, and each says where it differs from Lightspeed Retail.
A vendor can pay to be shown on this site. What we write about its product stays the same either way. Details.
Pricing: Per month by plan, published: Basic $89, Core $149, Plus $289, one register included; extra registers, locations and payments extra
Established in: Canada
Built for: A speciality retailer that needs real purchasing and stock
Not for: A single stall or pop-up
01
Why buyers look past Lightspeed Retail
01
The base price covers one till
Lightspeed's retail pricing page lists Basic at 89 USD, Core at 149 USD and Plus at 289 USD a month, and each includes a single register. Additional registers and extra locations are priced as separate monthly lines on the same page. A shop that begins with one counter and then adds a stockroom terminal and a second branch can see the bill rise in steps that the headline figure does not show.
02
Supplier ordering and wholesale assume a certain kind of shop
Much of the plan table is about buying: a wholesale network, a catalogue of over 5 million products, purchase orders and landed costs. For a retailer that makes or sources its own goods, or sells services, those rows are space it pays for and does not use. The AI document import for supplier invoices is an add-on on Basic and Core and only included on Plus.
03
Retail and hospitality are separate products
The company sells retail, restaurant and golf systems from the same site, with separate pricing pages for each, and the retail page states that its prices reflect Lightspeed Retail (X-Series), the product that came from Vend. A business that runs a shop and a cafe under one roof has to look at two product lines, and some conclude that one till designed for both, or a restaurant-first system, is simpler.
you have a software partner and want cost-plus card pricing across several countries
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03
What each one does differently
1
Shopify POS
Canada · Published
Shopify POS comes inside a Shopify plan, which Shopify's euro page lists from 28 euros a month on Basic, 78 on Grow and 384 on Advanced. In-person card rates there start at 1.4%, 1.25% and 1.1% by plan. The catch is that the extra stock-room features need POS Pro at 79 euros a month per location, and the system assumes an online shop exists.
Switch from Lightspeed Retail if the web shop earns as much as the counter and you want one catalogue behind both.
Square sells a Free plan, a Plus plan after a 30-day trial and a custom Premium plan through sales, per its retail page. Where Lightspeed charges for the register from the first day, Square lets a small shop start without a subscription and pay through processing. Square's own processing is the practical route, so there is less freedom to bring another acquirer.
Switch from Lightspeed Retail if a modest shop wants to begin with no subscription and upgrade only when stock grows.
ready2order, a GmbH with its legal notice in Vienna, charges 35.90 euros a month per device (430.80 a year) plus a one-off activation fee of 99 euros, excluding VAT. The cloud till runs on EU servers and is built for Austria, Germany and Switzerland tax rules. It has no wholesale network or supplier catalogue like Lightspeed's.
Switch from Lightspeed Retail if you trade in Austria, Germany or Switzerland and need a till that meets local fiscal rules out of the box.
Odoo's point of sale is one app inside a larger business suite, and its pricing page lists a free plan with one app and unlimited users. The all-apps Standard plan is priced per user per month, 24.90 euros on yearly billing at list. Accounting, inventory and e-commerce live in the same database, but someone has to configure it, and implementation help is not part of the subscription.
Switch from Lightspeed Retail if the till is only one piece of an accounting and stock setup you would rather run in a single system.
Erply's pricing page starts a retail POS at 49 US dollars per store a month, but that entry plan is for companies with up to 25,000 dollars of monthly net sales, covers one user and excludes backoffice access. Higher tiers add warehouse licences, API access and chain modules, from 1,800 and 3,500 dollars. It is built around ERP and NetSuite links more than around a wholesale marketplace.
Switch from Lightspeed Retail if you run a chain or franchise and need HQ controls, an API and a warehouse module.
Epos Now sells a hardware bundle rather than a monthly register: the UK page offers its Complete Solution from 299 pounds, down from 849, with a 12-month payments and support subscription required. It covers both retail and hospitality, and payments run on one flat rate for the main card brands. It offers less depth in purchasing than Lightspeed.
Switch from Lightspeed Retail if you want counter hardware, card terminal and UK phone support bought together.
On SumUp's UK page the default pay-as-you-go plan costs 1.69% per transaction with no monthly fee, and Payments Plus at 19 pounds a month suits sellers taking 3,000 pounds or more monthly. SumUp starts as a card reader plus app. The purchase-order and multi-location tooling that Lightspeed bundles sits at a lighter level.
Switch from Lightspeed Retail if card takings are modest and you prefer a rate per sale over a software subscription.
Zettle, now branded PayPal Point of Sale, lists a single 1.75% rate for major cards and mobile wallets, American Express included, and calls its POS app no-additional-cost. There is no plan ladder to climb. The price of that simplicity is a thin back office: there are no landed costs, wholesale ordering or workflows of the kind in Lightspeed's higher plans.
Switch from Lightspeed Retail if you want a single flat card rate and a free app, and do not need advanced stock tooling.
TouchBistro, headquartered in Canada per its privacy notice, is a restaurant platform: its pricing page lists Point of Sale from 69 dollars a month, an Essentials Bundle from 119 dollars and a custom setup on quote, with hardware and processing on top. Table floor plans, tableside ordering and kitchen display are central. It does not handle retail stock matrices.
Switch from Lightspeed Retail if your Lightspeed account mostly serves a sit-down restaurant rather than a shop.
storekit starts from online and in-venue ordering, not from the register. Its plan page lists a free Starter, Grow at 99 pounds and Pro at 199 pounds a month, and Enterprise from 995 pounds per brand per month. Connecting to your till is included from Grow, and kiosks cost extra, so it sits beside a till rather than replacing a retail inventory system.
Switch from Lightspeed Retail if a cafe or takeaway wants its own branded ordering site while keeping a separate till.
Toast is a restaurant-first platform; its pricing page returned an access error to our requests, so we cannot quote plans or processing rates here. What we can say from the category is that it targets hospitality operators rather than shops, which makes it a swap for Lightspeed's restaurant line more than for Lightspeed Retail.
Switch from Lightspeed Retail if you are moving a US restaurant off Lightspeed and want a hospitality-only vendor.
Clover is sold through banks and resellers with plans split by business type. Its pricing page loads client-side and returned no readable figures to us, so we cannot give a monthly price, processing rate or contract length. Terms vary by reseller, so the quote you receive is the number that counts, and it should be compared line by line with Lightspeed's.
Switch from Lightspeed Retail if your bank or acquirer offers it and you want hardware bundled into their contract.
myPOS sells card machines (Go 2, Go Combo, Ultra) and Tap to Pay together with a business account, as its own site shows. It is a payment provider with terminals. It does not offer Lightspeed's catalogue, purchase orders or multi-store inventory, so a shop with real stock still needs software alongside it.
Switch from Lightspeed Retail if the main need is a card terminal plus a business account from one provider.
Adyen's pricing page shows a fixed 0.13 processing fee per transaction plus a method-specific fee, with Interchange++ pricing passed through for cards, and no setup fee. It supplies terminals and payments to merchants and platforms, not a retailer's till. A development partner is needed to connect it to the retail software you choose.
Switch from Lightspeed Retail if you have a software partner and want cost-plus card pricing across several countries.
Lightspeed Retail stays the better choice for a speciality retailer whose work is buying and stock rather than the till itself. The plan table shows purchase orders, a wholesale network, a catalogue of over 5 million products, landed costs and workflows, none of which most of the cheaper options above provide. If you run several stores, order from brands on a regular cycle and want 24/7 chat and phone support (listed on all three plans), the three-figure monthly price buys real tooling. A 1.5% card-present rate, listed for every plan, is also competitive with the flat rates of reader-led vendors, though only when you use Lightspeed Payments. Leave only if you pay for rows you never use.
05
What moving off Lightspeed Retail involves
01
Export products and stock before cancelling
Your catalogue, variants and customer list are the data that matters. Export them to CSV while the account is open, count stock once at the old till and again at the new one, and keep the old plan live until the first month of sales has reconciled with your accounting.
02
Check the processor, not just the software
Lightspeed lists its payments rate on the plan page, and moving the till often means moving the acquirer too. Ask the new vendor whether it accepts your card reader hardware, how long a payout takes, and whether any contract with your current processor has an end date. If this product is the one you knew as Vend, note that the current name is Retail (X-Series).
06
Questions about replacing Lightspeed Retail
6 answers
How much does Lightspeed Retail cost?
Lightspeed's retail pricing page lists Basic at 89 USD, Core at 149 USD and Plus at 289 USD a month, each with one register included.
Extra locations and registers are priced separately. Lightspeed says its retail prices reflect Retail (X-Series). We checked this on 31 October 2026.
Is Vend the same as Lightspeed Retail?
Lightspeed's retail pricing page states that its prices reflect Lightspeed Retail (X-Series), and our database lists that product separately as the former Vend. The Vend name is no longer used on the pricing page.
Where is Lightspeed based?
Its about page says it is headquartered in Montreal, Canada, with offices in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, and it names around 146,000 locations in more than 100 countries.
What is the cheapest way to leave?
For a small shop, Zettle's 1.75% flat card rate with a no-additional-cost app, SumUp's 1.69% pay-as-you-go plan or Square's Free plan carry no software subscription.
Compare your monthly card volume against each rate, because at higher takings a subscription with a lower rate can come out cheaper.
Which alternative suits a restaurant?
TouchBistro and storekit are built around hospitality, and Toast is a restaurant-first platform whose terms we could not load. Lightspeed also sells a separate restaurant product, so check that before leaving.
Which alternative is hosted in Europe?
ready2order states that its cloud till runs on EU servers, and Odoo's pricing page lists cloud hosting on its own infrastructure with plans billed in euros. Neither is a replacement for Lightspeed's wholesale ordering tools.
Founder of The Knowledge Engineers and of 2 Steps Ahead, an AI search visibility agency. Editorially responsible for every page on this site; research and drafting are AI-assisted.
Written, edited and fact-checked by Sebastiaan Smits. Last reviewed 31 October 2026. How we review.
