Best POS Software for Small Business: Toast vs. Square vs. Shopify POS

Toast is built for restaurants. Square is the simplest default. Shopify POS is for omnichannel retail. The right choice depends on what you sell and how you sell it.

By The StackMatch Research Team

Toast, Square, and Shopify POS pricing varies by team size — choose based on headcount, not features

~$249-340/moToast

~$0-165/moSquare

~$89-399/moShopify POS

All three tools serve the same category. The wrong pick means paying for complexity you don't use — or outgrowing simplicity too fast.

Monthly cost comparison

Toast: ~$249-340/mo — built for restaurants

Toast is in virtually every restaurant and bar vertical at roughly $249-340/mo. It's the right choice when you need tableside ordering, kitchen display integration, menu management, and tip pooling. The hardware is proprietary (Toast-designed terminals, not iPads), which is a downside for some but an advantage for durability in a kitchen environment. Toast's offline mode is genuinely robust — it keeps processing cards when the internet drops, which matters for busy restaurants. The downside is that Toast is overkill for quick-service counters and genuinely wrong for retail.

Square: ~$0-165/mo — the simple default

Square is the easiest POS to get started with: $0/mo for basic processing, paid plans at $60-165/mo for advanced features. It's the right choice for small counters, pop-ups, service businesses taking payments in person, and any business that values simplicity over depth. Square's ecosystem (appointments, invoicing, online store) is broad but shallow — it covers many use cases without excelling at any of them. The processing rate (2.6% + 10¢) is competitive but not the cheapest. Square is the wrong choice when you need deep inventory management, multi-location reporting, or industry-specific workflows.

POS platform fit by business model

Criterion	Toast	Square	Shopify POS
Monthly cost	$249-340	$0-165	$89-399
Table-service ordering & KDS
Offline card processing		Limited	Limited
Online + in-store inventory sync		Basic
Best for	Full-service restaurants	Counters, pop-ups, services	Omnichannel retail

Whichever POS you pick, the payoff comes from how cleanly sales data flows into accounting and inventory — not the terminal itself.

The costliest POS mistake in restaurants isn't picking Square over Toast — it's running Toast at full price for a quick-service counter that never uses table management, kitchen routing, or tip pooling. That's paying $250+/mo for a feature set built for a different business model.

Shopify POS: ~$89-399/mo — the omnichannel retail choice

Shopify POS is the right choice when you sell both online and in-person and want unified inventory, customer profiles, and reporting across both channels. At $89-399/mo (plus the Shopify storefront subscription), it's more expensive than Square for pure in-person but cheaper than running separate online and offline systems. The inventory sync is the killer feature — when an item sells online, it's immediately unavailable in-store. The downside is that Shopify POS requires a Shopify storefront subscription, so it's not a standalone POS choice.

The three tools aren't really competing on price — they're built for different transaction shapes. Match the tool to how the sale actually happens (tableside, counter, or omnichannel), and the cost question mostly answers itself.

The actual decision rule

Questions to ask before picking a POS

Do we run table service with a kitchen that needs order routing? Toast is built specifically for that workflow.
Are we a quick counter, pop-up, or service business taking payment in person? Square's simplicity and $0 entry point fit best.
Do we sell both online and in-store and need one inventory count across both? Shopify POS is the only one built for that sync.
Are we already running Shopify for ecommerce? Shopify POS avoids fragmenting inventory across two systems.

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