Square for Retail Review 2026: Features and Pricing
Square’s POS system for retailers is quick to set up and start using. And it won’t lock you into a contract.
The bottom line:
Square for Retail’s free POS software and low-cost hardware make it a solid launch pad for small brick-and-mortar businesses. They can start out with the basics — reporting, low-stock alerts and an online shop — and scale up to paid plans as needed. But at a certain point, quickly growing retailers may hit a ceiling if they need advanced inventory tracking or multi-location management.
Software details
Payment processing fees
In-person: 2.6% + $0.15
Online: 3.3% + $0.30
Monthly fee
$0
For Free plan; $49 Plus plan; $149 Premium plan.
Pros & Cons
Pros
Free plan option available.
Offers helpful related services, like payroll, that integrate closely with its POS system.
No long-term contracts or termination fees.
All plans include a free online store.
Cons
Free plan processing rates are more expensive than competitors.
Retailers with multiple locations might prefer a more specialized system.
Doesn’t accept cross-border card payments.
Compare to other products
Payment processing fees
In-person: 2.6% + $0.15
Online: 3.3% + $0.30
Payment processing fees
In-person: 2.6% + $0.10
Online: 2.9% + $0.30
Payment processing fees
In-person: 2.6% + $0.10
Online: 2.9% + $0.30
Payment processing fees
In-person: 0.4% + $0.08
Online: 0.5% + $0.25
Plus interchange
Need more options? Check our picks for best payment processing systems
Shopify: Best for e-commerce. Shopify’s e-commerce platform is robust enough to support large companies, like Magic Spoon, Calpak and Anker to name a few. But it’s versatile enough to support small businesses, too. All of its plans include 24/7 chat support and let you manage up to 10 inventory locations. Read our full Shopify POS review.
Lightspeed Retail: Best for inventory management. Lightspeed Retail has more fees than Square, but it’s also more in-depth. It goes beyond basic inventory reporting with future inventory forecast tools. These can help you identify what to purchase and when based on sales. Read our full Lightspeed Retail review.
Helcim: Best for interchange-plus pricing. Helcim passes varying interchange fees along to your business instead of charging a flat rate per transaction. This can help high-volume retailers save in processing costs over time. Read our full Helcim review.
Full review
Square for Retail is ideal for small, local brick-and-mortar shops. It has multiple POS hardware options (from a free card reader to a full countertop register) for in-person sales and sets you up with a webpage for online ones.
Its free plan can support solopreneurs and side hustles. But if you need staff management tools and inventory reporting, you’ll have to upgrade to the $49-per-month Plus plan. This plan also comes with lower processing rates.
Square’s Plus plan charges 2.5% plus 15 cents per in-person transaction and 2.9% plus 30 cents per online purchase. We consider these rates to be competitive. The company’s free plan charges steeper fees: 2.6% plus 15 cents per in-person transaction and 3.3% plus 30 cents per online purchase. These aren’t great compared to some of Square’s competitors.
Regardless of which plan you choose, you won’t find hidden fees. There are no additional costs for PCI compliance, chargebacks, termination, popular accounting software integrations or setup. This isn’t the case with other industry-specific competitors like Lightspeed Retail.
That said, the savings might not be worth it for retailers that need more in-depth inventory tools and e-commerce capabilities. Square has a lot to offer, but it’s not well equipped to handle retail manufacturing operations or global online sellers.
Square is best for:
✔️ New retail businesses.
✔️ Quick setup.
✔️ No contracts.
Square for Retail overview
| Payment processing model | Flat rate. |
| Payment processing fees |
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| Monthly fee |
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| Hardware cost |
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| Contract length | No contract. Upgrade, downgrade or cancel at any time without penalty. |
| Customer support | Chat and email support in all plans. Free plan includes phone support only for the first 90 days. Plus plan subscribers can access phone support weekdays 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. PT. Premium plan subscribers receive 24/7 phone support. |
» MORE: Learn more about Square’s fees
Where Square for Retail stands out
Retail-specific features and related services
Square makes a specific version of its software for small retail businesses. Its offerings, unsurprisingly, get better as you scale up subscription plans.
Some highlights include:
- An inventory counting tool.
- Vendor and purchase order management.
- Bulk inventory intake.
- Abandoned cart emails.
All of these features come with the Plus plan. They can make it easier for retailers to monitor inventory levels, replenish them and increase conversion.
Square also offers services like in-house payroll. This is a big plus for retail shops that have multiple employees. Keeping these services in-house, as opposed to integrating with a separate payroll company, can help reduce manual data entry, too.
Free online store
All of Square for Retail’s plans include a built-in online shop. This feature lets you expand your sales online without spending extra (aside from online credit card processing fees). Competitors, like Clover, only include this capability in higher-tier plans that start at $84.95 per month.
Square gives you a few options for selling online. It lets you use prebuilt layouts to create your own website. Or, you can take more creative control, build a site with Wix and sync it with Square. Customers can create accounts on your website to view their order history, too.
Where Square for Retail falls short
Larger retailers might outgrow it
Square for Retail has industry-specific retail features, but they’re mostly the basics. And some retailers — especially ones that deal with manufacturing or have entire buildings dedicated to inventory storage — will need to dive deeper.
Lightspeed Retail, for example, lets you access vendor catalogs from within its POS software. From there, you can import product details straight to your site. This can help reduce manual data entry. Square allows you to import your product catalog, but it doesn’t connect seamlessly to a network of B2B suppliers like Lightspeed does.
Larger-scale retailers will also probably need more robust websites. That’s where products like Shopify come in. Square has lots of website customization tools, but Shopify goes a step further. For instance, Shopify has more than 1,000 website themes. Square offers roughly 30, and the majority aren’t available with the free plan.
Free plan isn’t what it used to be
Square for Retail’s free plan changed in early 2025. Its processing rates went up and the company migrated a handful of free features to paid plans. Some examples include exchange capabilities, ongoing phone support (past the 90-day mark) and time tracking for employees.
That said, the retail Plus plan did come down from $89 to $49 per month. Those savings are nice, but not as nice as getting more capabilities for free.
What small-business owners think of Square for Retail
NerdWallet checked online forums like Reddit and reviews from sites like TrustPilot, G2, the App Store and Google Play to gauge how users feel about Square for Retail. We used an AI tool to help analyze this feedback. Here are the major trends we spotted.
👍 Simplicity and ease of use
Online commenters say Square is user friendly and easy to navigate. Others recommend it for retailers searching for a simple, no-frills POS solution.
People also praise its mobile capabilities. It lets retailers sell at farmers markets and popups without hardware. All you need is a phone to accept Tap to Pay payments.
👎 Rising costs
No one’s excited to hear that their processing rates are getting higher. So it’s no surprise Square users disliked the free plan’s price increases in early 2025.
Most providers switch up their pricing every so often. But ideally, it doesn’t happen too frequently. Square changed its rates in 2019 and waited about six years to do it again.
👎 Website issues
Some users say it’s difficult to move their online inventory to their website and organize it in a way that makes sense for customers. Businesses can add navigation bars to their Square websites to help solve this. But that option only comes with certain layouts, and you have to enable it. This process might feel clunky to some business owners.
Commenters on Reddit suggest using Shopify over Square if you own an e-commerce business with large amounts of inventory. Shopify can be more expensive than Square, but they say it could save you time in the long run.
How we evaluated Square for Retail
NerdWallet’s writers and editors independently review POS systems, like Square, by analyzing more than 30 data points. We collected data from Square’s public-facing website, help articles and company representatives.
Our evaluations also take user sentiment into account. This involves looking through individual reviews and feedback on sites like Trustpilot, the App Store, Google Play and Reddit. Then, we use AI tools to help spot larger trends within those comments. Since we cannot verify each user’s individual experience, we don’t incorporate user reviews in our star ratings. For more information on how we score POS systems, see our full methodology.
Frequently asked questions
Square for Retail is Square’s five-star POS system with the addition of retail-specific features and optional add-ons designed with brick-and-mortar and online retailers in mind.
Square for Retail, particularly the paid Plus plan, offers a wealth of tools and features for retailers. Both the free and paid plans enable you to sort items into categories, receive alerts when your stock is running low, track stock numbers across multiple locations, build and make sales through a business website, process exchanges, manage refunds, access sales and product reports and more.
Square for Retail has a free software plan that includes quite a lot of basic retail POS functionality. However, even with the free monthly plan, you'll still have the cost of hardware and payment processing fees.