Square POS Review (2025): Is Square Right for You?

Running a shop, cafe or pop-up in 2025 means juggling in-person, online and mobile sales, often from day one. In our latest tests, we found Square lets US businesses do it all with a free, intuitive POS app, no-fee online store and affordable hardware that ranges from the $59 Square Reader to its new $399 Handheld.

It topped our retail and restaurant scoring, proving you don’t need a contract or an IT team to look polished everywhere.

But ease isn’t everything. As you’ll see in the full review, Square’s flat-rate processing can pinch high-volume operators and ingredient-level costing still lags rivals like Toast. Read on to learn where Square dazzles, where it stumbles and whether its “all-in-one” promise is the smartest bet for your next stage of growth.

Square Review: Key POS Features

Square combines checkout, inventory and online sales into one workspace, and even our less-experienced POS testers found it a simple system to use. Below, we unpack the headline tools that make its feature set greater than the sum of its parts.

Unified omnichannel commerce

Square’s free online store builder plugs straight into the POS dashboard, so catalogue edits, stock counts and orders stay synced. That’s whether they come from a countertop terminal or your website.

During our testing, it was one of only a handful of systems that could keep inventory and location-level reporting aligned across multiple stores without add-ons, something rivals like Zettle and SumUp still struggle with, and it matched Shopify’s specialist retail package for multichannel cohesion while being far quicker to set up.

Inventory and product management

Square inventory features such as bulk CSV uploads, barcode scanning and low-stock alerts make day-to-day stock control a more painless experience. That breadth was enough to beat comparatively lightweight platforms in this area, such as Zettle.

The likes of Clover and Lightspeed add deeper cost-of-goods and margin tools that larger operations requiring detailed profit-tracking may crave. But Square still nails the essentials for boutiques and cafes.

Bill management and offline safeguards

There are plenty of features for servers that are real time savers, including being able to split checks by item, percentage or fixed amount in a few seconds and move tabs between tables. These capabilities placed Square ahead of entry-level competitors and shoulder-to-shoulder with Clover and Toast in our bill-handling scenarios.

Offline mode is present too, meaning sales continue during Wi-Fi dropouts, though we found Clover’s automatic reconnection flow a touch smoother.

Tip and staffing tools

Square is one of the few mainstream POS platforms that can auto-pool gratuities based on hours worked, sparing managers a messy end-of-shift math session.

Combined with granular role-based permissions and simple staff clock-ins, the platform felt more complete for these staff-related features than the likes of SumUp or Shopify, though Toast still wins if ingredient-level labor costing is critical.

Floor plan, table management and reservations

Square lets managers build multi-room layouts with drag-and-drop tables whose shape, size, and labels can all be tweaked. These features come included for $0 via the Free plan, while Zettle offers no table plan at all and SumUp can’t resize tables.

Lightspeed and Toast go one step further with optional color coding and faster front-of-house edit tools, but they both lock that into paid tiers. Our testers did flag a quirk: on two occasions, the Square table map vanished from the back office until the page was refreshed, a nuisance that Clover and TouchBistro avoided with their dedicated frontend editors.

However, Square doesn’t bake reservations into the POS – instead, it plugs into OpenTable and other booking apps. That “integration-first” approach earned it a middling score in our tests compared with Toast’s native waitlist, and TouchBistro’s built-in reservations pushed them to the top of this category.

For small cafes that simply need walk-in seating management, Square’s floor plan alone is fine, but full-service restaurants that depend on pre-booked covers will prefer Toast or a third-party reservation platform tied into Square.

Reporting, loyalty and marketing ecosystem

From live sales dashboards to item-level insights, Square’s reporting suite is another area that gave our testers instant clarity, and its optional loyalty module and built-in email marketing mean campaigns launch from the same control panel rather than a bolt-on app.

We found that convenience eclipsed Zettle’s far simpler analytics section and narrowed the gap with Clover’s premium customer-engagement toolkit (at a fraction of the price, as we’ll come to shortly).

Square Review: Hardware and Accessories

Square earned near-top hardware scores, with the broadest accessory options and interest-free financing making it the most affordable route from card reader to full counter.

Power users who crave biometric logins or slimmer mobile units may still eye Clover’s premium lineup, which is our favourite overall choice for POS hardware, but there’s plenty to love about Square’s more affordable hardware products and packages. Let’s go through what you can get and our thoughts on them.

Countertop register and terminals

Square’s flagship Register ($799) delivers a slick dual-screen setup that rivals Clover’s Station Duo (one of our favorite hardware options on the market) but at a lower entry price. It achieved the same near-perfect hardware score across both retail and hospitality scenarios.

Smaller counters can opt for the Square Terminal ($299), an all-in-one touch device with a built-in printer. While our testing team liked its on-device POS access, they noted the wide chassis makes it more appropriate for countertop than tableside use, whereas Clover’s slimmer Flex feels lighter in hand. Meanwhile, Toast’s Go 2 offers similar mobility but, unlike Square, locks you into pricier restaurant-only software.

Handheld and mobile options

The new Square Handheld ($399) merges reader, touchscreen and barcode camera into a single unit.

Paired with Square’s Tap-to-Pay on iPhone/Android, it means pop-ups can start taking cards for just a $59 Reader (or even no hardware at all), helping Square match Clover’s “no-upfront-cost” flexibility while beating Shopify, which still lacks purpose-built handhelds.

iPad stands and self-serve kiosks

For merchants already using tablets, the Square Stand and Square Kiosk ($149 each) turn any recent iPad into a swivelling POS or self-order station without forcing a full register purchase. Lightspeed and Toast also lean on iPad shells, but neither bundles a free POS tier, making Square the cheapest way to add extra lanes during peak periods.

All-in-one kits and financing options

At the time of writing, Square has eight pre-bundled kits that combine the products listed above into one package. These range from the $399 Mobile POS Kit to the $1,899 Register Retail Kit, which combines drawers, printers, and scanners to let owners spin up a fully compliant checkout without much thought.

Because Square offers 0% APR financing on any hardware over $100, cash-constrained startups can also avoid the hefty upfront fees that pushed Clover’s otherwise excellent devices down in our value rankings.

Accessories and specialist devices

Square scored perfectly for its accessory breadth, too, covering everything from impact kitchen printers to USB scales and UniFi networking gear. This placed it level with Clover and ahead of Shopify’s more limited, largely third-party, catalog.

Crucially, Square sells its own kitchen display system (KDS) touchscreens (15.6″ or 21.5″), so restaurants don’t need to use iPads as make-do KDS screens as they would with Zettle or SumUp. It slots in without third-party fees and can be customized and reported on from the same back office, matching specialists like Toast and TouchBistro in our kitchen tests.

Square Review: Pricing and Fees

You know the feature-set and hardware options, now you need to know exactly how much you’ll be paying for the pleasure. Let’s go through Square’s POS software pricing, card processing fees and hardware costs, section by section.

POS software and online-store plans

With Square, you can get the following four plan pathways by default, ranging from $0 to $149 per location, per month (with prices above this for its Pro plan, being quote-based).

Are there any industry-specific POS software options?

Yes, there are vertical-specific POS upgrades on top of the above: Square for Restaurants Plus ($69) adds floor-plan editing and staff management, while Square for Retail Plus ($89) unlocks multi-location inventory and advanced analytics. Both keep the $0 entry tier in play, which is something Toast ($69+) and Clover ($105+) lack.

Card-processing rates

Depending on which plan you opt for, you’ll have different card processing fees with Square. Here’s how it breaks down, compared with some of its POS rivals.

Square’s flat, public rates trump the opacity of contract-based processors, but high-volume merchants can negotiate Pro pricing once they clear $250,000 a year.

Square’s hardware pricing

On Square’s website, you can find pricing for the following five items.

There are more products too, including accessory bundles, cash drawers, scanners and large KDS screens, which round out the ecosystem. Most sellers can stay inside Square instead of mixing vendors then, although the pricing for these products isn’t stated publicly.

Does Square offer good value for money?

With $0 software, interest-free hardware financing and next-day payouts, Square scored the highest pricing mark in both our retail and hospitality matrices, outpacing Clover and Toast despite those rivals’ slightly lower per-swipe fees.

For smaller US merchants that prioritize transparency and quick setup over shaving a few cents off every transaction, Square remains the most economical option from first sale to multi-location growth.

Comparing different quotes will give you a better overview of what you could pay in total, and for what. By using our free quote tool, we will match you with the companies best suited to your needs so you can get started.

Square Review: What Kind of Business Is Square Best For?

You now know what POS features and hardware you can get for your money, but it’s worth zooming in on precisely how Square can support your business. Here are three of the top business forms we think Square is suitable for.

Growing, multi-channel retailer

If you run a boutique or small chain that sells both in-store and online, Square’s free plan gives you barcode uploads, low-stock alerts and a synced website at $0 per month, then scales up with Retail Plus ($89) for multi-location inventory and richer analytics.

Our testing team loved how the same dashboard manages catalogues, web orders and gift-card sales without extra apps (which is something Shopify matches only on higher-priced tiers, and Zettle can’t do natively).

Restaurants and cafes

Square’s Restaurant POS starts free, yet already includes drag-and-drop table layouts, split-check options and a native kitchen display system ($20 per device). These tools earned Square a top-ranked usability score in our hospitality trials, while rivals like Toast gate similar features behind a $69+ subscription and Zettle offers no table plan at all.

There’s also the option to upgrade to Restaurants Plus ($69 per month) when you need floor-plan editing, advanced staff roles or QR-code ordering, still for less than Clover’s equivalent bundle.

Mobile sellers, pop-ups and event vendors

Food-truck owners and market traders will benefit from Square’s $59 Reader, Tap-to-Pay on iPhone/Android, and a one-hour offline mode that safely queues transactions until you’re back online.

In our offline functionality audit, Square outranked budget rivals SumUp and Zettle, and was one of only three platforms to resync payments automatically (vital when Wi-Fi drops mid-sale). Throw in next-day payouts and interest-free hardware financing, and Square stays the lowest-risk launchpad for businesses that move as much as they sell.

Square Review: How Does Square Compare to Its Competitors?

Even though Square is one of the cheapest options and is ranked the best POS system out there for most businesses, there are some caveats to that assessment.

Toast POS: Deeper Tools for Established Restaurants

If you’re running a multi-location restaurant or need tight ingredient-level costing, Toast outmuscles Square. Our testing team praised Toast’s built-in reservation system, automatic tip pooling and granular cost-versus-profit analytics. These are capabilities that Square relies on third-party apps for.

Toast also offers a color-coded floor plan and an optional training mode that new staff can practise on without touching live data, two gaps Square users flagged in our trials.

The trade-off is cost: Toast’s entry package starts at $69 per month (hardware and add-ons extra) and locks you into its own payment processing, whereas Square’s core restaurant features remain free until you upgrade. In short, we suggest choosing Toast when sophisticated back-of-house control is worth the higher monthly bill.

PayPal Zettle: Rock-bottom pricing for simple set-ups

At the other end of the pricing spectrum, Zettle by PayPal matched Square on “no-contract, start-today” simplicity but undercut it on headline fees: 2.29 % + $0.09 in-person, versus Square’s 2.6 % + $0.15.

Its hardware is equally wallet-friendly, with a compact reader that is just $29. Our testers loved its clean frontend for quick, low-volume sales, too.

The main catch with Zettle, however, is the depth of its offering. We found it lacks bulk inventory uploads, multi-location controls and offline reliability. If you’re a pop-up, craft-fair vendor or single-store retailer who simply wants the cheapest swipe without growing pains, Zettle wins on price; everyone else will outgrow it far sooner than they would Square.

How We Reviewed Square POS