Square vs Lightspeed: Which Is the Best POS?

Square and Lightspeed both offer fully featured point-of-sale (POS) systems for retailers and restaurants, with Square also offering tools for appointment-based businesses and Lightspeed a system for golf courses. Both providers offer their own payment processors, in-house ecommerce stores, and tons of POS tools and add-ons to manage your store.

However, they are best suited for different niches.

Square vs Lightspeed at a Glance

Overall, Square and Lightspeed are two of our highest-rated POS systems, appearing over and over again in our guides. Explore some of our favorite “best of” lists where you’ll find them both:

• Best POS Systems
• Best Multichannel POS
• Best Vape Shop POS
• Best POS for Inventory
• Best iPad POS
• Most User-friendly Cloud POS

Lightspeed vs Square Quiz: Which Is Right for You?

When to Choose Square vs Lightspeed

Square’s POS systems are the better choice for budget-minded businesses, food truck/cafe operations, mobile sellers, solo or micropreneurs, appointment-based businesses, and small to mid-size retailers.

Lightspeed’s POS systems are the better choice for full-service restaurants, retailers with large or complex inventories, high-risk businesses, golf courses, and businesses looking for high-level reporting tools and insights.

Most Affordable: Square

Overall, Square is the best choice in terms of affordability, with its completely free POS system option, add-ons you can pick and choose, affordable hardware, and competitive processing rates. It is even our top choice for the best free POS system.

Square’s base POS system is completely free; you only need to pay if you want advanced functions. Lightspeed, on the other hand, only offers a 14-day free trial (for its Retail POS), but from there, you will have to pay a minimum monthly fee of $89.

Square offers more affordable hardware options, including a free magstripe reader with every account. Lightspeed, in contrast, does not reveal its hardware pricing, and you have to meet a sales consultant to get a custom quote. Reportedly, systems start at $1,400 and go up from there.

When to Use Lightspeed

While Square is the cheaper option for monthly POS and hardware fees, Lightspeed could be the better deal if you are a high-volume or high-risk retailer.

Square does not allow you to integrate with a third-party merchant account, whereas Lightspeed does, at a slightly higher monthly POS fee. For businesses that do a lot of transactions, you may be able to get cheaper payment processing rates with a third-party processor and save in the long run. Additionally, the ability to add the merchant account of your choice means that you could find one to process high-risk sales.

Best for Register Functionality: Square

While Lightspeed and Square offer great checkout features, Square is the winner in this category for its more user-friendly interface and highly-rated mobile app.

Square offers an intuitive, feature-rich checkout with tools for managing customers, taking all payment types, processing returns and exchanges, managing BOPIS purchases, and making sales on the go. Square’s POS app has much better ratings among users than its Lightspeed counterpart. You also can’t forget that Square’s offerings are completely free; you just pay processing fees.

When to Use Lightspeed

While Square lacks advanced age verification tools or the ability to process high-risk sales, Lightspeed can support those functions, making it a better choice for liquor stores, smoke shops, vape shops, and other age-restricted, high-risk item sales.

Unlike Square, Lightspeed is also able to handle work orders. This makes it a better fit for retailers that offer repairs or boutiques that provide tailoring services. The register can also accommodate special orders, for example, if you need to order a custom part or hard-to-find item. Finally, the Lightspeed register can also track warranties for specific sales, so you can see at a glance if a customer’s purchase is still under warranty.

Best for Inventory Management: Lightspeed

Square and Lightspeed both come equipped with all of the basic inventory management tools such as variants and modifiers, purchase ordering, bulk uploads, and low-stock alerts. However, Lightspeed has better features for managing large or complex inventories and offers a more powerful inventory management system overall.

It ranks #1 in our list of the best POS inventory systems, with tools for managing massive numbers of SKUs, viewing in-depth reports on your inventory’s performance, and more. Lightspeed can track inventory by unit or volume—a great help when dealing with foodstuffs or selling by individual item or case. It also includes over 40 reports and custom reporting options so you can have a strong understanding of your stock and performance.

Lightspeed offers low-inventory alerts, vendor management, and integrated purchase ordering. Lightspeed’s unique offering, though, is that it has over 3,000 product catalogs integrated into the user dashboard, making it easy to shop and order stock from the POS dashboard. Not only that, but if you do B2B sales, you can apply to get your products hosted in the catalog.

When to Use Square

While its tools are not as in-depth, Square is no slouch in the inventory management category. For most retailers that don’t need high-level, high-volume inventory management tools, Square is a great option. Plus, the system is free and can handle the inventory management tasks that most businesses need.

Best for Restaurants & Food: Lightspeed

Both Lightspeed and Square offer great restaurant POS systems, with menu and table management, online ordering, and delivery service integrations, as well as KDS systems and tableside POS hardware.

Lightspeed, however, is our top choice for restaurants, with more powerful tools for managing multiple locations, detailed ingredient tracking, bar features, and integration with hotel property management system (PMS) software.

The system makes it easy to take special orders, upsell, and track to the ingredient level. You can keep open tabs, transfer those tabs from bar to table or between servers, and group or split payments as needed. If you sell alcohol, Lightspeed’s age verification tools ensure you stay compliant with state and local laws.

Lightspeed’s superior inventory and reporting tools make it better for larger operations and quick-service restaurants. In addition, if you have a hotel, Lightspeed integrates with hotel PMS so that you can manage room service.

When to Use Square

Square has a few things going in its favor. As always, the fact that Square offers its basic restaurant POS system for free makes it a great choice for businesses just starting out. Plus, it has great tools for cafes, pizzerias, bakeries, and food trucks.

Best for Appointments & Services: Square

Square Appointments is the best option for most service-based businesses. However, Lightspeed has a unique solution specifically for golf courses.

Square Appointments is perfect for salons and other beauty services, as well as professional services like home improvement or health and fitness. You can book appointments at the POS or on your online booking page, send automated SMS reminders, handle recurring appointments, and even charge cancellation or no-show fees (though you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan to unlock all the POS features).

The software includes notes for client profiles and team management. Plus, you still get Square’s powerful POS system, our top choice for the best POS for salons and spas.

When to Use Lightspeed

If you have a golf course or business with similar needs, you should consider Lightspeed Golf. The software lets you manage and set up tee times for up to 54 holes and many play types. It also allows you to follow your customers from the course to the restaurant, letting you keep a single tab running for all services. If you are managing a golf course or similar kind of operation, then Lightspeed is a better choice.

Best for Ecommerce & Multichannel Sales: Square

Lightspeed and Square both offer great ecommerce platforms, but Square’s is free with all POS accounts. That, plus Square’s POS offers more delivery integrations plus Etsy store management, so it beats Lightspeed by just a hair.

Square’s online store comes completely free with every POS account (whereas Lightspeed’s full ecommerce feature set only becomes available with plans starting at $149 per month). Square’s online store builder is easy to use, with tons of themes and industry-specific templates to choose from. From there, your store integrates seamlessly with your POS, syncing all sales, inventory, and customers across channels.

With Square for Restaurants, you can integrate with online delivery platforms to manage orders made through Uber Eats and lots of other delivery services right from your POS dashboard.

Square has a great list of social media and alternate sales channel integrations (including Etsy), enabling you to manage sales and orders from all your sales channels in one place.

When to Use Lightspeed

If you sell extensively on eBay or Amazon or are looking for a more customizable website builder, then Lightspeed is a better option. While Square will meet the needs of most sellers at a much lower price, it lacks eBay and Amazon integrations. Additionally, Lightspeed has more customization options in its website builder, if you need more branding or highly specific tools.

Best for Mobile: Square

Square is our top pick for mobile POS operations because it receives great user reviews, has greater compatibility than Lightspeed, offers affordable mobile hardware, and processes payments offline.

You’ll find Square at the top of our list of the best mobile POS apps. The versatility, ease of use, and price make Square’s mobile apps a great choice for selling crafts at the flea market or running a booth at the mall. You can also process and save transactions offline, to be synced later on. Users loved Square’s free plans, general customizability, industry-specific features, and ease of use. Overall, it’s an excellent system, as shown by its high ratings among users in both the Google and Apple app stores.

When to Use Lightspeed

If you are a restaurant using the Lightspeed Restaurant O series, then Lightspeed is a better option. The Lightspeed Restaurant app is designed with restaurants in mind, while Square’s mobile apps are most popular with retailers and appointment-based businesses. Lightspeed’s mobile app includes tools, such as bar tabs and table management.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

These are a few common questions we encounter about Lightspeed vs Square.

Between Lightspeed vs Square, which POS system should I use?

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I don’t know yet what kind of tools and features I’ll need. Which system is the better choice?

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What are the downsides of Square and Lightspeed POS systems?

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Bottom Line

In the contest between Square and Lightspeed, the winner depends on what you need. Square is clearly the best POS system for very small businesses, those looking for a free system, and most mobile businesses. It handles the basics of sales, inventory, and ecommerce. Plus, if the free version is not enough, there are affordable paid versions and add-ons that let it grow with you.

Lightspeed, on the other hand, offers more choices for payment processing, a more granular inventory system, and stronger restaurant functions. It’s more expensive, but the features are well worth the investment.