Square vs. Lightspeed for Restaurants and Retail: How to Decide (2026)
Square vs. Lightspeed for restaurants, or for retail, has no universal winner: the right choice depends on how your business runs. Settle five questions, run the same tests in each free trial, and add a third option: EloERP, which keeps POS, inventory and accounts in one system.
We build EloERP, so we don't rate Square or Lightspeed here and we don't quote their prices — prices and plans change, and you should get them from each vendor in writing. What we can give you is the decision process we would use ourselves.
Square vs Lightspeed: five questions to settle first
- Where do you sell? Confirm that each system is sold and supported in your country, takes card payments there, and prints receipts in your currency and tax format.
- What does a busy hour look like? Count transactions per hour at peak, terminals and staff on shift. That is the load your trial has to survive.
- How complex is your stock? Number of products, variants (size, colour), units (box, piece), batch and expiry dates, serial numbers, and how many suppliers you buy from.
- How many locations, now and in two years? Multi-location needs change the answer more than any single feature.
- What must the POS hand off? Accounting, payroll, e-invoicing, an online store. Every hand-off between separate systems is a place where data has to be synced and can drift.
Square vs Lightspeed POS for retail: what to test
Use your own products, not the demo catalogue, and run the same steps in both trials:
- Import your catalogue, including products with variants and products sold in more than one unit.
- Raise a purchase order, receive a supplier delivery against it, and check stock and cost updated.
- Set a reorder level, sell below it, and see what the system does next.
- Do a stock count and post the difference.
- Process a return and an exchange.
- Close the day and hand the reports to your accountant: ask what they would still have to re-type.
Square vs. Lightspeed for restaurants: what to test during a mock service
- Build part of your menu with modifiers and a combo.
- Seat, merge and move tables; assign a waiter.
- Send courses to the kitchen and add an item later: only the new item should reach the kitchen.
- Split a bill three ways across cash and card.
- Take a takeaway or delivery order and follow it to the kitchen screen.
- Ask the vendor to show offline service: disconnect the internet mid-order and check that everything syncs afterwards.
- Close the shift and reconcile the drawer against the end-of-shift report.
Multi-location stock tracking and reporting: how to compare
If you run, or plan to run, more than one store, this is where the systems you shortlist will differ most. Test each one the same way:
| Test | How to run it | What a pass looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Live stock across stores | Sell an item at store A, look it up at store B | Store B sees the new quantity at once |
| Transfers | Move 10 units from store A to store B | Stock leaves A and arrives at B, with a transfer document |
| Consolidated reports | Run sales and stock for all stores, then for one | Totals reconcile, and you can drill into a single store |
| Reordering | Set a reorder level and sell below it | The item is flagged and can become a purchase order |
| Accounts | Check what reaches your books | Sales, tax and cost of goods per store, without re-keying |
Lightspeed vs Square: comparing the total cost
Headline plan prices rarely tell you what you will pay. For a fair comparison, add up:
- the software subscription for your number of locations and terminals;
- hardware: terminals, printers, scanners, cash drawers, kitchen screens;
- card-processing fees at your expected card volume;
- any add-on modules you will need;
- any separate accounting or payroll software you will still have to run;
- setup, data migration and training time.
Ask each vendor for a written quote for the same setup over three years. Our POS comparison calculator helps you line the totals up.
Add a third option to your Square vs Lightspeed shortlist
If your answers to the five questions include several branches, deep inventory, buying from suppliers, keeping your own accounts, or e-invoicing, we recommend testing EloERP alongside the other two. It is a cloud ERP with a built-in POS, so the sale, the stock movement and the ledger entry are one record.
- Retail and restaurant modes on one terminal — cash, credit and installment sales, split payments and held sales; tables, kitchen tickets, a kitchen display, tokens and drive-thru.
- Inventory depth — variants, multi-unit selling, batch and expiry, IMEI/serial, reorder levels that turn into purchase orders, stock counts and multi-tier pricing.
- Multiple branches — branch-to-branch transfers and "All Branches" consolidated reports.
- Accounting built in — every sale posts revenue, tax and cost of goods to a double-entry ledger, with X and Z shift reports for the cash drawer.
- Offline POS — keeps selling without internet and pushes sales to the cloud when the connection returns.
- E-invoicing — integrates with FBR Digital Invoicing (through PRAL), PRA, ZATCA Phase 2, MyInvois and UAE e-invoicing.
- Online channels — connectors for Shopify, WooCommerce and Daraz.
EloERP pricing is on request: billed yearly (monthly on request), with add-ons priced separately. See how it lines up in EloERP vs Lightspeed and EloERP vs Square POS, or read about EloERP's POS module.
Compare your options before you commit. Start a 15-day EloERP free trial (no credit card), or book a free EloERP demo.