6 Best Free POS Systems For Small Business In 2023

We believe that Square is the overall best free POS system for business owners of all types because it has the most user-friendly but comprehensive feature set out of all the providers on this list. Free plans exist for business owners in the retail, restaurant, and service-based industries. It also has the most customizable free online store builder, which is available for all Square users.

We also appreciate how affordable Square POS hardware is. All you need is $49 and your smartphone, laptop, or tablet, and you’ve got a sleek, user-friendly register that you can use in-store or on the go. You can have an unlimited number of POS devices under the free plan as well, so you can add multiple customer touchpoints or send multiple people out in the field to make sales at once.

Square offers most of its features for free. If you have multiple locations, you’ll have to upgrade to a paid plan. Additionally, foodservice business owners may want to consider getting a Square KDS (kitchen display system) software subscription to make order flow easier.

Square POS is a hugely popular POS software with three solutions: Square for Retail, Square for Restaurants, and Square Appointments.

All three of these solutions allow for in-person and online sales through a completely free eCommerce website builder. Each solution also allows you to create physical and eGift cards, view customer orders and basic sales, and use an unlimited number of POS devices to take payments.

Square POS online store builder.

Square For Retail offers extensive retail inventory management, while Square for Restaurants has the right amount of inventory and menu customization for small mobile and countertop foodservice businesses to manage day-to-day operations with ease. Square Appointments allows service-based businesses such as spas and salons to manage their time and physical resources effectively.

No matter which Square POS software package you choose, you’ll have access to the Square ecosystem of tools and hardware available for all Square sellers.

Square POS contactless card reader.

You can download the Square POS app on any iOS or Android device.

To take card payments, you can get a free magstripe reader from Square or pay $49 for the Square contactless card reader. We strongly recommend buying the contactless card reader since you can’t take chip or mobile device payments using the magstripe reader. Also, the free magstripe reader works by plugging it into a headphone jack, which many smartphones don’t have anymore.

For more information on Square’s vast hardware offerings, including registers and iPad stands, read our Square POS hardware guide.

With Square POS, you’re limited to Square Payments as your payment processor. Fortunately, rates are transparent and competitive, starting at 2.6% + $0.10 per in-person transaction and 2.9% + $0.30 for online transactions.

Square offers month-to-month plans with no penalties for canceling your plan. The company also has a great hardware warranty that covers hardware you buy from Square directly and from third-party Square hardware sellers.

We’ve found that while PayPal Zettle doesn’t have the most advanced POS capabilities, it’s comprehensive enough for solopreneurs, microbusiness owners, and business owners who operate primarily online to use for in-person selling. At the same time, the software and hardware offerings are straightforward enough that an individual can quickly sign up, order a card reader, and start selling without any delays or intensive setup.

We also appreciate that the Zettle app integrates with the rest of PayPal’s business suite, so solopreneurs can sell subscriptions, sell online, take orders over the phone, and send invoices all within one place. Plus, if you already have a blog or website, you can easily add PayPal to your online presence and sell offline all at once.

PayPal has no monthly fees.

While PayPal’s in-person POS software and card reader gets the job done, PayPal’s online payments features are the best for solopreneurs and include the ability to:

• Integrate a PayPal buy button to a website built with a web builder or from scratch (PayPal integrates with all major web builders and has code you can inject into a custom-built website)
• Generate individual buy buttons for specific products you or someone else is promoting (for example, if your product is being promoted in a blog post)
• Sell through social media sites such as TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook
• Use a virtual terminal to take over the phone payments and invoice customers
• Sell subscriptions on a recurring billing schedule

Since PayPal is considered a safe, secure way to pay by most online buyers these days, people will feel safer paying for products and services that come from a very small business. Customers may not know your name, but they sure know PayPal!

PayPal buy button generator for selling individual items.

Solopreneurs can also import inventory information from a spreadsheet, create inventory catalogs, add product categories, labels, and images of individual products to a catalog; set automated inventory tracking; and get a low-stock alert when inventory dips below a certain minimum quantity. Plus, it’s easy and free to print out barcodes.

PayPal Zettle POS inventory catalog builder.

PayPal Zettle credit card reader.

To take payments, you can purchase the PayPal Zettle Reader 2 card reader for $29 (additional card readers cost $79 each) and use it with the PayPal Zettle app that’s available on Android and iOS devices.

Alternatively, you could purchase the all-in-one POS handheld device (also called a mobile POS or mPOS) and card reader for $199. Buying the all-in-one terminal means that you can use your phone and still take payments. The mPOS with a built-in barcode scanner costs $239 and could be a good investment if you’re scanning a lot of inventory.

PayPal also offers other hardware components, such as printers, cash drawers, and docks, starting at $49. You can also purchase a compatible store kit with bundled hardware and accessories starting at $249.

It should come as no surprise that Zettle’s payment processor is PayPal. While this does limit your choices, PayPal is known for its transparent, flat-rate fees. Card-present transactions are priced at 2.29% + $0.09 per transaction. Custom rates may be available for high-volume merchants.

When signing up with PayPal Zettle, you will have to sign a contract. However, you won’t have to worry about monthly or early termination fees. Still, it is important to make sure you review the contract to understand the terms of your account.

You will need to make a PayPal Business account to get a Zettle card reader (and all the other tools PayPal offers business owners.)

Loyverse has several industry-specific and general features built into its open-source framework. It also has several great features that normally only come with paid POS software, including a built-in loyalty program, kitchen display system, and multilocation support. Loyverse works completely offline as well, so completely mobile businesses can rest assured that this POS software won’t stop working on the go.

The only downside of Loyverse is that it doesn’t have native eCommerce capabilities, so if you want to focus on online sales, you’ll need to pay for an eCommerce integration or choose another POS option.

Loyverse is free to download and use forever. The following are paid add-ons:

• Advanced Inventory Management: $25/month; great for wholesalers and more complex inventory needs
• Employee Management: $25/month; great for businesses with different employee levels and user access needs
• Integrations: $9/month; necessary for connecting Loyverse to an eCommerce website, accounting apps, and delivery apps

Loyverse is a free, open-source POS software available for download, which means that you can use it offline and sell from anywhere, with Wi-Fi or without.

All business owners will appreciate that Loyverse offers a free customizable loyalty program builder that can help you retain a local customer base. This is a very uncommon feature among free POS systems.

Multilocation business owners will be able to monitor multiple establishments under one account, another very unique feature. Customers can collect and redeem loyalty points at any of your establishments while you monitor the inventory and performance of all your locations.

Restaurant, bar, and grocery store owners will appreciate these unique industry-specific features:

• Perishable and liquid inventory management
• Free kitchen display system/kitchen printer order routing capabilities
• Takeout/delivery sales options
• Sales by weight, which is great if you sell fresh food in containers and/or fresh produce

Loyverse POS sell items by weight.

Loyverse-compatible card readers for sale on the Loyverse website.

The Loyverse app can be downloaded on iOS and Android devices. Compatible card readers range from $20 to $250, depending on what credit card processor you work with.

Loyverse supports a wide assortment of hardware, including printers, barcode scanners, and terminals. Compatible hardware is available for purchase on the Loyverse website, ranging from $19.99 for a tablet stand to $439 for an integrated printer and cash drawer.

Loyverse integrates with several payment processors, including PayPal Zettle, SumUp, and Worldpay.

There are no contract requirements to sign up for Loyverse. However, you may have to sign a contract with your payment processor, depending on which option you choose.

We love how Toast allows restaurant owners with no budget to get powerful POS software and hardware for no monthly fees while also allowing you to add features within the Toast ecosystem of restaurant management software when you need to. Restaurants can expand to more registers on the floor, more locations within the business, more ways to manage the workforce, and negotiable payment processing fees without altering front-end operations.

It’s also impressive that restaurant owners can offer online ordering, a loyalty program, gift cards, and email marketing for no monthly cost. These are great features to turn one-time customers into lifelong ones, and once your business is established enough to handle monthly fees, you can upgrade to a plan that doesn’t charge you for these features in the form of a higher payment processing fee.

If you plan on expanding your restaurant business to multiple locations, have a large floor plan, or want stronger POS hardware than iPads, Toast is a great free POS system for you.

Toast’s Pay-as-you-Go plan is a plan that requires you to pay no monthly fees for the software and one POS terminal but will charge a higher payment processing rate than if you pay for the $69/month Point of Sale plan or $165/month Essentials plan.

Once your business processes a certain amount of money every month, you’ll end up paying more on payment processing fees than you do if you pay for a monthly subscription.

You are allowed only one free countertop or mobile POS (and one extra for a flat monthly fee) on the Pay-as-you-Go plan, so once you need more than one or two mobile or countertop POS terminals, you’ll have to upgrade to the Point of Sale or Essentials plan.

One of Toast’s most unique offerings is its durable restaurant-grade hardware, which you don’t have to pay for upfront. The Android-based handheld Toast Go 2 is one of the best mobile POS systems out there.

Many advanced restaurant management and revenue-generating features that usually come with a flat monthly fee are free for Toast users (if you agree to an extra 0.4% payment processing fee per transaction), including:

• Online Ordering: Create your own custom online ordering web platform and mobile ordering app, which connects to your own delivery dispatch system.
• Email Marketing: Automatically collect emails when customers give them for online orders, loyalty program signups, and for receipts. Create and automate email campaigns based on customer visits and purchase history.
• Loyalty Program: Customers can sign up for your loyalty program before paying by scanning a QR code on their receipt, before or after an online order, and at self-checkout screens (if you eventually decide to get a self-ordering kiosk).
• Gift Card Sales: Sell branded physical gift cards and eGift cards at all customer touchpoints.

Toast restaurant POS software online ordering.

Toast’s detailed perishable inventory, customizable tipping structure, detailed table mapping, and thorough item modifier capabilities are some of the best in the restaurant POS industry. Servers will appreciate how streamlined the order and checkout process is, while restaurant managers will appreciate how Toast’s comprehensive menu item, labor, and shrinkage reports can guide their decision-making in terms of what to put on the menu and how to cut costs in general.

Toast Go 2 handheld POS and card reader.

You do not have to pay any money upfront or monthly fees to get your first POS terminal on the Pay-as-you-Go plan.

The second terminal will cost $409 (Toast Go 2 handheld POS) or $599 (Toast countertop POS terminal) upfront, and you will be charged a monthly fee. After you exceed two POS terminals, you cannot use the software for free.

On the completely free, no monthly fees plan, you’ll pay 2.99% + $0.15 per transaction. If you add online ordering to your free plan, you’ll pay 3.39% + $0.15 per transaction, no matter whether the transaction is in-person or online.

You can only use Toast’s payment processor no matter which plan you are on, free or paid.

Toast has a standard two-year contract length and a pretty hefty early termination fee if you cancel your contract early.

This is why we recommend Toast for food service business owners who plan on scaling their business and sticking with Toast (and Toast’s suite of software/hardware features that are very helpful for large and multilocation restaurant owners) in the long run.

We love that Helcim provides everything a small business needs to take payments online and offline, plus merchant services that (in most cases) allow business owners to get lower payment processing fees than POS providers that offer only flat-rate payment processing. This merchant services provider continually updates its POS, virtual terminal, invoicing, and online checkout page software to give users the features they need to run their businesses.

It’s an especially great choice for larger businesses and B2B businesses since Helcim has built-in higher-level payment processing compliance, automated discounts as you increase your sales volumes, and allows for an unlimited number of users with different access levels. There’s an entire customer self-serve portal and remote invoicing capabilities, so it’s easy to get paid for large volumes of products or services no matter where your customer is located.

Plus, no matter what business type you have, you can create your own custom checkout flow and customer management system to provide customers with the best payment experience possible.

The Helcim POS system, virtual terminal, and all other software components are free to use. You can sign up and start customizing your POS within minutes.

Helcim is primarily a merchant services provider that has expanded to provide a suite of business features for merchants to grow both online and in-person sales. Helcim POS software offers retail, restaurant, and subscription sales features and is customizable enough that just any product-based, subscription-based, or invoice-based business can work with the software.

Helcim’s most attractive features are its customizable inventory and invoicing structures, as well as its self-serve customer account portals. Businesses that offer volume discounts, work with specific customers and vendors, or provide services that can be invoiced will appreciate that Helcim allows you to provide structured pricing tiers, create customer portals with login information, and send invoices with custom terms and automated reminder emails so that your customers remember to pay off their bill.

Helcim POS system customer profile settings.

Helcim also allows you to save customers’ cards on file, a feature that not even paid POS providers often provide (especially on lower-level paid plans.) With a card on file, you can charge customers when they place orders, after products or services are delivered, or at any time frame that meets the agreement you’ve come to with your customers.

Helcim credit card and mobile wallet reader.

You can use Helcim on iOS and Android devices, as well as Mac and Windows desktop computers and laptops. This makes Helcim one of the most device-compatible POS systems out there.

The Helcim card reader costs $109. With the card reader, you can securely save customers’ card information when they use their card or mobile wallet to pay, so you can charge customers in the future without them needing to bring in their physical card.

Helcim also sells a lightweight thermal printer for $79. Print out QR payment codes, receipts, and invoice information on the go with this Bluetooth-enabled printer.

Helcim offers all merchants interchange-plus pricing. Unlike flat-rate payment processing, the interchange-plus payment processing model provides a transparent idea of how much you’re paying in credit card processing fees and typically adds up to the lowest payment processing fees.

Helcim is on our list of best payment processing companies for small businesses because of its great contract terms and volume discounts. Volume discounts are automatically applied as your sales volumes grow.

Helcim has Level 2 and Level 3 payment processing built in, so you can take B2B and B2G (business-to-government) payments with lower interchange-plus fees than if you only had standard Level 1 processing compliance.

You will be required to sign up for a merchant account with Helcim, but Helcim offers some of the most transparent contract terms and no monthly account fees.

We like that eHopper is unique in that it offers credit card processing that’s potentially free for your business, assuming you don’t mind passing along these costs to your customers. Additionally, you can also receive a free terminal along with your no-cost POS software.

However, the free plan does limit your number of products and transactions, so if you want to remove these limits (or take advantage of more advanced features, such as customer loyalty and eCommerce), you’ll have to upgrade to a paid plan.

eHopper is free to use. You are limited to one POS license, 50 products, and 300 transactions per month. You must upgrade to the $29.99/month (includes two POS licenses and is billed at $359.88/year) if you exceed these limits.

eHopper is cloud-based POS software with retail and restaurant-specific features. It is compatible with iOS and Android devices, as well as Windows tablets and PCs, so laptop and desktop users can use their devices as POS systems, too.

Business owners looking for a completely free system, including no payment processing fees, will find what they want with eHopper’s cash discount program function. eHopper allows you to pass on any credit card fees you’d usually have to pay to customers and offer a “discount” to customers who pay in cash.

eHopper free POS cash discount settings.

Aside from this feature and the fact that you can run eHopper as a free POS system for Windows, this POS system has a pretty basic offering. You can manage items, taxes, customers, tips, receipt settings, and add surcharges on the free plan.

If you want to build a POS system beyond a mobile device, new customers can receive the Pax S300 Payment Terminal at no cost. eHopper also sells other POS hardware, including tablets, thermal printers, and terminals. Or you can purchase a hardware bundle that includes everything you need to get started, with prices starting at $899.

eHopper has its own in-house payment processor, which is unique in that you can avoid processing fees by passing them along to your customers. Currently, if you sign up for eHopper Processing, you can also receive a free eCommerce site.

If you want to use another payment processor, other options are available, including PayPal, Worldpay, TSYS, and Fiserv. The options available to you vary by country and the terminal you opt to use.

There are no long-term contracts with the eHopper Essentials plan. However, you may be required to sign a contract with your payment processor, so make sure you evaluate and understand your options before committing.

If you upgrade to one of eHopper’s paid plans, you can score a lower rate by signing a contract for up to three years.