Best Retail POS Systems
None of these is the best shop till in the abstract. The right one depends on how much you sell, how much stock you carry, and whether your customers also buy from you online.
We ranked them on the rate you actually pay across a year and the depth of the retail tools, not the headline monthly fee.
A POS that dazzles in a demo can feel like a second job at five o’clock on a Saturday. When a supplier delivery lands or your VAT quarter closes, you want the system working with you, not against you.
Each pick below comes with the condition that makes it the wrong call.
Best Overall for Independent Retail
Square POS. Free software, a £19 Reader, and 1.75% flat on every in-person card including Amex, with no contract.
The free app already covers unlimited products, stock counts, staff permissions and a customer list, so a single-site shop can open the box and ring up its first sale within the hour.
That flat rate is the catch as much as the appeal. Once card takings clear roughly £6,000 a month, 1.75% with no volume discount starts to cost more than a negotiated rate would, and you feel it on every sale.
Not right if: you already know you will be taking £10,000 or more a month in cards. At that point SumUp’s plan rate or a negotiated terminal deal saves you real money.
Visit Square POSBest for Multi-Store Retail
Lightspeed Retail. Plans run from £75 a month, and every tier carries centralised stock across all your sites, purchase-order management, and a built-in online store.
When a supplier delivery lands at one branch, your stock count updates across both, so a customer asking whether the other shop has the last size 10 gets an answer in one screen. Square, SumUp and Zettle can’t.
The trade-off is price and commitment. The UK card rate (around 1.49% plus 20p) is isn’t printed on the pricing page, so you’ll need a quote before you can compare the true cost against a flat-rate rival.
Not right if: you run one till and carry light stock. You would pay a multi-site platform fee for tools you never open.
Visit Lightspeed RetailBest for Keeping Card Costs Down
SumUp POS. Pay-as-you-go is 1.69%, already below Square, and the £19-a-month Payments Plus plan drops domestic consumer cards to 0.99%.
On £10,000 of monthly card takings, that 0.99% saves you about £76 a month against a flat 1.75%, the difference between the plan paying for itself twice over and not.
The free POS Lite tier handles a shop counter well; table management and split bills sit behind POS Pro at £49 a month, which matters more to cafes than to retailers.
Not right if: your card volume is low and erratic. Below roughly £2,500 a month the plan fee outweighs the rate saving, and plain Square is simpler.
Visit SumUp POSBest for Selling Online and In Store
Shopify POS. This is the one system where shop-floor and website stock, orders and customers stay in one place without bolting on middleware. Sell the last unit in store and the website updates before the next click.
For you that means one stock figure and one set of takings to hand your accountant at year end, not two systems to reconcile before your VAT return.
POS Lite is free on any Shopify plan from £25 a month; POS Pro at £69 a month per location adds staff roles and unlimited registers.
Shopify Payments is the built-in processor at 1.7% on the Basic plan. Bring a different acquirer and Shopify adds a 0.5% to 2% surcharge on every sale, which quietly rewrites your card costs.
Not right if: you sell in person only. The mandatory eCommerce plan is a sunk cost until your online side actually earns.
Visit Shopify POSBest for Stock-Heavy Retail
Epos Now. The £299 hardware bundle (a promotional price against a £849 list) puts a terminal, drawer and printer on the counter.
The software is built around stock: variants, purchase orders, supplier records and low-stock alerts that tell you to reorder before a supplier lead time leaves a gap on your shelf.
Epos Now publishes a 1.5% Visa and Mastercard rate, though it now quotes individually, so confirm yours before signing.
The friction is the commitment: a 12-month minimum and a £54-a-month care plan. You are buying depth, and you are locked in while you learn it.
Not right if: you want to walk away inside a year, or you carry so little stock that a free app would do the same job.
Visit Epos NowBest Value Hardware Bundle
YumaPOS. Software starts at £35 a month with the hardware bundled at no upfront charge, which keeps the day-one cost down for a new shop watching cash.
It leans towards food and hospitality retail, with delivery platforms built in, but the counter tools carry over to a deli or a farm shop.
The honest catch is that you can’t work out the full cost before a sales call. The card rate runs through a third-party processor that YumaPOS doesn’t publish, and the agreement is governed by US law, both of which are worth checking before you commit.
Not right if: you want every number on the page before you decide. Quote-only pricing moves that homework onto you.
Visit YumaPOSBest for Hands-On Setup Support
Takepayments. If the idea of configuring a POS yourself fills you with dread, this is the managed alternative: a UK-based Welcome Team sets you up, support runs seven days a week, and terminals ship with 4G as standard rather than as an add-on.
For a high-street boutique owner who would rather talk to a person than a help centre, that hand-holding is the product.
You pay for it in transparency. Rates are quote-based and set by a separate acquiring bank, the contract runs 12 months minimum, and the first quote is rarely the best one. It earns its place once you are doing enough volume to push back on the numbers.
Not right if: you take under roughly £4,000 a month or want published pricing before a phone call. A free Square account will almost certainly cost you less.
Get a Takepayments quoteRetail POS Systems Compared
Here is the detail behind each pick: what you get, where it bites, and our verdict. If your shortlist is down to two, this is where you split them.
Square ReaderTop Pick
SumUp POS
Epos Now
TakepaymentsBespoke pricing
Lightspeed Payments
Shopify POSBest for Ecommerce
YumaPOS
How to Choose the Best Retail POS System
Five questions decide this, and your cash flow answers most of them. Work through them in order before you let a sales rep walk you through a feature list.
Start with the software, not the card reader
The reader is the cheap part. What you live with every day is the software: how it tracks stock, handles variants and barcodes, runs end-of-day reports, and shows you which lines actually sell.
A £19 reader on weak software costs you far more in wasted time than a dearer system that keeps your stock honest. Decide what your shop needs the software to do, then check which readers it supports.
Know where the flat rate stops being cheap
Flat-rate systems like Square and Zettle are the cheapest way to take cards at low volume: no monthly fee, 1.75%, no commitment. The maths flips as you grow.
Around £2,500 a month in card takings, SumUp’s 0.99% plan starts to win. Above roughly £15,000 a month, a negotiated terminal rate through Dojo, Takepayments or a bank acquirer can reach 0.7% to 1.0%, and the flat rate becomes the most expensive option on the page.
Work out your monthly card turnover before you read a single headline rate, because the few pence a lower headline saves you rarely covers the hour you lose reconciling a second provider before your VAT return.
Read the contract before the brochure
Square, SumUp and Zettle have no contract. Shopify POS is month to month on its eCommerce plan. Epos Now asks for 12 months minimum, and Clover through UK resellers can run to 18 or 36. YumaPOS gives 30 days’ notice but is governed by US law.
If your shop is still finding its feet, stay no-contract until your volume and your way of working have settled. Your payroll and your rent don’t pause for a slow month, so don’t sign away flexibility you may still need.
Lock-in is cheap to agree to and expensive to leave.
Match the hardware to your counter
A market stall and a mobile reader is one decision. A fixed shop counter with a drawer, a printer and a barcode scanner is another.
A garden centre that takes payments out among the plants, sometimes in a 4G blackspot, needs offline mode and a battery that lasts the shift. Buy the kit your floor actually uses, not the biggest bundle in the catalogue.
Check what the POS locks you into
Square, Zettle, Lightspeed and Shopify tie you to their own card processor; Shopify adds a surcharge if you bring your own.
Epos Now defaults to its own service but accepts third-party terminals, and Loyverse and TouchBistro let you negotiate your own acquirer and switch when a better rate appears.
If you could win 0.8% from a bank but your POS holds you at 1.75%, that gap is roughly £950 a month on £100,000 of turnover. Lock-in is a pricing decision, not a technical footnote.
Fees and Costs to Watch
Total the first year, not the sticker price: hardware, software and a year of card fees as your turnover and your VAT quarters actually land them. The cheapest line on the brochure is rarely the cheapest system once it’s running in your shop.
Hardware and Setup Costs
Entry hardware ranges from a £19 Square Reader to a £299 Epos Now bundle and a quoted Lightspeed terminal. Takepayments and YumaPOS bundle the kit into the contract with no upfront charge, which spreads the cost but ties you in.
A free reader on a contracted platform is rarely free once you add the monthly fee, so total the first year, not the sticker price.
In-Person Card Rates and the Volume Breakpoint
Published in-person rates, lowest first: SumUp 0.99% on the £19 plan or 1.69% pay-as-you-go, Epos Now 1.5% on Visa and Mastercard, Shopify 1.7%, Square and Zettle 1.75%. Lightspeed, YumaPOS and Takepayments quote individually.
Those flat rates apply to UK cards. Square adds a 1.5% surcharge on cards issued outside the UK, so a non-UK card runs at 3.25% in person, and its £49-a-month Retail Plus plan lowers the in-person rate to 1.6% for higher-volume shops.
The rate you should care about is the one applied to your average basket and your monthly volume, not the headline. Below £2,500 a month, flat-rate wins. Above £15,000, a negotiated rate almost always beats it.
Software and Contract Costs
Square, SumUp Lite and Shopify POS Lite cost nothing in monthly software, though Shopify needs a £25 eCommerce plan underneath. Lightspeed starts at £75 a month, Epos Now at £54, YumaPOS at £35.
The number to weigh is software fee plus a year of card fees together: a higher subscription with a lower rate can be the cheaper system once your volume is real.
Processor Lock-In and Hidden Costs
The cost that hides best is the one you can’t switch away from. Bring a non-Shopify acquirer to Shopify POS and you pay a 0.5% to 2% surcharge on every sale. Square, Zettle and Lightspeed don’t let you bring your own processor at all.
If your volume grows into negotiating territory, a system that locks the rate quietly caps how much you can ever save.
Disputed payments carry their own fixed cost: SumUp, for example, charges £10 per chargeback on top of the refunded amount, win or lose.
Verified against provider sites, June 2026. Quote-only rates require a direct quote, and this page is editorial guidance, not regulated financial advice.
Our Verdict
For most independent shops, Square POS is the one to beat: free software, a £19 Reader and a flat 1.75% on every card with no contract mean you can be selling within the hour and walk away whenever you like. It only loses its edge once card takings climb past roughly £6,000 a month.
From there the choice is about what your shop actually does. If card volume is steady and high, SumUp’s £19-a-month plan rate of 0.99% on domestic consumer cards quietly saves the most. If you sell across a website and a shop floor, Shopify POS keeps one stock figure across both. Carry deep stock across several sites and Lightspeed or Epos Now earn their monthly fee in inventory tools — provided you can live with their longer commitments.
The two quote-only options, Takepayments and YumaPOS, are worth a call once your volume is high enough to negotiate — but benchmark any quote against a free Square account before you sign anything with a minimum term.
The bottom line: start with Square unless a specific need rules it out — SumUp for the lowest rate at steady volume, Shopify for true online-and-in-store selling, Lightspeed or Epos Now for stock-heavy multi-site retail, and the quote-only managed options only once you can push back on the numbers.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a POS system in retail?
A point-of-sale (POS) system is the till that completes a sale and the software behind it. In a shop, that means taking the card payment, recording what sold, adjusting stock, and feeding the day’s figures into your reports. Modern retail POS systems also handle staff logins, customer records and, increasingly, your online store. The card reader is the visible part; the software is what you live with, and it is where the systems on this page genuinely differ.
What is the difference between a POS and an EPOS system?
EPOS stands for electronic point of sale and simply means a computerised till, as opposed to a manual cash register. In practice every system here is electronic, so the label won’t help you choose. What matters is whether the software covers the stock control, reporting and integrations your shop relies on. Treat POS and EPOS as the same thing and compare on features, not the acronym.
Which retail POS system is cheapest for a small shop?
For a small shop with low card volume, Square is usually the cheapest: free software, a £19 reader, 1.75% on every card and no monthly fee or contract. SumUp is close at 1.69% pay-as-you-go. Once your card takings pass roughly £2,500 a month, SumUp’s £19 plan at 0.99% on consumer cards starts to undercut Square. The cheapest system at £500 a month isn’t the cheapest at £15,000, so size the decision to your card takings across a real VAT quarter and how steady your cash flow is, not a quiet week.
Do retail POS systems work offline?
Some do, and for a shop in a patchy signal area it matters. Square and Zettle process card payments offline for up to 24 hours and sync when the connection returns. Lightspeed has an offline mode that catches up on reconnect. Epos Now and YumaPOS are cloud-dependent, so a dropped connection can stop you taking payment. If your counter sits in a 4G blackspot or your broadband is unreliable, make offline capability a shortlist requirement, not an afterthought.
Which retail POS handles stock and barcodes best?
For deep stock control, Lightspeed and Epos Now lead: both handle product variants, purchase orders, supplier records and low-stock alerts, and Lightspeed centralises all of it across multiple sites. Shopify POS is the strongest if your stock has to stay in sync with an online store. Square covers the basics well for a single shop with straightforward lines, but a homeware or hardware retailer with thousands of SKUs will feel its limits. Match the depth of the stock tools to the depth of your stockroom.
Can I use my own card processor with a retail POS?
It depends on the system, and it can cost you. Loyverse and TouchBistro are payment-agnostic, so you negotiate your own rate and switch acquirers when you find a better one. Epos Now defaults to its own service but accepts third-party terminals. Square, Zettle and Lightspeed lock you to their processor entirely. Shopify POS lets you bring your own but adds a 0.5% to 2% surcharge on every sale. If you expect to grow into negotiating your own rates, check this before you commit, because it sets a ceiling on what you can ever save.
How we reviewed retail POS systems
Ranking criteria. We ranked providers on the card rate you pay across a year, the depth of the stock and reporting tools, hardware cost and contract risk. Rate and lock-in carry the most weight because they compound on every sale and are hardest to escape once you have signed.
Data sources. We checked every rate, hardware price and contract term directly against provider pricing pages (squareup.com/gb, sumup.co.uk, eposnow.com/uk, lightspeedhq.co.uk, shopify.com/uk, yumapos.co.uk and takepayments.com) in June 2026.
We cross-checked the FCA register for each regulated entity, and used no comparison-site figures and no press releases.
Update cadence. We re-verify a provider whenever it changes its published pricing or terms, and at least quarterly. Where a provider quotes individually, we say so rather than guess. Some links on this page are affiliate links, which doesn’t affect our assessments. See our editorial policy.