Lightspeed
Mid-market positioning, with separate Retail and Restaurant product lines. Lightspeed Retail publishes three plans: Basic $89/mo, Core $149/mo and Plus $289/mo, with a billing toggle offering up to 18% off for paying annually. Strongest in multi-location retail and hospitality, where the inventory and multi-store reporting depth is the reason to pay the higher software floor. Lightspeed does not publish device prices on the pricing page.
Processing is left blank because two Lightspeed-published surfaces disagree. The US retail pricing page shows a Lightspeed Payments card-present rate of 1.5% on all three plans, with no per-transaction fee listed (read 3 October 2026). Lightspeed's own guidance content elsewhere still quotes 2.6% + $0.10 card-present. We are not going to pick one and present it as the rate, so Lightspeed is excluded from the processing comparison until the vendor's surfaces agree. Confirm your rate in writing before signing.
What this POS actually costs in Year 1.
*Representative buyer: 1 location · 2 terminals · $40K/mo card volume · ~600 transactions/mo.
Software only, because the rest is not published. Lightspeed Retail lists Basic $89/mo, Core $149/mo and Plus $289/mo, with up to 18% off for annual billing, so one terminal on Core is $1,788 a year at the monthly rate or about $1,466 annually billed. Lightspeed publishes no device prices on the pricing page, and its own surfaces disagree on the card rate, so we give no hardware or processing line and therefore no year-1 total. Get both in writing and apply them to the formula on our methodology page.
Why this POS is priced this way.
Lightspeed Commerce is the mid-market specialist for multi-location retail and hospitality, and it prices like one. The $89/mo floor is well above the cheapest options here because Lightspeed is not competing for the buyer shopping on price: it is selling inventory management, multi-store reporting and the depth that a two-to-ten-site operator actually needs. There are two separate product lines, Retail and Restaurant, which is how a single business can run both sides on Lightspeed.
What first-time buyers miss.
The upgrade path is real and the card rate is unclear. Full multi-location capability sits on Plus at $289/mo, and buyers who start on Basic or Core often need Plus within the first year, which is a $200/mo step rather than a tweak. Separately, Lightspeed's retail pricing page currently shows a 1.5% card-present rate while Lightspeed's own guidance content elsewhere quotes 2.6% + $0.10. That is a difference of more than a percentage point on every card transaction, which at $40K/mo over 1,600 transactions is $600 a month. Do not sign without the rate written into the contract.
Who this POS fits.
Multi-location retail, roughly two to ten stores. Mid-market hospitality. Buyers who need genuine inventory and reporting depth and will pay the software floor to get it. Not the cheapest first POS, and not intended to be.