The Best POS Systems of 2025

A POS system is a combination of software and hardware that facilitates transactions between a customer and a merchant. POS software is used with a payment processor to accept debit and credit cards at the point of sale, track sales trends over time, manage inventory and support online transactions.

POS system hardware is varied, including simple tools like mobile credit card readers that plug into a smartphone and more sophisticated setups with countertop terminals and connected cashier drawers. The exact configuration your business requires will depend on where and how most of your business is done; some companies can get by with just virtual e-commerce tools, while others need the complete system.

>> See our Toast vs. Clover comparison to learn more about how POS systems operate.

The best POS systems can help businesses do more without demanding a lot of resources. For example, built-in tools for creating a customer loyalty program drive repeat business, and the ability to seamlessly share data with accounting software fosters efficiencies.

Below are some key POS system benefits you can expect after implementation.

• Streamlined operations and time savings: Instead of juggling multiple software programs, a comprehensive POS system lets you manage sales, inventory, customers and reports from a single platform, reducing complexity and boosting efficiency across your business.
• Smarter business decisions based on real-time insights: The advanced reporting capabilities of high-quality POS solutions reveal not just what you’re selling, but how your business is truly performing. You’ll gain valuable insights into customer buying patterns and employee performance, empowering you to make data-driven decisions that drive growth.
• Accessible data — anywhere, anytime: Cloud-hosted POS systems free you from being tied to a single location. You can check sales, update inventory or process transactions from anywhere, giving you the flexibility to run your business on your terms while enjoying greater reliability than traditional on-premises solutions.
• Enhanced customer experiences and increased loyalty: Advanced features like intelligent inventory management, seamless e-commerce integration and customized loyalty programs help you deliver more personalized service that keeps customers coming back and increases their lifetime value.
• More sales opportunities and improved service speeds: Mobile-compatible POS systems transform tablets and smartphones into portable checkout stations, allowing you to capture sales anywhere in your store, reduce checkout lines and provide tableside service that improves customer service while boosting revenue potential.

The more advanced your terminal setup is, the more you’ll pay in hardware costs. Source: Lightspeed

When you invest in a POS system, you’ll typically incur three primary costs: a one-time hardware fee, a monthly or annual software fee and a payment processing fee. While it might be tempting for new businesses or those on a tight budget to just pick the cheapest solution, it’s important to consider the value per dollar a system provides and its ability to grow with your business over time.

Here’s an overview of what you can expect to pay for each expense:

• Hardware: The average cost for POS hardware is $799, but you could spend up to $1,500. The exact price depends on how many registers and accessories you need. If you already own POS hardware, you could save money by choosing a POS software provider that allows third-party hardware integrations.
• Software: Software plan costs range from free to nearly $400 per month. You may have to pay for a higher-priced plan if you have many users, need to track a lot of inventory or want multiple add-on services.
• Payment processing: Payment processing fees typically range from 1.5% to 3.5% per transaction. The rates often vary slightly based on whether the transaction is in person or is a card-not-present transaction, such as an online payment. Whether you use the POS system’s native processor or a third-party processor will also affect your costs. Both Lightspeed and Shopify cost more if you don’t use their built-in payment processing.

Hidden fees of POS systems

Beyond the advertised pricing, many POS systems come with additional costs that can significantly impact your budget. Businesses should be aware of these common hidden expenses:

Setup and installation fees: Some POS vendors charge hundreds of dollars in one-time setup fees, depending on the complexity of your system configuration. This can include software installation, hardware setup and initial employee training.

Extra register fees: If your business needs multiple checkout stations, expect additional costs for each additional terminal or device. For example, Lightspeed includes one register in its retail POS packages; if you want more, that’s an extra hardware expense.

Additional location fees: Businesses with multiple locations often face additional monthly charges. Toast’s free Starter Kit package only permits one location; to serve multiple locales, you’d have to upgrade your plan.

Software add-ons: Valuable features like advanced reporting, loyalty programs, employee management or integrations with accounting software often incur an extra monthly cost, or could necessitate purchasing a higher-tier package.

Early termination fees: Many POS providers require contracts and charge substantial early termination fees if you need to switch systems. These fees are typically based on the remaining contract value.

Training and support costs: While basic support may be included in your plan, premium customer service options like 24/7 phone support, dedicated account managers or on-site training often require additional monthly fees.

Free POS systems

Several reputable POS providers offer free software plans that can help businesses get started without upfront costs. However, there are limitations to consider if you choose one of these options. Here’s a comparison of the top free POS systems available:

Vendors who offer free POS systems typically offset their no-cost software by requiring you to use their payment processor and charging higher transaction fees. Businesses should calculate their expected monthly transaction volume to determine if a free plan or paid subscription offers better long-term value.

There are some key factors to consider when choosing a POS system. Before jumping in and scheduling a demo or accessing a free trial of just any system, take a moment to consider your business’s needs and create a shortlist of solutions that may suit them.

We talked to business owners and decision-makers who have been through the process of choosing a POS system and asked them how they made their selections — and what they wish they had known beforehand.

Consider setup and implementation.

Setting up a POS system can be a big task, and sometimes, it comes with an additional price tag. For new businesses launching sales operations, choosing a complex system could cause unnecessary delays and expenses. For small businesses on a budget, expensive setup fees or switching to a new platform may turn a cost-effective system into a cost-prohibitive one.

“While the ongoing costs of a good POS system are usually low, the initial setup costs can be higher than you might expect,” said Dimitri Zobnin, owner and managing director of House of Enki. “You’re not just paying for the software; if your chosen POS isn’t compatible with your current hardware, you might end up spending a lot on new cash drawers, barcode scanners and other equipment.”

Look for training and learning resources.

Your staff will be working in your POS system every day and need to be proficient at using it. Choosing a user-friendly POS system with plenty of training support and learning resources is critical to avoid disrupting operations. Reducing the learning curve as much as possible will ensure your business can operate unhindered by the new system.

“Another crucial factor for us was simple training procedures. Retail often sees high staff turnover, especially around the Christmas season when you might bring on temporary staff to handle the increased demand,” Zobnin said. “I can say that extensive training can really drain company resources, as experienced staff need to take time away from their usual duties to train new team members.”

By selecting a POS system that is relatively intuitive, you can minimize the need for training, which is especially important when getting a startup off the ground or when running a small business with limited staff. Moreover, if the vendor provides a lot of easily understood self-guided help resources, your staff can reference this information to quickly get up to speed on their own.

Check the reporting tools.

When a POS system offers in-depth reporting, it can become a valuable asset that helps you make better decisions about how to run your business. However, not all POS reporting modules are created equal. Make sure you look closely at the types of reports you can run and whether the software offers custom reporting. You should also consider whether a system allows you to export your data to an outside source, if you need to make use of it elsewhere.

“We needed a POS that would allow us to export our sales data and reports as a CSV,” said Lev Tretyakov, CEO and sales director of Fortador. “We export the data and use Excel to check for trends, performance, and patterns and make business decisions.”

Analyzing reports in this way is especially important for new businesses that need to establish a baseline understanding of what their customers want and don’t want. Over time, this data can be used to adjust inventory and ensure you’re providing your customers with the right products.

Find out about customization and flexibility.

Some POS solutions are highly flexible and allow you to customize the software and configure the hardware in whatever way best suits your team. Others are more rigid, and what you see is what you get. During demonstrations of any POS system, be sure to ask clear questions about customizability and what can be tailored to your existing workflow.

“If I could do anything differently, I would explore more customizable solutions to fit our specific needs better,” said Valentin Radu, CEO and founder of Omniconvert. “Investing the time to assess our unique requirements before purchasing could have led to an even more tailored solution.”

Ultimately, properly customized software can boost efficiency and reduce the learning curve associated with any new system. Look for a platform that can be tailored to your business’s needs, and a vendor that will help you configure it in such a way at a reasonable cost.

Opt for responsive customer support.

Check out real users’ reviews about the customer support team before partnering with any vendor. You are bound to run into issues with your POS system sooner or later, and a helpful, responsive customer service team can make all the difference between a minor hiccup and a major nightmare.

“The customer support experience also plays a vital role; having responsive support can make a significant difference when troubleshooting issues,” Radu said.

Today’s POS systems go beyond ringing up sales — the software can also facilitate customer loyalty programs. Source: Toast

The right POS features will make it easier to run your business and streamline your operations. Here are some features you should look for when choosing a POS system.

Software Features

Payment processing and financial management: Look for a POS solution with comprehensive payment processing that accepts all major credit cards, debit cards, mobile wallets (Apple Pay, Google Pay) and contactless payments. Your system should also integrate seamlessly with your accounting software to automatically sync transactions, reducing manual data entry and minimizing errors in your financial records.

Inventory control and management: Effective inventory management features include real-time stock tracking, low-stock alerts, automatic reorder points and barcode scanning capabilities. Advanced systems offer multilocation inventory tracking and supplier management, helping prevent stockouts and overstock situations that tie up your cash flow.

Sales analytics and business intelligence: Beyond basic sales reporting, seek POS systems that provide actionable insights through customizable dashboards, trend analysis, peak hour identification and profit margin tracking. These analytics help you understand customer behavior, optimize pricing strategies, and identify your most profitable products and services.

Advanced growth features: Once your core needs are met, consider customer relationship management tools, loyalty program integration, gift card programs, email marketing capabilities and employee management features like scheduling and time clocks. These additions help retain customers, increase average transaction values and streamline staff management as your business scales.

Hardware Features

Retail store equipment: Traditional brick-and-mortar retailers typically need stationary terminals with large displays for customer-facing transactions, cash drawers with multiple bill compartments, receipt printers and barcode scanners. Consider touchscreen monitors for intuitive operation and kitchen display systems if you serve food.

Mobile and flexible hardware: Businesses requiring mobility — such as food trucks, farmers markets or service providers — benefit from tablet-based systems, mobile card readers and portable receipt printers. These configurations offer the same functionality as traditional POS setups while providing location flexibility and reducing upfront hardware costs.

E-commerce and hybrid business hardware: Online-only businesses can operate with virtual POS systems that require minimal hardware, while omnichannel retailers need integrated solutions that sync inventory and customer data across online and physical locations. Consider unified systems that manage both in-person and online transactions from a single platform.

Modern POS systems incorporate multiple layers of security to protect sensitive customer data and comply with industry regulations. Understanding these security features is crucial for businesses handling credit card transactions.

PCI Compliance

Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliance is mandatory for all businesses that store, process or transmit credit card information. According to the PCI Security Standards Council, PCI DSS 4.0, which became mandatory in March 2025, includes over a dozen operational and technical requirements designed to protect cardholder data.

High-quality POS systems help businesses achieve PCI compliance through built-in security measures. Companies should seek solutions that provide comprehensive security protections, such as data encryption, tokenization and fraud prevention tools, to safeguard their business and customer information.

Data Encryption

POS systems use multiple encryption methods to protect sensitive information. Point-to-point encryption encrypts cardholder data from the moment a card is dipped, swiped, tapped or manually entered at the payment terminal, with tokenization ensuring sensitive card data is converted to secure tokens rather than storing actual card numbers in your POS system. Tokenization makes intercepted data unusable even if accessed by unauthorized parties.

PCI DSS 4.0.1 requires robust encryption methods, including AES (128-bit or higher), RSA (2048 bits or higher) and ECC (224 bits or higher), to protect data during transmission. Modern POS solutions automatically implement these encryption protocols, ensuring your business meets compliance requirements without additional technical configuration. Compliance with these encryption requirements helps you avoid costly data breaches and maintain customer trust while meeting regulatory obligations.

Fraud Prevention

Advanced POS systems incorporate real-time fraud prevention capabilities, such as:

• Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): Recent PCI DSS updates require MFA for all users accessing systems with cardholder data, moving beyond basic password protection.
  
• Transaction Monitoring: The best POS systems analyze purchasing patterns to identify suspicious activities and flag potentially fraudulent transactions.
  
• EMV Chip Technology: EMV features strengthen payment security while enabling businesses to accept diverse payment methods and meet customers’ growing expectations for secure transactions.

Access Controls

Secure POS systems implement strict access management functionality, including:

• Role-Based Permissions: Different employee levels receive appropriate system access, following the principle of least privilege.
  
• Audit Trails: Comprehensive logging tracks all system activities, enabling businesses to monitor who accessed what information and when.
  
• Secure User Authentication: Beyond MFA, systems may incorporate biometric authentication and unique user credentials for each staffer.
  

Businesses should embrace a comprehensive security framework featuring advanced data encryption, payment tokenization, rigorous user authentication, protective web application firewalls and ongoing penetration testing to ensure complete system-wide protection. As the security landscape continues evolving, POS providers are regularly updating their systems to address emerging threats and maintain compliance with the latest industry standards.

While we’re confident our top recommendations above can meet your company’s POS needs, we understand you may want to know what else is available. We tested and evaluated several other solutions and found some notable strengths in the POS systems highlighted below.

Epos Now

Epos Now is one of the best POS systems for businesses concerned about ease of use. The software is intuitive — it should take your staff less than 15 minutes to learn how to use the platform, so you’ll save on employee training costs. Plus, you’ll receive one-on-one onboarding when getting started. Epos Now offers excellent hardware options, including a touchscreen POS system, a handheld POS option, receipt printers and cash drawers. You can add the equipment you need to create a custom solution for your business. Epos Now also integrates with various third-party products, giving you many options to adjust the system’s functionality to your liking. Learn more in our Epos Now review.

Brilliant POS

Brilliant POS is a Clover hardware reseller that provides additional inventory management features for a wide range of businesses. With Brilliant POS, you can track products at the item level and receive automated alerts when your stock is running low. You can also upload an unlimited number of stock keeping units and leverage your sales data to optimize your reordering from suppliers; that way, you’ll never run out of inventory, but won’t keep too much on hand either. We found Brilliant POS to be highly user-friendly, especially its straightforward dashboard that displays all the most important data a business needs at a glance. See pricing in our Brilliant POS review.

Wix

Wix is best known for its website-building tools, but like GoDaddy, it also offers POS software that’s particularly suitable for e-commerce businesses. Wix POS comes with flat-rate payment processing powered by Square and is packaged in an intuitive solution that takes little to no time to learn how to use. We found Wix to be useful for businesses with both e-commerce and brick-and-mortar elements to their operations, blending the software and hardware needs that both types of companies demand. The platform supports adept inventory management and enables customers to select flexible delivery or pickup options, allowing you to use it in the way that best suits your business and customers.

Revel

The Revel POS system is ideal for retail and restaurant businesses wanting to focus on multilocation growth. With an open API, you can customize and scale the cloud-based software to serve multiple sales channels as your company expands. Thanks to the “Always On” mode, we love that this solution can process sales even if your internet is out, while the vendor’s “payments agnostic” approach gives you the freedom to work with the payment processor of your choosing. You’ll also find tools for inventory management, employee time tracking and loyalty programs.

CardConnect

CardConnect is a merchant services provider that offers virtual terminals for a browser-based POS system, as well as a mobile credit card app, CardPointe retail terminals and Clover hardware for a robust physical setup. With this combination of tools, businesses can ring up sales anywhere and feel secure knowing CardConnect has built-in features for fraud protection, PCI compliance and other security measures. Payment processing costs are based on interchange rates that are optimized with each transaction. We especially appreciate the integration with QuickBooks, allowing you to streamline financial recordkeeping and accounting processes.

Lavu

Similar to Toast, Cake and TouchBistro, Lavu is another restaurant-specific POS solution suitable for food and beverage businesses, ranging from fine-dining establishments to nightclubs to ice cream shops. This cloud-based iPad system can include terminals, self-order kiosks, a kitchen display system and more. We’re particularly fond of the software’s dual pricing feature, which allows businesses to set one price for customers paying by cash and another for those using credit cards. Cash discounts can incentivize diners while offsetting your credit card processing fees, so this is a smart tool to have.

At Business News Daily, our team of small business sales and technology experts has been researching and testing POS systems for years, comparing some of the leading solutions across more than 25 key metrics.

To determine the best options on the market, we considered 112 POS systems as part of our initial pool of candidates. We examined pricing plans, core features, reporting tools and the availability of customer support. We also considered setup fees, available integrations with leading accounting software and available training resources. Finally, we weighed reviews from real-world customers to see what business owners who have actually used each platform had to say.

After narrowing down our initial list, we closely reviewed and tested 15 POS systems before selecting our nine best picks above. Our testing began with live demonstrations of each platform, during which we asked pointed questions of company representatives. We also accessed free trial software to get a firsthand sense of what it’s like to set up and use each system. We took the approach of a brand new user starting from scratch and went searching for training resources to see how easy it would be to get up to speed with each system.

Below are the factors we examined when deciding our top recommendations. Each is weighted according to how much the criteria typically influence business owners’ buying decisions.

Pricing (30%): To determine which vendor provides the most value per dollar, we analyzed not just the base costs of the hardware and software used in each POS system but also the number of pricing plans available, the payment processing rates and any add-on fees.

Features (25%): We evaluated each system’s sales dashboards and tested the payment processing, inventory management options and customer engagement tools. We also looked at access management settings to ensure only authorized employees could access the system.

Usability (20%): We paid close attention to the ease with which the hardware and software could be set up, how intuitive we found the platform’s navigation and use of key features, and the training and informational resources available to new users. We also investigated whether the point-of-sale hardware was portable and if the software had a responsive mobile app or mobile browser.

Customer Support (15%): We examined the different ways customers could contact the vendor’s customer service team if in need of help. We also reviewed customer feedback to assess how well each company’s customer support representatives meet the needs of existing users.

Integrations (10%): We considered the third-party integrations each POS system includes, as well as whether the vendor offers an open API or would build new integrations upon request. While every business’s tech stack is different, we prioritized vendors that offered pre-built integrations with leading accounting software platforms and those that extended open APIs to their users.

In addition to evaluating each POS system based on these criteria, we also determined the best use-case scenarios for each. No two businesses are exactly alike, so we put ourselves in the shoes of different types of small business owners to identify the best POS systems for a variety of needs.

To learn more about how we review and test sales technology products and services for small businesses, read about our editorial process.

POS systems have come a long way since the early days of retail. No longer is a POS system just a register, cash drawer and credit card swiper. These days, they are multifaceted solutions that enable you to manage various aspects of your business from one platform. That management is set to become easier: In 2025, POS platforms will increasingly boast advanced, AI-driven features and tools that help businesses optimize operations and leverage customer data.

As POS systems change in the next 12 months, we expect to see expanded automation abilities. Vendors are regularly rolling out software features that let you set up automated workflows for inventory management, payroll, reservations, orders and payments, freeing your staff to focus on other areas that may require more attention. Automation can be an effective solution for streamlining processes and maximizing efficiency.

We’re also noticing more POS systems offering self-service options for customers, especially restaurant-specific solutions. With some setups, customers can order online and pick up their food without ever leaving their vehicles. They can also use self-serve kiosks to order and even pay their bills right from their phone. Meanwhile, POS systems that cater to e-commerce companies are providing more ways for businesses to sell their products online via social media; we predict this trend will continue this year and beyond.

For both online and brick-and-mortar businesses, we expect AI to play an increasingly important role in POS software. Predictive AI can perform functions like flagging suspicious transactions and recommending products to stock. Another valuable feature we’re seeing is AI-controlled dynamic pricing that adjusts product prices in real time based on supply and demand.