Honest comparison · updated July 2026
Square is excellent at what it's for: swiping cards. Its free inventory is a side dish to payment processing — and it assumes every sale is a card tap at a register. If half your sales are cash, Venmo, and “I'll pay you Friday” DMs, you're bending a card reader's software around a maker's business.
| StashQ | Square for Retail | |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | 25 products, 50 orders/mo, full CRM | Free POS — plus ~2.6% + 10¢ per card swipe |
| Cash / Venmo / IOU sales | First-class — partial payments & balances tracked | Recordable, but built around card flows |
| Cost recipes & profit per product | Built in (cost builder) | Price only — no true cost/margin story |
| Purchase orders + vendors | Growth plan — $39/mo | Plus plan — $49/mo per location |
| Expense + mileage tracking | Included ($19/mo plan) | No |
| Works offline at a market | Yes — sales queue and sync | Offline card mode with limits |
| Card processing hardware | No — record any payment method | Yes — its specialty |
| Free online storefront | Not yet | Yes |
| Entry paid price | $19/mo (Starter) | $49/mo (Plus) + processing fees |
Prices and features as of July 2026, from each product's public pricing pages. Square for Retail: Free $0, Plus $49/mo per location, Premium custom; card processing fees apply on all plans. Spot something outdated? Tell us and we'll fix it.
Plenty of sellers run both: Square to take cards at the table, StashQ as the system of record — every sale (card, cash, Venmo, IOU) in one place, with real costs, profit, and who-owes-what. But if you're paying $49/mo just to get purchase orders from a card company, that's the part StashQ does for free.
25 products, 50 orders a month, full CRM — free forever. No card required.
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