Ask a small retailer what point of sale they should buy and the shortlist usually collapses to three names that sound interchangeable: Odoo POS, Square, and Lightspeed. They are not the same kind of product wearing different logos. Square is a payments company that gives you a till. Lightspeed is a retail platform built around the till. Odoo 20 POS is one app inside an ERP suite, and the till is almost the least interesting thing about it. That structural difference — not any single feature — is what should drive the decision, because it determines how you pay, what else the system runs, and what happens when the shop outgrows the counter.
This comparison sticks to what can be verified from the vendors themselves: Odoo's 20 release notes and 20.0 documentation, and Square's and Lightspeed's own product pages. The specialists' prices change by country and promotion, so it compares pricing models rather than quoting figures that may not match your province or month.
Three products, three centres of gravity
Square started in payment processing and built the register around it. Its Canadian retail pages describe a free entry tier with basic inventory tools, paid tiers priced per location that add advanced inventory, and per-transaction processing charges on top — the software and the card processing are one commercial relationship. The pitch is speed: download the app, order hardware, take a payment today.
Lightspeed is a cloud retail POS in the classic mould. Its own retail pages emphasise inventory with variants and matrices, real-time stock across locations, purchase orders and transfers, customer profiles, integrated Lightspeed Payments, and an open API. It is a specialist: the register and the retail back office around it are the whole product.
Odoo POS is the checkout screen of a much larger system. A sale in Odoo POS draws down the same Inventory database your warehouse uses, posts into the same Accounting your bookkeeper closes, feeds the same CRM and eCommerce catalogue, and is licensed as part of a per-user suite subscription rather than per register. Odoo's pricing structure — confirmed in the Odoo 20 fact base for this series — keeps the Standard plan price unchanged, raises the Custom plan by around 20% from 2027, and adds a Light User licence for limited-access staff; exact figures vary by region, so the only honest price reference is odoo.com/pricing for your country.
The comparison table
| Dimension | Odoo 20 POS | Square for Retail | Lightspeed Retail |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it fundamentally is | One app in an ERP suite (inventory, accounting, CRM, eCommerce, HR on one database) | Payments-led POS; processing and software from one vendor | Retail-specialist cloud POS platform |
| Pricing model | Per user per month for the suite; POS included with the apps you license | Free entry tier; paid tiers per location, plus per-transaction processing | Subscription POS, typically tiered by features, with its own payments offering |
| Payment processing | Your choice of terminal/provider; processing fees are a separate relationship | Built in — Square is the processor, at its published per-transaction rates | Integrated Lightspeed Payments, or supported third-party options depending on plan/region |
| Inventory depth | Full ERP inventory behind the till: multi-warehouse routes, lots/serials, landed costs — or the new simplified mode without the Inventory app | Basic inventory on the free tier; advanced tools (counts, label printing, bundling) on paid tiers | A core strength: variant matrices, multi-location stock, purchase orders and transfers |
| Accounting | Native — POS sessions post into Odoo Accounting; in 20, session close generates a global sale to simplify entries | Sales data exports/integrations to accounting software | Integrations with accounting packages such as QuickBooks and Xero |
| Hardware model | Browser-based; printers, scanners, scales, cash drawers, customer displays and shelf labels via local network access or an IoT system | Square's own readers, stands, registers and accessories | Vendor-supported hardware bundles, commonly iPad-based |
| Scales beyond retail | Same database grows into purchasing, manufacturing, warehousing and multi-company | Adds Square's other business tools (invoices, online store, loyalty) around the POS | Multi-location retail and its eCommerce connection are the growth path |
No row of that table has a universal winner. Each row is a trade: integration depth against time-to-first-sale, pricing predictability against processing convenience.
What is new in Odoo 20 POS that matters to a small shop
The Odoo 20 release notes give POS a practical, shop-floor list rather than a reinvention:
- Browser-based hardware discovery and local network access. The 20.0 documentation describes direct browser communication with local hardware such as ePOS printers without SSL certificates, alongside the IoT system route for printers, scales and scanners. Label printers can also connect directly via USB proxy.
- Convert order lines into a combo. The POS now recommends converting order lines into combos when possible — small, but it speeds up exactly the messy multi-item orders that slow a counter down.
- Snooze products. Make a product temporarily unavailable on the POS or self-ordering menu instead of deleting or hiding it permanently — the 86'd item problem, solved properly.
- A restrictive “Supervised” employee access level joins the renamed access levels, so junior staff can sell without holding the keys to refunds and discounts.
- Simplified inventory mode. POS can now run without installing the Inventory app: one on-hand quantity per product, no required transfers. This is Odoo conceding that a one-room shop does not need a warehouse system — and it closes much of the simplicity gap with Square.
- Cleaner session accounting. At end of session, a global sale is generated to simplify the accounting entries, and payment journal entries are generated automatically at a configured time without waiting for the session to close.
- Multiple currencies at one checkout, multiple printers linked to a point of sale with selection at print time, expired-product warnings, and drag-and-drop reorganisation of the product grid round out the list.
Where Square and Lightspeed still win
Honesty about the other side is what makes a comparison useful. Square's integrated processing removes an entire vendor relationship: no separate merchant account negotiation, no terminal compatibility questions, and a free tier that lets a market stall or pop-up sell today. Lightspeed's retail depth — variant matrices, multi-location visibility, supplier-facing ordering — is purpose-built, and both vendors sell you hardware they themselves support end to end. Odoo, by contrast, asks more of you at setup: choosing a payment terminal and provider, configuring taxes and fiscal positions, and usually leaning on a partner or a technically confident owner. The licence can look cheap while the implementation is not.
There is also a support asymmetry. When a Square reader fails mid-Saturday, one company owns the whole stack. In Odoo, the browser, the network, the IoT box and the printer may each have a different owner — this is a system you operate, not just an app you open.
Where Odoo wins — and when it matters
Odoo's case rests on what happens after the sale. Because POS shares one database with the rest of the suite:
- A product sold at the till is the same record the website sells and the warehouse picks — no sync jobs, no third copy of the catalogue.
- Session totals land in Odoo Accounting as part of the same ledger as supplier bills and payroll, instead of being re-keyed or imported.
- The same licence grows sideways: add purchasing, a second warehouse, manufacturing or a service arm and the POS data is already there. The per-user model also means a second till is mostly a hardware question, not a second location subscription — though every back-office user still needs a licence, and the new Light User tier exists precisely for staff who only need a sliver of the system.
- Canadian specifics cut both ways: Odoo's localisation and fiscal positions put tax configuration on you and your accountant (and Canada gets the Avalara Included option in 20), while the specialists present tax as a handled setting. Neither is automatically better; it depends on who you trust to own the configuration.
A decision framework for small retail
- Choose Square if you need to sell this week, card processing simplicity outranks everything, and inventory is a list rather than a logistics problem. The free tier plus integrated processing is the fastest legitimate route from zero to trading.
- Choose Lightspeed if retail is the whole business — apparel-style variants, several locations, serious purchasing — and you want that depth without adopting an ERP. It is the specialist's specialist.
- Choose Odoo 20 POS if the shop is one face of a wider operation — wholesale alongside retail, a warehouse, light manufacturing, services, multiple companies — or you already run (or plan to run) Odoo for accounting and inventory. Then the POS is close to free at the margin, and the simplified inventory mode lets a small location start light and grow into the full stack.
- Price the whole system, not the licence: Odoo implementation and your chosen processor's rates; Square's processing on every transaction, forever; Lightspeed's tier and payments terms. Run your actual card volume through each model before signing anything.
The shortest honest summary: Square sells you payments with a till attached, Lightspeed sells you a retail system, and Odoo sells you a business system that happens to include a till. Small retailers should buy the centre of gravity that matches where their complexity actually lives.
Further reading
- Odoo 20 Release Notes — Odoo — the Point of Sale section: combos, snooze, supervised access, simplified inventory, session accounting.
- Hardware and network — Odoo 20.0 documentation — supported peripherals, local network access and IoT connection models.
- Square POS Pricing — Square Canada — Square's own plan and processing-rate structure for Canada.
- Retail ePOS System — Lightspeed — Lightspeed's own description of its retail inventory, payments and multi-location features.
