Square Online vs Shopify: which is better in 2026?

The quick verdict

Pick Square Online if you already sell in person with Square, especially as a restaurant, cafe or small shop. You can start at $0 a month, your items and orders sync with the Square register and kitchen, and online ordering with pickup and delivery is built in.

Pick Shopify if the online store is the main business, or you expect it to become one. Shopify has the deeper store, a large app store and in-person selling of its own. It costs more up front, but its online card rate on Basic is lower than Square’s free plan.

Side by side

Square’s figures come from its online store plans page and Shopify’s from the Shopify pricing page. The exit score is our 10-point measure of how much of your site you can take with you if you leave. See every builder on the exit scores page.

What changed at Square in October 2025

On October 6, 2025, Square replaced 18 separate subscriptions, including the old standalone Square Online website plans, with three plans priced per location: Square Free at $0, Square Plus at $49 a month and Square Premium at $149 a month. Square shows monthly prices only; we found no yearly discount. If you were on a legacy Square Online Plus or Premium plan, Square’s help center describes a self-serve switch to the new plans.

The new plans cover far more than the website. Plus adds things like advanced inventory, loyalty and staff tools, and Premium includes nearly all of Square’s software, according to Square’s announcement. That is good value if you use them, and a lot to pay for if you only want a website.

Cost over 3 years

This comparison only makes sense with in-person sales in the picture, so our example includes them.

The example business: a small shop or cafe with about 10 pages, a .com domain and one business email address. It sells $2,000 a month online (50 orders at $40) and $5,000 a month in person (250 sales at $20). Over three years that is $72,000 online from 1,800 orders and $180,000 in person from 9,000 sales.

How we got these numbers:

• Plans. Square Plus is $49 a month per location, billed monthly. Shopify Basic is $29 a month billed yearly.
• Online card fees. Square charges 3.3% + 30 cents on Free and 2.9% + 30 cents on Plus and Premium. Shopify Payments charges 2.9% + 30 cents on Basic.
• In-person card fees. Square charges 2.6% + 15 cents on Free, 2.5% + 15 cents on Plus and 2.4% + 15 cents on Premium. Shopify charges 2.6% + 10 cents on Basic.
• Domain. Neither company’s page we used lists a .com renewal price, so we use Namecheap’s listed prices as a stand-in: $11.28 for the first year and $18.48 a year to renew. Square also offers a free square.site address.
• Email. Neither includes email hosting. We budget Google Workspace Business Starter at $7.00 per user per month on the annual plan ($84 a year).

The takeaway: at this size, Square Free is the cheapest by about $306 over three years, and Shopify Basic comes second. Square Plus costs the most here, but it is the plan that adds QR code table ordering, loyalty and automated marketing. If you need those, compare Plus with what you would spend on Shopify apps to do the same jobs.

When Square Plus pays for itself

Plus lowers Square’s online card rate by 0.4 points. On about $12,250 a month in online sales, that saving equals the $49 monthly fee. Your in-person sales add a little more, since Plus is 0.1 points lower there. Below that level, Square Free costs less on fees alone.

What the table leaves out

• Hardware. Card readers and registers cost extra on both. We did not price them.
• More locations. Square’s paid plans are priced per location, while Square Free allows multiple locations at no extra cost. Shopify Basic, Grow and Advanced each allow 10 inventory locations.
• Apps. Shopify’s App Store has thousands of apps, many with monthly fees. Shopify does not publish a typical spend.
• Shopify with another gateway. Skip Shopify Payments and Shopify adds 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced and 0.2% on Plus. Our transaction fees explainer covers why that matters.
• Big sellers. Square says sellers processing over $250,000 a year can ask for custom processing rates.

To try your own numbers, use the website cost calculator.

Design and ease of use

Square Online is built to get a selling site live fast. The site runs on the same Square system as your register, so it works from your existing item library, and restaurant menus sync with Square POS. Square’s plans page lists a website builder on every plan, and Premium adds “expanded site customization.” Square does not publish a template count on the pages we used.

Shopify starts from a theme in the Shopify Theme Store, with free and paid options. You adjust colors, fonts and sections without code. Themes are written in Liquid, Shopify’s template language, which a developer can edit for bigger changes.

The bigger difference is the back office. With Square, the website is one screen in a system that runs your register, staff and kitchen. With Shopify, the store admin is the center, and in-person selling plugs into it.

Store, blog and SEO

Selling online and in person

Both handle online and in-person sales. Shopify publishes in-person card rates on every plan, from 2.6% + 10 cents on Basic down to 2.3% + 10 cents on Plus. Its online rates fall as you move up too, to 2.7% + 30 cents on Grow ($79 a month billed yearly) and 2.5% + 30 cents on Advanced ($299 a month billed yearly). Staff accounts go from none on Basic to 5 on Grow and 15 on Advanced.

Square includes online ordering, pickup, local delivery, customer accounts, coupons and lead forms even on the free plan. It also supports bundles and subscriptions on every plan.

Restaurants

This is where Square stands out. Its online ordering offers pickup and on-demand courier delivery on all plans with no marketplace commission, though delivery providers charge their own fees. Menus sync with Square POS, and orders flow to the register and the kitchen. QR code ordering at tables, seats or parking spots needs Square Plus or Premium, and those orders print to kitchen printers or a kitchen display.

The Shopify information we work from does not cover restaurant ordering, so we cannot compare it here. See our best website builders for restaurants for more options.

Blog and SEO

Shopify includes a built-in blog and pages, plus SEO fields on every product. Square lists “website builder with SEO tools” on every plan, but its plans page does not detail blog features, sitemaps or redirects. If you plan to publish a lot of articles, Square is not the right tool. Our SEO glossary entry explains the basics both need.

AI features

Shopify’s AI is aimed at running the store. Sidekick, its AI assistant, comes with your plan, though Shopify says features and usage limits vary by plan. It helps with store design, photo editing, product copy, discounts, email campaigns, inventory alerts and reports. Updates added a fullscreen mode (December 2025), payments and site-speed data (January 2026), and the ability to create customers and companies (February 2026).

Square’s online store plans page does not list AI website features, so we cannot compare them. If AI help matters to you, ask Square what is included before you choose.

Leaving later

This is Square Online’s weakest area. It scores 2 out of 10, against Shopify’s 5.

Square Online has no whole-site export. The pages, design and code stay on Square, so you rebuild elsewhere. Your item library does export, as an Excel or CSV file, from the Square Dashboard. Square has help articles on exporting online orders and moving saved cards to another processor, but we could not read them in full, and the domain transfer process was not confirmed.

Shopify exports products, customers and orders to CSV. Product images export only as links that stop working if the store closes, so download them before you cancel. Themes download as Liquid files but only run on Shopify.

On either platform, keep your domain at an outside domain registrar so it is never tied to your plan. Our guide to leaving your website builder covers the full move.

Pick Square Online if…

• You already use Square POS and want the website to share items, orders and customers with it.
• You run a restaurant or cafe and want online ordering, pickup and delivery without marketplace commissions.
• You want to start at $0 a month and pay only card fees.
• Your online sales are modest, so the higher free-plan card rate stays small.
• You would use Square’s loyalty, staff and marketing tools on Plus or Premium anyway.

Pick Shopify if…

• Selling online is the main business, or you plan for it to be.
• You want lower online card rates as you grow, and room for a large catalog.
• You want a big app store and an AI assistant built into the admin.
• You want a better exit path: product, customer and order data all leave as CSV files.
• You prefer yearly billing; Square’s plans show monthly prices only.

Neither? Look at these

• WooCommerce on self-hosted WordPress takes no platform fee and scores 10/10 on exit, because you own the files and the database. You handle hosting and upkeep. We build on WordPress every week; see Shopify vs WooCommerce.
• Squarespace suits a polished site with a small store. Its Core plan is $29 a month billed yearly ($39 billed monthly) with a 0% store fee. See Squarespace vs Shopify.
• Wix has a free plan to try first and puts a store, bookings and marketing in one dashboard. Its exit score is 3/10. See Wix vs Shopify.

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