Shopify POS in 2026: Included Features vs POS Pro, Rates and Hardware

Shopify POS is the point-of-sale app that lets you sell in a shop, at a market or at a pop-up using the same products, inventory, customers and orders as your online store. Every paid Shopify plan includes a set of in-person selling features at no extra cost. If you run a permanent retail location with staff, you can add Shopify POS Pro to that location for $89 USD per month, billed yearly, as of October 2026.

You may still see "POS Lite" in older articles. Shopify no longer uses that name publicly. Its pricing page now calls the free tier "casual in-person selling, included in every plan," and the Help Center describes it as the in-person selling features included with all paid plans.

The real cost of Shopify POS has three parts: your Shopify plan, your in-person card processing rate, and POS Pro for any location that needs it. Hardware is a one-time cost on top. This guide explains each part, what POS Pro actually adds, which devices work, and who each setup suits.

For more on running a Shopify business end to end, see our Shopify resource hub.

What Shopify POS is and how it syncs with your store

Shopify POS is an app, not a separate system. According to Shopify's Help Center, it "syncs with Shopify to track your orders and inventory across your retail locations, online store, and other active sales channels." That shared back office is the main reason merchants choose it: a sale in your shop reduces the same inventory count your website uses, and an online customer's profile is available at the counter.

You manage products in the Shopify admin and decide whether each one is available online, in store or both. Your store is required even if you only sell in person, because it is where customers, inventory and account settings live. Shopify's POS pricing page says the centralized back office supports more than 1,000 locations.

Included features vs POS Pro

The table below summarizes Shopify's POS feature comparison. It is not every row, but it covers the differences that usually decide whether a location needs Pro.

Shopify's own guidance is simple: it recommends POS Pro for locations with a lot of foot traffic, multiple levels of staff or a large catalog. A weekend market stall rarely needs it. A store with three employees, returns from online orders and stock transfers between locations usually does.

What Shopify POS costs

As of October 2026, the US pricing breaks down like this (monthly billing for plans; POS Pro as published by Shopify):

Shopify's POS pricing page states that POS Pro "is an additional $89 USD/month billed yearly for each location." Merchants on Basic, Grow and Advanced can choose monthly or yearly billing for POS Pro, but Shopify doesn't publish a separate monthly-billing figure on that page, so check the price in your admin before you commit. Outside the US, the published POS Pro prices are £69 per location in the UK, $119 CAD in Canada and $129 AUD in Australia.

A few billing rules are worth knowing before you add Pro:

• POS Pro is set per location, so you can run Pro at a flagship and the included features at a pop-up.
• All POS Pro locations must use the same billing schedule. Plus stores can only use a 30-day cycle.
• Refunds are available within 7 days of a monthly billing date or 30 days of an annual billing date, if you downgrade the location.
• You can't move a Pro subscription between locations yourself without being billed twice; Shopify Support handles transfers.
• New locations added after the trial default to the included features until you upgrade them.

To compare in-person rates with online rates and third-party processor fees, see our guide to Shopify Payments.

Hardware and supported devices

The minimum setup is a supported phone or tablet, the Shopify POS app and a card reader. On supported phones, Tap to Pay can replace the reader entirely for mobile selling. For a counter, Shopify sells card readers, the POS Terminal, the POS Go handheld, barcode scanners, receipt printers, cash drawers and stands, and its POS Hub connects peripherals to a tablet over USB. Hardware availability and prices vary by country, so check the Shopify Hardware Store for your region.

According to Shopify's POS FAQ, the app works on:

• iPad (5th generation or later), iPad Air (2nd generation or later), iPad mini (4th generation or later) and all iPad Pro models on iPadOS 15.1 or higher.
• iPhone 7 or later on iOS 15.1 or higher.
• Android phones and tablets on Android 10 or higher with Google Play Services.
• POS Go with current Shopify software.

Plan ahead for a change: Shopify says that in 2027 Android devices must run Android 13 or higher and iPhones and iPads iOS 18 or higher, and devices on older systems must be updated by 6 June 2027 to keep using the app. Shopify POS doesn't run on laptops, desktop computers or Amazon Fire tablets. Integrated payment hardware with Shopify Payments is available in the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and a list of European countries.

Staff, permissions and accountability

Each staff member signs in with a four-digit PIN, and their name is attached to every order they ring up. That gives you a basic audit trail on any plan. How many staff can log in depends on your plan: Shopify's POS pricing cards show "limited staff" on Basic and unlimited POS logins on Grow, Advanced and Plus.

POS Pro is where staff management becomes a real tool. It adds unlimited POS-only staff, retail roles and permissions (so a part-time associate can't issue refunds without a manager), and the ability to attribute a sale to a staff member for commission tracking.

Omnichannel features that matter in practice

The biggest operational wins come from treating online and in-store as one business:

• Buy online, pick up in store and ship to home from the counter (POS Pro). If an item is out of stock in the shop, staff can sell it and ship it from another location.
• Returns and exchanges: included features cover refunds at the original purchase location; POS Pro adds exchanges and returns at any location.
• Shared customer profiles, so online purchase history is visible in store, with richer profiles and lifetime value on Pro.
• Shop Pay Installments in person, available for retail locations in the United States.
• Retail markets, which let different locations carry different products or prices; customizing their catalogs requires POS Pro or Plus.

Shopify ships POS updates through its Editions, and Spring '26 (June 2026) introduced POS 11. Each app version is supported for about 180 days, so leave automatic updates on or schedule them outside business hours.

If you run many locations or complex stock flows, our article on multi-location Shopify apps covers when custom tooling makes sense.

Who each setup fits

• Online-first brand doing occasional markets or pop-ups: the included features on Basic or Grow, a phone with Tap to Pay or a small card reader, and no POS Pro.
• Single permanent shop with staff: Grow or Advanced plus one POS Pro location, a countertop kit, and staff roles turned on.
• Several stores: POS Pro on each permanent location, with inventory transfers and pickup in store. At 20 or more locations, compare the cost with Plus, which includes 20 POS Pro locations. Our Shopify Plus guide covers that math.

Note that the old Retail plan, which bundled one POS Pro location with limited online tools, is no longer available to new stores.

Conclusion

Shopify POS is strongest when you already sell online on Shopify and want one inventory, one customer list and one set of reports. Start with the in-person features your plan includes, and add POS Pro only to locations that need exchanges, pickups, transfers or staff permissions. If you are building a store that has to work as well at the counter as it does online, our Shopify website design team builds for both.

Frequently asked questions