12 Best Inventory Tracking Software for Small Business in 2026, Compared

Zoho Inventory is the best value pick for most small businesses because the free plan is genuinely usable: 50 orders a month, one user and one location, with no time limit. Paid Standard starts at $29 a month billed annually and covers 500 orders, three users and two locations, with composite items, dropshipping and backordering included. Pricing is per organization rather than per user, so adding staff does not raise the bill.

The catch is the meter. Everything is priced by monthly order volume, so a busy season can push you into Premium at $79 a month billed annually, and barcode, serial and batch tracking sit on Premium too. If your order count is steady and under 500 a month, Zoho is hard to beat; if you ship thousands of orders, price the next tier before you commit.

Square for Retail is the cheapest way to start tracking stock, because the starting price is zero. The Free plan covers sales, basic inventory and payments at Square's standard processing rate, and a small shop can run on it for a long time before needing anything else. Plus at $49 a month per location adds purchase orders, vendor management and advanced inventory counts, and Premium at $149 adds multi-location and loyalty tooling.

The lock-in is the processing. You cannot bring your own processor to Square, so the per-transaction fee is not negotiable, and card fees apply on every sale even on the Free plan. Shops that outgrow the free inventory features usually land on Plus, which at $49 per location still undercuts most dedicated inventory tools.

Sortly is the simplest visual tracker in this list, and that is the point. Every item gets a photo, a folder and a QR code, and stock counts happen by scanning with a phone instead of typing SKUs into a spreadsheet. The Advanced plan costs $49 a month and covers 500 unique items with two users, and the free plan covers 100 items for a single user.

Watch the annual price: the $24 a month figure on the yearly toggle is a first-year promotion for new customers, and yearly plans renew at a 20% discount after that, so budget against year two, not year one. Sortly is the right pick for a small team that counts stock by hand; it is the wrong pick for a seller who needs purchase orders on the cheapest plan.

Finale Inventory is built for sellers who ship volume. The Starter plan costs $63 a month billed annually and covers up to 100,000 products, with multichannel order management and warehouse support that cheaper tools do not offer. It also carries the highest G2 score in this list at 4.8 out of 5 from 41 reviews.

The trade-off is the ladder. Starter covers only two users, and the next tiers jump to $166 and $291 a month billed annually, so a growing team should price the step up before signing. There is no free plan, only a trial. Pick Finale when order volume is the problem; pick Zoho or Square when the catalogue is small and the budget is tight.

Lightspeed Retail is the inventory-first pick for stores with real stock complexity. Basic at $89 a month on annual billing covers POS, payments and core inventory with purchase orders and low-stock alerts, plus basic ecommerce. Core at $149 adds the multi-location transfers and advanced reporting that growing chains need, and Plus at $289 adds forecasting, order recommendations and API access.

The trade-off is commitment: the best price needs an annual contract, and setup takes real work compared with Square. Each plan includes one register, so a second till costs extra. Choose Lightspeed when the shop floor and the stockroom are the same problem; choose Square when a single counter and a free start matter more.

inFlow Inventory is the wholesaler pick in this list. Lite starts at $99 a month billed annually with two team members and one location, and every plan includes unlimited products, sales and purchase orders. The B2B Showroom gives each customer a private portal with their own products and prices, which is the feature that separates inFlow from the retail-first tools here.

Two costs sit outside the headline price. Core and above require a one-time $499 onboarding package, and serial and lot tracking are $39 a month add-ons below the top tier. If you sell wholesale and need customer-specific pricing, inFlow earns its price; if you sell only to consumers, the retail tools above do the same job for less.

QuickBooks Online belongs in this list for one reason: many small businesses already run their books on it, and Plus adds inventory tracking to the same login. Plus costs $140 a month and covers five users, 40 classes and locations, project profitability and budgets, alongside invoicing, bills and bank feeds. New customers get 50% off for the first three months.

Do not buy the cheapest plan by mistake. Simple Start at $38 and Essentials at $85 have no inventory tracking at all, and the user caps force the next tier fast: one user on Simple Start, three on Essentials, five on Plus. Buy QuickBooks when the books and the stockroom should share one subscription; buy a dedicated tracker when inventory is the whole job.

Fishbowl is the QuickBooks-native workhorse in this list. Essentials costs $229 a month billed annually and includes two users with unlimited locations, orders and volume, plus real-time inventory, SKU tracking, reorder points and mobile barcode scanning. The two-way QuickBooks sync posts inventory movements cleanly to the ledger, which keeps finance and ops on the same numbers.

The buying process is the catch. There is no free plan and no click-to-start trial; you talk to sales, and an implementation package is required with every purchase, priced by quote. Manufacturing features live on the separate Fishbowl Advanced platform, which starts higher. Pick Fishbowl when QuickBooks is already the system of record and the stock is complex.

Katana is the maker pick in this list. Core costs $299 a month and includes multi-level bills of materials, manufacturing orders, forecasting and real-time stock across sales channels, with QuickBooks and Xero integrations. Unlimited users and integrations come with the paid plan, and a free plan with 30 SKUs lets a small maker try the workflow before paying.

The base price is not the whole price. Lot tracking costs $249 a month extra and production routings $199, and sales-order volume and extra locations add usage charges on top. A manufacturer needing full traceability should budget around $498 a month before usage fees. Pick Katana when you build what you sell; pick a reseller tool when you only buy and resell finished goods.

Unleashed is the Xero sidekick in this list: it runs beside your accounting software rather than replacing it. Lite starts at $99 a month on the US page with three users, 100 sales orders a month and batch and serial tracking, and Core at $399 adds the production module and more. Multi-warehouse tracking and deep Xero and QuickBooks Online integrations come standard.

Count the whole stack before you compare prices. Unleashed needs a separate Xero or QuickBooks subscription, and order-volume upgrades run from $70 to $490 a month once you pass 100 orders. Pick Unleashed when batch and serial tracking beside Xero matter; pick Zoho when one subscription should cover both stock and books.

Cin7 Core is the most complete system in this list for a growing multichannel seller. Standard costs $349 a month and covers 6,000 sale orders a year with five users, two integrations and unlimited inventory locations, plus built-in purchasing, production, CRM and accounting modules. More than 700 integrations connect it to Shopify, Amazon and other sales channels.

The price is the first thing a small team runs into. At $349 a month with no free plan, Cin7 only makes sense once order volume justifies it, and forecasting and POS are paid add-ons on top. Older directories still show Advanced at $999 a month; the vendor's own pages now list it at $1,199. Pick Cin7 when several channels and a warehouse outgrow the cheaper tools.

Ordoro sits in the gap between label printers and full inventory systems. Its Pro plan costs $499 a month and bundles inventory management, kitting, purchase orders and multi-warehouse tracking with discounted USPS rates and batch label printing. Automation rules and shipping presets cut the manual work out of fulfilling hundreds of orders a month.

Read the plan names carefully before you buy. Express at $59 a month is shipping only, with no inventory management, and dropshipping automation is a separate $299 a month module. A seller who needs shipping plus inventory plus dropshipping pays for three products. Pick Ordoro when labels and stock leave from the same desk every day.