Best AI for Retail Business

Lightspeed Retail: AI forecasting and purchasing inside the POS

A store POS with inventory, purchase orders, a large supplier catalogue and AI that turns supplier documents into draft orders.

By The editors · Updated · 2 min read

Contents
  1. What Lightspeed Retail does
  2. Published evidence
  3. Strengths and limits
  4. Pricing
  5. Questions to ask Lightspeed
  6. Sources
TypeRetail POS with inventory and AI
PricingPublished
Websitelightspeedhq.com

Lightspeed Retail is a point-of-sale and inventory system for stores. Its AI sits where store staff already work: in inventory, purchase orders and reporting⁠1.

Best for: Specialty stores that want POS, inventory, purchase orders and supplier catalogues in one retail system.

Not the right fit for: Retailers that want AI to write to suppliers or answer customers on their own.

What Lightspeed Retail does

Every plan includes inventory management, purchase orders and PO Sync, the NuORDER supplier catalogue with more than 5 million products, Lightspeed Wholesale, workflows, API access and Insights for forecasting and order recommendations. Basic includes basic eCommerce; Core and Plus include the full version. AI Doc Import, which creates draft purchase orders from supplier documents, is an add-on on Basic and Core and included on Plus⁠1.

Plans cost $89, $149 and $289 a month, each with one register; annual billing saves up to 18%, and extra registers and locations are priced separately. Integrated payments are listed at 1.5% for card-present transactions⁠1.

Published evidence

No case studies with named customers are published.

Strengths and limits

Strengths

  • Inventory, purchase orders and forecasting sit in the same system as the till.
  • AI Doc Import removes manual keying of supplier documents into purchase orders.
  • Published monthly prices for each plan.

Limits

  • AI Doc Import is an add-on on Basic and Core and included only on Plus.
  • Extra registers and locations cost more, and the amounts were not listed on the page we read.
  • No customer-facing AI is described on the pages we read.

Choose another option if: You want AI to handle supplier and customer mail as well as stock (OpenLazarus), or you sell mainly online on Shopify (Shopify).

Pricing

Published (USD a month): Basic $89, Core $149, Plus $289; annual billing saves up to 18%; card-present payments 1.5%.

Questions to ask Lightspeed

  • What do extra registers and locations cost for our stores?
  • How accurate have Insights' order recommendations been for stores like ours?
  • Which supplier document formats does AI Doc Import read?

See how Lightspeed compares with the other tools in the main guide.

Sources

  1. Lightspeed Retail pricing. Lightspeed. Accessed 8 Nov 2026.

Further reading