Compare restaurant inventory software
Every comparison page on the internet was written by someone with a stake in the answer, this one included. What I can do is show the work: each price and feature claim about another company links to their own page with the date I checked it, and where they beat us, the table says so.
Starting prices at a glance
| Starting price | How you buy it | |
|---|---|---|
| ShelfCount | $50/mo flat | Sign up on the site |
| MarketMan | $249/mo (Starter) | Book a demo |
| MarginEdge | $350/mo per location | Get a demo |
| WISK | $249/mo, plus a $750 one-time setup fee | Book a demo |
| Craftable | Not published | Book a demo |
| QuickStok | Free for one cafe; Pro $19/mo, $9 per extra location | Sign up on the site |
| Square Restaurant Inventory by MarketMan | $99/mo per location, on top of Square Plus ($49) or Premium ($149) | Through Square |
| A spreadsheet | $0, plus your hours | You already have it |
Vendor-published figures taken from each company's own pricing page on 2026-10-13, sourced individually on the page for each comparison. Tiers, add-ons and setup fees change the real number, and the detail is on each page below.
The comparisons
- ShelfCount vs MarketMan — About a fifth of the price. They have EDI ordering, Xero sync, and a multi-unit tier. We have QuickBooks Online and none of the rest.
- ShelfCount vs MarginEdge — $50 flat against $350 per location. That $300 also buys bill pay, which we do not offer. We sync QuickBooks Online.
- ShelfCount vs WISK — They weigh open bottles on a Bluetooth scale. If your money is leaking out of the bar, that is not something we match.
- ShelfCount vs Craftable — An enterprise hospitality suite that does not publish a price, against a one-location tool that does.
- ShelfCount vs Parly — Square only, at $79 or $149 a month. They have tasks, supplier cutoffs and a phone app that feels like one. We have purchase orders drafted from your count, invoice scanning, and Clover as well as Square.
- ShelfCount vs QuickStok — Free for one cafe, and free is sometimes the right answer. Here is where it stops: Clover, orders sent to the vendor, and a usage variance report.
- Square's own inventory vs the MarketMan add-on vs ShelfCount — What Square tracks by itself, what the MarketMan add-on for Square costs, and when neither is the right fix.
- ShelfCount vs a spreadsheet — The competitor almost everyone is actually using. Where the sheet is fine, and where it quietly stops.
How these pages are written
Four rules, which is why they took a week each rather than an afternoon.
- Every competitor claim comes from that company’s own public pages, linked at the bottom of each comparison with the month it was checked.
- Where a vendor doesn’t publish something, whether that’s contract length, seat limits or which tier a feature sits on, the cell says “not published” instead of a guess. Where two of their own pages disagree, both get shown.
- Where we lose, the table says we lose. “Not yet” means not yet, rather than a roadmap promise dressed up as a feature. Where we do part of something, the cell says which part.
- Everything gets re-checked quarterly. Prices move, and a stale comparison is just a wrong one.
I write these. I own Stella Coffee in Los Angeles and run the shop on ShelfCount every day, which is the bias you should read them with.
What ShelfCount doesn’t have
All in one place, so you can rule us out quickly if one of them is the reason you’re shopping: multi-unit rollup reporting across locations, vendor EDI ordering, Xero sync, bill pay, and scale-based bottle weighing. Toast is built and waiting on partner approval, which isn’t live, so we don’t count it. Receipt scanning is review-first on purpose: a person approves every price change, and there’s no auto-commit path however confident the parse.
Partly here: QuickBooks Online only (bills from approved receipts and a journal entry CSV), and counts that queue on the phone when the signal drops but cannot reload offline.
What is here: counts on any phone with nothing to install, price history with alerts if you turn them on, nested recipes and prep recipes that recost themselves, par-driven purchase orders, receipt and invoice scanning, waste tracking, Square and Clover sales sync, and theoretical against actual COGS. One plan at $50 a month, as many team members and storage locations as you need, month to month.
Barcode scan mode in counts, once barcodes are learned from approved receipts.
Questions people actually ask
- Which restaurant inventory software is cheapest?
- A spreadsheet is free, QuickStok is free for one cafe, and QuickStok Pro at $19 a month costs less than we do. Of the rest, ShelfCount at $50 a month flat is the lowest published price. MarketMan and WISK start at $249 a month, MarginEdge at $350 per location, and Craftable does not publish pricing at all. Watch for one-time fees on top: WISK's published implementation fee starts at $750 for a single venue.
- Which ones can I try without talking to a salesperson?
- As of 2026-10-13, ShelfCount has a self-serve trial, and so do two of the others: QuickStok is free forever for one cafe, and Square lists a 30-day free trial on its Plus and Premium plans. MarketMan, MarginEdge, WISK and Craftable all run their buying process through a booked demo, per their own sites. WISK does publish a 20-minute recorded demo you can watch without booking, and offers a 60-day money-back guarantee instead of a trial.
- What does ShelfCount not do?
- Multi-unit rollup reporting, vendor EDI ordering, Xero sync, bill pay, and scale-based bottle weighing. QuickBooks Online is covered, but nothing past it. Offline counting is partial: entries queue on the phone and save when the signal returns, but reloading the page offline does not work. Toast is built and waiting on partner approval, so we count it as not live. If one of those is the reason you are shopping, one of the other products on this page is a better buy and the comparison page will say so.
- How current are the prices on these pages?
- Every competitor figure was taken from that company's own public pages and is stamped with the date it was checked. We re-verify quarterly. Software pricing moves, so check the vendor's page before you sign anything. Email us if you spot something stale and we'll fix it.
- Which is best for a coffee shop?
- I'm obviously biased. What I can point at: MarketMan, MarginEdge, WISK and Craftable publish no cafe-specific material, meaning no coffee-shop landing pages, case studies or customer logos on the pages we checked. QuickStok's site is aimed at independent cafes, and Square's own tools cover a cafe's sales and basic stock. ShelfCount was built inside one, so modifier costing, milk waste and prep batches got the most attention. Read the tables and decide for yourself.
Sources
Every figure above about another company came from its own public pages on the date listed. Prices move; if one of these is stale, email us and we’ll fix the page.
- MarketMan pricing page — https://www.marketman.com/pricing (opens in a new window) (checked 2026-10-13)
- MarginEdge pricing page — https://www.marginedge.com/pricing/ (opens in a new window) (checked 2026-10-13)
- WISK pricing page — https://www.wisk.ai/price (opens in a new window) (checked 2026-10-13)
- Craftable pricing URL, which returns HTTP 404 — https://craftable.com/pricing (opens in a new window) (checked 2026-10-13)
- QuickStok pricing page — https://www.quickstok.ai/pricing (opens in a new window) (checked 2026-10-13)
- Square Restaurant Inventory by MarketMan, with Square plan prices — https://squareup.com/us/en/inventory-management/restaurants (opens in a new window) (checked 2026-10-13)
You don’t have to book a call to see this one. The demo is the real product with a cafe’s data already in it. Open it, poke around, close the tab.