ShelfCount vs MarginEdge: $50 flat against $350 a location
MarginEdge publishes its price, which already puts it ahead of most of this category. It's $350 per location per month. We're $50 flat. That gap buys you real things, and this page is mostly about what those things are.
The price, side by side
| ShelfCount | MarginEdge | |
|---|---|---|
| Base price, one location | $50/mo flat | $350/mo per location |
| With their bar module | Not offered | $500/mo per location with Freepour |
| Annual billing | No annual option. Month to month only | 10% off, which their page says saves $420 a year, and commits you for 12 months |
| Setup fees | None | None. Their page says "we don't charge traditional setup fees"; paid onboarding packages are optional |
| Extra cost on Toast | None | Toast's own Restaurant Management Suite, $50/mo per location, which their integration needs |
| Free trial | 14 days. Card at signup, nothing charged | None published |
| How you buy it | Sign up on the site | Get a demo |
| Cancelling | Month to month, cancel in the app | No cancellation fee monthly. Annual owes the remaining balance |
MarginEdge figures from marginedge.com/pricing, checked Aug 2026. Capterra lists $330 and $480, which conflicts with MarginEdge's own page, so we use the vendor's numbers. Prices change, so check theirs before you sign.
One location, month to month, no bar module: $300 a month between us, about $3,600 a year. On Toast the gap gets wider, because MarginEdge’s integration runs on Toast’s Restaurant Management Suite, and that’s a separate $50 per location per month you pay Toast. Toast’s fee rather than MarginEdge’s, but it lands on the same P&L.
What each one actually does
| ShelfCount | MarginEdge | |
|---|---|---|
| Counting on a phone | A browser link. Nothing to install | Phone or tablet, "even in sketchy walk-in wifi" |
| Offline counting | Not yet | Not named as a spec on their site; a third-party listing calls it offline access |
| Recipes and prep recipes | Nested, and everything downstream recosts when a price moves | Recipes and menu analysis, with menu engineering off POS sales mix |
| Theoretical vs actual COGS | Yes | Yes, one of their core reports |
| Invoice processing | Photograph or forward it, we parse it, then it waits for your approval | Photos, email, uploads or EDI. Line-item data back in 24-48 hours, handwriting included |
| Bill pay | Not offered | Unlimited US bills paid, included in the base price |
| Accounting sync | Not yet. You export CSV | QuickBooks Online and Desktop, Xero, Sage Intacct, Sage 50, Restaurant365 |
| Vendor price alerts | Price changes surface in the receipt review before you approve them | Per-item thresholds that auto-email whoever you nominate |
| Waste tracking | On the one plan | Yes, and it feeds the variance report |
| Purchase orders from par levels | Yes, emailed to the vendor | Purchasing and receiving. Their own pages don't detail the PO workflow |
| POS sales sync | Square and Clover. Toast is in certification | 20 named partners including Square, Clover, Toast, Lightspeed, SpotOn. Their copy claims 50+ |
| Multi-unit rollup reporting | Not yet. Built for independents | Yes, all locations in one view |
| Team members included | Unlimited | Not published |
| Cafe and coffee-shop material | The whole point. Modifiers, milk waste, prep batches | None found: no cafe landing pages, case studies or customer logos |
MarginEdge cells come from marginedge.com, their help center and their Capterra listing, checked Aug 2026. Where their own copy stops short of a spec, the cell says so.
Where MarginEdge is ahead
MarginEdge is a back office. We’re an inventory and food-cost tool. That one sentence explains most of the table above and all of the price gap.
Their invoice pipeline is the clearest example. You send it however you like, by photo or email or upload or EDI, and line-item data comes back within 24 to 48 hours, coded to your accounts, handwriting and all. Then they pay the bill: unlimited US bill pay sits in the base price. Then it lands in QuickBooks, Xero, Sage Intacct, Sage 50 or Restaurant365 without anyone retyping it. If your bookkeeper is currently keying two hundred invoices a month, that’s what you’re buying, and it’s a fair price for it.
They also run multi-unit properly, with sales across every location in one view and order guides managed centrally. We don’t have that.
One thing their reviews flag repeatedly, on both Capterra and G2: getting recipes and unit conversions set up takes real work. Know that going in. In fairness, it’s true of us too. Any system that can cost a plate has to be taught your pack sizes first.
Where we went the other way
We built for the operator who doesn’t have an AP problem, because they don’t have that much AP. A cafe with nine vendors and forty invoices a month doesn’t need someone else in the invoice loop. It needs to know what a latte costs when milk goes up eleven cents, and it needs the count to actually get done on a Sunday night.
That’s where the price comes from. No bill pay, no accounting sync, no multi-unit rollup. Counts, recipes, purchasing, receipts, waste, and theoretical against actual. $50, everything included, as many people on the account as you like.
The other difference is how you find out whether it fits. MarginEdge starts with a demo booking. Ours is a button: the demo is the real product with a cafe’s data in it, and the trial is two minutes and a card that isn’t charged for fourteen days.
Who MarginEdge is right for
- Full-service restaurants with serious invoice volume
- Anyone who wants AP and bill pay handled, not just inventory counted
- Books in QuickBooks, Xero, Sage Intacct or Restaurant365
- Several locations that need one view across all of them
- A bar program big enough that Freepour’s smart scales pay for themselves
Who ShelfCount is right for
- A cafe or a single-site restaurant
- Bookkeeping small enough that a CSV export is fine
- Anyone for whom $350 a month is most of the software budget
- Square or Clover on the counter
- People who want to look at the thing before they talk to anyone
So which one
If handing off accounts payable is the problem, MarginEdge solves it and $350 is fair for that. If your problem is knowing your true food cost, and AP is four invoices a week you open yourself, you’d be paying $300 a month for a department you don’t have.
Questions people actually ask
- How much does MarginEdge cost?
- $350 per location per month, in their own words, when we checked their pricing page in August 2026. The Freepour bundle, which adds smart-scale liquor inventory, is $500 per location per month. Annual billing is 10% off, which their page says saves $420 a year, and commits you for twelve months. There are no setup fees. If you run Toast, add Toast's own Restaurant Management Suite at $50 per location per month, because MarginEdge's integration depends on it. Capterra shows $330 and $480 instead; MarginEdge's own page is the number we use.
- Does MarginEdge have a free trial?
- No. Every path on their site is Get a demo, and Capterra's listing says no free trial and no free version. ShelfCount's trial is 14 days: card at signup, nothing charged until it ends, cancel in one click.
- Is ShelfCount cheaper than MarginEdge?
- For one location, $50 a month against $350 is about $3,600 a year. But cheaper only means something if the thing does what you need, and a real slice of that $350 is bill pay and accounting sync, which we don't offer at all.
- Does ShelfCount do bill pay or sync to QuickBooks?
- Neither, and bill pay isn't planned. ShelfCount covers counts, recipes and prep recipes, purchasing, receipt scanning, waste and theoretical vs actual COGS. Your accountant gets a CSV export. If handing off AP is the problem you're solving, MarginEdge solves it and we don't.
- Which one is better for a coffee shop?
- I'm biased, so read the tables rather than me. What I can point at: MarginEdge's public customer logos are steakhouses, breweries and casual dining, and a search of their site turned up no cafe-specific pages or case studies. ShelfCount was built on a coffee shop, so modifier costing, milk waste and prep batches got the most attention.
Compare something else
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.
- MarginEdge pricing page — https://www.marginedge.com/pricing/ (checked Aug 2026)
- MarginEdge, how it works — https://www.marginedge.com/how-it-works (checked Aug 2026)
- MarginEdge inventory management page — https://www.marginedge.com/inventory-management (checked Aug 2026)
- MarginEdge POS integrations page — https://www.marginedge.com/pos-integration (checked Aug 2026)
- MarginEdge accounting integrations, help center — https://help.marginedge.com/hc/en-us/articles/4417522839571-Accounting-System-Integrations-Overview (checked Aug 2026)
- MarginEdge on Capterra — https://www.capterra.com/p/187718/MarginEdge/ (checked Aug 2026)
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.