What is the best inventory software for a small business in 2026?

Zoho Inventory has a free plan a real business can run on, and it's the only app here whose first paid tier includes three users. Free covers 50 orders a month, one user and one location. Standard costs $29 a month billed yearly for 500 orders, three users and two locations. That's $348 a year for a team of three.

Watch the order counter, not the seat count. A store that jumps from 40 to 60 orders in December leaves the free plan. Extra orders, users and locations are sold as add-ons, and the next tiers are $79, $129 and $249 a month.

The complaints worth knowing: store sync can break on products with variants (size, color) when stock-tracking settings differ between variants. One WooCommerce merchant describes months of failed product syncs and a support team asking for the same checks again. Positive reviews, on the other hand, praise the marketplace sync.

Tip: during the trial, connect your store and import your five best-selling products with variants. If their stock comes through right, the rest will.

If you sell over the counter, the cheapest inventory software may be the one inside your register. Square's free plan includes your item catalog, low-stock alerts, inventory reports and spreadsheet export. Each sale takes the item out of stock on its own.

Plus costs $49 a month per location and adds what a growing shop asks for next: barcode labels, unit costs, cost of goods sold reports, transfers between locations, purchase orders and vendor lists. Premium sits at $149 a month per location. With one shop, Plus is $588 a year, and the price is per location, not per user, so a team of three pays the same.

The limit is depth. Square scores 3.5 on inventory features, second lowest here after Sortly: it's built to sell, then to count. If you also sell online on another platform, or keep stock in a warehouse, a dedicated app does more.

Tip: stay on Free until you need purchase orders. That's usually the feature that makes Plus worth it.

Sortly is the easiest app in the ranking, and that's its top score. You snap a photo of an item, drop it in a folder (a shelf, a van, a storage unit) and scan its barcode with your phone. For a contractor's materials or a team's equipment, you're up and running in an hour.

The pricing needs a careful read. Free stops at 100 items and one user. Advanced lists at $49 a month for 500 items and two users, but costs $288 for the first year thanks to a 50% discount. That discount applies to the first year only, for new customers. After that you drop to 20% off on yearly billing, about $470 a year. For three users you need Ultra (2,000 items, 5 users): $888 the first year, then about $1,430. The 14-day trial asks for your card and rolls into a paid plan on its own.

A former spreadsheet user sums up the limit: no units of measure, no physical count module, useful for very few items. Sortly doesn't handle sales orders or invoices.

Tip: put your trial end date and your first renewal date in your calendar the day you sign up.

Odoo has the deepest inventory features in the ranking. Its "one app free" plan gives you the Inventory app alone, hosted by Odoo, with unlimited users. For a team that only needs to know what's on the shelves and in the back, that's $0.

The catch comes with the second app. Add Sales, Purchase or Invoicing and the whole account moves to paid, per user: Standard at $31.10 a month in year one ($38.90 list). For three users, that's $1,119.60 for the first year. The discount covers only the users on your first order, and setup help is sold separately. Adding a customization tool or a second company moves you to Custom, at $61.

Small teams who leave negative reviews describe the same things: a complex system, a slow learning curve and sometimes code to write. Paid support is called expensive.

Tip: decide on day one whether you'll invoice in Odoo. If yes, budget for Standard from the start.

Katana is the only app here built for manufacturing. It tracks raw materials, bills of materials (the recipe of each finished product) and production orders. Sell a candle and it knows how much wax and how many jars you have left.

The free plan is generous on access and tight on catalog: 30 SKUs, unlimited users and locations, no card. For the first 15 days SKUs are unlimited, so you can import everything. The only sales integration on Free is Shopify. Beyond that, Advantage is quote-only on an annual contract, so you can't know your cost upfront.

For a small brand with a handful of products and a Shopify store, it's a strong start. For a shop that resells without making anything, it's overkill.

Tip: count raw materials in your 30 SKUs, not just finished goods. A range of 8 products can need more than 30.

inFlow is the most complete paid app that still fits under about $100 a month. Lite costs $99 a month billed yearly, or $1,188 a year, and $129 if you pay monthly. It includes 2 team members and 1 location; a third member adds $29 a month, so a team of three pays $1,536 a year billed yearly.

Lite is limited to one location. That's fine for a single shop or stockroom; with a second warehouse you jump to Core at $3,588 a year, which is out of a small business budget. Serial numbers, API access and extra integrations are paid add-ons too.

What you get for the price: solid purchasing, sales orders and reports, and support that scores well with users. It's the app to move to when Zoho's free plan or Sortly's item cap starts to pinch.

Tip: list the add-ons you actually need before checkout, since each one adds to the monthly bill.