Of everything in this comparison series, WooCommerce POS — the plugin at wcpos.com, sometimes called WCPOS after its author — is the product closest to OpenPOS in philosophy. Both are self-hosted. Both refuse a vendor cloud. Both take no cut of your transactions and charge nothing per register. It is GPL, it has a genuinely free forever tier, and its author ships updates constantly.
If you want a free, honest, self-hosted WooCommerce register and your needs are simple, install it. This article is about the three places where the two products diverge, and one of them is bigger than it looks.
1. Offline means different things
WooCommerce POS caches products on the device, so you can search the catalogue without a connection. Its own documentation is careful about the rest: “Search products and customers without internet (orders require connectivity).”
That is the important sentence. Browsing offline is not selling offline. If the line drops mid-queue, you can look up a price but you cannot complete the sale.
OpenPOS completes the sale. The order is written to the device, the receipt prints on a local printer, the drawer opens, and the order sits in a queue until the connection returns, at which point it becomes an ordinary WooCommerce order. It cannot capture a card payment offline — no self-hosted POS can, because the processor is on the internet — but cash trading continues. For a shop with unreliable internet, this is not a feature comparison, it is the whole decision.
2. Restaurants
WooCommerce POS is a retail register. It has no tables, no floor plan, no kitchen display screen, and does not claim to.
OpenPOS includes restaurant and café mode in the same licence: a floor plan you draw, an open bill per table, table merge and transfer, kitchen tickets, a kitchen display screen, and QR ordering from the table. If you sell coffee across a counter, this is irrelevant. If you have tables, it is the only thing that matters.
3. Hardware and payment breadth
| WooCommerce POS (wcpos) | OpenPOS | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free forever; Pro $129/yr or $399 lifetime | One-time purchase, per site |
| Licence | GPL, open source | Commercial, self-hosted |
| Offline | Search offline; orders need connectivity | Full offline order queue |
| Card terminals | Stripe Terminal, SumUp (Pro) | Stripe Terminal, Square, Authorize.net, BlockChyp, Clearent, Vipps, LayBuy |
| Apps | Browser, native desktop, iOS/Android in beta | Progressive Web App on every platform |
| Restaurant | No | Yes, included |
| Multi-outlet stock | Connect multiple stores; per-warehouse stock not evidenced | Outlets and warehouses with transfers |
| Scales, decimal stock, label printing | Not evidenced | Yes |
Where WooCommerce POS is genuinely better
- It is free, and it is GPL. Not a capped trial — a working register at no cost, with source you can read and modify. That is a real answer to “what if the author disappears”.
- Native desktop apps for Windows, macOS and Linux, plus native mobile builds in beta. A packaged desktop app reaches hardware more easily than any browser.
- A published lifetime price. $399 for Pro, forever. Clear, and cheaper than most subscriptions inside two years.
- Momentum. Frequent releases and the largest active install base of the self-hosted WooCommerce registers.
Where OpenPOS is better
- You can finish a sale with the internet down.
- Restaurant mode — tables, kitchen screens, QR ordering — in the same purchase.
- More card terminals, so you are likelier to keep the acquirer you already have.
- Grocery and deli hardware: digital scales, decimal quantities, barcode label printing, cloud printing via Star CloudPRNT and PrintNode, customer pole displays.
- Multi-outlet and warehouse stock with transfers, adjustments and a live overview.
- Staff sessions tracked by cashier, outlet and IP, with remote log-off that does not destroy an open cart.
Which should you choose?
Choose WooCommerce POS if your budget is zero and you want something honest; if open source matters to you on principle; if you want a native desktop app; if your internet is reliable and your shop is a straightforward retail counter.
Choose OpenPOS if trading through an outage is a requirement rather than a nice-to-have; if you have tables and a kitchen; if you weigh produce, print labels, or move stock between outlets; if your card terminal is not a Stripe or a SumUp.
Both of us are on the same side of the argument that matters — your sales data belongs in your own database, and nobody should take a percentage of a sale you made in your own shop. There is a free OpenPOS Lite on WordPress.org too, but it runs through the OpenPOS cloud, so if a free self-hosted register is specifically what you want, WooCommerce POS is the one to install first. If it does what you need, you have saved money and we have lost nothing worth having.
Frequently asked questions
Can I run both to compare?
On a staging copy, yes, and you should. Ring up ten sales on each, then unplug the router and see which one lets you finish the eleventh.
Do both write real WooCommerce orders?
Yes. Neither invents a parallel order type, so your reporting, accounting and export plugins see in-store sales with no special integration.
What happens when a WooCommerce POS Pro licence lapses?
Its terms describe a year of updates and support, and the plugin is GPL, which strongly implies the register keeps running. It is not stated explicitly — ask before relying on it. OpenPOS states it plainly: the register keeps running, only support renews.
Is OpenPOS open source?
It is a commercial plugin with documented, extendable code and add-ons, but it is not distributed as a free open-source project. If that is a dealbreaker for you, it is a fair one.
WooCommerce POS pricing, offline behaviour and platform support above were read from wcpos.com, docs.wcpos.com and its wordpress.org listing in July 2026, USD listings. Both products ship often — verify current capabilities before deciding.
Test the offline claim yourself: open the live demo (admin / admin123), turn off Wi-Fi, and complete a sale. OpenPOS is a one-time purchase with lifetime updates.