Head to head
BigCommerce vs Square Online
Both platforms are scored with the same methodology and the same category rubric. Nothing on this page is influenced by advertising.
56/100 | 66/100Higher score | |
|---|---|---|
| Category rank | #3 | #1 |
| Confidence | High confidence | High confidence |
| External Reputation | 80 | 77 |
| AI Authority | 50 | 40 |
| Web Authority | 21 | 86 |
| Expert Assessment | 65 | 63 |
| TOP10 User Score | — | — |
| Pricing | Core $39/mo monthly or $29/mo billed annually · free tier: Free trial offered on the vendor pricing page; length not stated on the vendor page (a third-party source says 15 days, unconfirmed). No permanent free plan. | Not published — Square Plus is paid per active location; exact per-location dollar figure not confirmed on the vendor plans page · free tier: Square Free — no monthly subscription cost; you only pay processing fees when you take a payment, with all POS modes and Square Banking included |
| Pricing model | Subscription with GMV caps plus percentage payment fee | Freemium |
| Best for | Multi-channel merchants doing roughly $150K–$2M a year who want a feature-complete hosted platform without stacking paid apps, and who can route all payments through one of the 21 Embedded Payment Providers so the Open Payment Provider Fee is genuinely zero. | Single-location or few-location retail, food and service sellers who already use or want Square in person, need one catalogue and one payout account, and want to launch a store at zero subscription risk. |
| Avoid if | You are committed to a payment processor outside the Embedded list (a Core merchant then pays 2.0% of GMV to BigCommerce on top of processing), you are very early-stage or thin-margin, your tax/shipping/marketplace volume inflates GMV against real revenue, your sales are volatile or declining (downgrades are gated by trailing-12-month GMV), or you need customer-specific B2B price lists without an enterprise budget. | You run many locations (per-location billing multiplies the cost of one website), you need deep template and brand control for a design-led DTC store, you take heavy international card volume, or you want payments decoupled from your site platform. |
| Markets | SMB, Mid-market, Enterprise, B2B, Agencies, Multi-channel retail | SMB, Retail, Food & Beverage, Services |
| Founded | — | — |
| Headquarters | Austin, Texas, United States (per BBB profile for BigCommerce, Inc.) | — |
A higher TOP SCORE means more of the evidence favours that platform on this methodology — it is not a recommendation, and it does not account for your specific requirements. Advertisers are never declared the winner of a comparison.