Square Invoices is free to send, but it takes about 3.3% + 30¢ out of every card payment, and it's built for every business, not yours. SideWRK lets you get paid fee-free to Venmo, Cash App, Zelle, or Apple Pay — plus trade-built estimates, approvals, and real profit — for a flat $24/mo.
| SideWRK | Square Invoices | |
|---|---|---|
| App cost | $24/mo (full trade toolkit) | Free (Plus is $49/mo for lower rates) |
| Card fee per invoice | Card optional — or skip it entirely | ~3.3% + $0.30 (Free); 2.9% on Plus |
| Fee-free payment options | Yes — Venmo, Cash App, Zelle, Apple Pay (no merchant account) | No — a fee on every payment |
| Built for | The trades, per trade | Any business / general POS |
| Estimates & logged approvals | Yes — name, time & amount | Basic |
| Real-profit tracking | Yes — private cost per line | No |
| Multiple trades, one login | Yes ($39/mo) | N/A |
| Free trial | 14 days | Free app |
Square pricing and fees per its public pricing pages (2026); rates vary by plan and payment method. Illustration is an example, not a quote. Square is a trademark of its owner; SideWRK is not affiliated with or endorsed by Square.
A percentage of every job, forever, adds up fast. Get paid fee-free to Venmo, Cash App, Zelle, or Apple Pay and keep the whole ticket.
Square is generic. SideWRK speaks your trade — the right thing-you're-working-on to log, the right pricing, license/permit info on invoices, real-profit math.
Estimate, get it approved with photos, invoice, and get paid — one flow, one app — instead of stitching invoicing onto a payments tool.
If most of your sales are in-person card or tap at a shop counter, Square's point-of-sale hardware and ecosystem are excellent and hard to beat for that.
Square is general-purpose by design — retail, food, services. If you need that breadth more than trade-specific depth, Square covers a lot of ground.
Your customers come with you. Export your client list from Square (any CSV or spreadsheet works — even a screenshot or a photo of a handwritten list), then in SideWRK open Customers → Import and drop it in. Names, phones, emails, addresses, and notes land clean, with a preview and dedupe before anything saves. Your history stays yours: SideWRK exports everything back out in a click, so there's no lock-in on this side either.
Your money is never held. Payments go straight to you — Venmo, Zelle, or Cash App directly, or cards on your own Stripe account where you're the merchant of record. How that works →
No caps, no per-user fees. Unlimited jobs and invoices on every plan, and the working automation — deposits on approval, e-signatures, customer-choice add-ons, automatic payment reminders, receipt scanning, review follow-ups — is included, not held two tiers up.
The price you join at is the price you keep. Features you already have never move behind a new paywall.
Square's app is free, but it takes a cut of every payment — about 3.3% + $0.30 on card payments via invoice (2.9% on the $49/month Plus plan). SideWRK is a flat $24–$89/month and lets you get paid fee-free to Venmo, Cash App, Zelle, or Apple Pay. On a few thousand dollars of card invoices a month, what Square keeps can easily exceed SideWRK's flat fee.
Yes. SideWRK lets you request payment fee-free straight to Venmo, Cash App, Zelle, or Apple Pay with no merchant account, so you keep 100% of the job. In-app card payments are available too if a customer prefers a card.
SideWRK is built for the trades: trade-specific estimates, customer approvals logged with name/time/amount, photo documentation, and real-profit tracking with a private cost per line — where Square Invoices is a generic tool used across every kind of business.
If you mostly take in-person card or tap payments at a counter and want a full point-of-sale with hardware and a broad ecosystem, Square's POS is excellent at that. SideWRK is built for mobile trade work.
Set up in minutes and send your first professional estimate today.
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