inFlow Inventory vs Fishbowl: prices, plans and which fits a small stock team

inFlow Inventory vs Fishbowl entry prices

inFlow Inventory is the cheaper starting point: its Lite plan is $99 a month billed annually, or $129 month to month, for two team members and one location. Fishbowl Inventory's Essentials plan is $229 a month billed annually and also includes two users. Both figures are in US dollars as read on 3 October 2026 on each vendor's pricing page. Fishbowl's page shows annual-billing prices only, so no month-to-month Fishbowl figure is quoted here.

Fishbowl sells two separate lines. Fishbowl Inventory is cloud software for finished goods, at $229 for Essentials, $429 for Growth with five users and $729 for Scale with ten. Fishbowl Advanced is the manufacturing and warehouse platform, with published starting prices of $595 a month for Advanced Warehouse and $675 for Advanced Manufacturing, both confirmed by quote.

Side by side on nine criteria

What inFlow does that Fishbowl's pricing page does not offer

inFlow lets you start without talking to sales. The trial is self-serve, the monthly price is published and Lite does not require an onboarding purchase. Every inFlow Inventory plan also includes unlimited products, sales orders, purchase orders and integrations. Fishbowl's plan table lists standard ecommerce integrations as one or two included, or $50 a month, depending on plan.

inFlow also keeps manufacturing affordable for light assembly. inFlow Manufacturing adds manufacture orders, bills of materials and labor tracking from $169 a month billed annually, well under Fishbowl Advanced Manufacturing's $675 starting point.

What Fishbowl does that inFlow does not list

Fishbowl Advanced Manufacturing lists MRP and production scheduling. inFlow's official feature list covers manufacture orders, bills of materials, assembly operations and cost tracking, but does not list material requirements planning.

Fishbowl Advanced also offers self-managed deployment for teams that want control of their own infrastructure, and deep QuickBooks Desktop integration. inFlow is cloud-hosted and its accounting connections are QuickBooks Online, Intuit Enterprise Suite and Xero. If your books are in QuickBooks Desktop and must stay there, that alone decides it for Fishbowl Advanced.

Who should choose inFlow and who should choose Fishbowl

• Choose inFlow Inventory if you are a wholesaler, distributor or ecommerce seller with two to twenty staff, you buy and resell finished goods, and you want to test the software yourself before paying.
• Choose inFlow Manufacturing if you assemble kits or simple products and do not need scheduling.
• Choose Fishbowl Inventory Scale if you are in a regulated category and want lot traceability, audit trails and compliance documents in one plan.
• Choose Fishbowl Advanced if you need MRP, QuickBooks Desktop or self-managed hosting.

For other options in the same range, see the inFlow Inventory alternatives and the Katana comparison for manufacturers.

What switching between Fishbowl and inFlow involves

Moving to inFlow is a spreadsheet job. inFlow's getting started guide imports products, costs and stock levels from CSV files, and the help center has separate imports for customers, vendors and orders. Export those lists from Fishbowl, clean the SKUs, and import them in that order.

Moving to Fishbowl goes through its implementation team. Fishbowl's pricing page says the required package includes data migration but not history, plus training that runs six to eight weeks. In both directions, plan a stock count at the cutover date and decide which system owns open orders. The migration cutover plan lays out the steps. Prices were read on 3 October 2026 and can change.