The best AI tools for retail are Power BI for sales analysis, Zendesk and Tidio for customer service, Inventory Planner and Nextail for stock, and Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT or Claude for everyday work. I compare them with data from their official sites. To help your team apply them with judgment, see the Founderz AI program.
Reviewed in October 2026.
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What you’ll take from this
This guide helps you pick a tool for the problem in your retail business: stock, customer service or sales analysis.
- A comparison of 15 tools with free plan, starting price and availability.
- Which tool fits each task, from demand forecasting to the order-status chatbot.
- A score from 1 to 25 based on official documentation and the plans checked.
- A checklist for privacy and data protection, and four steps to bring AI into your operations.
- Three prompts to start today and answers to the most searched questions.
The best AI tools for retail: comparison
This table brings together specialist software for stock, customer service and pricing, general assistants and the tools we teach at Founderz. Data is from each official site in October 2026.
Our rating: how they score
Best for retailers
Tidio
Chatbot for online stores, Shopify integration
Best general assistant
Microsoft Copilot
Excel, Outlook, Teams and Word work
Best free option
Gemini
Google Workspace and quick queries
How to read this rating
- These tools are very different, so we score within each category: software built for retailers does not compete with a general assistant.
- Fit counts double: a tool built for your sector scores 5; a general assistant that does the job well with good prompts scores 3.
- General assistants (Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini) share the same fit score because they do the same kind of job; ease, price, availability and privacy set them apart, and we score privacy for professional use with client data. Ties are broken on privacy.
- Best if you use shows whether a tool works best inside Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace. Copilot and Gemini are not marked down for it, but they are only the best choice if you already work there.
- Scores are based on official information checked on October 25, 2026. This is not a lab test: it is our rating against fixed criteria, and we keep the reason behind every score.
| Software for retailers | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tool | Fit (×2) | Ease | Value | US availability | Privacy | Total /30 |
| 🏆 TidioBest if you use: Any setup | 4 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 2 | |
| PrisyncBest if you use: Any setup | 4 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 2 | |
| NetstockBest if you use: Its own platform | 4 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 4 | |
| Inventory PlannerBest if you use: Its own platform | 5 | 4 | 1 | 3 | 2 | |
| NextailBest if you use: Its own platform | 5 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 2 | |
| RELEXBest if you use: Its own platform | 5 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 2 | |
| LokadBest if you use: Its own platform | 4 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 2 | |
| General AI assistants | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tool | Fit (×2) | Ease | Value | US availability | Privacy | Total /30 |
| 🏆 Microsoft CopilotBest if you use: Microsoft 365 | 3 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 5 | |
| GeminiBest if you use: Google Workspace | 3 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 4 | |
| ChatGPTBest if you use: Any setup | 3 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 3 | |
| ClaudeBest if you use: Any setup | 3 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 3 | |
| Automation | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tool | Fit (×2) | Ease | Value | US availability | Privacy | Total /30 |
| 🏆 Power AutomateBest if you use: Microsoft 365 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 4 | |
| Copilot StudioBest if you use: Microsoft 365 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 5 | 4 | |
| Productivity and documents | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tool | Fit (×2) | Ease | Value | US availability | Privacy | Total /30 |
| Power BIBest if you use: Microsoft 365 | 4 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 3 | |
| Other tools | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tool | Fit (×2) | Ease | Value | US availability | Privacy | Total /30 |
| ZendeskBest if you use: Any setup | 3 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 3 | |
How we score: 1 to 5 on each criterion against a fixed scale (fit ×2, total out of 30), from official documentation, plans and prices checked on the date shown. We compare within each category. This is not a lab test.
Each tool in the comparison gets 1 to 5 on five criteria; the total is out of 30.
My pick: Microsoft Copilot for everyday work, because of enterprise data protection and because it lives in Excel and Outlook, and Power BI to see sales. For stock, RELEX or Nextail if you are a chain and Inventory Planner if you sell online; they fit best there, although their price is not public.
Pricing, plans and availability
| Tool | Best for | Free plan | Starting price | US availability |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft Copilot | Excel, Outlook, Teams and Word for the operations and purchasing team | Copilot Chat free with a work account | €21.84/user/month excl. VAT (monthly) | Yes |
| Power BI | Dashboards for sales, margin and stock from your data | Yes, free account | €12.10/user/month excl. VAT (Pro, annual) | Yes |
| ChatGPT | Product listings, emails, spreadsheet analysis and drafts | Yes | $20/month (Plus) | Yes |
| Claude | Long report analysis and careful writing | Yes | $17/month (Pro, annual) or $20 monthly | Yes |
| Gemini | Google Workspace and quick queries | Yes | €21.99/month (Google AI Pro) | Yes |
| Zendesk | AI agents and customer service across web, email and messaging | 14-day trial | €19/agent/month (Support Team, annual) | Yes, zendesk.es |
| Power Automate | Automating stockout alerts, orders and flows between apps | 30-day trial | €13/user/month, annual, excl. VAT | Yes |
| Tidio | Chatbot and customer service for online stores, with Shopify integration | Yes: 50 conversations | $24.17/month (Starter) | Multilanguage; Spanish not detailed |
| Inventory Planner | Forecasting and purchase orders for online and omnichannel stores on Shopify, Amazon or WooCommerce | No; demo | pricing on request | Not confirmed |
| Netstock | Inventory planning on top of your ERP (NetSuite, Sage, SAP Business One and more) | No; demo | From $900/month, annual | Not confirmed |
| Prisync | Competitor price tracking | 14-day trial | From 99 per month (currency not stated) | Not confirmed |
| Copilot Studio | Your own service agent over your catalog and policies | Trial via a free Azure account | €173.30/month per 25,000 credits | Yes |
| RELEX | Demand forecasting and automatic replenishment for chains | No; demo | pricing on request | Site in Spanish; software languages, see site |
| Nextail | Replenishment, allocation and inventory rebalancing across fashion stores | No; contact | pricing on request | Not confirmed |
| Lokad | Store-level demand forecasting, stock allocation and ordering for store networks | No; demo | pricing on request | Site in Spanish and English |
Data checked on October 25, 2026 on each tool’s official website. Prices, plans and terms change often: always check the current details on the provider’s site before you buy.
No affiliates, no sponsorships. Founderz receives no affiliate commission or payment from any of these tools for being listed here. We wrote this guide to give you a genuinely useful resource to help you choose what best fits your needs.
Free plans have usage limits and prices change often; always check the official site.
What they are and who they are for
AI tools for retail are software and algorithms that apply artificial intelligence to stock management, customer service and sales analysis. They analyze large amounts of data (sales history, customer behavior, seasonality) and return predictions or actions a team would take hours to calculate by hand. Almost all of them rely on machine learning: models that learn from history and improve with each new data point.
They are built for several retail profiles:
- Store and operations managers, who adjust replenishment and shifts to demand.
- E-commerce teams, who personalize the experience and automate customer service.
- Purchasing and supply chain, who optimize inventory and logistics.
- Retail marketing, who create product content and campaigns with generative AI.
A physical store with frequent stockouts will start with inventory; an e-commerce business swamped with questions, with chatbots. Each retailer can start where its most urgent problem is.
AI use cases in retail
AI in the retail sector comes down to five use cases that deliver measurable results first. In all of them, the technology proposes and the team decides, with context only people inside the business have.
- Stock and inventory management with predictive demand analysis by store and point of sale.
- Customer service with chatbots and virtual assistants that improve customer satisfaction.
- Content creation for products and marketing campaigns with generative AI.
- Sales and pricing analysis to optimize margin and promotions.
- Personalization of the shopping experience, with product recommendations based on history and the CRM.
Some chains add image recognition to monitor shelves and AI agents that run tasks on their own, although that is already a bigger project. Across the whole supply chain, from supplier to store, a good forecast feeds purchasing decisions. In the guide to optimizing inventory with AI I go step by step.
Stock: forecasting and replenishment
AI predicts demand more accurately than a manual average because it combines sales history with seasonality, promotions and external signals such as weather. An example: the downtown store sells more convenience products on weekdays while a residential-area store spikes on big weekend baskets; the same algorithm produces two different replenishment plans. That cuts stockouts and overstock at the same time.
RELEX
RELEX brings demand, supply, pricing and promotion signals into a single model and automates replenishment, according to its site. Task: generating the daily order proposal by store and product. Limits: it is a chain-scale project that needs rollout and clean data; the site is in 13 languages but does not confirm the software’s. Cost: pricing on request; demo.
Lokad
Lokad offers a solution for store networks that forecasts demand swings by store, guides allocations and times orders. Its site is available in Spanish. Task: deciding how much to ship from the warehouse to each store this week. Limits: its approach relies on custom programming and data work, with a steep learning curve. Cost: no published prices; a demo is required.
Nextail
Nextail is an AI merchandise execution platform for fashion, footwear, jewelry, outdoor and luxury. It covers allocation and replenishment, inventory analytics, store operations and rebalancing between stores; its customers include the Spanish brand Merkal. Task: moving units from an overstocked store to one running out of sizes. Limits: built for fashion; the site does not list languages. Cost: no published prices; you contact sales.
Inventory Planner
Inventory Planner connects with Shopify, Amazon, WooCommerce, eBay, BigCommerce and systems such as Brightpearl, Cin7, QuickBooks or NetSuite. Its site says pricing depends on inventory volume and includes unlimited users. Task: turning the forecast into purchase orders to suppliers. Limits: the site does not detail languages or security. Cost: pricing on request; 30-minute demo.
Netstock
Netstock plans inventory on top of your ERP and says it integrates with more than 60 systems; both of its products are ISO 27001 certified. Task: flagging items with excess or stockout risk before you place the order. Limits: I could not confirm the product language; the site is in English and German. Cost: from $900/month on an annual subscription.
Tip
Before booking demos, export 12 to 24 months of sales by product and store from your system and check that no codes or dates are missing. The quality of that file shapes the result more than the software brand.
Customer service: chatbots and assistants
In retail, many questions are predictable: where is my order, how do I return an item, do you have this size, how long does shipping take. A chatbot trained on your catalog and policies answers them in seconds, on the web, on WhatsApp or in the app. The team keeps the complex issues, complaints and highest-value customers.
Zendesk
Zendesk offers AI agents that, according to its site, resolve full inquiries across channels; it has a Spanish-language site and a 14-day free trial. Task: answering order status and returns by connecting the shipping system. Limits: the included AI capabilities vary by plan. Cost: from €19/agent/month billed annually (€25 monthly).
Tidio
Tidio combines live chat and an AI assistant (Lyro) and has a Shopify app; native Shopify actions start with the Growth plan. Task: answering size and shipping questions in a small online store. Limits: the site says “multilanguage” but does not detail Spanish, and its pricing page does not mention GDPR. Cost: free plan (50 billable conversations, 50 Lyro conversations lifetime) and Starter from $24.17/month.
Copilot Studio
Copilot Studio lets you build your own agent over your documents and connect it to other apps; it is one of the tools we teach at Founderz. Task: an agent that answers about the returns policy and checks an order status. Limits: it needs setup and good judgment about the data it connects. Cost: €173.30/month per 25,000 credits; trial via a free Azure account.
Sales: analysis and pricing
AI for sales works on concrete questions: which products sell together, which price maximizes margin without slowing sales, which promotion worked and which gave up margin for nothing. With real-time or near real-time data, it lets you adjust more often than is feasible by hand; AI proposes and the team approves with the business context.
Power BI
Power BI turns your sales, margin and stock data into dashboards, and combines with Copilot and Power Platform, which we teach at Founderz. Task: a sales dashboard by store and category with a low-turnover product alert. Limits: you need tidy data and someone to model the report; sharing requires Pro. Cost: free account; Pro €12.10/user/month excl. VAT billed annually.
Prisync
Prisync tracks competitor prices on the sites you specify, with plans by number of products and a 14-day trial without a card. Task: knowing daily whether your 100 key SKUs are above or below the market. Limits: the site does not state currency or languages; you decide the final price. Cost: from 99 per month (100 products).
Power Automate
Power Automate automates flows between apps and is also part of Power Platform. Task: sending purchasing an alert when a product’s stock falls below a minimum. Limits: you must design the flow and test it with real data. Cost: €13/user/month excl. VAT billed annually; 30-day trial.
Everyday work: AI assistants
Generative AI creates drafts of listings, campaign copy and message variations. A large catalog is a bottleneck: AI produces the first draft from product attributes and also personalizes emails from purchase history or CRM data. But it can invent data or get a price wrong: AI drafts, a person validates.
Microsoft Copilot
Microsoft Copilot works inside Excel, Outlook, Teams and Word, and is one of the tools we teach. Task: asking it to summarize the weekly sales sheet by store and draft the email to the team with the three stores under target. Limits: it needs a Microsoft 365 license and tidy data. Cost: Copilot Chat free with a work account; €21.84/user/month excl. VAT on monthly billing.
ChatGPT
ChatGPT works for product listings, template service replies and analyzing a spreadsheet you upload. Task: generating 20 listings from an attribute table, in the brand’s tone. Limits: it can invent features; do not upload customers’ personal data on a free plan. Cost: free plan; Plus $20 a month; Business from $20 per user a month billed annually ($25 monthly).
Claude
Claude is useful for reading long supplier or market reports and writing carefully. Task: comparing three supplier offers and listing terms, lead times and risks. Limits: it does not know your real stock unless you give it the data. Cost: free plan; Pro $17/month billed annually ($20 monthly).
Gemini
Gemini fits if your team works in Google Workspace. Task: summarizing a Google Sheet of the week’s sales and proposing three actions. Limits: check which company data it shares under your plan. Cost: free plan; Google AI Pro, €21.99/month.
Retailers and generative AI: where it is heading
The future of retail runs on artificial intelligence applied to concrete tasks, not on promises. Generative AI already writes product descriptions, prepares emails by segment and guides customers through the buying process with an assistant that understands natural language processing. Thanks to AI, customer service answers outside business hours and the sales team spends its time on the customers who need it most.
An AI model can analyze data from large volumes of ticket data and process millions of lines to maximize availability, adjust prices and personalize the customer experience. That automation and optimization only delivers tangible results if the integration of AI starts from clean data; it is what makes smart retail more than a slogan. With a custom AI solution or a standard tool, AI can improve the experience at every touchpoint, and AI makes it possible to measure what works. This is how AI is transforming retail, with success stories that always start from one concrete use case.
How to choose the right tool
Choosing is not about buying the most powerful tool but the one that fits your problem and your data. A store with overstock needs a forecasting engine, not a listing generator. Use this checklist:
- Privacy and GDPR: where customer data is hosted and whether there is a data processing agreement.
- Integrations: that it connects to your POS, ERP, online store and shipping system.
- Cost per user and by volume of products or conversations.
- Language: interface, support and customer service in your language.
- Learning curve: how long the team takes to use it unaided and who maintains it.
How to bring AI into your operations
Bringing in AI is not a two-year project. It is a sequence of short steps that start with a single use case:
- Initial diagnosis. Identify where you lose the most time or margin: stock, customer service or content.
- Start with one use case. Pick the one with available data and a measurable result.
- Measure. Define a metric before starting: stockouts, response time or hours of writing.
- Scale. When the first case works, move to the next and train the team.
Training for your team
Picking the tool is the easy part; getting the whole team to use it well, with data protected, is harder. Founderz teaches a method that works with Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and the specialist tools for retailers.
Important
Do not upload customers’ personal data to free versions of general AI whose data handling you do not control, and always review prices and listings before publishing. Each vendor’s security claims should be checked against its privacy policy.
Prompts to get started
Three prompts to copy and paste. What goes in brackets is your case; do not paste personal data.
Act as the purchasing manager of a [sector] store. Using this table of sales for the last 12 months by product and store, identify the 10 products with the highest stockout risk and the 10 with excess stock. Explain the criteria, say which data is missing instead of assuming it and propose one action for each. Table: [paste data without personal information]Write a reply to a customer asking about the status of order [number] who also wants to return an item. Friendly, clear tone, at most 80 words. Include the return steps from this policy: [paste policy] and do not invent deadlines that are not in it.From these product attributes: [paste table], write a product listing of 80 to 100 words for [channel], in the tone of [brand]. Do not add features that are not in the table and flag anything we must confirm with the word CHECK.Frequently asked questions
These are the questions searched most about AI in retail.
What AI tools are used in retail?
Forecasting and replenishment software such as RELEX, Nextail or Inventory Planner, chatbots such as Zendesk or Tidio, analysis with Power BI and assistants such as Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT or Claude. The choice depends on whether your problem is stock, customer service or sales.
What is the best AI software for retail?
There is no single one. In my scoring, Microsoft Copilot and Power BI score highest for daily work and analysis, and RELEX or Nextail fit stock best for chains. The best is the one that covers your task with the data you have.
How can AI reduce overstock?
With a forecasting model that combines sales history by store with seasonality and promotions and recommends how much to order. Start with one product group and measure stockouts and inventory before and after.
Is there AI for small stores?
Yes. ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Power BI have a free plan, and Tidio offers a free plan with 50 conversations. For stock, Inventory Planner connects with Shopify or WooCommerce stores, although it does not publish prices.
How much does AI for retail cost?
From €0 on free plans to tens of euros per user per month: Zendesk from €19/agent/month, Power BI Pro €12.10/user/month and Netstock from $900/month. RELEX, Lokad and Nextail do not publish prices.
Can a chatbot handle returns and orders?
Yes, if it is connected to your order system and trained on your policy. It handles the repetitive part and hands complex issues to a person.
How can AI predict retail sales?
With sales history by product and channel, plus seasonality, holidays and promotions. Tools like Power BI or an assistant like Copilot allow a first analysis; for automatic forecasting, specialist software.
The tools we teach at Founderz
In the Founderz program you can take, you work through practical cases with these tools:
Your next step
Pick one problem in your business, test a tool from this guide and measure the result. If you want your team to apply AI with judgment, the Founderz AI program, from a school with Microsoft as Worldwide Training Partner, gives you the method.
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