Open Pantry vs Fresho: which is right for your wholesale food business?
The short answer
These are the two closest products here: both run the whole operation from the order to the invoice, and both read messy orders with AI. Two things separate them. Open Pantry publishes the ordering app under your own name, your own domain and your own App Store and Google Play listing, where Fresho describes a branded ordering portal. And Open Pantry’s AI capture lets you set the bar: confident orders place themselves above a threshold you choose, and everything below it is shown line by line beside the original message, with unmatched lines flagged, until your team approves it. Both read voicemail; Fresho sells into four countries. Open Pantry publishes its prices — $0 to start, $149 a month for Pro — against Fresho’s tailored pricing from $499 a month plus a set-up fee.
Choose Open Pantry if…
- Your customers should download your app — your name, your icon, your listing on the App Store and Google Play, on your own domain — rather than signing in to a supplier-branded portal on someone else’s platform.
- You want the AI to draft, not decide. Every captured order is presented line by line against the original message, unmatched lines and unknown customers are flagged, and a person approves it before it becomes real.
- You want the whole stack on one plan — picking, lot/expiry FEFO, delivery runs, credits, invoicing, inventory and accounting sync — rather than separately-scoped modules and solutions.
- You want a published price and a free tier: $0 to start and $149 a month for Pro, against tailored pricing from $499 a month plus a one-off set-up fee.
Choose Fresho if…
- Voicemail orders are a real part of your inbound — OrderPilot lists voicemails alongside emails, texts, WhatsApp messages and PDFs.
- You want the AI order entry to feed an ERP you are keeping, rather than replacing your order platform at all.
- You want a vendor with a local office in the UK or the United States — Fresho lists both, alongside Australia and New Zealand.
- Your volumes are high enough that per-order pricing beats a plan, and a set-up fee is not a barrier.
Open Pantry and Fresho at a glance
Every Fresho cell below is footnoted to a dated source at the foot of this page. Where a capability is not described on Fresho’s own site we mark it partial and say so — that means we could not confirm it, not that it is missing.
| Capability | Open Pantry | Fresho |
|---|---|---|
| Ordering channels for your customers | YesWeb and iOS/Android ordering, sales-rep ordering on behalf, standing and recurring orders. | YesA branded portal where customers place orders 24/7 with live pricing and availability.[1] |
| AI order capture from messages and documents | YesEmail, PDF, photo, SMS, WhatsApp and voicemail orders read into a draft order at that customer’s own price list. Above a confidence threshold you set the order is placed automatically; below it, it is shown line by line beside the original message for your team to approve — anything the AI cannot confidently match, including an unknown customer, is flagged rather than guessed. Enterprise plan. | YesOrderPilot turns emails, texts, WhatsApp messages, voicemails and PDFs into structured sales orders 24/7, flowing into your ERP or system. Priced as its own solution.[2] |
| Branded (white-label) ordering app under your own name | YesWhite-label ordering app and custom domain under your own name and app-store listing. You set the logo, colours, sending email address and App Store and Google Play links yourself from your account’s Integrations screen. Enterprise plan. | PartialFresho describes a branded customer ordering portal. A white-label mobile app with your own app-store listing and domain is not stated publicly — confirm with vendor.[1] |
| Customer-specific pricing, price lists and promotions | YesUnlimited price lists, per-customer price exceptions, promotions and specials. Pro plan and above. | YesA Pricing & Margins module described as "the perfect balance of control and flexibility", with live pricing shown to customers in the ordering portal.[3] |
| Digital pick and pack in the warehouse | YesPick & Pack warehouse app with pick slips, pick waves by storage zone, picker assignment, short picks and substitutions, and a picker productivity report — lines picked per hour by picker over 7, 14 or 30 days. Pro plan and above. | YesA Digital Picking & Packing module — digital picking tools with real-time visibility — and a Reporting module whose published example charts lines picked by worker.[3] |
| Delivery runs, routing and live ETAs | YesDelivery runs with driver navigation and live ETAs for the venue. | YesA Delivery Management module covering delivery "right to the last mile", plus a SolBox integration for route optimisation.[3] |
| Catch-weight and selling the same product by different units | YesThe same product sold by carton, tray, kilogram or each; catch-weight items priced on the weight picked. | PartialFresho targets fruit and veg, meat and seafood wholesalers, but catch-weight and multi-unit selling are not described explicitly on its public pages — confirm with vendor.[3] |
| Lot, expiry and FEFO picking | YesLot and expiry tracking with FEFO picking. Pro plan and above. | PartialInventory management is a listed module ("manage stock and purchases in one place"), but lot, expiry and FEFO picking are not stated publicly — confirm with vendor.[3] |
| Accounting and ERP sync | YesXero, MYOB and QuickBooks Online sync on Pro; ERP integrations on Enterprise. | YesXero, MYOB, QuickBooks, Sage, NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Cin7, Unleashed, SolBox and Stripe, plus bespoke integrations built with your consultant.[4] |
| Invoicing and payments | YesAutomatic invoicing, credit notes and payment collection by card or bank direct debit on the customer’s terms, with credit limits, automatic credit stops and scheduled reminders for overdue accounts. | YesAn Invoicing & Payments module — "get invoices out faster so you get paid sooner" — with a Stripe integration listed.[3] |
| Bank direct debit on invoice terms | YesBank direct debit on invoice terms — BECS in Australia, Bacs in the UK, SEPA in Europe — alongside card. A failed payment is retried at 1, 3, 7 and 14 days only when the decline reason makes a retry worthwhile; a stolen card is never retried. Credit limits can stop new orders or switch the customer to card-only instead of blocking them. | PartialStripe is the listed payments integration; direct debit is not stated publicly — confirm with vendor.[4] |
| In-app messaging with your customers | YesA message thread on every order, visible to your team and the venue, plus push, SMS and email broadcasts to all customers, a segment, a tag or lapsed customers. | PartialA Messaging & Insights module — "use insights to drive smarter customer messaging" — is listed. A conversation thread on each order is not described publicly — confirm with vendor.[1] |
| Courier booking from the order | YesBook a courier from the order through Starshipit — Australia Post, StarTrack, CouriersPlease, NZ Post, DHL and 40 more — with the label and tracking number kept on the order. | PartialNo courier or parcel carrier is named among its published integrations; SolBox is listed for route optimisation. Not stated publicly — confirm with vendor.[4] |
| Customer and product tags on reports | YesCustomer and product tags you define, applied as a filter on every report tab and every broadcast audience. | PartialA Reporting module is listed; tagging is not described publicly — confirm with vendor.[3] |
| Inventory, purchasing and vendor invoice matching | YesStocktakes, lots and expiry, purchasing with automatic purchase orders and three-way vendor invoice matching. | PartialInventory Management covers stock and purchases in one place. Three-way vendor invoice matching is not stated publicly — confirm with vendor.[3] |
| Marketplace and buyer discovery | NoNot a marketplace. Your catalogue, pricing and customer list are yours alone and no other supplier can see them. | NoFresho is supplier software, not a buyer marketplace — customers order through your own portal rather than browsing other suppliers.[3] |
| Published pricing | YesPublished plans: Free $0, Pro from $149/month, Enterprise custom. No percentage of order value. | PartialTailored pricing "starts from $499 monthly", plus a one-off set-up fee, based on average order volume and the modules chosen. Fresho publishes two worked examples: AUD $1,742 per month for 1,000 orders a week using AI order entry on 20% of orders plus eCommerce, and AUD $1,072 per month for 400 orders a week on Fresho Operations with eCommerce. No plan table is published.[1] |
| Free plan | YesFree plan at $0 with unlimited customers and unlimited purchase orders, no time limit. | NoNo free plan is published; pricing starts from $499 per month plus a set-up fee.[1] |
| Markets served | Yes46 countries, each priced in its own currency — Australia and New Zealand first, then the UK and Ireland, the United States and Canada, most of Europe, Singapore, Hong Kong and South-East Asia, the UAE and South Africa — with Australian-based support. | YesRegional sites and listed offices for Australia (South Melbourne), New Zealand (Auckland), the United Kingdom (London) and the United States (Brooklyn).[1] |
Open Pantry capabilities are from our own published plans and feature pages. Fresho capabilities are from its own published pages, read on 9 September 2026.
Everything Open Pantry runs
Fresho runs a comparable operations stack and the table above says so honestly. This is ours, with the page behind every line. The two we would point at first are the branded app — published under your name on the App Store and Google Play, not a portal on ours — and the review step inside AI order capture.
Taking the order
- Customer ordering portal
- Your customers order on the web or the app, 24/7, at their own prices.
- Your own branded app
- Published as your listing on the App Store and Google Play, on your domain. Enterprise.
- AI order capture, with a review step
- Email, SMS and WhatsApp orders drafted, then shown line by line against the original message for a person to approve. Enterprise.
- Standing and recurring orders
- The weekly order that places itself, with the customer still able to change it.
- Sales-rep ordering on behalf
- Your reps place and edit orders as the customer, from anywhere.
- Product visibility per customer
- Who can see and buy which products, controlled per customer.
Pricing and catalogue
- Catalogue and pricing management
- One catalogue behind every channel, so a price is changed once.
- Customer-specific pricing
- Negotiated prices per customer, honoured everywhere including AI-captured orders.
- Price lists
- Unlimited lists and groups, with per-customer exceptions.
- Specials and promotions
- Time-boxed specials that expire on their own.
- Selling by carton, tray, kilo or each
- The same product sold in the units your customers actually order, catch-weight included.
- Bulk catalogue import
- Products, units, pack sizes and images loaded from a spreadsheet, not retyped.
The warehouse and the run
- Digital pick and pack
- Pick slips on a phone, with short picks and substitutions recorded as they happen. Pro.
- Lot, expiry and FEFO picking
- Oldest stock picked first, and traceable afterwards. Pro.
- Delivery runs and live ETAs
- Runs built, driver navigation, and an ETA the venue can see.
- Order status tracking
- Where every order is, without anyone phoning the warehouse to ask.
- Credits and returns
- A short delivery becomes a credit note instead of an argument.
Money and the back office
- Automatic invoicing and payments
- The invoice follows what was actually picked and delivered.
- Xero, MYOB and QuickBooks sync
- Invoices and credits land in the ledger without re-keying. Pro.
- Inventory
- Stock on hand, stocktakes, and what is committed to tomorrow.
- Purchasing and automatic POs
- Purchase orders raised from what has been sold and what is short.
- Vendor invoice matching
- What you ordered, what arrived and what you were billed, matched three ways.
- Margin and COGS analytics
- Margin by product and by customer, not just revenue.
- Customer CRM
- Who has stopped ordering, and what they used to buy.
- Dashboards and reporting
- The morning numbers on one screen.
Where each one is stronger
Neither product wins on every row, and a comparison that says otherwise is not worth reading.
Open Pantry is stronger at
- A genuine white-label app. Your name, your icon, your own listing on the App Store and Google Play, on your own domain — published and maintained for you — rather than a branded portal running on a vendor’s platform.
- The review interface on AI order capture. The draft order is shown line by line against the message it came from, anything the AI cannot confidently match is flagged, and nothing enters the system until a person approves it — so accuracy never depends on trusting the model.
- Published pricing with a free tier — $0 to start and $149 a month for the operations plan, against tailored pricing from $499 a month plus a set-up fee.
- Lot and expiry tracking with FEFO picking included in the Pro plan, on the same system that took the order.
- One plan rather than modules: ordering, picking, delivery, credits, invoicing, inventory and accounting sync are the Pro plan, not separately-scoped solutions.
- Getting paid and getting parcels out: card or bank direct debit on the customer’s invoice terms with retries and credit limits, and courier booking through Starshipit with the label and tracking kept on the order.
Fresho is stronger at
- OrderPilot is sold as a standalone product with its own pricing and marketing, and Fresho publishes worked examples of what it costs at volume.
- AI order entry sold as a standalone product that feeds an ERP you are keeping, so you can automate order entry without changing your order platform.
- International reach, with regional sites and offices in the UK and the United States as well as Australia and New Zealand.
- Depth of the specialist fresh-produce operations stack, with named modules for inventory, pricing and margins, delivery, invoicing and reporting.
What each one costs
Open Pantry
Three published plans. Free is $0 with unlimited customers and unlimited purchase orders and no time limit. Pro starts at $149 per month, priced by monthly order volume, and adds accounting sync, inventory, invoicing, the Pick & Pack app and delivery runs — with a 14-day free trial and no credit card. Enterprise is custom-priced and adds the white-label app, ERP integrations and AI order capture from email, SMS and WhatsApp.
Fresho
Fresho does not publish a plan table. Its pricing page states that tailored pricing starts from $499 monthly, that you pay a one-off set-up fee plus a recurring monthly subscription based on average order volume and the solutions you need, and that solutions can be mixed — though Operations always includes online ordering. Two worked examples are published: a business processing 1,000 orders a week using AI order entry for 20% of orders plus eCommerce, without Fresho Operations, at AUD $1,742 per month; and one processing 400 orders a week on Fresho Operations with eCommerce and no AI order entry, at AUD $1,072 per month.
Source: Fresho — Pricing & solutions (starting price, set-up fee, worked examples, office locations) · verified 9 September 2026
Switching from Fresho to Open Pantry
What the move actually involves. We do not promise a timeline — it depends on the size of your catalogue and how quickly your customers move across.
- Import your catalogue. Products, units, pack sizes and images load in bulk from a spreadsheet rather than being retyped — see bulk product uploads and catalogue imports.
- Load your price lists. Customer groups, per-customer exceptions and promotions come across as data, so nobody is re-keying a price book.
- Invite your customers. Venues get a single-click invite to your ordering app; you can run both systems side by side while they move across.
- Keep the messy orders working from day one. Customers who email, text or WhatsApp their order can carry on doing exactly that — AI order capture turns those into draft orders for your team to confirm.
- Connect accounting last. Xero, MYOB or QuickBooks Online is a settings-screen connection once the orders and invoices look right.
Who uses Open Pantry
- Suppliers on Open Pantry
- 600+
- Venues ordering through it
- 5,000+
- Markets served
- AU & NZ
Open Pantry vs Fresho — common questions
What is the difference between Open Pantry and Fresho?
Both run a wholesale food operation end to end and both read messy orders with AI. The differences are the brand, the price and the shape of the deal. Open Pantry puts the ordering app under your own name and domain on Enterprise and publishes plan prices starting at $0 and $149 a month. Fresho sells tailored solutions from $499 a month plus a set-up fee, and its OrderPilot is sold as a standalone product that can feed an ERP you are keeping.
How much does Fresho cost for a wholesale food supplier?
Fresho publishes that tailored pricing starts from $499 monthly, with a one-off set-up fee and a monthly subscription based on average order volume and the modules chosen. Its own worked examples are AUD $1,742 a month for a business doing 1,000 orders a week with AI order entry on 20% of orders plus eCommerce, and AUD $1,072 a month for 400 orders a week on Fresho Operations with eCommerce. Verified 2 September 2026.
Which platform reads voicemail orders — Open Pantry or Fresho?
Both. OrderPilot lists voicemails alongside emails, texts, WhatsApp messages and PDFs. Open Pantry transcribes voicemails that reach its order-import address or a provisioned voicemail number and reads them like any other order, on the Enterprise plan — and places the confident ones automatically above a threshold you set.
Can I use AI order entry without replacing my existing order system?
With Fresho, yes — OrderPilot is sold as a solution that structures incoming orders and pushes them into the ERP or system you already run. Open Pantry’s AI order capture sits on the Enterprise plan of the platform itself, so it comes with the ordering, picking and invoicing rather than as a bolt-on to a system you are keeping.
Does either platform give my customers an app with my own branding on it?
Open Pantry does on the Enterprise plan — a personalised ordering mobile app with your branding and your own domain. Fresho describes a branded customer ordering portal; whether that extends to a white-label mobile app with your own app-store listing is not stated publicly, so ask them directly.
Does a person check an AI-captured order before it is accepted?
In Open Pantry, always. A captured email, SMS or WhatsApp order becomes a draft, and that draft is shown line by line beside the message it came from, priced at that customer’s own price list. Anything the AI cannot confidently match — a line, or the customer themselves — is flagged for someone to resolve rather than guessed, and nothing enters picking or invoicing until your team approves it. Fresho describes OrderPilot as turning messages into structured sales orders that flow into your ERP; what its own review step looks like is not described on its public pages, so ask them.
Which platform collects payment by bank direct debit?
Open Pantry does — BECS in Australia, Bacs in the UK and SEPA in Europe, on the customer’s invoice terms, with a failed payment retried at 1, 3, 7 and 14 days only when the decline reason makes a retry worthwhile. Fresho lists Stripe as its payments integration and does not state direct debit on its public pages, so ask them directly.
Do both platforms integrate with Xero, MYOB and QuickBooks?
Yes. Fresho lists Xero, MYOB, QuickBooks, Sage, NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Cin7, Unleashed, SolBox and Stripe, and will build bespoke integrations. Open Pantry syncs to Xero, MYOB and QuickBooks Online on the Pro plan and supports ERP integrations on Enterprise.
Which is better for a fruit and veg or seafood wholesaler in Australia?
Both are built for fresh food and both operate in Australia. The deciding questions are usually whether you want your own branded app, whether you want AI order entry as part of the platform or as a standalone product feeding an ERP, and what you are willing to spend before seeing value — Open Pantry starts free and at $149 a month with published plans, Fresho starts from $499 a month plus a set-up fee with pricing tailored to your volume.
How often is this comparison checked, and what do I do if something is wrong?
Every claim on this page is taken from the vendor’s own published pages on the verification date shown at the top, and the page is re-checked quarterly. Anything marked "not stated publicly" means we could not confirm it from Fresho’s own site — treat it as a question for them, not a verdict. If you believe something here is wrong, tell us and we will correct it.
Sources
Every Fresho claim on this page comes from one of these pages, read on 9 September 2026. Vendors change their products and their prices; if something here is out of date, tell us and we will fix it.
- Fresho — Pricing & solutions (starting price, set-up fee, worked examples, office locations) — https://www.fresho.com/au/pricing (accessed 9 September 2026)
- Fresho — OrderPilot (AI order entry channels and workflow) — https://www.fresho.com/au/orderpilot (accessed 2 September 2026)
- Fresho — Fresho Operations modules (ordering, inventory, pricing, delivery, invoicing, reporting, digital picking) — https://www.fresho.com/au/ (accessed 9 September 2026)
- Fresho — Integrations — https://www.fresho.com/au/integrations (accessed 9 September 2026)
- Open Pantry — Wholesale supplier pricing and plans — https://www.theopenpantry.com/suppliers/pricing (accessed 2 September 2026)
See Open Pantry running on your own catalogue
We will load your products and your customers and walk you through ordering, picking, delivery and invoicing on your own data — not a demo dataset.