Shopify pricing, plan by plan

Shopify pricing looks like five plans. It is really two decisions — which subscription you pay, and which percentage you pay — and the second one is bigger than the first for almost every store past its first year. This page takes both apart, gives the standard published rates as of 20 September 2026, and works out the revenue at which each upgrade stops costing money and starts saving it.

The standard rates

These are the figures to plan against. They are what every independent rate sheet we checked on 20 September 2026 agrees on, and they hold on annual and monthly billing as shown.

Annual billing removes 25% from Basic, Grow and Advanced. Starter is monthly only. Before you commit, compare these against what Shopify's pricing page shows you in your own region on the day — that is the one figure we cannot check on your behalf. The Plus rates are single-sourced and should be read as approximate — Plus is a contract, and contracts are negotiated.

The tag you will be shown is not always this one

On the day we checked, shopify.com/pricing displayed Basic at $27 a month and $19 on annual billing, with Grow at $72 and $54, while Advanced and Plus appeared at their standard rates. Entry tiers discounted, upper tiers untouched: a promotional offer, and one that depends on country and session.

This is worth a paragraph rather than a footnote because it breaks the most common way people budget for software, which is to read a price once and assume it is the price. If you are quoted $19, take it — but build the budget on $29, because that is the rate a renewal is likely to find you at, and a store that cannot absorb a ten-dollar increase has a bigger problem than its plan tier.

Two other offers were live the same day. Three days free followed by $1 a month for three months, which covers the subscription only and not a cent of processing. And 1% of sales back as subscription credit, capped at $4,500 on Basic and rising with the tier, reported elsewhere as running six months. Both are promotions. Neither is a plan feature.

Where the money actually goes

Take a store turning over $4,000 a month across 80 orders, on Basic at the standard annual rate, taking US standard cards through Shopify Payments:

• Plan: $29.00
• Card processing, 2.9% of $4,000: $116.00
• Per-order fee, 30¢ × 80 orders: $24.00
• Total: $169.00 a month — an effective 4.2% of revenue

The subscription is 17% of that. Double the store's revenue and the subscription becomes 9%; halve it and the subscription becomes 29%. This is the single most useful thing to understand about Shopify pricing: the plan fee matters enormously to a small store and barely at all to a large one, and the rate does the exact opposite.

When to upgrade, with the arithmetic

Every upgrade is the same trade: a fixed increase in subscription against a 0.2 percentage point reduction in card rate. Divide one by the other and you get the revenue at which they cancel out.

Basic to Grow

The plan gap is $50 a month ($79 against $29, annual billing). The rate gap is 0.2 points, or 0.002. Break-even is $50 ÷ 0.002 = $25,000 a month in card revenue. Below that, Basic is cheaper on rate alone. At our $4,000 store, Grow would cost $211 against Basic's $169 — $42 a month worse.

You will find plenty of advice suggesting the switch pays off around $8,000 or $10,000 a month. That advice is not counting rate alone; it is bundling in the value of five staff accounts and better shipping discounts. Those are real reasons to upgrade. Just do not tell yourself the processing saving is paying for it, because until $25,000 a month it is not.

Grow to Advanced

Plan gap $220 ($299 against $79). Rate gap again 0.2 points. Break-even: $220 ÷ 0.002 = $110,000 a month. Advanced's other draw is live carrier-calculated shipping rates, which for a store shipping heavy or awkward goods can justify the tier well before the rate does.

Starter to Basic

Starter is $5 and charges 5% + 30¢ on everything. Basic is $29 annual and charges 2.9% + 30¢. The plan gap is $24, the rate gap is 2.1 points, and break-even is $24 ÷ 0.021 = about $1,143 a month in sales. Below that Starter is genuinely cheaper; above it Basic wins and keeps winning. That figure, incidentally, is the closest thing this site has to a floor for the whole platform.

Advanced to Plus

This one does not resolve to arithmetic, because Plus is a contract. From $2,300 a month against Advanced's $299 is a $2,000 gap, and a 0.25-point rate improvement would need roughly $800,000 a month to cover it. Nobody buys Plus for the rate. They buy it for the contracted terms, the Plus-only checkout surfaces and the multi-store allowance.

What the tiers actually unlock

Very little of Shopify's functionality is gated by plan, which is why the rate matters more than the features. The catalogue is unlimited on every real plan, the themes are the same, the App Store is the same, and the storefront builder is the same. What changes is a short, specific list.

Staff accounts are the one that catches people. Basic gives one login. Not one plus the owner — one. The moment a second person needs access to orders, you are sharing a password or you are on Grow, and sharing a password in a system that can issue refunds is not a real option. Grow gives five, Advanced fifteen, Plus unlimited. Plenty of stores move to Grow for this alone, long before $25,000 a month, and that is a legitimate purchase — just book it as a staffing cost rather than a processing saving.

Shipping is the other real gate. Advanced is the lowest tier with live carrier-calculated rates, which pull real-time quotes from carriers at checkout rather than using rate tables you maintain by hand. For a store shipping uniform small parcels this is worth nothing. For one shipping heavy, bulky or wildly varied items, it prevents the slow bleed of under-charging for postage, and can justify Advanced well before the arithmetic does.

Reporting deepens as you climb, and Plus adds the contractual items: up to ten stores, unlimited staff, and access to checkout surfaces that non-Plus merchants cannot reach — payment customisation, delivery customisation, order routing and cart-transform functions among them.

Retail: the cost that sits outside the plan

If you sell in person, there is a second subscription. Every paid plan includes casual in-person selling — limited staff access, simple customer profiles, returns at the original location only. That is free and, for a market stall or the occasional pop-up, sufficient.

POS Pro is $89 a month per location, billed yearly, and the per-location part is what reshapes a budget. Three shops is $267 a month before a single card is tapped. What it buys is unlimited POS staff with roles and permissions, returns and exchanges at any location, proper inventory management and retail reporting. In-person card rates run 2.6% + 10¢ on Basic, 2.5% + 10¢ on Grow and 2.4% + 10¢ on Advanced — cheaper than the online equivalents, as card-present rates almost always are. Starter cannot take POS Pro at all.

The fees that are not on the pricing page

Three surcharges do more damage to a budget than any plan choice.

Third-party gateways. Decline Shopify Payments and Shopify adds 2.0% on Basic, 1.0% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced or 0.2% on Plus — on top of whatever the other processor charges. On the $4,000 store that is $80 a month for no additional service.

Premium cards. Shopify's definition covers domestic commercial, corporate and business-tier cards, plus every domestic American Express. On Basic these bill at 3.5% + 30¢ rather than 2.9%. A store with a B2B tail pays materially more than its headline rate.

International cards. Add a full percentage point, and a further 1.5% where a currency conversion happens. A US Basic store taking a European card with conversion pays 5.4% + 30¢ — nearly twice the advertised rate.

Beyond the card rates, the recurring lines most budgets miss are apps and a theme. Apps typically run $50 to $150 a month for a modest stack and past $300 at scale; themes are a one-time $180 to $350 for most of the Theme Store, up to around $500. Shopify's email allowance, by contrast, is unusually generous: 10,000 sends a month included, with abandoned-checkout automations free on top.

Picking a tier without overthinking it

1. Under about $1,143 a month in sales, use Starter or do not use Shopify yet.
2. From there to $25,000 a month, Basic on annual billing — unless you need more than one staff login, in which case Grow is an operational purchase, not a financial one.
3. Past $25,000 a month, Grow pays for itself on rate.
4. Past $110,000 a month, or as soon as you need live carrier shipping rates, Advanced.
5. Plus when the contract terms, not the percentages, are what you are buying.

And whichever tier you land on, use Shopify Payments unless you have a specific, costed reason not to. It is the single largest avoidable line in Shopify's fee structure. The wider case for and against the platform is in the full Shopify review.