Shopify Pricing Plans in 2026: The Complete Cost Breakdown

Choosing between Shopify pricing plans looks simple on the surface: four tiers, four monthly prices, pick the one that matches your size. In practice, the sticker price is the smallest part of the decision. The real cost of a Shopify store in 2026 is shaped by payment processing rates, third-party gateway surcharges, app subscriptions, and the discounts you unlock with annual billing. This guide breaks down every plan, every fee, and the total cost of ownership math we run with clients before every migration, so you can pick the right tier with full visibility.

If you want the short answer: most stores under roughly $10,000 in monthly revenue belong on Basic, growing stores with a small team belong on Grow, stores where payment volume makes processing rates the biggest line item belong on Advanced, and Plus starts to pay for itself somewhere north of $1 million in annual sales. The rest of this article shows the numbers behind that answer. You can also check out our WooCommerce Shopify Migration sprint.

Shopify pricing plans at a glance

Here is the current lineup as of 2026, according to Shopify’s official pricing page:

Plan	Monthly billing	Annual billing (per month)	Best for
Starter	$5	$5	Selling via link in bio and social, no full storefront
Basic	$39	$29	Solo founders and new stores
Grow	$105	$79	Growing stores with a small team
Advanced	$399	$299	High-volume stores that need lower processing rates
Plus	from $2,300	from $2,300 (3-year term)	Enterprise and high-growth brands

Three things to notice before we go deeper.

First, annual billing cuts roughly 25 percent off Basic, Grow, and Advanced. If you know you will still be on Shopify in a year, and if you are migrating a real business you should, paying annually is the easiest saving in this entire article.

Second, the middle tier is now called Grow. If you are comparing older articles that mention the “Shopify” plan, that is the same tier under its previous name.

Third, Plus pricing depends on your contract term: $2,500 per month on a 1-year term, $2,300 per month on a 3-year commitment. Above a revenue threshold, Plus switches to a variable platform fee, which we cover in the Plus section below.

What each of the Shopify pricing plans includes

All Shopify pricing plans share the core platform: unlimited products, the checkout, fraud analysis, abandoned cart recovery, discount codes, and 24/7 support. The differences that actually matter sit in four areas: payment rates, staff accounts, reporting, and shipping discounts.

Basic: $39 per month, or $29 on annual billing

Basic is the entry point for a real storefront. You get the full online store, blog, and checkout, but only 1 staff account alongside the owner, basic reports, and the highest payment processing rates in the lineup: 2.9% + 30¢ on online card payments through Shopify Payments, and a 2% surcharge if you use a third-party gateway instead.

Who it fits: pre-launch stores, side projects becoming businesses, and most stores doing under roughly $10,000 per month in sales. At that volume, the processing rate difference between Basic and Grow does not yet cover the plan price difference.

Grow: $105 per month, or $79 on annual billing

Grow adds 5 staff accounts, professional reports, and lower processing: 2.7% + 30¢ online, with a 1% third-party gateway surcharge. It is the default tier for stores with an employee or two, a bookkeeper who needs access, and enough order volume that basic reports stop being enough.

Who it fits: stores in the $10,000 to $50,000 monthly revenue range, or any store where more than one person works in the admin daily.

Advanced: $399 per month, or $299 on annual billing

Advanced is priced for stores where payment volume does the math for you: 2.5% + 30¢ online rates, a 0.6% third-party surcharge, 15 staff accounts, custom reports, and third-party calculated shipping rates at checkout. It also unlocks better international selling tools, including improved duties and import tax handling.

Who it fits: stores processing roughly $50,000 to $200,000 per month. A store processing $100,000 monthly saves about $400 per month in processing fees alone compared to Basic rates, which covers the entire plan price.

Plus: from $2,300 per month

Shopify Plus is a different product tier: unlimited staff accounts, the lowest negotiated payment rates (typically in the 2.15% to 2.45% range online), checkout extensibility, Shopify Functions, B2B wholesale features, up to 9 expansion stores, Launchpad, and a dedicated support tier. The third-party gateway surcharge drops to 0.15%, and can be waived at negotiated volumes.

Pricing works on a greater-of model: $2,300 per month on a 3-year term or $2,500 on a 1-year term, until your volume pushes you into the variable fee, roughly 0.35% of D2C sales on a 3-year term or 0.40% on a 1-year term. In plain numbers: once you pass around $8 million in annual direct sales, you pay the percentage instead of the flat fee.

Who it fits: brands past roughly $1 million to $2 million in annual revenue, brands that need checkout customization, B2B price lists, or multiple storefronts, and merchants preparing for agentic commerce features that land on Plus first. We covered the AI side of this tier in our guide to the Shopify agentic plan and AI strategy.

Shopify pricing plans and payment fees: where the real money goes

For most stores, payment processing costs more than the subscription. This is the table to bookmark:

Plan	Online card rate	In-person rate	Third-party gateway surcharge
Basic	2.9% + 30¢	2.7%	2%
Grow	2.7% + 30¢	2.5%	1%
Advanced	2.5% + 30¢	2.4%	0.6%
Plus	~2.15% to 2.45%	~2.15%	0.15%

Rates shown are for Shopify Payments in the US; exact rates vary by country, and the current numbers for your region are listed in Shopify’s Payments documentation.

Two rules of thumb follow from this table.

Use Shopify Payments if it is available in your country. The third-party gateway surcharge is pure extra cost stacked on top of whatever your external processor already charges. On Basic, routing $20,000 of monthly sales through an external gateway costs an extra $400 every month for nothing.

Upgrade when the rate savings cover the plan difference. The breakeven between Grow and Advanced sits around $110,000 per month in card volume on annual billing. Below that, the cheaper plan wins even though its rate is higher. This is the calculation, not the feature list, that should drive most plan upgrades.

The costs that are not in any Shopify pricing table

When clients tell us their WooCommerce store is cheaper, the honest comparison has to include everything. The same discipline applies here. A realistic 2026 Shopify budget includes:

• Apps: most established stores run $50 to $300 per month in app subscriptions for reviews, email, subscriptions, or bundles. Every app you can replace with a native feature is margin recovered; this is a big part of why stores escape plugin hell when leaving WooCommerce.
• Theme: premium themes run roughly $150 to $350 one time. Budget it once, choose carefully, and avoid rebuying.
• Domain: $10 to $20 per year, whether registered through Shopify or externally.
• Email volume: Shopify Email includes 10,000 sends per month free, then charges per thousand.
• Development: custom work is the widest variable, anywhere from a few hundred dollars for small tweaks to five figures for a full custom build.

The good news relative to self-hosted platforms: there is no hosting bill, no security patching, no PCI DSS compliance work, and no maintenance retainer just to keep the lights on. We ran the full comparison in our WooCommerce vs Shopify cost of ownership guide, and the operational overhead is consistently where self-hosted “savings” evaporate.

How to choose between Shopify pricing plans in 2026

Strip away the feature grids and the decision comes down to four questions.

1. What is your monthly card volume?

Under $10,000: Basic. Between $10,000 and $50,000: Grow, and run the numbers on Advanced as you approach the top of that range. Over $110,000: Advanced pays for itself on rates alone. Over $1 million to $2 million annually: start the Plus conversation.

2. How many people work in your store admin?

Basic’s single staff account is the limit stores hit first, often before any revenue threshold. If a VA, a marketer, and an accountant all need access, you are a Grow customer regardless of volume.

3. Do you need checkout control or B2B?

Checkout extensibility, Shopify Functions, and native B2B price lists are Plus-only. If your growth plan depends on custom checkout logic or wholesale, no amount of volume math keeps you on Advanced.

4. Are you betting on agentic commerce?

Catalog access for AI shopping agents, UCP readiness, and the newest AI features consistently reach Plus and Advanced merchants first. If AI-driven discovery is part of your 2026 roadmap, factor early access into the tier decision, not just today’s feature list.

Shopify pricing plans compared to the migration budget

Most of our readers are not choosing Shopify pricing plans in a vacuum; they are budgeting a move from WooCommerce or another platform. Two notes from that work.

Pick the plan for who you are at launch, not who you plan to be. Upgrading later takes minutes and Shopify prorates it. Starting on Advanced “to grow into it” burns money during the exact months you want to conserve it. The one exception is the staff account limit, which is worth solving on day one.

Second, put the plan cost in context. In a typical migration cost breakdown, the first year of even the Advanced plan is a minor line next to design, data migration, and app replacement decisions. If you want the move handled end to end, with the plan decision made for you along the way, our woocommerce shopify migration sprint packages the entire process into a fixed timeline. Optimizing the subscription while ignoring a 2% gateway surcharge or $200 in redundant apps is optimizing the wrong number.

Frequently asked questions about Shopify pricing plans

Is there still a Shopify free trial in 2026?

Yes. New stores get a 3-day free trial, then 3 months at $1 per month on Basic, Grow, or Advanced. It is the cheapest possible way to validate a store build before committing.

Which of the Shopify pricing plans is best for a new store?

Basic on annual billing, at $29 per month, is the right starting point for almost every new store. The features you give up compared to Grow are things new stores rarely use in their first months, and upgrading takes minutes when you outgrow it.

Do Shopify pricing plans include transaction fees?

If you use Shopify Payments, there are no additional transaction fees on any plan, only the card processing rate. If you use an external payment provider, Shopify adds a surcharge of 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced, and 0.15% on Plus.

How much does Shopify Plus cost in 2026?

Plus starts at $2,300 per month on a 3-year term or $2,500 per month on a 1-year term. High-volume merchants pay a variable fee of roughly 0.35% to 0.40% of D2C sales instead once that exceeds the base fee.

Can I switch plans later?

Yes, in either direction, from the admin at any time. Charges are prorated. The practical migration path we see most often is Basic at launch, Grow within the first year, then Advanced once processing volume justifies it.

The bottom line

Shopify pricing plans in 2026 reward one behavior above all: matching the tier to your current payment volume and team size, then revisiting the decision every six months as you grow. Pay annually, use Shopify Payments, audit your app stack quarterly, and treat the Advanced and Plus thresholds as math problems rather than status upgrades.

If you are budgeting a replatform and want the full picture, plan subscription, migration, apps, and design together, our team does this exercise with store owners every week. Start with our WooCommerce to Shopify migration guide or talk to us directly and we will run your numbers with you.