Shopify Pricing Plans Explained: Which One to Choose

All Five Shopify Plans at a Glance

Shopify offers five pricing tiers as of 2026. All plans except Starter include a full online storefront, unlimited products, 24/7 support, a free SSL certificate, and abandoned cart recovery. The differences come down to transaction fees, staff accounts, reporting capabilities, and international selling features.

Starter ($5/month): A product link and checkout, not a full store. Designed for social sellers and creators who share purchase links on Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp, or embed buy buttons on an existing website. No customizable storefront, no themes, no blog. Payment processing is 5% per transaction. Use this only if you sell a handful of products through social media and do not need a store customers can browse.

Basic ($39/month): The entry-level full store. Two staff accounts, basic reports (sales, sessions, returning customers), Shopify Payments at 2.9% + 30 cents online (2.7% in person), and a 2% surcharge on third-party gateways. Supports up to 1,000 inventory locations, discount codes, manual order creation, and all Shopify sales channels (Facebook, Instagram, Google, Amazon, TikTok). This plan handles everything a store processing under $20,000/month in revenue needs.

Shopify ($105/month): The growth plan. Five staff accounts, professional reports (sales by product, traffic source, customer name, and more), lower Shopify Payments rates at 2.6% + 30 cents online (2.5% in person), and the third-party gateway surcharge drops to 1%. Adds USPS Priority Mail Cubic pricing for small dense packages. The professional reports are the key upgrade here, giving you data that directly informs marketing and inventory decisions.

Advanced ($399/month): The high-volume and international plan. Fifteen staff accounts, a custom report builder for creating your own reports, computed carrier shipping rates at checkout, estimated duties and import taxes for international customers, and the lowest Shopify Payments rates at 2.4% + 30 cents online (2.4% in person). The third-party gateway surcharge drops to 0.6%. This plan also includes up to 100 inventory locations and enhanced fraud analysis.

Plus (starting at $2,300/month): Enterprise tier with a dedicated account manager, unlimited staff accounts, higher API rate limits, Shopify Functions for custom discount logic, Checkout Extensibility for custom checkout experiences, the ability to run up to 10 expansion stores from a single account, and organization-level user management. Plus payment processing rates are negotiable based on volume. This plan targets brands processing $1 million or more annually.

Transaction Fee Comparison

Transaction fees are where plans diverge most for established stores, because these are variable costs that scale with revenue. The table below shows what you pay per $100 online transaction using Shopify Payments:

Starter: $5.00 per $100 (5% flat rate)

Basic: $3.20 per $100 (2.9% + $0.30)

Shopify: $2.90 per $100 (2.6% + $0.30)

Advanced: $2.70 per $100 (2.4% + $0.30)

The $0.30 per transaction difference between Basic and Shopify seems small, but it adds up. On 1,000 transactions per month averaging $50 each ($50,000 monthly revenue), the difference is $150/month in processing savings on the Shopify plan versus Basic. Subtract the $66/month plan price increase, and you net $84/month in savings. That crossover point, where the processing savings exceed the plan cost difference, sits at roughly $22,000/month in revenue for Shopify versus Basic, and $90,000/month for Advanced versus Shopify.

If you use a third-party payment gateway (like Stripe directly or Authorize.net) instead of Shopify Payments, Shopify charges an additional surcharge on every transaction: 2% on Basic, 1% on Shopify, 0.6% on Advanced, and 0.15% on Plus. This surcharge is on top of whatever your gateway charges, making Shopify Payments the obvious default unless you have a specific reason to use an alternative processor.

What Each Plan Includes for Reporting

Reporting is the most underestimated difference between plans. On Basic, you get overview dashboards showing total sales, sessions, returning customer rate, and conversion rate. These are useful for daily monitoring but do not help you answer questions like "which marketing channel drives my most profitable customers" or "which products have the highest return rate."

The Shopify plan adds professional reports: sales by product, by discount code, by traffic referrer, by billing location, and by customer name. You can see which products drive revenue versus which just generate traffic. You can see which discount codes bring in customers who buy again versus one-time bargain hunters. You can see which states or countries produce your most valuable customers. These insights drive better decisions about inventory, marketing spend, and product development.

Advanced adds the custom report builder, which lets you create reports by combining dimensions and metrics. For example, you could build a report showing average order value by traffic source by month, or return rate by product category by season. If you make data-driven decisions about your business, the custom report builder is the feature that distinguishes Advanced from Shopify.

International Selling Features by Plan

All plans support multiple languages and currencies through Shopify Markets, but the depth of international support increases with higher plans. On Basic, you can display prices in local currencies (using exchange rate conversion), but the customer is still charged in your store's default currency, so their bank may apply a foreign transaction fee. On Shopify and above, you can sell in local currencies natively, meaning the customer is charged in their local currency and you receive the payout in yours.

Advanced adds estimated duties and import taxes at checkout, which is critical for international selling. Without this feature, your international customers receive unexpected duty charges when their package arrives, leading to refusals, returns, and support complaints. With Advanced, the customer sees the total landed cost at checkout and pays duties upfront, resulting in a smooth delivery experience. If more than 15% of your revenue comes from international customers, this feature alone can justify the Advanced plan.

When to Upgrade: Revenue-Based Decision Framework

Stay on Basic if: You process under $20,000/month, have one or two people managing the store, sell primarily to domestic customers, and the basic reporting dashboards give you enough data to make decisions. Most stores in their first year should stay on Basic.

Upgrade to Shopify if: You process $20,000 to $50,000/month, need professional reports to make marketing and inventory decisions, have a small team that needs more than two staff accounts, or the lower transaction fees create meaningful savings at your volume.

Upgrade to Advanced if: You process over $50,000/month, sell internationally and need duties/tax estimation at checkout, want custom reports for sophisticated business analysis, or need computed carrier shipping rates at checkout (where the customer sees real-time UPS/USPS/FedEx quotes rather than flat rates).

Upgrade to Plus if: You process over $1 million annually, need multiple storefronts (different brands or regions from one account), require custom checkout logic, or your business needs justify a dedicated account manager and SLA-backed support.

Hidden Costs Beyond the Monthly Subscription

The monthly plan price is only part of your total Shopify cost. Every store owner should budget for these additional expenses:

Theme: Free themes work well (Dawn is excellent), but if you buy a premium theme from the Theme Store, expect to pay $180 to $400 one time. Third-party themes from developers outside the official store may cost less but carry more risk regarding updates and compatibility.

Apps: The average Shopify store uses 6 to 15 apps. Many have free tiers, but paid apps typically cost $5 to $50/month each. A common app stack (email marketing, reviews, SEO, loyalty program, upsells) can add $80 to $200/month in recurring costs. Be deliberate about which apps you install, because every app adds cost and can slow your store down.

Domain: $14/year through Shopify, $10 to $15/year through third-party registrars like Namecheap or Cloudflare Registrar. A one-time cost that is trivial relative to other expenses.

Transaction processing: This is your largest variable cost. At 2.9% + 30 cents on Basic, you pay $320 in processing fees for every $10,000 in sales. This is not a Shopify markup, it covers the credit card networks' interchange fees, the processor's margin, and Shopify's cut.

Shopify Email: Free for the first 10,000 emails per month, then $1 per 1,000 additional emails. If you use Klaviyo or another third-party email provider, that cost replaces Shopify Email, typically $20 to $150/month depending on your subscriber count.

Annual vs Monthly Billing

Shopify offers a discount for annual billing: Basic drops from $39/month to $29/month (25% savings), Shopify drops from $105/month to $79/month, and Advanced drops from $399/month to $299/month. Annual billing saves $120 to $1,200 per year depending on your plan.

The tradeoff is commitment. If you are testing Shopify or unsure if your business will succeed, pay monthly for the first three to six months. Once you are confident the store is viable and you will be on Shopify for at least a year, switch to annual billing. You can switch from monthly to annual at any time through Settings, then Plan.

For a complete accounting of every cost category, see Real Cost of Running a Shopify Store.