Shopify pricing

About

Shopify is a commerce platform that lets merchants build and run an online store, sell in person through Shopify POS, and sell across social channels, marketplaces, and — increasingly — AI chats, all from one back office. Its core product bundles a website builder, the world’s-best-checkout, payments, inventory, shipping, marketing, and analytics into a subscription, then layers on transaction fees, retail (POS Pro), and enterprise (Plus) as separately-priced surfaces.

Shopify serves the full range of merchants: solo entrepreneurs on Basic, small teams on Grow, scaling and global merchants on Advanced, and high-volume, B2B, and multi-store brands on Shopify Plus. The platform is publicly traded (NYSE/TSX: SHOP), with tens of billions in gross merchandise volume flowing through it and a marketing claim of $1.1 trillion in cumulative merchant sales.

Competitively, Shopify positions against WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Wix, Squarespace, and Adobe Commerce (Magento) at the SMB-to-mid-market end, and against Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Adobe at the enterprise end via Shopify Plus. Its distinctive lever is a checkout it claims converts 15% better on average than other platforms, plus a large third-party app ecosystem.

Pricing summary : subscription plus tiered transaction fees and per-location retail add-on

Shopify uses a hybrid model — a flat subscription combined with usage-based transaction fees and per-location retail pricing — with four dimensions (US list prices):

1. Subscription (per plan, monthly or yearly): Basic $39/mo, Grow $105/mo, Advanced $399/mo when paying monthly; $29 / $79 / $299 per month when billed yearly (roughly 25% off). A $5/mo Starter plan covers checkout/buy-button selling without a full storefront. Shopify Plus starts at $2,300/mo on a 3-year term (~$2,500/mo on a 1-year term), or a variable platform fee (~0.25% of monthly revenue) for complex structures.
2. Third-party transaction fees (usage): a percentage of sales charged when you use an external payment provider instead of Shopify Payments — 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced, 0.2% on Plus. Using Shopify Payments avoids this fee in favour of tier-based card rates (2.9% / 2.7% / 2.5% + 30¢ online for Basic / Grow / Advanced).
3. POS Pro (per-location add-on): POS Lite is included on every plan; POS Pro is +$89/mo per location (lower billed yearly). Plus includes 20 POS Pro locations.
4. AI, bundled: Sidekick (commerce AI assistant), an AI website builder, and “millions of tokens” of AI usage are included on every paid plan starting at Basic — a bundled, not metered, AI motion. See our usage-based pricing guide for how hybrid models like this trade off predictability and upside.

What makes this different: Shopify keeps a simple flat subscription as the headline number but moves the real cost lever onto the transaction-fee percentage, which shrinks as you climb tiers — so upgrading is often justified by fee savings on sales volume rather than by feature unlocks.

Pricing by product

US list prices (recovered 2026-08-10; see the currency note in frontmatter — capture screenshots rendered INR under an IP geo-lock, so figures here are corroborated USD, not FX conversions). “Monthly” = pay-monthly rate; “Yearly” = the effective per-month rate when billed yearly.

Shopify plans (core platform)

Shopify Plus (enterprise term pricing)

*Plus transaction fees and Shopify Payments card rates vary by region (per the Plus pricing page footnote).

Shopify POS (retail)

Sales motions across products: PLG / self-serve for Starter, Basic, Grow, and Advanced (3-day free trial, self-onboarding); sales-led (“Get in touch”) for Shopify Plus and its term/variable-fee pricing.

Other bill-relevant mechanics

• Marketplace order sync overage: first 50 synced marketplace orders per month are free on all tiers; over 50 costs 1% per order (small monthly cap).
• Headless storefronts: 1 on Basic/Grow/Advanced, 25 on Plus.
• Inventory locations: 10 on Basic/Grow/Advanced, 200 on Plus.
• Shopify Balance earnings rate: 2.29% on Basic/Grow/Advanced, 3.31% on Plus.
• Intro offer: 3-day free trial (no credit card), then “$1/month for the first 3 months” before the standard rate applies.

Hidden costs : transaction fees, POS Pro per location, and app costs beyond the subscription

The $39/mo Basic headline understates what a real store pays, because Shopify’s true cost lever is the percentage taken on every sale — card processing plus, if you route around Shopify Payments, a third-party transaction fee. Two archetypes make this concrete.

Archetype 1 — growing store on Basic, $40K/mo GMV, using Shopify Payments

The subscription is under 2% of the bill — payment processing is the real line item, and it scales linearly with sales, not with the plan.

Archetype 2 — the third-party-gateway penalty (Basic, $40K/mo GMV)

Bringing your own gateway on Basic adds $800/mo in Shopify’s cut alone. This is why the transaction-fee percentage — 2% → 1% → 0.6% → 0.2% — is the number that decides when an upgrade (or Shopify Payments adoption) pays for itself. Add-ons stack on top: POS Pro at $89/mo per physical location, and a typical merchant’s app subscriptions ($20–$200+/mo) that Shopify never surfaces on the pricing page. For the finance-team view of why a percentage-of-sales fee behaves so differently from a flat SaaS bill, see our usage-based pricing for finance teams breakdown.

Want to estimate your own Shopify bill? Use the Shopify pricing calculator to model your monthly cost based on plan, sales volume, transaction fees, and POS Pro locations.

Pricing evolution : from flat store plans to bundled AI and tiered transaction fees

Cadence

Tracked range: 2023-01 – 2026-08. Wayback archives were unreachable during this pass (403), so intermediate quarters are unverified rather than confirmed stable; the changes above are sourced from press and Shopify Editions coverage.

Notable changes

• 2023-01-23 — Shopify’s first broad-based subscription increase in roughly 12 years, averaging ~33%; it framed the move as funding platform investment and simultaneously ended a legacy annual-plan discount. (Motley Fool, 2023-01-26; Subscription Insider; ChannelX.)
• 2025-12-10 — The Winter ‘26 Edition upgraded Sidekick and introduced Agentic Storefronts, cementing AI as an included capability across plans rather than a metered upsell. (thelettertwo.com, 2025-12-10.)
• 2026-04 — Sidekick’s custom-app generation became plan-gated to Grow, Advanced, and Plus, with the Basic-plan grace period ending — a subtle packaging line that reserves the most compute-intensive AI generation for higher tiers.

What’s unique : tier-declining transaction fees and AI bundled from the entry plan

1. The real price is a percentage, not a plan. Shopify’s headline subscription ($39 → $399) is small next to the money it makes on every transaction — card processing (2.9% → 2.5% + 30¢) plus a third-party-gateway fee (2% → 0.2%) that steps down as you climb. For any store doing meaningful volume, the percentage dwarfs the subscription, so the plan number is almost a rounding error in the total cost of selling — the same gross-margin-per-feature lens finance teams apply to AI features applies to a merchant’s effective take-rate here.

2. Fees that shrink as you grow make upgrades self-justifying. Because the third-party transaction fee falls from 2% to 0.2% across tiers, the upgrade decision is arithmetic: at enough GMV, the fee savings alone exceed the subscription increase. Shopify effectively lets sales volume — not feature envy — pull merchants up the ladder, a cleaner expansion mechanic than most seat-based SaaS.

3. AI is bundled from the entry plan, not metered. Sidekick, an AI website builder, and “millions of tokens” of AI usage ship on Basic at $39/mo. Where many peers across the pricing blueprint meter AI by token or seat, Shopify treats it as included table stakes — then reserves only the most compute-heavy piece (Sidekick custom-app generation, gated to Grow+ since April 2026) for paid-up tiers.

Strengths & weaknesses

Billing UX : monthly/yearly toggle, geo-priced cards, and comparison table

• Pay monthly / Pay yearly toggle — the pricing and POS pages carry a “Pay monthly / Pay yearly” switch; yearly shows the discounted effective per-month rate (~25% off, “billed yearly”), monthly shows the full rate. The comparison table lists both rows side by side (“Pay monthly” and “Pay yearly”).
• Geo-priced plan cards — plan cards render prices in the visitor’s local currency based on IP; a US ?country=us URL parameter does not override the geo-IP currency, so an India-based session sees INR (Basic ₹1,499/mo yearly) even though the same card is $29/mo yearly in the US and the footer still reads “USA | English”.
• “Compare all features” table — a full feature-by-tier comparison grid below the cards exposes staff-account caps, inventory locations, transaction fees, POS Pro per-location pricing, API rate limits, headless storefront counts, and marketplace-sync overage in one place.
• “Starting at” + intro-offer banners — cards show “Starting at” prices plus a “Try 3 days free, then $1/month for 3 months” intro banner, with the trial requiring no credit card.
• POS Pro per-location add-on line — each POS plan card shows a ”+$89/month for each POS Pro location” line item (lower billed yearly), making the retail add-on cost explicit at the point of selection.
• Term selector (Plus) — the Shopify Plus page offers a “1-year term / 3-year term” selector that changes the quoted platform fee (~$2,500 vs from $2,300/mo), plus a “Get in touch” sales path for the variable platform fee (~0.25% of monthly revenue).

Strategic wins : why the checkout, payments attach, and app ecosystem compound

1. Tier-declining transaction fees make upgrades self-justifying.

By dropping the third-party transaction fee from 2% to 0.2% as merchants climb from Basic to Plus, Shopify ties the upgrade decision to sales volume rather than feature envy — a merchant doing enough revenue saves more on fees than the higher subscription costs. On $500K/yr through an external gateway, the Basic→Advanced fee delta (2%→0.6%) is ~$7,000/yr in savings versus a ~$4,300 subscription gap. See our usage-based pricing guide for how usage-linked levers drive expansion.

2. Bundling AI from the entry plan removes an adoption tax.

Sidekick, the AI website builder, and “millions of tokens” of AI usage ship on Basic, so AI is a reason to stay rather than an upsell — contrasting with metered-AI peers across the pricing blueprint. Reserving only the heaviest piece (custom-app generation, gated to Grow+ in April 2026) preserves an upsell hook without taxing basic AI adoption.

3. POS Lite everywhere seeds the retail attach.

Including POS Lite on every plan lets any online merchant sell in person for free, creating a low-friction path to the paid POS Pro per-location add-on at $89/mo. The online store becomes the top of a funnel into physical-retail monetization, and Plus bundles 20 POS Pro locations to pull multi-store retailers up to the enterprise tier.

Areas to improve : currency transparency and clearer total-cost-of-selling estimates

1. Currency follows IP, not intent.

The pricing page geo-locks currency to the visitor’s IP and ignores the ?country=us parameter, so a merchant researching from abroad sees INR while the footer still says “USA | English” — and cannot easily preview the currency they’ll actually be billed in. A visible currency selector (as most global SaaS ships) would remove the ambiguity.

2. The real cost of selling is spread across the page.

Card rates, third-party transaction fees, POS Pro per-location pricing, and marketplace-sync overage live in different sections, so the headline subscription badly understates total cost. A combined “estimated total cost of selling” tool tied to sales volume — like our Shopify pricing calculator — would set clearer expectations.

3. Plus pricing is quote-gated below the headline.

Plus shows term-based platform fees (from $2,300/mo) but routes the variable platform fee to “Get in touch,” leaving high-complexity merchants without a self-serve estimate of the ~0.25%-of-revenue model that often governs their actual bill.

Key takeaways

1. The subscription is the smallest number on the page. Basic through Advanced run $39–$399/mo, but for any store with real volume the card rate (2.9%→2.5% + 30¢) and third-party fee (2%→0.2%) dominate the bill. Read Shopify’s price as a percentage of sales, not a monthly flat fee.
2. Yearly billing is a flat ~25% cut. Basic $39→$29, Grow $105→$79, Advanced $399→$299 per month — a simple, predictable annual discount rather than a bespoke negotiation.
3. The transaction-fee ladder decides upgrades. Because the third-party fee falls 2%→1%→0.6%→0.2%, the break-even for moving up a tier is a GMV calculation; enough sales volume makes the higher subscription cheaper on net.
4. AI is included, not metered. Sidekick, the AI website builder, and “millions of tokens” ship on Basic — with only custom-app generation reserved for Grow and up since April 2026 — so AI is retention table stakes rather than a line-item upsell.
5. Geo-pricing can mislead researchers. Displayed currency is locked to your IP and ignores ?country=us, so verify against the US list ($39/$105/$399/$2,300) before quoting Shopify’s price from a non-US session.

UBP implications

1. Hybrid done well: flat headline, usage-based reality. Shopify shows how to keep a simple subscription as the marketing anchor while capturing value on a usage metric (sales processed). The lesson for UBP designers: your headline number and your revenue engine don’t have to be the same number.
2. Declining usage rates are a legitimate expansion lever. Lowering the take-rate as customers scale (2%→0.2%) aligns price with realized value and makes upgrades a math problem, not a sales fight — a pattern worth copying wherever a per-transaction fee exists, and a close cousin of the outcome-based pricing shift many AI vendors are testing.
3. Bundle AI to defend, meter it to expand. Shopify bundles baseline AI to remove adoption friction, then gates only the most compute-intensive generation. For AI products weighing metered vs. included pricing, the split — include the cheap/high-frequency AI, meter the expensive/occasional AI — is a replicable middle path.

Sources

• Shopify pricing page (accessed 2026-08-09) — rendered INR under IP geo-lock; see currency note
• Shopify Plus pricing page (accessed 2026-08-09)
• Shopify POS pricing page (accessed 2026-08-09)
• Shopify Editions — twice-yearly product/AI updates (accessed 2026-08-10)
• Shopify changelog (accessed 2026-08-10)

USD list prices were recovered from corroborating secondary sources (documented in public/images/blueprint/shopify/2026-08-09-main-validated.txt) because the live pages geo-rendered INR; they were cross-checked against the well-documented January 2023 US price schedule.

Bottom line

Shopify’s pricing looks like simple SaaS — four tiers from $5 to $2,300+ a month — but the number that actually governs a merchant’s bill is the percentage Shopify takes on every sale: 2.9%→2.5% + 30¢ in card fees, plus a third-party-gateway fee that falls from 2% to 0.2% as you climb. That fee ladder, not feature gating, is Shopify’s expansion engine, and bundling Sidekick AI from the entry plan keeps merchants in the funnel without an adoption tax. Read the plan as a floor, and model the percentages to know your real cost of selling.

Want to compare Shopify against other commerce-platform pricing? Browse the pricing blueprint.

Pricing timeline : Major events on a vertical axis

Each milestone below corresponds to a public pricing change, product launch, or material adjustment. Major events use a filled marker; minor adjustments use a faded one.

Current US structure: Basic $39 / Grow $105 / Advanced $399 / Plus $2,300+

Aug 2026

Live pricing shows four tiers with tier-declining third-party transaction fees (2% / 1% / 0.6% / 0.2%), Shopify Payments card rates (2.9%/2.7%/2.5% + 30c online), an $89/mo per-location POS Pro add-on, and Sidekick AI bundled from Basic. USD recovered from secondary sources; capture screenshots rendered INR due to IP geo-lock (validated.txt second source).

Sidekick custom-app generation gated to Grow/Advanced/Plus

Apr 2026

Sidekick's custom-app generation became plan-gated to Grow, Advanced, and Plus, with the Basic-plan grace period ending in April 2026 — a quiet packaging move that reserves higher-cost AI generation for paid-up tiers while keeping the assistant itself universal.

Sidekick upgraded + Agentic Storefronts; AI bundled across plans

Dec 2025

Shopify's Winter '26 Edition shipped an upgraded Sidekick commerce assistant, Agentic Storefronts, and 'millions of tokens' of AI usage bundled into every paid plan starting at Basic — AI positioned as included, not a metered upsell. (thelettertwo.com 2025-12-10.)

First broad subscription increase in 12 years (~33%)

Jan 2023

Shopify raised US subscription prices by an average of ~33% — Basic $29->$39, Shopify $79->$105, Advanced $299->$399 — its first broad-based plan increase since roughly 2011. It also ended a legacy annual-plan discount, standardizing the ~25%-off yearly rate. (Motley Fool 2023-01-26; Subscription Insider; ChannelX.)