Shopify Fees [2026]: Plans, 2.5–2.9% Rates + Hidden Costs

Shopify fees in 2026 fall into five categories: subscription plans (US$29/mo to US$299/mo on annual billing for Basic through Advanced, plus US$5/mo Starter and from US$2,300/mo Plus), payment processing (2.5%–2.9% + 30¢ via Shopify Payments), third-party transaction surcharges (0.2%–2.0% if you skip Shopify Payments), apps and themes, and currency/international conversion. The headline plan price is only the starting point. A Basic-plan store paying with PayPal and running five paid apps can easily double its monthly cost before adding a single ad dollar. This guide breaks down every Shopify fee so you can budget accurately before committing, or optimise costs if you’re already on the platform.

Shopify Pricing Plans at a Glance

Shopify offers five plans, though only three are relevant for most independent sellers. Here’s how they compare:

These are US list prices. Shopify sets plan fees and card rates per region rather than converting from US dollars, so sellers outside the US should expect different numbers. See Shopify retail fees below for a worked Singapore comparison.

Key difference: The Starter plan does not include a full online store. You get a simple link-in-bio page and the ability to sell through social media, messaging apps and email. If you want a proper storefront with a custom domain, product pages and checkout, you need Basic or above.

Starting with Basic is the standard path for new dropshippers. Our Shopify dropshipping guide walks through the full cost stack (plan fee, apps, payment processing, ad spend) and shows why most stores stay on Basic until revenue justifies the upgrade. If you’re dropshipping, layer ad spend on top of these platform costs before you judge a product: our dropshipping profit calculator works out net profit per order and your break-even ad cost once product cost, marketplace fees and shipping are accounted for.

Actionable Insight: Annual billing saves roughly 25% compared to monthly billing on Basic, Grow and Advanced plans. If you’re past the testing phase and committed to Shopify, switching to annual billing is the single easiest way to reduce your costs. To see exactly what each plan costs you per order at your specific order volume, run the numbers through our free Shopify fee calculator. It amortises plan + apps over your monthly orders and adds processing on top.

Payment Processing Fees (Shopify Payments)

Payment processing is the fee you pay every time a customer completes a purchase. If you use Shopify Payments, Shopify’s built-in payment processor powered by Stripe, you pay these rates:

These rates apply to transactions in your store’s default currency. International cards and currency conversion attract additional fees:

• International cards: +1.5% on top of the standard rate
• Currency conversion: +1.5% if the customer pays in a currency different from your payout currency

So a US$100 purchase from an international customer paying in their local currency could incur up to 5.9% + US$0.30 in total processing fees on the Basic plan (2.9% base + 1.5% international + 1.5% conversion).

Actionable Insight: If you sell primarily to domestic customers, international surcharges won’t affect you much. But if you’re a cross-border seller targeting multiple markets, these fees add up fast. Factor them into your pricing strategy from day one.

Third-Party Transaction Fees

This is the fee that catches many new sellers off guard. If you choose not to use Shopify Payments and instead process payments through a third-party gateway like PayPal, Stripe (directly), or a local provider, Shopify charges an additional transaction fee on every sale:

This fee is on top of whatever your third-party payment provider charges. So if you’re on the Basic plan using PayPal (which charges roughly 2.9% + US$0.30), your total per-transaction cost becomes approximately 4.9% + US$0.30, nearly double what you’d pay with Shopify Payments alone.

Why does Shopify charge this? Shopify Payments is their preferred processor, and the transaction fee surcharge incentivises sellers to use it. In countries where Shopify Payments isn’t available, this fee is unavoidable, which makes Shopify relatively more expensive.

Actionable Insight: Check whether Shopify Payments is available in your country before committing to a plan. If it’s not, factor the additional 0.6–2% transaction fee into your margin calculations. For sellers in regions without Shopify Payments support, this surcharge can significantly impact profitability.

Shopify App Fees

Shopify’s app ecosystem is both a strength and a hidden cost centre. The core platform handles the basics, but most sellers install apps for functionality like email marketing, reviews, loyalty programmes, SEO optimisation and inventory management. These subscriptions add up quickly.

Typical App Costs by Category

Most Shopify sellers spend between US$50 and US$300 per month on apps, depending on store complexity. A solo seller running a simple store might manage with just Shopify Email (free for up to 10,000 emails) and a free reviews app. A growing brand with loyalty programmes, advanced analytics and multichannel inventory sync could easily spend US$300+ per month on apps alone. Subscription apps in particular charge a percentage of recurring revenue on top of the monthly fee. Our subscription ecommerce guide breaks down the unit economics and our Shopify subscription apps comparison ranks 12 apps (Recharge, Bold, Stay AI, Loop, Skio, Yotpo, Appstle, Shopify Subscriptions, Subify, Seal, PayWhirl, Awtomic) by base price, transaction-fee percentage, and the model each one fits. Returns apps work the same way: a base subscription plus a per-return fee that compounds at scale; our returns management software comparison ranks 10 tools (Loop, AfterShip Returns, ReturnGO, Yayloh, Happy Returns, Narvar, ReturnLogic, Optoro, Outvio, Returnly) and shows where the per-RMA fee tips the maths against you.

Actionable Insight: Audit your app stack quarterly. Sellers often install apps during setup, forget about them, and end up paying for tools they no longer use. Shopify’s app billing section shows exactly what each app costs, so review it regularly.

Theme and Design Costs

Shopify’s theme store offers both free and paid themes:

• Free themes: Shopify provides roughly 12 free themes (including Dawn, the default). These are fully functional, mobile-responsive and regularly updated. For most new sellers, a free theme is perfectly adequate.
• Paid themes: Premium themes from the Shopify Theme Store cost a one-time fee of US$150–US$400. Third-party marketplaces like ThemeForest offer Shopify themes for US$30–US$80, though quality and support vary.
• Custom design: Hiring a Shopify developer for a fully custom theme typically costs US$5,000–US$30,000+ depending on complexity.

Unlike apps, theme costs are usually one-time. However, if you switch themes or need customisation beyond what the theme editor allows, expect additional costs from a developer.

Domain and Email Costs

• Custom domain: Shopify charges US$14–US$40 per year for domain registration through their built-in domain service. You can also use a domain purchased elsewhere (GoDaddy, Namecheap, Cloudflare) and point it to Shopify at no additional Shopify cost.
• Shopify Email: Free for the first 10,000 emails per month, then US$1 per additional 1,000 emails. For most small stores, email marketing through Shopify Email is effectively free.
• Professional email (Google Workspace, etc.): If you want a branded email address (hello@yourstore.com), you’ll need a third-party provider like Google Workspace (US$6/user/month). Shopify doesn’t include email hosting.

Shopify Retail Fees: POS, In-Person Rates and Per-Location Costs

If you sell in person, whether from a physical shop, a pop-up market or a trade show, Shopify bills retail separately from your online store. Three things drive the cost: what your plan already includes, the POS Pro upgrade, and the in-person card rate.

What every paid plan already includes

Shopify’s pricing pages now describe the tier bundled with every paid plan as casual in-person selling, rather than the older “POS Lite” branding you’ll still see quoted on a lot of blogs. It genuinely costs nothing extra, but it is deliberately limited:

• Only limited staff can access the POS
• Simple customer profiles only
• Returns can be processed at the original purchase location only

For a single shop with one or two people behind the counter, that’s usually enough. The limits bite the moment you add staff or a second location.

Shopify POS Pro: the per-location fee

POS Pro is an add-on charged per location, not per account. This is the most commonly misread retail fee on the platform. Shopify lists it at US$89/month per location in the US and S$129/month per location in Singapore (billed yearly), charged on top of your plan fee.

POS Pro unlocks:

• Unlimited staff accounts, plus staff roles and permissions
• Rich customer profiles and customer loyalty insights
• Returns and exchanges at any location, not just the one that made the sale
• Inventory management across locations
• Professional retail reports
• Omnichannel selling, including buy-online-pickup-in-store (BOPIS) and endless aisle

The per-location trap: a three-shop retailer on Basic pays one plan fee and three POS Pro fees. Singapore Basic is S$29/month on annual billing (S$39 on monthly billing), and three POS Pro locations at S$129 come to S$387, so the point-of-sale add-on costs ten to thirteen times the plan itself depending on your billing term. Model your retail fees per location before you sign the lease on shop number two, not after.

In-person rates are lower, but the gap depends on your market

The standard advice is that in-person card rates beat online rates. That holds, but the size of the gap varies a lot by country, and on small baskets the fixed per-transaction component matters more than the percentage.

In the US, ringing a sale up in store instead of online saves 0.3 percentage points and 20 cents. In Singapore it saves 0.2 percentage points and nothing on the fixed component, because the S$0.50 is identical either way. On a S$15 basket that’s a saving of three cents, which will not pay for POS Pro.

Actionable Insight: Shopify prices by region, not by exchange rate. The US$ figures quoted throughout this guide are US list prices, and your local plan fee, card rates and POS Pro cost will all differ. Check Shopify’s POS pricing page for your own market before you budget.

Once stock is moving across a storefront and one or more physical counters, the fee you should worry about isn’t on Shopify’s invoice. It’s the cost of overselling the same unit twice. Shopify’s own answer is POS Pro’s multi-location inventory, which is part of why the add-on exists at all. If you also sell on marketplaces, see our guides to omnichannel inventory management and retail POS systems for how the stock layer usually gets solved.

The Real Cost: Worked Examples

Theory is useful, but here’s what Shopify actually costs for three common seller profiles:

Example 1: Side Hustle (50 orders/month, US$40 average order value)

Example 2: Growing Business (500 orders/month, US$60 AOV)

Example 3: High-Volume Brand (5,000 orders/month, US$80 AOV)

As order volume increases, the effective fee rate drops because the fixed subscription cost is spread across more transactions. Payment processing remains the largest cost at every scale.

How Shopify Fees Compare to Other Platforms

If you’re evaluating Shopify against marketplaces, the fee structures are fundamentally different. Shopify charges a flat subscription plus low per-transaction fees. Marketplaces charge higher per-sale commissions but include built-in traffic.

The comparison isn’t entirely fair because marketplaces and Shopify serve different purposes. Shopify gives you a branded store you own, with full control over design, customer data and the checkout experience. Marketplaces give you access to existing buyers but take a larger commission and control the customer relationship.

Actionable Insight: Many successful sellers don’t choose one or the other. They run a Shopify store for brand building and direct sales while listing on Amazon, Shopee or Lazada for marketplace discovery. If you’re weighing Shopify against the fastest-growing social commerce channel specifically, our TikTok Shop vs Shopify comparison breaks down the per-sale economics, audience, and content-skill differences. The bigger operational challenge, keeping inventory synchronised across all channels, is exactly what multichannel management tools solve.

Hidden Costs Most Sellers Miss

Beyond the official fee schedule, several costs are easy to overlook:

1. Chargebacks

Shopify charges a US$15 chargeback fee (refunded if you win the dispute). High-risk categories or poor fraud screening can make chargebacks a significant cost. Shopify Protect covers eligible orders, but it doesn’t cover all transactions. For a breakdown of the friendly-fraud and triangulation patterns most likely to trigger chargebacks, plus how to defend against them, see our guide to the most common Shopify scams.

2. Shopify Markets (International Selling)

If you enable Shopify Markets to sell internationally with duties, local currencies and translated storefronts, pricing is:

• Markets: Included in your plan (basic international features)
• Managed Markets (powered by Global-e): 6.5% per international order for duty/tax calculation, guaranteed landed cost and local payment methods

For sellers doing significant cross-border volume, the 6.5% Managed Markets fee is substantial, though it does replace the headache of calculating duties and import taxes yourself.

3. Shopify Capital Repayment

Shopify Capital offers merchant cash advances repaid as a percentage of daily sales. This isn’t technically a “fee,” but the factor rate (typically 1.1–1.17×) means you repay 10–17% more than you borrow. It’s convenient but expensive compared to traditional business loans.

4. Premium Customer Support

Support is included on all plans, but Shopify Plus customers get a dedicated account manager and priority support. On lower plans, you may wait longer during peak periods, which has an indirect cost if time-sensitive issues (checkout bugs, payment failures) go unresolved.

5. Shipping Cost Leakage

Shopify itself does not mark up shipping, but the way you configure rates can quietly bleed margin. Flat rates set during launch often go years without review while carrier prices rise. Calculated carrier rates without Shopify Shipping discounts active charge customers (or you, if you absorb shipping) full retail. For the full breakdown of flat rates, calculated carrier rates, free shipping thresholds, and the discounts available through Shopify’s own programme, see our Shopify shipping rates guide.

6. Staff Account Limits

Basic allows 2 staff accounts, Grow allows 5, and Advanced allows 15. If you have a team larger than your plan’s limit, you either need to upgrade or share login credentials (not recommended for security and accountability).

How to Reduce Your Shopify Costs

Here are practical ways to keep your Shopify expenses under control:

1. Use Shopify Payments. Avoid the 0.6–2% third-party transaction surcharge. This is the single biggest cost saving available.
2. Switch to annual billing. Save 25% on your subscription immediately.
3. Start with free apps. Shopify Email, basic analytics, and free review widgets cover most needs for stores under 500 orders/month.
4. Use a free theme. Dawn is well-optimised and regularly updated. Premium themes are nice-to-have, not must-have.
5. Review your app subscriptions quarterly. Uninstall anything you tested but aren’t actively using.
6. Negotiate at scale. Shopify Plus pricing is negotiable, and even on lower plans, contacting Shopify about payment processing rates once you hit consistent volume can yield reductions.
7. Avoid unnecessary plan upgrades. The main reasons to upgrade from Basic to Grow are lower processing rates and more staff accounts. If neither matters to you yet, stay on Basic.

When Shopify Gets Expensive, and the Alternatives

Shopify is cost-effective for most independent sellers, but there are scenarios where costs escalate:

• High-volume, low-margin products: When payment processing eats 2.5–2.9% of every sale, thin margins get thinner. Sellers moving 10,000+ orders/month may find custom-built solutions or headless commerce platforms more economical.
• Heavy app dependency: If your store relies on 10+ paid apps totalling US$500+/month, you’re essentially paying for Shopify’s ecosystem tax on top of the platform fee.
• Multi-channel sellers paying marketplace commissions AND Shopify fees: Running Shopify alongside Amazon, Shopee, Lazada and TikTok Shop means multiple fee layers. Using a multichannel management platform like OneCart doesn’t eliminate marketplace fees, but it reduces the operational cost of managing inventory, orders and listings across all channels from a single dashboard, saving staff time that would otherwise be spent on manual reconciliation. For a deeper look at how to classify and report these fees properly in your books, see our guide on ecommerce accounting.

For sellers who find Shopify too expensive, alternatives include WooCommerce (self-hosted, no per-transaction fees but requires hosting and maintenance), BigCommerce (similar pricing but no transaction surcharge on any gateway) and marketplace-only selling if you don’t need a branded store. WooCommerce is the most common pivot. Our WooCommerce vs Shopify comparison runs the total-cost-of-ownership math at three revenue stages so you can see where each platform actually wins. For sellers eyeing BigCommerce specifically, its 0% transaction fees on every plan are the headline savings, and our BigCommerce vs Shopify comparison walks through the pricing, B2B, and multi-storefront trade-offs plan-by-plan. See our full comparison of 9 Shopify alternatives for a side-by-side look at fees, features and who each platform fits best.

Is Shopify Worth the Cost?

For most ecommerce sellers, yes. Shopify’s total cost of ownership is predictable and competitive compared to building and maintaining your own ecommerce infrastructure. The payment processing rates are in line with industry standards, and the platform’s reliability, built-in features and app ecosystem mean you spend less time on technical maintenance and more time selling.

The key is understanding all the fees, not just the subscription price, so you can make an informed decision about which plan fits your margin structure and growth trajectory.

Selling on Shopify alongside other marketplaces? Keeping inventory, orders and listings synchronised across Shopify, Amazon, Shopee, Lazada and TikTok Shop is the biggest operational challenge for multichannel sellers. OneCart connects all your channels in one dashboard with real-time inventory sync, consolidated order processing and cross-platform listing management, so you spend less time switching between tabs and more time growing your business. Start your free trial →