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Shopify Fees Explained: Finding the Right Plan for Your Business

Shopify offers five pricing tiers, each with different monthly costs and payment processing rates. Understanding how these fees affect your per-order profit is critical to choosing the plan that matches your sales volume and maximizing your margins.

Shopify Plan Pricing

Shopify currently offers five plans: Starter at $5/month, Basic at $39/month, Shopify at $105/month, Advanced at $399/month, and Plus at $2,300/month. The Starter plan is limited in features and charges a 5% third-party transaction fee, making it suitable only for very low-volume sellers or social media selling. The Basic plan is the entry point for most serious merchants.

Shopify Payments Processing Rates

When using Shopify Payments (Shopify's built-in payment processor), the processing rates decrease as you move up in plans. Starter charges 5% with no fixed fee per transaction. Basic charges 2.9% + $0.30, Shopify charges 2.6% + $0.30, Advanced charges 2.4% + $0.30, and Plus charges 2.15% + $0.30. For international cards, add an extra 1-2% on top of these rates.

Third-Party Transaction Fees

If you use an external payment gateway instead of Shopify Payments, Shopify charges an additional transaction fee on top of whatever the gateway charges. These fees are 5% on Starter, 2% on Basic, 1% on Shopify, 0.5% on Advanced, and 0.15% on Plus. This is a strong incentive to use Shopify Payments, where these additional fees are waived entirely.

Choosing the Right Plan

The key trade-off is monthly cost versus per-order savings. A higher plan costs more each month but takes a smaller percentage from each sale. The break-even point depends on your monthly order volume and average order value. Use the calculator above to model your specific situation: enter your typical product price, costs, and shipping, then compare results across plans to find where the lower processing rate offsets the higher monthly fee.

Additional Costs to Consider

Beyond plan and processing fees, Shopify sellers often pay for apps from the Shopify App Store (email marketing, reviews, inventory management) and potentially custom themes. The calculator lets you add these as monthly overhead costs amortized across your order volume. Shopify also charges currency conversion fees of 1.5-2% on international orders, which can matter significantly if you sell globally.

  • Use Shopify Payments to avoid the additional third-party transaction fee
  • Model your break-even point between plans before upgrading
  • Factor in app and theme costs as monthly overhead when calculating true per-order profit
  • Compare your Shopify per-order cost against marketplace platforms like Etsy and Amazon to see which channel is most profitable for your products