Let's clear up a common misconception right away: Shopify isn't a single price point. In 2026 it runs five tiers, ranging from $5/month to $2,300+/month โ a wide spread, and picking the wrong one leads to one of two problems: either paying for features you'll never use, or hitting plan limitations that start constraining how you operate. Understanding what each tier actually includes and what fees it charges matters a lot more than memorizing a single "Shopify costs X" number.
Five Plans, One Table
| Plan | Monthly billing | Annual billing (per month) | Online credit card rate | Third-party gateway surcharge | Best fit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $5/mo | No annual discount | 2.9% + $0.30 | N/A (no full storefront) | Social-only selling, no independent store needed |
| Basic | $39/mo | $29/mo | 2.9% + $0.30 | 2% | Beginners, monthly GMV under $100K |
| Grow | $105/mo | $79/mo | 2.7% + $0.30 | 1% | Growth stage, monthly GMV $100Kโ$300K |
| Advanced | $399/mo | $299/mo | 2.5% + $0.30 | 0.6% | Mid-size stores, monthly GMV $300Kโ$1M |
| Plus | From ~$2,300/mo (3-yr) or ~$2,500/mo (1-yr) | Shifts to revenue share above certain GMV threshold | Negotiable, ~2.45% + $0.30 | Contract-dependent | Enterprise, annual revenue $10M+ |
(Prices in USD. GMV refers to annual gross merchandise value. Verify current thresholds and rates on Shopify's official pricing page.)
Starter isn't really "opening a store" in any conventional sense. For $5/month you get a checkout link and a buy button โ something you can drop into an Instagram bio or a TikTok comment. No full storefront, no theme, none of what most people picture when they think "online store." It works for sellers who are purely social-commerce-driven and have no need for an independent website.
Basic is the plan most beginners actually start on โ $39/month ($29/month on annual billing), covering a complete online store, unlimited products, abandoned cart emails, and 24/7 support. There's a limitation here that's easy to miss: Basic hasn't included any staff accounts since 2024. Only the store owner can log into the backend. If you're planning to bring someone in to help run the store, this directly affects whether Basic will work for you.
Grow (renamed from "Shopify" in 2026 โ older articles calling it the "standard plan" are referring to the same tier, same features and pricing, just a new name) runs $105/month ($79/month annually). Its two meaningful advantages over Basic: staff accounts open up (5โ10 depending on billing cycle), and the credit card rate drops from 2.9% to 2.7%, with the third-party gateway surcharge falling from 2% to 1%. That rate difference isn't trivial โ if your monthly revenue is around $10,000 and you're running PayPal alongside Shopify Payments, Basic's 2% gateway surcharge alone costs you roughly $200 extra per month. The savings on Grow cover the plan upgrade difference quickly.
Advanced at $399/month ($299/month annually) drops the credit card rate further to 2.5% and the gateway surcharge to 0.6%, while also unlocking custom reporting and more detailed shipping cost calculation tools. It's built for stores with consistently high monthly revenue that are starting to need more granular operational data.
Plus is the enterprise tier, starting around $2,300/month on a 3-year contract or $2,500/month on a 1-year contract, shifting to a revenue share model above a certain sales threshold โ the specific percentage requires separate negotiation. The core capabilities this tier unlocks are native B2B functionality, deep checkout customization, and Shopify Functions for custom business logic. If none of these apply to your operation, Advanced is usually sufficient and there's no need to rush toward Plus.
Where the Money Actually Goes Beyond the Plan Fee
The price on Shopify's website is only half the story. In practice, a few cost items that don't appear on the pricing page often run higher than the monthly plan fee itself.
Credit card processing fees are the largest ongoing expense for nearly every merchant. On a $100 order processed through Shopify Payments, Basic takes $3.20, Grow takes $3.00, Advanced takes $2.80 โ small differences in isolation, but when revenue scales into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, those percentage points accumulate into real money. If you're not using Shopify Payments and running PayPal or another third-party gateway instead, Shopify stacks a surcharge on top of the gateway's own fees (0.6%โ2% depending on plan) โ a cost a lot of beginners don't factor in upfront.
App subscriptions are the second-biggest hidden cost. The Shopify App Store has over 4,000 apps, and most commonly used tools โ email marketing (Klaviyo), product reviews (Judge.me), cart recovery โ run on monthly subscriptions, typically $9โ$99 per app. A mid-size brand store running 5โ8 core apps simultaneously isn't unusual, and that adds up to somewhere between $50 and $300 in additional monthly spend that won't appear anywhere on Shopify's pricing page.
Themes and shipping are worth a quick mention too. Free themes like the official Dawn work fine for most new stores โ but if you want a more distinctive paid theme, expect a one-time cost in the $200โ$400 range. On the shipping side, Shopify's built-in carrier discounts (up to roughly 77โ88% depending on plan) can produce meaningful savings, but actual shipping costs still need to be calculated per order and aren't absorbed by the plan fee.
How to Figure Out Which Plan You Actually Need
My advice is to stop trying to find the "best value plan" in the abstract and work backward from your current situation instead.
If you're a complete beginner who hasn't validated whether a product will sell, starting on Basic is the right call. The $39/month cost is low enough that you're not carrying heavy fixed expenses before you've made a single sale. Once you've confirmed the product sells and you either need to add staff access or find you're running a meaningful portion of payments through PayPal or another third-party gateway, that's when to evaluate upgrading to Grow. The math for that upgrade decision is simple: calculate how much you're paying each month in third-party gateway surcharges at Basic's 2% rate. If that figure exceeds the $66/month difference between Basic and Grow, upgrading pays for itself.
If you're already doing consistent monthly revenue (broadly, somewhere in the hundreds of thousands of dollars range) and need more detailed reporting and lower transaction rates, Advanced is the logical next step โ no need to jump straight to Plus. Most mid-size brand stores can run comfortably on Advanced for a long time. Plus's core value proposition is concentrated in B2B and deeply customized checkout flows; not every business needs that.
The signals that Shopify Plus is worth considering are usually: you need to sell to business customers with bulk ordering (native B2B functionality), you need to deeply customize the checkout experience with specific promotional logic, or your annual sales are in the tens of millions of dollars and you need higher API call limits and dedicated account support. If none of those apply, staying on Advanced is almost always the more cost-efficient choice.
What actually drives Shopify's total cost was never the plan fee itself โ it's your transaction volume and payment gateway choices. Using Shopify Payments and landing on the right plan tier saves considerably more than the difference between plan price tags. Before launching, it's worth opening Shopify's Fee Calculator on the pricing page, entering your estimated monthly revenue and average order value, and running the actual numbers across plans. That exercise gives a clearer picture than looking at monthly fees in isolation.