Shopify Pricing Plans Compared: The True Cost
The monthly sticker price is only part of the cost — payment processing rate and transaction fee change based on plan too.
By Marginory team · Online sellers with hands-on experience across Etsy, Shopify & PODUpdated Fee data verified against official platform documentation
Plan comparison
| Fee type | Basic ($25/mo) | Grow ($65/mo) | Advanced ($399/mo) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shopify Payments rate | 2.9% + $0.30 | 2.7% + $0.30 | 2.5% + $0.30 |
| 3rd-party gateway transaction fee | 2% | 1% | 0.5% |
| Annual billing discount | ~25% | ~25% | ~25% |
Source: shopify.com/pricing · Verified July 2026
When the processing rate difference matters
The 0.4-percentage-point gap between Basic (2.9%) and Advanced (2.5%) sounds small, but at high volume it adds up. On $50,000/month in sales, that's a $200/month difference in processing fees alone — potentially enough to justify the higher plan cost.
Break-even volume for upgrading Basic → Grow:
($65 − $25) ÷ (2.9% − 2.7%) = $20,000/month in sales
Don't just compare the sticker price
A common mistake is choosing a plan purely on monthly fee without modeling the payment processing savings at your actual sales volume. For growing stores, the crossover point where a higher plan becomes cheaper overall often arrives sooner than expected.