Shopify Fee & Plan Comparison Calculator: Find Your Most Profitable Plan

These are two separate charges that are easy to confuse. The credit card fee (also called the payment processing rate) is what you pay to process a card payment when you use Shopify Payments, the built-in processor. It is a percentage of the sale plus a flat per-transaction amount, for example 2.9% plus 30 cents on the Basic plan. Every store pays a processing fee of some kind, because moving money always costs money.

The separate Shopify transaction fee is an extra surcharge Shopify adds only when you use a third-party payment gateway instead of Shopify Payments. On the Basic plan that surcharge is around 2% per order, on the Shopify plan around 1%, and on the Advanced plan around 0.6%. If you use Shopify Payments, the transaction fee is waived and you only pay the credit card processing rate. This calculator assumes you are using Shopify Payments, so it models the credit card processing rate and not the third-party surcharge.

Upgrading is worth it at the exact point where the money you save on lower processing rates is greater than the jump in monthly subscription cost. Because the 30 cent per-order fee is identical on every plan, it cancels out and never decides the winner. Only the subscription price and the percentage rate matter.

Working through the math with Shopify Payments rates, the Basic plan ($39 at 2.9%) is cheapest until your monthly revenue reaches about $22,000, where the Shopify plan ($105 at 2.6%) takes over. The Shopify plan then stays cheapest until your monthly revenue reaches roughly $147,000, where the Advanced plan ($399 at 2.4%) finally becomes the most profitable choice.

In short, Advanced typically only pays for itself once you are processing well over $100,000 per month. Below that, the higher subscription fee outweighs the small rate discount. Enter your own numbers above to see the exact crossover for your store.

Yes. If you route payments through a third-party gateway such as PayPal, Stripe, or Authorize.net instead of using Shopify Payments, Shopify adds its own transaction fee on top of whatever that outside gateway charges you. That extra Shopify surcharge is about 2% per order on Basic, about 1% on the Shopify plan, and about 0.6% on Advanced.

On top of that surcharge you still pay the outside gateway its own processing rate, so you can end up paying twice. This is why most merchants who qualify use Shopify Payments, which waives the surcharge entirely. This calculator assumes Shopify Payments, so it does not add the third-party surcharge. If you plan to use an outside gateway, add roughly the surcharge percentage above to each plan's estimated fees to see your true cost.

Average Order Value changes the number of separate transactions hidden inside your revenue, and the flat 30 cent per-order fee is charged once per transaction. For a fixed amount of revenue, a low AOV means many small orders and therefore many 30 cent fees, while a high AOV means fewer, larger orders and fewer flat fees.

For example, $15,000 in revenue at a $50 AOV is 300 orders, which is $90 in flat fees, but the same $15,000 at a $150 AOV is only 100 orders, which is just $30 in flat fees. The percentage portion of the fee does not change with AOV, only the flat per-order portion does.

Stores with low average order values, such as those selling inexpensive single items, feel the 30 cent fee much more sharply and benefit most from encouraging larger carts through bundles, free-shipping thresholds, or upsells. Importantly, because the 30 cent fee is the same on all three plans, your AOV does not change which plan is cheapest, only your total dollar cost.

This tool compares the three core Shopify subscription tiers using their standard month-to-month pricing with Shopify Payments: the Basic plan at $39 per month with a 2.9% plus 30 cent processing rate, the Shopify plan at $105 per month with a 2.6% plus 30 cent rate, and the Advanced plan at $399 per month with a 2.4% plus 30 cent rate.

It estimates your monthly order count from your revenue and average order value, calculates the full cost of each plan, and highlights the cheapest option for your specific volume. It does not include the Starter plan, the enterprise Shopify Plus tier, annual-billing discounts, or paid apps, all of which can shift your real total.