How much does Shopify actually cost?
The plan price is the number on the pricing page. The bill is the plan, plus an extra cut of every order if you take payment anywhere other than Shopify Payments, plus the apps. Here is all three, added up, with the sums shown.
The plan
Shopify's published US month-to-month prices. Paying annually discounts these; the figures below do not assume you do.
The fee for using your own payment gateway
If you take payment through anything other than Shopify Payments, Shopify charges an additional percentage of every order — on top of what your processor already takes. It falls as the plan gets dearer, which is why the cheapest plan is not always the cheapest answer.
eCrate charges 2% of a paid order and adds nothing for the gateway you use. That is the single biggest structural difference between the two bills, and on some stores it is the whole difference.
- Shopify Basic2%
- Shopify Grow1%
- Shopify Advanced0.6%
- eCrate0%
The apps are usually the biggest line
Reviews, bundles, email, upsells, subscriptions, affiliate tracking — each one a separate subscription. Here is a whole year for a store doing $30,000 a month on Shopify Grow, with $300 a month of apps and its own payment gateway.
A store doing $30,000/mo on Shopify Grow, with $300/mo of apps, on its own payment gateway
eCrate is cheaper by
$1,246
per year
Shopify, today
- Shopify Grow plan$105/mo × 12
- $1,260
- Apps$300/mo × 12
- $3,600
- Third-party gateway fee1% of $360,000 yearly revenue
- $3,600
eCrate
- PlatformFree — no plan, no feature gates
- $0
- Apps$0 — the standard stack is built in
- $0
- Order fee2% of $360,000 yearly revenue
- $7,200
- Marketing email2k over the 3k/mo free tier × 12
- $14
- Media storage5 GB is inside the 10 GB free tier
- $0
- Landing pages$0 — you have none published
- $0
- AI store builder$0 — you have not used it
- $0
That is one store, and it is the flattering direction. Change it to Shopify Payments with no apps and the same calculator has eCrate coming out more expensive — on Shopify Payments with no apps, Shopify Grow is the cheaper of the two above about $5,200 a month in revenue. Put your own numbers in rather than ours.
The ones the invoice provokes
How much is Shopify per month?
Basic is $39 a month ($468 a year), Grow is $105 a month ($1,260 a year), Advanced is $399 a month ($4,788 a year), on the month-to-month price. Annual prepayment discounts are not included, and none of those figures include apps or the extra fee on each order described below.
What is the extra fee if I don't use Shopify Payments?
2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced — charged on every order, on top of whatever your own payment processor takes. It is the line that most often decides whether another platform is cheaper for you, and it is the one nobody notices until they read an invoice.
Why is my Shopify bill bigger than the plan price?
Because the plan is one of three things you pay. The others are the per-order fee above, if you take payment anywhere other than Shopify Payments, and the apps — reviews, bundles, email, upsells, subscriptions — which on most stores add up to more than the plan does.
Is there a platform without a monthly fee?
eCrate has none. There is no plan and no feature gate, and it charges 2% of an order once it is paid, plus metered email and storage above free tiers. Whether that works out cheaper for you depends on your revenue against your app spend — the calculator on this site answers it in your own numbers, and says so when the answer is no.
Shopify's published prices on this page were last checked in April 2026. We re-check them at least every 9 months, and this note says so when we have not.
- Shopify plan prices and third-party gateway fees are Shopify's published US month-to-month rates, last checked April 2026. Annual prepayment discounts are not applied.
- Card-processing rates are excluded from both columns — you pay your processor either way, whichever platform you are on.
- App spend is whatever you tell us you spend today. On eCrate, reviews, bundles, email, the CRM inbox, affiliate tracking and analytics are built in, so the comparable spend is usually lower.
- eCrate's order fee is charged on paid orders only. Refunded and cancelled orders are not billed.
Start with what you're renting
Paste your store's address. We read the same public pages your shoppers load and name the apps you're paying for — no account, no login, nothing installed.
Run the app-stack check