Shopify pricing in the US

What the plans cost

Four plans, in dollars, inclusive of nothing else. The yearly column is the per-month cost when you pay twelve months up front, which is what Shopify’s own pricing page shows by default. The monthly column is what you actually pay if you are paying monthly, and it is meaningfully higher.

Cross-checked against Shopify’s own plan structure and three independently dated pricing guides current as of 24 August 2026: subscription prices, third-party fee percentages and POS Pro’s monthly figure agreed exactly across all three. Card rates are for US-issued consumer cards taken online through Shopify Payments. American Express and international cards cost more: 3.5% + 30¢ on Basic, falling to 3.1% + 30¢ on Advanced. In person is cheaper, at 2.6% + 10¢ on Basic down to 2.4% + 10¢ on Advanced. Those two rate columns and the Plus card rate below are the figures on this page from a single cross-checked source rather than two agreeing sources, and are the ones most likely to move on a direct re-read.

Which plan each one is really for

The fee that costs more than the plan

If you take payment through anything other than Shopify Payments, Shopify adds its own charge on top of whatever your provider is already taking. It is 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced and 0.2% on Plus, and it applies to the order value.

On a store selling $20,000 a month on Basic, that is $400 a month, or $4,800 a year, on top of your gateway’s own fees and on top of the subscription. It buys you nothing. It is the most expensive avoidable line in US Shopify pricing and it is the one we most often find running on stores that come to us from elsewhere.

There are legitimate reasons to run another gateway, usually a payment method Shopify Payments does not support in your market. If that is not your situation, this fee is simply a bill for a decision nobody revisited.

Sales tax isn’t included, and it isn’t automatic either

A UK Shopify subscription never has to think about VAT as a separate line; it is a different tax handled a different way, and not something the platform bills you for. A US store does not get the same pass. Shopify Tax will calculate the right rate at checkout across more than 11,000 US tax jurisdictions, collect it from the customer, and, once you enroll, file and remit it in the states you tell it to. What it will not do is decide FOR you where you owe tax in the first place.

That is your economic nexus: the set of states where your sales, or sometimes your transaction count, has crossed a threshold that creates a legal obligation to collect. Working that out, and keeping it current as you grow, is on you or your accountant. Shopify Tax is free up to $100,000 of global annual sales. Above that, it charges 0.35% (0.25% on Plus) on orders in the states where you have collection turned on, capped at $0.99 per order and $5,000 per region per year.

It is nowhere on Shopify’s headline pricing page, most new US merchants do not know it exists until their first tax filing deadline, and it is the single biggest content difference between this page and its UK counterpart, because the UK simply does not have this problem in the same shape.

The revenue at which changing plan pays for itself

Moving up a plan costs more in subscription and less in processing, so there is a revenue figure where the two cancel out. You can work it out from the table above, and it is worth doing rather than taking anyone else’s word for it.

Basic to Grow costs $50 a month more on yearly billing and saves 0.2% on every order. Those meet at $25,000 a month in sales. Below that, Basic. Above it, Grow, and the gap widens quickly.

Grow to Advanced costs $220 a month more and saves a further 0.2%, so it pays from around $110,000 a month. That is a much higher bar than most people assume, and plenty of stores sit on Advanced paying for a card rate they are nowhere near earning back. If you are on Advanced for the shipping rates or the regional pricing, that is a real reason. If you moved for the percentage, check the arithmetic.

Advanced to Plus saves 0.35% for around $2,001 a month more, which does not break even until roughly $571,714 a month, or $6.9 million a year. Treat this tier of the arithmetic as approximate: Plus rates are negotiated per account and the figure above is cross-checked, not read directly from Shopify. Confirm your own quote before relying on it. Nobody should move to Plus for the card rate alone. Move for the things only Plus has, which we go through in Shopify vs Shopify Plus.

What Shopify’s pricing page leaves out

Apps. This is where store budgets actually go. Three or four subscriptions between $20 and $100 a month each is entirely normal, and the app bill commonly passes the plan within the first year and never comes back under it.

Sales tax, covered above: free up to $100,000 in annual sales, a usage fee above it. Not a Shopify plan cost in the strict sense, but a cost of selling in the US that the plan price never hints at.

POS Pro, at $89 a month per location, if you also sell in a physical store. Casual in-person selling is included; the retail features are not. Shopify retail fees at that tier are POS Pro’s own monthly charge, separate from your online Shopify website cost entirely. We cover what that involves on Shopify POS.

The theme, once, in the low hundreds if you buy one rather than using a free Shopify theme.

Design and build. Not a Shopify cost, and usually the biggest number in year one. It is also the only one on this list where what you spend changes what you earn, which is why we would rather see a brand on Grow with a fast, well-built store than on Advanced with a slow one.

What we would actually do

Start on Basic, monthly, during the trial and the first trading months, because the plan you need becomes obvious the moment you have real order volume instead of a forecast. Use Shopify Payments unless you have a specific reason not to. Set up Shopify Tax and get an accountant to confirm your nexus early, not after the first filing deadline. Move to Grow once you are past $25,000 a month. Review the app bill every quarter, because it grows by accumulation and nobody ever cancels anything.

Then stop optimizing the subscription. The difference between Basic and Grow is $50 a month. A checkout that converts a percentage point better is worth more than that on the first day, every day, and that is the work we do.