Which Shopify plan should you choose

Shopify publishes a comparison table running to roughly sixty rows. Fifty-four of them are identical across Basic, Grow and Advanced. That is not a criticism of the table, but it does mean most people read it, feel vaguely anxious, and pick the middle option because the middle option usually feels safe.

The middle option is often wrong at launch. Here is the shorter version.

Start on Basic

Every one of the three plans runs the same shop. Same storefront, same checkout, same unlimited products, same payment processing, same abandoned cart recovery, same marketing tools. Nothing about launching is compromised by choosing the cheapest one.

What separates them is the card rate and a handful of features you will not reach for in your first year.

What actually differs

Six lines, not sixty.

• The online card rate. 2.9% on Basic, 2.7% on Grow, 2.5% on Advanced, each plus 30 cents.
• Staff accounts. Basic gives the account owner and nothing more. Grow adds five, Advanced fifteen.
• Carrier-calculated shipping. Not on Basic, a paid add-on on Grow, included on Advanced.
• The monthly fee. $39, $105 and $399, or $29, $79 and $299 on an annual term.
• Sales credit. Up to $5,000, $7,500 or $10,000 back at 1% of sales.
• Region-specific storefronts. Advanced only.

Everything else on that sixty-row table is the same on all three.

Ignore the transaction fee row

Shopify lists third-party transaction fees of 2%, 1% and 0.6%, which makes Basic look punitive and pushes a lot of people upward.

Those apply only if you process payments through something other than Shopify Payments. If you use Shopify Payments, which most stores should, they are zero on all three plans. It is the single most misread line in the comparison.

The sum that tells you when to move up

Each step up buys two tenths of a percentage point off the card rate in exchange for a larger monthly fee. Which plan is cheaper depends entirely on how much you sell, so there is no universal answer, but there is a simple way to find yours.

Divide the extra monthly fee by the rate you would save. That gives the monthly card sales figure at which the two plans cost you exactly the same.

Basic to Grow is $66 a month against 0.2%, so the two plans cost the same at $33,000 a month in card sales. Below that, Basic is cheaper. Above it, Grow is. Grow to Advanced is $294 against the same 0.2%, which puts the crossover near $147,000 a month.

Worth being precise about what that is and is not. It is a comparison of two subscription prices, not a break-even and not a forecast. It says nothing about whether the business is profitable at that volume. It is simply the point where one bill overtakes the other.

The same two tenths separates the premium card rates and the in-person rates too, so the crossover lands in the same place whatever your mix turns out to be.

What the plan price does not cover

So that the figure you budget is the real one.

• Card processing. Per sale rather than per month, and the largest running cost on this list.
• Apps. Subscriptions, reviews and loyalty are not included in any plan. Each is built by a different developer who sets their own price.
• The domain. Paid at your registrar, not to Shopify.
• POS Pro, at $89 a month per location, if you have a physical shop. Casual selling at pop-ups and markets is included on every plan already.

The trial that makes this harder, not easier

Shopify has been running the first three months at $1 a month on all three plans.

That sounds generous, and it is, but notice what it does: it removes the price difference at exactly the moment you are asked to choose. It becomes tempting to take Advanced on the grounds that it costs the same today.

In month four it becomes $399 a month. Worse, anything you have built on its region-specific features has to be unpicked before you can come back down. Take the trial, by all means. Just choose the plan you would have chosen without it.

One thing no plan gives you

Checkout customization is listed as limited on all three. Full control of the checkout begins at Shopify Plus, well above Advanced. So do not buy up expecting to redesign the checkout, because Advanced will not let you either.

Deciding in two minutes

Start on Basic unless one of two things is true.

If you and your business partners each need a separate login rather than sharing one, that forces Grow regardless of revenue, because Basic gives you exactly one account.

If your monthly card sales are already comfortably past the crossover you worked out above, start on the plan that matches where you are rather than where you were.

Otherwise Basic, and revisit it at month three with real orders in front of you instead of an estimate. Plans move up and down from the admin without touching the store, the products or the orders, so the decision is reversible in a way that most launch decisions are not.

Prices and plan features above are as published by Shopify on 5 October 2026, in US dollars for a United States store. Shopify changes them, so check the current figures before you commit.