What a Shopify store really costs per month (with sources)
The plan price is only one line of the bill. A worked example for a small US store with 200 orders a month: plan, card processing, transaction fees, apps, theme and domain, each with its source and the date it was checked.
"$39 a month" is the number most people remember about Shopify. It's a real number, but it isn't what a store pays. A working store also pays for card processing, sometimes a transaction fee on top, usually a handful of apps, and a few smaller things like a domain.
This post adds those up for one realistic small store, with a source and a check date next to every outside figure. We make Waise, a Shopify alternative, so we have a stake in this comparison. That's why we show our working, and why we say plainly where Shopify comes out ahead.
The example store
- A US candle and home-fragrance brand
- 200 orders a month, $60 average order, so $12,000 in sales a month
- Domestic customers paying by card online
- Billed monthly (yearly billing is cheaper on most platforms; we note it where it matters)
Your numbers will differ. The point is the shape of the bill, not the exact total.
Line 1: the plan
| Shopify plan | Billed monthly | Billed yearly (per month) | Fee if you use another payment provider |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | $39 | $29 | 2% |
| Grow | $105 | $79 | 1% |
| Advanced | $399 | $299 | 0.6% |
| Plus | from $2,300 | — | 0.2% |
Source: shopify.com/pricing, US prices, checked November 3, 2026.
For our 200-order store, Basic is the natural fit.
Line 2: card processing
Every online card payment costs money, on any platform. The question is who takes it and at what rate.
- Shopify Payments (Shopify's own processor) on Basic is commonly listed at 2.9% + 30¢ per online domestic card payment, with lower rates on Grow and Advanced (2.7% + 30¢ and 2.5% + 30¢). We could not confirm these rates on a Shopify page on November 3, 2026; they come from several third-party fee guides. Check Shopify's admin or help center for your own rate.
- Stripe, used directly, is 2.9% + 30¢ per successful domestic card payment, plus 1.5% for international cards and 1% when currency conversion is needed. Source: stripe.com/pricing, checked November 3, 2026.
For our store, 2.9% of $12,000 is $348, plus 200 × 30¢ = $60. About $408 a month in card processing, whichever of the two you use at that rate.
Line 3: Shopify's fee for using another processor
If you use Shopify Payments, Shopify charges no extra transaction fee. If you use another provider (Stripe directly, PayPal as your main processor, or a local processor in a country where Shopify Payments isn't offered), Shopify adds its own fee on top: 2% on Basic.
For our store that's 2% × $12,000 = $240 a month, on top of the processor's own fee. Most US stores avoid it by using Shopify Payments, so we leave it out of the main example.
Line 4: apps
This is the line that varies most, and the one people underestimate. A Shopify store usually adds apps for things like product reviews, email marketing, upsells and bundles, and loyalty. Some list prices:
| App | What it does | Listed price per month |
|---|---|---|
| Judge.me | Product reviews | $15 |
| Loox | Photo reviews | $49.99 |
| Kaching Bundles | Volume discounts and bundles | $14.99 to $59.99 |
| Smile | Loyalty and rewards | $15 to $199 |
| Klaviyo | Email marketing | Free up to 250 profiles and 500 emails a month; paid plans after that, priced by list size |
Sources: each app's own pricing page, checked by Waise on October 22, 2026 (Judge.me, Loox, Kaching, Smile) and November 3, 2026 (Klaviyo's free plan). Not re-checked for this post except Klaviyo; app prices change often.
A store doesn't need all of these. A realistic small-store set (reviews, a bundles or upsell app, and email beyond the free tier) is roughly $50 to $100 a month at these list prices. That range is our estimate from the table above, not a survey.
(Owner: our economic model cites a Koala Apps figure of a $52 median monthly app spend across 11 apps. We could not open the original source to confirm it, so it is not used here.)
Line 5: theme and domain
- Theme. Shopify offers free themes. Paid themes are a one-time purchase, often a few hundred dollars. (Owner: the $100 to $500 range in our claims log comes from shopthemedetector.com; it was not re-checked for this post.) Spread over two years, a $300 theme is about $12 a month.
- Domain. A .com domain usually costs somewhere in the range of $10 to $25 a year depending on the registrar. This is a general estimate, not a quote. About $1 to $2 a month.
The total
| Line | Shopify Basic with Shopify Payments |
|---|---|
| Plan | $39 |
| Card processing (2.9% + 30¢) | ~$408 |
| Transaction fee | $0 |
| Apps | ~$50 to $100 |
| Theme (paid, spread over 2 years) | $0 to ~$12 |
| Domain | ~$1 to $2 |
| Total | ~$498 to $561 a month |
Card processing is the biggest line, and it doesn't change much between platforms. The lines you can actually shop around on are the plan, the transaction fee and the apps.
The same store on Waise
Here's the same store on our own pricing, so you can compare like with like.
| Line | Waise Basic, with your own Stripe |
|---|---|
| Plan | $29 |
| Per-order fee: first 50 orders free, then $0.25 × 150 | $37.50 |
| Card processing (Stripe, 2.9% + 30¢) | ~$408 |
| Apps for reviews, bundles and volume discounts, cart upsells, abandoned-cart and win-back emails | $0 (included) |
| Theme | $0 (included; a few premium designs are a one-time purchase) |
| Domain | ~$1 to $2 |
| Total | ~$476 a month |
Waise prices from waise.com/pricing on November 3, 2026. Email sending above each plan's included amount is charged at cost; check the pricing page for current limits.
What this shows, honestly:
- On the platform and fees alone, Shopify Basic is cheaper. $39 against $66.50 for this store. Shopify's flat plan beats our per-order fee at this volume.
- The difference comes from apps. If your store would pay for review, bundle and upsell apps, those are included on every Waise plan, and the total can come out lower. Waise has no loyalty-points program, so if you need one, add that app's price back in. If you'd run Shopify with no paid apps at all, it may well be the cheaper choice for you.
- The fee structure is different. Shopify's 2% applies only if you don't use Shopify Payments; ours is a flat amount per order that doesn't grow with the size of the cart, and it drops on bigger plans (zero on our Company plan).
How to work out your own number
- Take last month's sales and order count.
- Multiply sales by your card rate and add the per-transaction fee.
- Add your plan price.
- Add any transaction fee for your setup.
- List every app you pay for, at today's price.
- Add theme and domain, spread per month.
Then do the same for any platform you're considering. The calculator on our home page does this with your own numbers, and in the Waise admin a store sees its real monthly bill and what the built-in tools brought back.
A note on checking these numbers
Prices on every platform change. Each figure above carries the date we checked it; if it's more than a few months old when you read this, open the source and check again. If you spot something wrong, tell us and we'll correct it.