Shopify transaction fees: what the 2% actually costs

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By Jason Feng, Founder & Researcher. See how this review was researched.

Quick answer

Shopify Basic costs $29 a month billed yearly or $39 billed monthly, and the fee that decides your real processing cost is not the subscription. Use Shopify Payments if you can.

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By Jason Feng · 2026-10-21

Shopify Basic costs $29 a month billed yearly or $39 billed monthly, and the fee that decides your real processing cost is not the subscription. It is the 2% Shopify charges on every order paid through a provider other than Shopify Payments. On $10,000 in monthly card sales, that 2% is $200, which is almost seven times the subscription on the yearly term.

The charge is easy to miss because it never appears on the plan card. It appears in the feature comparison table, one row under the card rates, labelled “Third-party transaction fees.” The rate falls as you move up: 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced, and 0.2% on Plus. Whether you ever pay it depends on one question, which is whether Shopify Payments is available for your business and whether you choose to use it.

This is a research-based review. Every rate comes from Shopify’s own pricing page and feature table, which we link and date at the bottom. The page was captured on 2026-10-21 through a US exit IP (199.237.109.149) with an en-US locale, because Shopify serves different currencies and plan prices based on where a request originates; every figure here is the US version. Totals labelled as our arithmetic are computed from published rates under assumptions printed beside them. One plan price conflicted between two captures, and this article flags it rather than picking the friendlier number.

Shopify transaction fees: what the 2% actually costs
Shopify transaction fees: what the 2% actually costs

A single Shopify order can carry four separate charges, and only one of them is the subscription.

The subscription is fixed per month regardless of volume. The card rate is a percentage plus a fixed amount per transaction, taken by whichever processor handles the payment. The third-party transaction fee is Shopify’s cut when that processor is not Shopify Payments. Surcharges apply on top for international cards, currency conversion, and premium cards.

Fee Basic Grow Advanced Plus
Subscription, yearly billing $29/mo $79/mo See note below Not published
Subscription, monthly billing $39/mo $105/mo $399/mo Starts at $2,300/mo
Online card rate, Shopify Payments 2.9% + 30¢ 2.7% + 30¢ 2.5% + 30¢ 2.25% + 30¢
In-person card rate 2.6% + 10¢ 2.5% + 10¢ 2.4% + 10¢ 2.3% + 10¢
Third-party transaction fee 2% 1% 0.6% 0.2%
POS Pro add-on $89/mo per location $89/mo per location $89/mo per location $89/mo per location

Advanced’s yearly subscription price is the one number I will not print as settled. [DATA NOT VERIFIED: Shopify pricing page shows $359/mo annually in the 2026-10-21 fetch, $299 in an earlier fetch] The two captures are months apart, both were taken from the US version of the same page, and the difference is $60 a month. It may be a price change, a regional test, or a rendering difference in a page that loads its plan table with JavaScript. I cannot tell which from outside, so any budget built on Advanced should be rechecked against the live page before signing. The monthly price of $399 appeared in both captures and is stable.

The card rate column is where the tiers earn their keep. Moving from Basic to Grow costs $50 a month on yearly billing and buys a 0.2-point lower online rate. That upgrade breaks even at $600 a year divided by 0.002, or $300,000 in annual card volume. Below that, the higher tier costs you money on card fees alone. The third-party column changes that arithmetic for anyone outside Shopify Payments, because the tier discount applies to the 2% as well.

Shopify’s own FAQ answers the availability question in one line: “Third-party transaction fees may apply when you use a third-party payment provider (instead of Shopify Payments).” The pricing page also states that Shopify Payments is available only in certain countries, and that the payment options offered depend on where the business is based.

That sentence describes two very different merchants. The first has Shopify Payments available and chooses Stripe anyway, usually because of an existing relationship or a rate negotiated at volume. The second operates in a country where Shopify Payments is not offered, which makes an outside processor the only option and turns the fee into a permanent cost of selling.

Run the numbers on the first case. Stripe’s published US standard rate is 2.9% + 30¢ per successful domestic card transaction. On Shopify Basic with Stripe, an order carries Stripe’s 2.9% + 30¢ and Shopify’s 2%, so $10,000 in monthly sales costs $330 in processing plus $200 to Shopify. The same $10,000 through Shopify Payments costs $330 total. The 2% is not a small administrative charge on top of a marginally different rate; it is a second processor-sized cut on the same revenue.

For the second case, the calculation is worse, because the tier ladder for card rates is a Shopify Payments feature. A merchant on Basic outside Shopify Payments pays an outside processor’s rate plus 2%, and upgrading to Grow reduces that 2% to 1% for $50 a month. At $10,000 in monthly sales the upgrade saves $100 a month and costs $50, so it pays. At $3,000 in monthly sales it saves $30 and costs $50, so it does not. The crossover sits at $5,000 in monthly third-party volume, which is arithmetic on the published rates and not something the pricing page states.

There is a fourth fee worth separating from the transaction fee, because the two get confused in forum posts. Shopify charges no setup fee on any plan, the pricing page says so directly. It does charge for POS Pro at $89 a month per location, and for marketplace order syncing beyond the free monthly allowance. Neither is a transaction fee, and neither changes when you switch processors.

What the fee costs at three revenue levels

Assumptions: yearly billing on the subscription, an average order value of $75 to fix the number of 30¢ charges, Stripe’s published 2.9% + 30¢ as the outside processor, and Shopify Payments at the tier rate published on the pricing page.

Monthly sales Basic, Shopify Payments Basic, Stripe plus 2% Grow, Stripe plus 1%
$3,000 $29 + $99 = $128 $29 + $99 + $60 = $188 $79 + $99 + $30 = $208
$10,000 $29 + $330 = $359 $29 + $330 + $200 = $559 $79 + $330 + $100 = $509
$50,000 $29 + $1,650 = $1,679 $29 + $1,650 + $1,000 = $2,679 $79 + $1,650 + $500 = $2,229
$250,000 $29 + $8,250 = $8,279 $29 + $8,250 + $5,000 = $13,279 $79 + $8,250 + $2,500 = $10,829

The third column is the reason the tier ladder matters more than the subscription. A Basic merchant using Stripe pays $559 a month on $10,000 in sales. Moving to Grow cuts the platform fee from $200 to $100, so the same store pays $509: $50 cheaper despite a $50 higher subscription. At $3,000 in sales the same move costs $20 more than staying on Basic, and at $50,000 it saves $450.

Now compare column one to column three at the top of the range. On $250,000 in monthly sales, Shopify Payments on Basic costs $8,279 including the subscription, while Stripe on Basic costs $13,279. The $5,000 gap is the 2%, and no amount of plan optimisation closes it. If Shopify Payments is available to you, using it is worth more than every other decision on this page combined.

Monthly sales Advanced, Stripe plus 0.6% Advanced, Shopify Payments
$10,000 $330 processing + $60 = $390 before subscription $330 + subscription
$50,000 $1,650 + $300 = $1,950 before subscription $1,650 + subscription
$250,000 $8,250 + $1,500 = $9,750 before subscription $8,250 + subscription

I have left the Advanced subscription out of those cells on purpose. [DATA NOT VERIFIED: Shopify pricing page shows $359/mo annually in the 2026-10-21 fetch, $299 in an earlier fetch] Filling in either number would produce a total that looks precise and may be wrong by $720 a year.

Average order value drives the 30¢ component, and I fixed it at $75. A store selling $15 items pays the fixed fee five times as often for the same revenue, which adds roughly $24 a month per $10,000 in sales compared with the $75 assumption. That is small against the 2%, and large enough to matter at the margin.

International orders change the ranking. Shopify Payments adds 1% on international cards, and premium cards are priced higher than standard ones, starting at 3.5% + 30¢ on the lower tiers according to the pricing page’s card rate tables. An outside processor applies its own international surcharges, and Stripe publishes 1.5% for international cards plus 1% when currency conversion is required. A store selling mostly cross-border can see its effective rate rise well above either headline number, and the 2% platform fee is charged on the full order value regardless.

Currency is another moving part. Every figure in this article is the USD version of the pricing page. Shopify serves localized prices elsewhere: the same capture that produced the USD table also carried HKD rates such as 3.3% + HK$2.35 for standard cards, which is a different number for a different market. A merchant billing in another currency should read their own localized page rather than converting these.

Plan prices themselves move. The Advanced conflict above is the clearest example in this data set, and it is a reminder that a fee article is a snapshot. The structural finding, that the third-party fee is a percentage of revenue rather than a fixed cost, survives price changes. The exact totals do not.

One more limit: negotiated rates. Shopify publishes no threshold at which it discounts the subscription or the card rate, and neither does Stripe. High-volume merchants negotiate both, and any comparison built on posted rates overstates what a large store actually pays.

What is the Shopify third-party transaction fee?

It is a percentage Shopify takes when an order is paid through a provider other than Shopify Payments. The rate is 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced, and 0.2% on Plus. It is charged on the order total and applies in addition to whatever the outside processor charges, so the two stack on the same sale.

How do I avoid the 2% fee on Shopify Basic?

Use Shopify Payments. The fee applies only when you route payments through another provider, and the pricing page states that Shopify Payments is available in certain countries. If it is not offered where your business is based, the fee cannot be avoided on Basic; moving to Grow halves it to 1% for $50 a month more on yearly billing, which pays for itself above $5,000 in monthly third-party volume.

Is the Shopify subscription the same as the transaction fee?

No. The subscription is a fixed monthly charge: $29 on Basic billed yearly, $39 billed monthly, $79 or $105 on Grow. The transaction fee is a percentage of sales and scales with revenue. On $10,000 in monthly sales, Basic’s 2% third-party fee equals $200, against a $29 subscription. The percentage line is the larger one for any store doing real volume.

Does POS Pro change the transaction fee?

POS Pro is a separate add-on at $89 a month per location, and it does not change the online third-party transaction fee. It does carry its own in-person card rates, which are lower than the online rates on every tier: 2.6% + 10¢ on Basic against 2.9% + 30¢ online. A store selling both in person and online should model the two channels separately rather than applying one blended rate.

Why does the Advanced price differ between sources?

Because two captures of the same page disagreed. [DATA NOT VERIFIED: Shopify pricing page shows $359/mo annually in the 2026-10-21 fetch, $299 in an earlier fetch] The monthly price of $399 matched in both, so the conflict is confined to the yearly column. Check the live page before committing to an annual Advanced term, since the difference is $720 a year.

Use Shopify Payments if you can. That single decision is worth more than the plan choice at every revenue level in the table above, and on $250,000 in monthly sales it separates an $8,279 month from a $13,279 one.

Choose Basic if your monthly sales sit under roughly $5,000 and you can use Shopify Payments. The 2.9% rate is the highest online rate Shopify publishes, and at low volume the $50 monthly step to Grow cannot earn back its own cost. Choose Grow once card volume passes $5,000 a month on an outside processor, because halving the platform fee from 2% to 1% beats the subscription increase at that point. Skip Advanced until you have confirmed the yearly price on the live page, given the conflict between the two captures, and until your volume justifies 0.6%.

If Shopify Payments is unavailable in your country, do not treat Shopify as a low-cost platform. The 2% on Basic is a permanent tax on revenue that no plan change removes below Grow, and at that point a self-hosted cart with your own gateway is the structurally cheaper option. Our WooCommerce versus Shopify fee comparison prices that alternative line by line, our Shopify alternatives roundup covers platforms that do not charge for outside processors, and our monthly store running cost model puts these fees next to hosting and email so the total is visible in one place.

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  • https://www.shopify.com/pricing (accessed 2026-10-21)
  • https://stripe.com/pricing (accessed 2026-10-21)

By Jason Feng, Founder & Researcher. See how this review was researched.

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