WooCommerce vs Shopify fees: what you actually pay — comparison table

WooCommerce vs Shopify fees: what you actually pay

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

Quick answer

WooCommerce charges no platform fee and takes no share of your sales, but its in-house processor runs 2.90% + $0.30 on US cards, and that rate does not fall as you grow. Shopify charges a subscription and cuts your card rate by tier: 2.9% + 30¢ on Basic, 2.7% on Grow, 2.5% on Advanced. At $250,000 in monthly sales, Shopify Advanced came out cheaper than a WooPayments store in our model. The catch is real, though. Shopify also charges Basic users 2% of the order if they don’t use Shopify Payments.

Table of contents

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What a "fee" means on each platform

WooCommerce and Shopify sell different things, so their fees don’t line up row by row. WooCommerce is an open-source plugin you install on WordPress hosting you rent yourself. Shopify is a hosted service with the store, checkout, and servers included in one bill.

That difference decides where each platform can charge you.

WooCommerce can’t charge a platform fee, because you own the software. It earns on payments through WooPayments and on extensions sold in its marketplace. Shopify earns on the subscription and on card processing through Shopify Payments. When you don’t use its processor, it charges a fee for standing in the way.

If you want the broader three-platform total cost model, our Shopify vs WooCommerce vs BigCommerce pricing comparison covers BigCommerce’s GMV caps and revenue share claims. This article stays on the fee mechanics: what each platform charges per transaction, per order, and per month.

WooCommerce’s fee stack: zero platform fee, four real costs

The pricing page states the headline plainly: "$0 platform fee" and "0% revenue share." The same page names where the money goes instead.

Cost line Published figure (US)
Platform fee $0
Revenue share 0%, stated as "no revenue share"
Hosting (third party) $25–$350/month for most stores, scales with traffic
Extensions $29–$299/year per extension
US card rate, WooPayments 2.90% + $0.30 per transaction
International card surcharge +1.50%
Currency conversion +2.00%
Dispute fee $25.00
Fee for using an outside processor None

Two notes on those numbers. First, the card rate: WooCommerce’s pricing page describes payments as "~2.50-2.90% + 30¢ per transaction with WooPayments," while the WooPayments fee documentation lists the US card rate as 2.90% + $0.30. I use 2.90% in the model below, because that’s the line in the fee table itself. At high volume, Woo says custom pricing exists for established merchants, but it doesn’t publish the threshold or the rate.

Second, the fee for using a different processor. WooCommerce’s own comparison table lists "None" in that row for its column, which means a Stripe account behind a WooCommerce store costs you Stripe’s rate and nothing else. That’s the structural advantage, and it’s easy to lose track of once a subscription model looks cheaper on paper.

Hosting is where the range bites. $25 a month and $350 a month are both "most stores." The vendor can’t know your traffic, so it publishes a spread rather than an answer.

Shopify’s fee stack: subscription plus a tiered card rate

Shopify publishes subscription prices in two columns, monthly and yearly, and the yearly column is roughly 25% cheaper. The US prices, read from the pricing page on 2026-09-24:

Plan Billed monthly Billed yearly Online card rate (Shopify Payments) Third-party transaction fee
Basic $39/mo $29/mo 2.9% + 30¢ 2%
Grow $105/mo $79/mo 2.7% + 30¢ 1%
Advanced $399/mo $299/mo 2.5% + 30¢ 0.6%
Plus Starts at $2,300/mo Not published 2.25% + 30¢ 0.2%

The card rate column is the part people underweight. Moving from Basic to Grow costs $50 a month on yearly billing and buys a 0.2-point lower card rate. You can work out when that pays for itself: $600 a year ÷ 0.002 = $300,000 in annual card volume. Below that, the upgrade costs you money. Above it, it saves you money. Nothing on the pricing page frames it that way, but every number needed for the calculation is printed there.

Three more published rates belong in the same conversation. Online international card rates add 1% on every tier. Premium card rates start at 3.5% + 30¢ on Basic and fall to 2.95% + 30¢ on Plus. And marketplace order syncing is free for the first 50 orders a month, then 1% up to a $99 monthly cap. If you sell on Amazon or eBay through Shopify, that line is not optional.

The third-party transaction fee, and who actually pays it

This is the fee that shows up after you’ve already chosen a processor, and it’s the one most plan comparisons leave out.

Shopify’s pricing page answers the question directly: "There are no setup fees on any of our plans. Third-party transaction fees may apply when you use a third-party payment provider (instead of Shopify Payments). The rate depends on your plan." The rate, from the feature table, is 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced, and 0.2% on Plus.

Run that against a real processor. Stripe’s published US standard rate is 2.9% + 30¢ per successful domestic card transaction. On Shopify Basic, a merchant using Stripe pays Stripe’s 2.9% + 30¢ and Shopify’s 2% on the same order. On $10,000 in monthly card sales, that’s $330 to Stripe and $200 to Shopify, or $530 in processing cost on revenue where a Shopify Payments user pays $330.

WooCommerce merchants never see that second charge. The comparison table on Woo’s pricing page lists the additional fee for a third-party payment solution as "None" in its own column, which is also what the plugin’s code does: it hands the checkout to your gateway and takes nothing.

There’s a wrinkle worth knowing before you assume Shopify Payments is available to you. The pricing page notes that Shopify Payments "is available only in certain countries," and that available payment options differ depending on where your business is based. If you’re outside its footprint, the third-party fee is not an edge case. It’s the default, and on Basic it adds 2% to every order.

Stripe’s own published add-ons matter here too, since it’s the most common outside processor:

Stripe item Published rate
Domestic cards 2.9% + 30¢ per successful transaction
Manually entered (keyed) cards +0.5%
International cards +1.5%
Currency conversion required +1%
ACH Direct Debit 0.8%, $5.00 cap
Instant payouts 1.5%, 50¢ minimum
Instant currency conversion Starting at 0.5%

Those surcharges stack on top of whatever platform fee applies. A store selling internationally on Basic with Stripe could be looking at 2.9% + 1.5% + 1% + Shopify’s 2% on the same order. The platform fee is charged on the full order value, not on the margin.

Total cost at $10K, $50K, and $250K in monthly sales

Here’s the model, with the assumptions stated up front so you can change them.

Assumptions: yearly Shopify billing ($29/$79/$299); average order value of $75, which sets the number of 30¢ charges; Stripe’s published 2.9% + 30¢ for the third-party scenario; WooCommerce hosting at both ends of the published $25–$350 range; three paid extensions, each priced somewhere in the published $29–$299/year range.

Monthly sales Shopify, with Shopify Payments Shopify, with an outside processor WooCommerce, on WooPayments
$10,000 Basic: $359 Basic: $559 $362 to $755
$50,000 Grow: $1,629 Grow: $2,129 $1,682 to $2,075
$250,000 Advanced: $7,549 Advanced: $9,049 $8,282 to $8,675

Read the third column first, because it’s the one that contradicts the usual summary of this comparison. WooCommerce’s $0 platform fee is real, and it still loses to Shopify Advanced at $250,000 a month, because 2.5% of $250,000 is less than 2.9% of $250,000. WooPayments charges a flat rate. Shopify Payments charges less the more you pay.

Here is the arithmetic behind the $50,000 row, line by line:

Cost line Shopify Grow + Shopify Payments WooCommerce (low-end hosting)
Subscription or hosting $79/mo $25/mo
Extensions Included in subscription 3 × $29–$299/yr = $7.25–$74.75/mo
Card processing on $50,000 2.7% + 30¢ on 667 orders = $1,550 2.90% + $0.30 on 667 orders = $1,650
Platform cut of sales None None
Total $1,629/mo $1,682–$2,075/mo

The gap at $50,000 is $53 a month at the bottom of Woo’s hosting range, and it flips by $446 a month if your host sits at the top of it. That’s the honest picture: the two platforms are close, and your hosting receipt decides which one wins at this level.

At $10,000 a month the two are $3 apart on the cheapest host, which is noise. At $250,000 a month the gap widens to $733 a month in Shopify’s favor on the WooPayments low end, and $1,126 on the high end.

Now look at column two. If you can’t use Shopify Payments, Shopify Basic costs $559 a month at $10,000 in sales, against $362 for the cheapest WooCommerce setup. Shopify’s tiered rate discount only exists inside its own payment stack. The moment you bring Stripe, the subscription buys you less.

Where this model breaks

A few limits to keep in mind, because a single table can oversell its precision.

Average order value drives the 30¢ component. I assumed $75 per order. A store selling $15 items pays the fixed 30¢ five times as often for the same revenue, which can move the totals by tens of dollars a month in either direction.

International sales change the ranking. WooPayments adds 1.50% for international cards and 2.00% for currency conversion. Shopify Payments adds 1% for international cards on every tier and doesn’t publish a conversion surcharge on the pricing page. A heavily cross-border store needs to model its own mix rather than read either platform’s headline rate.

High-volume merchants negotiate. Stripe sells custom pricing above Standard, and WooCommerce says it offers custom solutions for high-volume stores without publishing the rates. At the $250,000-a-month level, both of those conversations matter more than any posted rate, and I’m not going to guess what they come out to.

One frequently repeated figure I’d treat carefully: WooCommerce’s comparison table attributes a "0.25% on monthly sales over $800k" revenue share to Shopify Plus. Shopify’s own pricing page does not state that fee anywhere. It may well be in Plus contracts, but the only published source I could find is a competitor’s comparison table, so treat it as unconfirmed rather than settled.

Our verdict

Shopify wins the fee comparison at scale, and WooCommerce wins it when you want to choose your own processor.

If you will use Shopify Payments and your monthly sales sit at or above $50,000, upgrade tiers on Shopify rather than chasing the $0 platform fee. The 2.5% Advanced rate beats WooPayments’ 2.90% on $250,000 in monthly sales by more than $700 a month, which is far more than any hosting bill difference. If you’re under $10,000 a month, the two are within a few dollars of each other and the decision should be about who maintains the store, not about fees.

WooCommerce is the better answer in one specific case: you process through a gateway you already have favorable rates with, or Shopify Payments isn’t available in your country. In that scenario Shopify’s 2% third-party transaction fee on Basic is the single most expensive line item on this page, and WooCommerce charges nothing equivalent.

Before you commit, do the one calculation vendors don’t do for you. Take your monthly card volume, multiply it by each candidate rate, and add the subscription and the fixed per-order fees. If you’d rather skip a platform migration entirely, our WooCommerce to Shopify migration walkthrough covers what actually moves and what you’d rebuild. And if you’re still choosing between platforms on more than price, our Shopify alternatives comparison weighs them on setup and support too.

Frequently asked questions

Does WooCommerce charge a platform fee or take a cut of sales?

No. WooCommerce states a $0 platform fee and 0% revenue share, and its comparison table lists no fee for using an outside processor. It earns instead through WooPayments and marketplace extensions.

What is Shopify’s third-party transaction fee and when does it apply?

It applies when you use a payment provider other than Shopify Payments, and the rate depends on your plan: 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced, and 0.2% on Plus. Shopify notes Shopify Payments is only available in certain countries, so for some merchants this fee is the default.

What does WooPayments charge per transaction?

The WooPayments fee documentation lists the US card rate as 2.90% + $0.30 per transaction. International cards add 1.50%, currency conversion adds 2.00%, and the dispute fee is $25.00.

Is Shopify cheaper than WooCommerce at high sales volume?

In the article’s model, yes, if you use Shopify Payments: at $250,000 in monthly sales, Shopify Advanced came out cheaper than a WooPayments store. The gap was $733 a month on the low end of WooCommerce hosting and $1,126 on the high end.

When does upgrading from Shopify Basic to Grow pay for itself?

Moving from Basic to Grow costs $50 a month on yearly billing and buys a 0.2-point lower card rate. The article calculates the break-even at $300,000 in annual card volume ($600 a year ÷ 0.002).

How much does Shopify cost per month on each plan?

US prices are $39/mo Basic, $105/mo Grow, $399/mo Advanced, and Plus starting at $2,300/mo when billed monthly. Billed yearly, those drop to $29, $79, and $299 respectively, with Plus yearly not published.

How we researched this

  • This is a research-based review. Every figure comes from the vendors’ own published pricing pages and fee documentation, which we link and date.
  • All pages were captured on 2026-09-24 through a US exit IP with an en-US locale, because Shopify serves different currencies and prices based on where the request originates. Every price quoted here is the US version.
  • Card rates, third-party transaction fees, surcharges, and caps come from the vendors’ own feature tables and fee documentation, not from marketing copy.
  • Total cost figures in the tables are our arithmetic, computed from published rates under the stated assumptions. They are not vendor-published totals.
  • Where two sources disagree, we say so and name the one we used. Where a threshold or rate isn’t published, we say that instead of estimating.
  • Our full methodology is on the how we research page.

Sources

Directly comparable breakdowns on this site:

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