There is a number you can verify and a number nobody can publish. On Shopify's own pricing page, read on September 2, 2026 with the region set to USA and prices shown in USD, Basic is $25 a month on monthly billing and $19 on annual billing, and Grow is $65 and $49. Add a domain at the $9 a year Shopify's domains page quotes, launch on a free theme, and the floor for a working store is about $25.75 a month. Your actual total cannot be published by anyone, because Shopify publishes no price for apps and did not state a card processing rate on any page I could read.
This is a dated record, not a permanent fact. Every figure below was read on September 2, 2026 from Shopify's own pages and is quoted as Shopify words it at the time of writing (September 2026). Shopify's own fine print says that "pricing and payment options can differ depending on where your business is based," so the US page is the US page and nothing else. Before you commit money, open your own country's version and read it yourself.
What Shopify's pricing page showed on September 2, 2026
Read from shopify.com/pricing, region selector on USA, English, prices in USD.
| Plan | Monthly billing | Annual billing | Third-party payment providers | Staff accounts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | $25/mo | $19/mo | 2% | no additional staff accounts |
| Grow | $65/mo | $49/mo | 1% | "Up to 5 staff accounts" |
| Advanced | $399/mo | $299/mo | 0.6% | "Up to 15 staff accounts" |
| Plus | "Starts at $2,300/mo" | not shown | 0.2% | "Unlimited staff accounts" |
The same page states that every plan includes "Unlimited web hosting" and a "Free SSL certificate," and that you can "Sell unlimited products." It also carries an introductory offer, quoted exactly: "Try 3 days free, then $1/month for 3 months."
Five cost lines, and only three have a published price
This is the part the cost guides skip, and it is the whole reason their totals disagree with each other.
| Cost line | Does Shopify publish a price? | What I read, September 2, 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Plan | Yes | $25 to $2,300+/mo, table above |
| Domain | Yes | "domains typically start at $9 USD/year, billed annually" |
| Theme | Yes, per theme | Paid themes on the store's front page ran from $180 to $400 |
| Apps | No | The App Store front page showed "Free," "Free plan available" and "Free trial available" labels and no dollar figures at all |
| Card processing | Not on the pages I read | No percentage stated on the pricing page, the Shopify Payments page, or the Shopify Payments fees help page |
So no card processing percentage appears anywhere in this article, and none is used in any calculation. Two of your five monthly cost lines have no published number, which means any article handing you a single confident total has filled those gaps with something it did not read. Mine leaves them empty and shows you the floor instead.
How much Shopify really costs per month, computed from published prices only
A domain at $9 a year is $0.75 a month. That is the only recurring cost besides the plan that Shopify publishes a universal price for.
| Setup | Monthly cost | What is excluded |
|---|---|---|
| Basic, monthly billing, free theme, no paid apps | $25.75 | apps, card processing, ads |
| Basic, annual billing, free theme, no paid apps | $19.75 | same |
| Grow, monthly billing, free theme, no paid apps | $65.75 | same |
| Basic, monthly billing, a $180 theme spread over year one | $40.75 | same |
| Basic, monthly billing, a $320 theme spread over year one | $52.42 | same |
Illustration only, using the published figures above and simple arithmetic. Annual billing saves $6 a month on Basic, which is $72 over a year, in exchange for committing to a year before you know whether your customers followed you.
Your first three months are not your bill
Shopify's offer, quoted from the page, is "Try 3 days free, then $1/month for 3 months." On monthly Basic with a domain, that makes months one through three cost about $1.75 a month, and month four cost $25.75. The subscription line multiplies by twenty-five with no change in what you are getting. A seller budgeting from that first invoice is budgeting from a discount that expires.
What actually moves the number, ranked by how much it moves
The reader arriving at this question wants the plan price. The plan price is the fourth largest variable in it.
| Rank | What moves your monthly cost | How far it can move it |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Apps you install | Unbounded, and Shopify publishes no price for them. This is the line that decides your total. |
| 2 | Not using Shopify Payments | 2% of sales on Basic. On $2,000 a month of sales that is $40, more than the plan itself. |
| 3 | Traffic you now buy yourself | Appears on no Shopify invoice, and is usually the largest real number of all. |
| 4 | Plan tier | $40 a month between Basic and Grow, and only worth it when you need the staff accounts. |
| 5 | Theme | One purchase, $180 to $400 on the store's front page, or $0 if you take a free one. |
| 6 | Domain | $9 a year. The smallest line here by a wide margin. |
Ranks one, two and three are the ones a pricing page cannot tell you and a cost article cannot honestly estimate for you. Ranks four, five and six are the ones every guide writes about, because they are the only ones with a published number. That inversion is the single most useful thing on this page.
The 2% is not a card fee, and reading it as one is expensive
The percentages in the plan table are labeled "3rd-party payment providers." They are a penalty for processing payments through someone other than Shopify Payments, not a commission on your sales and not your card rate. Shopify's Shopify Payments fees help page, read the same day, states that "you aren't charged third-party transaction fees for orders that are processed through Shopify Payments, Shop Pay, Shop Pay Installments, and Paypal Express."
Two consequences. If Shopify Payments is available where you bank and you use it, that column is 0% for you. If it is not available in your country, or you prefer another gateway, then on Basic you are paying 2% of revenue on top of the plan, which quietly turns a $25 subscription into a percentage business again. Card processing itself is a separate charge that exists on both platforms, and since I could not read Shopify's rate from Shopify today, it is excluded from every figure here. Etsy's side of that same comparison is in Etsy's fee stack line by line, where the processing percentage is published.
Why every guide ranking for this question shows a different price
Search this question today and you will find well-built guides showing Basic at $39 a month with $29 on annual billing, and the mid plan at $105 with $79 annually. Shopify's own page, for the USA in USD, showed me $25 and $19 for Basic and $65 and $49 for Grow on September 2, 2026. One of the guides I checked states it was updated in May 2026.
None of that means anyone is lying. Plan prices differ by country, Shopify's mid plan has been renamed from "Shopify" to "Grow," promotional pricing comes and goes, and an article updated four months ago is quoting a page that has since moved. It does mean that quoting Shopify's price from another article, however recent that article is, produces a number that is nobody's actual bill. The instruction that survives all of this is short: open shopify.com/pricing on your own device, in your own country, today. The plan-versus-commission arithmetic against your marketplace is worked through in the Etsy and Shopify fee comparison, and if you would rather use your own revenue and order figures than mine, the fee calculator on this site runs it.
Where this monthly cost is the wrong shape for a seller
I am a Shopify partner and this site earns from Shopify referrals, so take the following as the part I have an incentive to leave out.
A subscription and a commission are opposite shapes. A marketplace percentage charges you nothing in a month when nothing sells. A $25 plan charges you $25 in that same month, and $25 again the month after. Three situations where that shape works against a seller:
- Your orders arrive almost entirely from marketplace search. The plan buys software and zero visitors. The saved commission becomes your entire acquisition budget, and it is usually smaller than the traffic it has to replace. How long it takes to replace marketplace income is the relevant number, not the plan price.
- Your quiet months are genuinely quiet. Seasonal and handmade shops with a slow quarter pay the fixed cost through it with nothing coming in, and apps bill on the same schedule.
- Your only reason to move is the fee saving. The saving is real and it is small next to the work it creates. The honest case for staying is a real outcome here, not a disclaimer, and for a shop turning over a few hundred dollars a month it is usually the better-fitting one. If the timing rather than the logic is the problem, it may simply be too early.
Last checked: September 2, 2026. All figures read that day from shopify.com/pricing (USA, English, USD), shopify.com/domains, themes.shopify.com and Shopify's Shopify Payments fees help page, and quoted as Shopify publishes them. No card processing rate is stated because none appeared on those pages. Shopify changes plan prices and publishes different figures in different countries.
FAQ
How much does Shopify really cost per month? The verifiable floor is the plan plus a domain. On Shopify's own pricing page read September 2, 2026 for the USA in USD, that is $25.75 a month on Basic with monthly billing and a free theme, or $19.75 on annual billing. Your real total depends on apps and card processing, and Shopify publishes no universal price for either, so no honest single figure exists above that floor.
Is Shopify $25 or $39 a month? Shopify's own pricing page showed Basic at $25 a month on monthly billing for the USA in USD on September 2, 2026. Several guides currently ranking for this question show $39. Plan prices differ by country, change without notice, and appear differently under promotions, so the only figure that applies to you is the one on your own country's version of the page today.
What does Shopify charge per transaction? The percentages on the plan table, 2% on Basic down to 0.2% on Plus, apply to orders processed through a third-party payment provider rather than Shopify Payments. Shopify's help page states you are not charged those third-party transaction fees on orders processed through Shopify Payments, Shop Pay, Shop Pay Installments and PayPal Express. Card processing is charged separately, and I could not read that rate from Shopify's pages, so it is not quoted here.
Do I have to buy a theme and a domain? Neither is compulsory. The theme store has a free category, and the paid themes on its front page ran from $180 to $400 on the day I read it. Shopify offers a free myshopify.com subdomain so you can build before buying a domain, and its domains page says domains "typically start at $9 USD/year, billed annually," with renewal pricing that "may differ from initial purchase."
Why is my first Shopify bill so much lower than this? Because of the introductory offer, quoted from the pricing page as "Try 3 days free, then $1/month for 3 months." A store that starts on Basic monthly billing pays about $1.75 a month including a domain for its first three months, then about $25.75 from month four. The month-four figure is the one that describes the ongoing cost.