Shopify fees vs WooCommerce: what your store really pays each month.
Enter your monthly sales and your number of orders. The calculator estimates platform and payment fees for each Shopify plan and for WooCommerce with Stripe, PayPal or Square, using rates checked on each company’s own pricing page. Every rate is editable and nothing is stored.
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Your sales, every platform, one table.
Rates were checked on October 14, 2026 and are shown with that date. If your statement says something different, change the rate and the totals update. Totals are rounded estimates of platform and payment fees only: hosting, apps, taxes, refunds, disputes and any discount you have negotiated are left out, and the lowest line is not automatically the best platform for your store. It runs in your browser.
Percentages hide the real number.
A rate like 2.9 percent plus 30 cents sounds small until you multiply it by a year of orders. Then add a monthly plan, a separate charge for using a different payment company, and fees that change with your plan, and comparing Shopify fees with WooCommerce on a pricing page becomes guesswork.
The calculator does the multiplication at your own volume, so you can see the gap in dollars a month and decide whether it is big enough to matter.
Four inputs to a fair comparison.
Monthly sales
Use a normal month’s total card sales, before refunds. A seasonal store should try a slow month and a busy month.
Number of orders
The fixed fee per order adds up fast on small orders. Two hundred orders pay that fixed fee two hundred times.
Check the rates
Each rate is pre-filled from the provider’s published pricing with the date checked. Edit any one to match your own statement.
Add what it cannot know
WooCommerce hosting and care, Shopify apps, paid extensions and international cards. More on those below.
Current Shopify fees and payment rates, in plain words
Checked on each company’s own United States pricing page on October 14, 2026. Prices change, which is why the calculator lets you edit them.
Shopify plans
On Shopify’s pricing page, the Basic plan is thirty-nine dollars a month, or twenty-nine a month when billed yearly. Grow is one hundred five a month, or seventy-nine billed yearly. Advanced is three hundred ninety-nine a month, or two hundred ninety-nine billed yearly. Shopify Plus starts at about twenty-three hundred dollars a month.
Shopify Payments online card rates
- Basic: 2.9 percent plus 30 cents per order
- Grow: 2.7 percent plus 30Â cents
- Advanced: 2.5 percent plus 30Â cents
- Plus: 2.25 percent plus 30Â cents
The extra Shopify fee for other payment companies
If you take payments through a third-party provider instead of Shopify Payments, Shopify adds its own transaction fee on top of that provider’s rate: 2 percent on Basic, 1 percent on Grow, 0.6 percent on Advanced and 0.2 percent on Plus. On a Basic store doing ten thousand dollars a month, that is another two hundred dollars a month.
WooCommerce payment options
WooCommerce itself is free, with no monthly subscription and no fee per sale. You pay your payment processor:
- Stripe: 2.9 percent plus 30 cents for domestic cards (Stripe pricing)
- WooPayments: 2.9 percent plus 30 cents for cards issued in the United States, with no monthly fee (WooPayments fees)
- PayPal: on PayPal’s fee page, the PayPal Checkout button costs 3.49 percent plus 49 cents. Card payments through PayPal’s Advanced Credit and Debit Card Payments cost 2.89 percent plus 29Â cents
- Square: Square’s help center lists 2.9 percent plus 30 cents for payments taken through its eCommerce API on every plan. Payments through Square’s own online store and invoices cost 3.3 percent plus 30 cents on its free plan, so check which rate your account shows
What each line in the estimate means.
A store’s fee bill is built from up to four parts. Knowing which part is large tells you what to change.
Monthly plan
The Shopify subscription. Zero for WooCommerce, which has no plan fee; your hosting is a separate bill you add yourself.
Rate on sales
The biggest number for most stores. It grows with every dollar of sales, so a lower plan rate matters more as you grow.
Fixed fee per order
The cents added to every order. It hurts stores with small average orders more than stores selling big-ticket items.
Third-party fee
Shopify charges it when a store takes payments through a processor other than Shopify Payments. If it would be large for you, switching processors or plans may save more than any discount.
Three costs a fee calculator cannot see.
WooCommerce still costs money to run
WooCommerce’s own pricing page estimates hosting at twenty-five to three hundred fifty dollars a month for most stores, and paid extensions at twenty-nine to two hundred ninety-nine dollars a year each. Add yours before you compare.
Shopify apps add up too
Many Shopify features come from apps, and most bill monthly. List the ones your store would need and add their prices to the Shopify side.
International cards cost more
Stripe and WooPayments add 1.5 percent for international cards and 1 percent when currency is converted. Square adds 1.5 percent for cards issued in another country. Mostly local customers can ignore this.
When Shopify fees decide it, and when they do not
At small volumes, fees rarely decide the platform. A store selling two thousand dollars a month pays roughly the same card fees with any of the main card processors, and the plan fee is the difference. At larger volumes, two things start to matter: the percentage rate on your plan, and whether you are paying Shopify’s extra fee for using another processor.
For most businesses, the bigger question is not fees but fit. Shopify is a rented storefront that is quick to open. WooCommerce is a store you own that can do whatever the business needs, from bourbon compliance shipping to syncing with the register on the counter. I wrote the full comparison in WooCommerce or Shopify? An honest answer, including when Shopify is the right call.
If you already sell on Square in person, Square Online versus WooCommerce covers that choice, and WooCommerce payment setup covers connecting Stripe, PayPal or Square properly.
WooCommerce stores in production, from Louisville.
Heimerdinger Cutlery sells about 1,000 products online. Lucas Play is a 1,374-product store I rebuilt. Shop Peerless ships small-batch bourbon direct to consumers with per-product limits and inventory synced to the Clover register. The Island Earth is my own 3,800-product store, the one I built and still run.
None of them pays a platform a percentage of its sales. Each pays its card processor and its hosting and care, and the store software takes nothing per order.
Store fees, answered.
Why does the number of orders change the total?
Every processor charges a fixed amount per order on top of the percentage. At 30 cents an order, a thousand small orders cost three hundred dollars in fixed fees alone, before the percentage.
Why might my real bill differ from the estimate?
Refunds, disputes, international cards, currency conversion, sales tax collected and the way your plan is billed all move the number. Use a recent statement to set the rates and the estimate gets close.
Is WooCommerce really free?
The software is. Running a store is not: you pay for hosting, card processing, any paid extensions and someone to keep it updated. The difference is that none of those is a percentage of your sales.
Can a WooCommerce store take both cards and PayPal?
Yes. WooCommerce supports more than one payment method at checkout, so many stores take cards through Stripe, WooPayments or Square and offer PayPal as a second button.
Is anything I enter stored?
No. The calculator runs in your browser. Your sales and order numbers never leave your computer.
Can you help me choose or move platforms?
Yes. I build and run WooCommerce stores and move Shopify stores to WooCommerce with every product, customer and old address redirected. If Shopify is the better fit, I will tell you that too.
Want a second opinion on your store costs?
Send me your platform, your monthly sales and what the store has to do. I will tell you honestly whether switching would save money or just move it around.
Connect with me
Tell me about your store.
What happens next
- 01I reply, usually the same day. Every message comes straight to me, not a ticket queue.
- 02A short call. What the site needs to do, who it is for, and what has not worked before.
- 03A written scope and flat quote. Before any work starts, with hosting and ongoing care listed separately.
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