How the result is calculated
Running a store on Shopify costs two kinds of money. The first is the plan, a fixed subscription that buys the store itself: Basic, Grow and Advanced in most countries, cheaper per month when you pay for a year up front. The second depends on your sales. With Shopify Payments, Shopify's own payment processing, every online card payment pays a percentage and a small fixed amount, and both get cheaper on the dearer plans. With any other payment provider, the provider charges its own fee and Shopify adds a transaction fee of its own on top, again lower on the dearer plans.
Card rates also depend on where the card was issued. A store in Britain pays one rate on British cards and a higher one on cards from anywhere else; a store in the euro area pays its standard rate on any card from the European Economic Area. American Express and, in the United States, business cards have their own rate. When a customer pays in a currency other than your payout currency, Shopify charges a conversion fee as well: 1.5% in the United States and 2% elsewhere.
With Shopify Payments: S + n × (V × r + f) + n × V × c
With another provider: S + n × (V × p + q) + n × V × t
- S
- the plan's price per month, monthly or yearly billing
- n
- orders in the month
- V
- the average order, including tax and shipping
- r, f
- the plan's card rate and fixed fee for the card's origin
- c
- the currency conversion fee, when customers pay in another currency
- p, q
- another provider's own rate and fixed fee
- t
- Shopify's transaction fee for the plan
Worked example
The calculator opens on an American store on the Basic plan, billed monthly, taking 100 online orders a month at an average of $50, all on standard US cards.
| Item | Amount | How it is obtained |
|---|---|---|
| Basic plan | $39.00 | billed monthly |
| Card fee per order | $1.75 | 2.9% × 50 + 0.30 |
| Card fees for the month | $175.00 | 100 × 1.75 |
| Sales | $5,000.00 | 100 × 50 |
| Shopify costs a month | $214.00 | 4.28% of sales |
The same store taking payments through another provider at 2.9% plus 30 cents pays that provider the same $175, and Shopify adds 2% of every order on Basic.
| Item | Amount | How it is obtained |
|---|---|---|
| Basic plan | $39.00 | billed monthly |
| Provider's fees | $175.00 | 100 × (2.9% × 50 + 0.30) |
| Shopify transaction fee | $100.00 | 100 × 2% × 50 |
| Shopify costs a month | $314.00 | $100 more than with Shopify Payments |
Reading the result
The headline is the month's cost of selling on Shopify: plan plus payment fees, with its share of your sales. The tiles split it into the plan and the fees, give the fee on one order, and show what you keep from the month's sales. The working under them names the rate it used and where it came from.
The table under the result prices every plan at your volume, with the same cards and the same provider, and marks the cheapest. If it is not the plan you chose, the calculator says how much the cheaper one would save. In New Zealand, where Shopify bills plans in US dollars but card fees are in New Zealand dollars, plan prices and fees are shown side by side and not added, since adding them would need an exchange rate.
What changes the result
Volume and order size decide the plan
A dearer plan earns back its price through lower rates, so the right plan depends on how much goes through the store. In the US, Grow costs $66 a month more than Basic and saves 0.2 percentage points per order. At a $50 average order that is 10 cents an order, so Grow pays only above 660 orders a month; at a $200 average order the break-even falls to 165.
Where your customers' cards come from
International cards cost noticeably more. A British store on Basic pays 2% + 25p on a British card and 3.1% + 25p on any other, cards from the EU included. A store with many overseas customers should choose its typical card accordingly rather than assume the domestic rate.
Using another provider
The transaction fee makes another provider dearer unless its own rate is far lower than Shopify Payments, or you need it for a payment method Shopify Payments does not offer. The fee falls to 1% on Grow and 0.6% on Advanced, which can tip the plan choice for a store that has to use another provider, as every store in India does.
What is not included
Shopify Plus is left out: its price is quoted only as a starting figure and its card rates are agreed with Shopify. In-person card payments, POS Pro, apps, themes, domains and shipping labels all carry costs of their own, as do chargebacks. Shopify adds VAT, GST or sales tax to its own bill in many countries, and the figures here are before that tax. Refunds do not return the card fee.
France, Spain, the Netherlands and Sweden have Shopify Payments, but Shopify shows those countries' prices only to visitors browsing from there and no checkable copy could be read, so they are not covered. Sri Lanka has no Shopify Payments and no pricing page of its own.
Using the result
Run the calculator at your current volume and at the volume you expect in a year, and look at which plan is cheapest at each. Changing plan is easy, so there is no reason to pay for a lower rate before your orders justify it, or to stay on Basic once they do.
Put the per-order fee into your product costs: the margin calculator turns a price and a cost into a margin, and the break-even calculator treats the plan as a fixed cost and the per-order fee as a variable one, which is exactly how they behave. Check the date the prices were read, under the working, against Shopify's page before relying on a figure.