Costs · Margins · The business of ecommerce
This article settles what the four Shopify plan tiers actually charge per card transaction using only the rates published on Shopify's own pricing page, because the usual answer treats the monthly fee as the whole cost and ignores the per-transaction rate stacked on top of it.
Merchants comparing Shopify Payments against an external gateway usually stop at the monthly plan price and call it the cost of doing business. That number is only half the equation. Every card transaction on every plan carries its own rate, and that rate is what actually scales with revenue while the monthly fee stays fixed. Read the wrong line and a store owner can pick a plan that looks cheap in September and costs more by December simply because volume went up and the rate stacked with it.
Shopify’s pricing page, as loaded on September 5, 2026, lists four tiers by monthly price and pairs each with its own card rate. Basic is €24/mo and its rate starts from 2% + €0.25 EUR. Grow is €69/mo with a rate of 8% + €0.25 EUR. Advanced is €289/mo at 6% + €0.25 EUR. Plus starts from €2,100/mo and the page describes it as everything in Advanced, aimed at complex businesses, without a separate rate figure in the loaded content. These four numbers, read side by side, are the whole basis for any fee comparison a merchant can make from this page alone.
The page also states a trial: three days free, then €1/month for three months. That applies to the monthly subscription charge, not to the per-transaction rate. Nothing in the loaded page ties a different card rate to the trial window. So a store running during the trial still pays whatever rate applies to the plan it picked, whether that is 2% + €0.25 EUR on Basic or 8% + €0.25 EUR on Grow, once a card transaction actually happens.
Here is where the usual assumption breaks. A merchant might expect that paying more per month buys a lower transaction rate every time, the way many subscription products work. The published numbers do not move that way.
| Plan | Monthly price | Card rate |
|---|---|---|
| Basic | €24 /mo | 2% + €0.25 EUR |
| Grow | €69 /mo | 8% + €0.25 EUR |
| Advanced | €289 /mo | 6% + €0.25 EUR |
| Plus | from €2,100 /mo | not listed in loaded content |
Grow costs more per month than Basic and also carries a higher rate than Basic. Advanced costs more per month than Grow but carries a lower rate than Grow. So the relationship between monthly price and transaction rate is not linear across the tiers, based on what the page actually shows. A merchant choosing between Grow and Advanced purely to save on transaction fees needs to weigh the rate difference against the monthly price difference, and the page itself does not do that math for them.
The Plus tier breaks the pattern of the other three because the page gives a starting monthly price, from €2,100/mo, and describes it as covering everything in Advanced plus additional scope for complex businesses, but it does not publish a per-transaction rate figure in the content that was loaded. That is a real gap in the published page as read on September 5, 2026, not an oversight in this article. A merchant sizing up Plus for transaction cost reasons has to look elsewhere on Shopify’s site or talk to sales, since the rate simply is not part of the pricing page’s public content at that tier.
These figures come from Shopify’s own pricing page as loaded on September 5, 2026, and nowhere else. A merchant should pull up that same page before committing to a plan, because rates and monthly prices are the kind of number that changes without much notice, and matching the current page against the tier actually being sold is the only way to know the transaction math still holds.
The Basic plan is listed at €24/mo and its card rate starts from 2% + €0.25 EUR per transaction, according to Shopify's pricing page as loaded on September 5, 2026. That per-transaction charge is separate from the monthly fee and applies to each card payment processed. There is also a free trial structure, three days free then €1/month for three months, before the standard monthly price applies. No other Basic-tier numbers appear on the page beyond these.
The pricing page lists Grow at €69/mo with a rate of 8% + €0.25 EUR, which sits above the Basic rate of 2% + €0.25 EUR. Both numbers come from the same pricing page as loaded on September 5, 2026, so the comparison is direct. The page does not explain the jump in a separate line, it simply lists the rate against the tier. Merchants comparing tiers should read both the monthly price and the rate line together rather than the monthly price alone.
Advanced is priced at €289/mo with a rate of 6% + €0.25 EUR, compared to Grow at €69/mo with 8% + €0.25 EUR. Both figures are taken from the same Shopify pricing page as loaded on September 5, 2026. The monthly price is higher on Advanced but the listed rate is lower than Grow's. Which tier costs less overall depends on transaction volume, though the page itself does not publish a break-even volume.
Plus starts from €2,100/mo according to the pricing page as loaded on September 5, 2026, described for complex businesses. The page states Plus includes everything in Advanced. No separate per-transaction rate figure for Plus appears in the measured facts from this page, so none can be quoted here. Merchants asking about Plus transaction rates should check the pricing page directly since that number was not present in the loaded content.
The trial is structured as three days free, then €1/month for three months, as stated on Shopify's pricing page as loaded on September 5, 2026. The page does not tie a different transaction rate to the trial period in the measured content. The rates from 2% + €0.25 EUR up through 8% + €0.25 EUR are listed against the named tiers, Basic, Grow, and Advanced, not against the trial itself. So the trial changes the monthly charge, not the per-transaction structure, based on what the page shows.