Shopify Fees 2026: What a Small Store Keeps per Order After the Plan, Card Fees and Apps

Published 2026-10-19 · Updated 2026-10-19

On Shopify, a small US store pays two kinds of fees: a monthly plan fee ($39 a month on Basic, or $29 a month if you pay yearly) and a card processing fee on every online order (2.9% + 30¢ on Basic when you use Shopify Payments). Unlike Amazon or Etsy, Shopify takes no commission on the sale itself. On a $34 product with $4.95 shipping, the payment fees come to about $1.51 per order, or 4.4% of the price. That low number is why Shopify can look like the cheapest place to sell. The costs that actually decide your profit are the ones Shopify does not list for you: apps and the advertising you pay for to get visitors, because your own store has no marketplace traffic. This guide follows one small store through all of it.

Short answer: our $34 leather dog collar keeps $22.74 per order after Shopify's card fees, materials and postage. After an assumed $8 of ad spend per order, that drops to $14.74. Once the $39 plan and $45 of apps are spread over 40 orders a month, the store keeps $12.64 per order, or $505.66 for the month.

The store in this guide

Sam runs a one-person Shopify store selling custom-engraved leather dog collars from a home workshop in the US. Sam sells only on the store, takes card payments through Shopify Payments, and gets most buyers from paid social ads.

Shopify's fees below come from Shopify's official pages. Sam's own numbers are assumptions we chose for this example, so replace them with yours:

• Price: $34.00 per collar (one collar per order)
• Shipping charged to the buyer: $4.95
• Leather, buckle, D-ring and engraving: $9.50 per collar
• Postage and a padded mailer: $5.20 per order
• Sales tax: we assume 7% on the collar and the shipping, so the buyer pays $2.73 in tax. Real rates and whether shipping is taxed depend on the buyer's state.
• Apps: $45 a month in total (for example a reviews app, an email app and a product personalization app). App prices vary a lot; check your own app bills.
• Ad spend: $8 per order on average. This is the hardest number to know and the one that moves profit most.

1. What Shopify charges a US store

Source: Shopify Pricing, US prices, checked October 19, 2026. Shopify Plus starts at $2,300 a month and is left out; Shopify describes it as the plan "for complex businesses". Shopify says pricing and payment options can differ depending on where your business is based. The pricing page lists a separate, higher rate for "premium" cards but does not define which cards count as premium.

Three details from Shopify's help pages matter for a small store:

• The 2% third-party fee is avoidable. It applies when you take payments through an outside payment provider instead of Shopify Payments. It does not apply to orders paid with Shopify Payments, Shop Pay, Shop Pay Installments, or manual methods such as bank transfers, and PayPal orders are also exempt when Shopify Payments is your main provider (Shopify Help: Third-party transaction fees, checked October 19, 2026). When it does apply, Shopify calculates it on the products minus discounts, plus tax and shipping.
• Gift cards and store credit can count too. The same page says that for stores created on or after May 12, 2025, the third-party fee also applies to orders paid with store credit or gift cards.
• Mixing providers costs more. If you use Shopify Payments alongside a direct third-party provider, Shopify says its own Shopify Payments transactions are charged the standard rate plus a 1.25% premium (Shopify Help: Cost of Shopify Payments, checked October 19, 2026).

For Sam, using only Shopify Payments means the card rate is the whole per-order fee.

2. Sam's profit on one order

Shopify's pages list the card rate but do not spell out the amount it applies to. We assume the rate is charged on everything the buyer's card pays, including shipping and sales tax, because that is the amount the card is charged. Under that assumption, Sam pays 2.9% on the $2.73 of tax too, even though the tax is passed on to the state.

Calculated with the same formula as our Shopify fee calculator: fee = 2.9% × (price + shipping charged) + $0.30, with the fee on sales tax and the ad spend entered as "Other cost per unit". Sales tax is collected from the buyer and passed on, so it is not counted as revenue.

Compare the fee line with a marketplace. On Etsy, a $38 mug paid about $5.01 in fees; on Shopify, Sam's $34 collar pays $1.51. But the ad line is bigger than the whole Shopify fee. A store owner who only compares fee percentages will pick Shopify and then be surprised by the month-end result.

3. The same collar at different prices

Here is Sam's collar at four prices, all with $4.95 shipping charged, $9.50 materials, $5.20 postage and 7% sales tax:

The Shopify fee hardly changes across the table. The ad cost does not change either, which is exactly why it hurts cheap products most: at $28, the $8 ad cost takes almost half of what Sam would otherwise keep.

Using the calculator's target-price feature with Sam's costs:

• Without ads: break-even is $10.59, a 25% margin needs $14.25, and a 40% margin needs $18.00.
• With $8 ad spend per order: break-even rises to $18.82, 25% needs $25.35, and 40% needs $32.01.

Put the other way round: at $34, Sam can spend up to $22.74 on ads per order before the order loses money, not counting the plan and apps. That figure is worth knowing before you set an ad budget.

4. The month: plan, apps and order volume

Per-order profit is only half the picture on Shopify, because the plan and apps are fixed monthly costs. Here they are spread over different order counts, on Basic billed monthly ($39) with $45 of apps and $8 ads per order:

Sam covers the $84 of plan and apps with about 6 orders a month. After that, the fixed costs fade quickly: at 20 orders they take $4.20 from each order, at 150 orders only 56¢. Paying yearly would cut the plan to $29 and add $10 a month to every row.

The more useful lesson is in the app line. Many small stores install app after app during setup, each with a free trial, and end up paying more for apps than for Shopify itself. Review your app charges every few months and remove anything you no longer use.

5. When does a bigger plan pay for itself?

Each step up in plan lowers the standard online card rate by 0.2 percentage points; the 30¢ stays the same. So the question is how much card volume you need before 0.2% of it covers the higher plan price. Counting only payment fees, and leaving out the other features each plan adds:

• Grow vs Basic, billed yearly: $50 more a month ÷ 0.2% = $25,000 a month in card payments.
• Grow vs Basic, billed monthly: $66 ÷ 0.2% = $33,000 a month.
• Advanced vs Grow, billed yearly: $220 ÷ 0.2% = $110,000 a month.

For Sam, each order charges the buyer's card $41.68 (collar, shipping and tax). Here is the plan fee plus card fees for a month, all plans billed yearly:

At 600 orders a month, Basic and Grow cost the same. Below that, Basic is cheaper. If you are thinking of upgrading for other reasons, compare what each plan includes on the Shopify pricing page; the lower card rate alone will not justify Grow for most small stores.

6. Costs that show up later

• Refunds keep the card fee. Shopify says that when you refund an order paid through Shopify Payments, "the original credit card processing fee isn't reimbursed", whether or not the order was fulfilled (Shopify Help: Refunds, checked October 19, 2026). On Sam's collar that is $1.51 lost on every refund, on top of any postage. A custom engraved collar also cannot be resold, so a clear returns policy matters.
• Chargebacks. When a buyer disputes a payment, Shopify says the cardholder's bank takes a chargeback fee from you, and that if you win, Shopify "might refund the chargeback fee depending on your country or region" (Shopify Help: Chargebacks, checked October 19, 2026). The amount is shown in your Shopify admin, so check it there.
• Premium cards. Shopify lists a higher online rate for premium cards: 3.5% + 30¢ on Basic. If Sam's buyer pays with one, the card fee on the $41.68 charge is about $1.76 instead of $1.51, so a store where many buyers use premium cards should budget a little more per order (Shopify Pricing, checked October 19, 2026).
• International buyers. Online international cards cost an extra 1% on every plan, about 42¢ on Sam's order (Shopify Pricing, checked October 19, 2026).
• Things not in this example: a custom domain, a paid theme, shipping labels, and income tax. All profits here are before income tax.

Key takeaways

• On Basic, a US Shopify store pays $39 a month ($29 billed yearly) plus 2.9% + 30¢ per online card order through Shopify Payments. There is no commission on the sale.
• On Sam's $34 collar with $4.95 shipping, card fees are about $1.51, far below marketplace fees, but an assumed $8 of ads per order costs more than five times that.
• Plan and apps are fixed costs. At 40 orders a month, Sam's $84 of plan and apps cost $2.10 per order; at 150 orders, 56¢.
• Use Shopify Payments to avoid the 2% third-party fee on Basic, and avoid mixing providers, which adds a 1.25% premium.
• Grow pays for itself on card fees alone only above about $25,000 a month in card payments (yearly billing).

FAQ

Does Shopify take a percentage of each sale? Not as a commission. You pay the plan fee and the card processing rate. If you use a third-party payment provider instead of Shopify Payments, Shopify adds a transaction fee of 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow and 0.6% on Advanced.

Are Shopify card fees charged on shipping and sales tax? Shopify's pages do not spell this out. In this guide we assume the rate applies to the full amount charged to the card, including shipping and tax, which is the safer assumption for pricing. Your payout reports show the exact fee on each order.

Do I get the fee back if I refund an order? No. Shopify says the original card processing fee is not reimbursed on refunds.

Is the Basic plan enough for a small store? On fees alone, yes, until you take roughly $25,000 a month in card payments. Upgrade earlier only if you need a feature the higher plan includes.

What is the biggest hidden cost of selling on Shopify? Usually getting visitors. A marketplace brings buyers in exchange for its fee; your own store does not, so ad spend per order belongs in your margin from the start.

Run your own numbers

Open the free Shopify fee calculator, enter your price, the shipping you charge, your product cost and your real postage, and put ad spend per order and any fee on sales tax in "Other cost per unit". It shows profit, margin, break-even price and the price you need for a target margin. If you are on Grow or Advanced, change the rate under "Edit marketplace fees". You can also compare all channels side by side on the main seller profit calculator.

For the margin formula and why fixed per-order costs hurt cheap items most, read how to calculate your real profit margin. To see what the same kind of product keeps on marketplaces instead of your own store, see Amazon vs eBay vs Etsy vs Walmart vs TikTok Shop.

Related guides: Etsy fees 2026 · TikTok Shop fees 2026

Fees are from Shopify's official pages for US stores, checked October 19, 2026. They differ by country and can change; always confirm on Shopify's pricing page and in your Shopify admin before you set prices.