Basic £25, Grow £65, Advanced £344, Plus from £1,800 a month: what Shopify costs in the UK, which fees come on top of every sale, and what a store really costs in year one.
In the UK, Shopify costs £25 (Basic), £65 (Grow) or £344 (Advanced) a month, and Shopify Plus starts at £1,800 a month. Billed yearly, the three standard plans drop to £19, £49 and £259 a month.
The plan is rarely your biggest cost. Card fees of 1.3% to 2% plus 25p per online payment with Shopify Payments, apps with their own monthly fees (billed in USD) and a transaction fee of up to 2% when you use a third-party payment provider make up most of the running costs of a growing store.
Realistic plan and payment costs in year one, before apps and implementation: about £3,900 for a small store doing £150,000 in sales, about £34,000 for a midsize store doing £1.5 million, and about £107,000 for a Plus store doing £5 million.
Shopify’s monthly fee is easy to compare. Per-sale fees, apps and third-party fees aren’t, and they’re what drives the bill once your store grows. This guide is for founders, store owners and directors in the UK who are planning a Shopify store, reviewing their current plan or comparing Shopify with Shopware.
After reading, you’ll be able to pick the right plan, calculate your fees per sale and put together a realistic first-year budget, with or without an agency.
Before we founded solution25, we built our own online store and grew it to more than 500 orders a day. Since 2017 we’ve been building stores for merchants: Shopware as a Platinum Partner, and Shopify for merchants whose requirements fit it. So we know the cost question from both sides.
All plan and Shopify Payments figures are UK list prices in GBP from Shopify’s UK pricing page, accessed November 2026, before VAT. App, theme and some service prices are billed in USD and shown as listed by the provider.
| Cost item | Typical range | When you pay |
|---|---|---|
| Shopify plan | £25 (Basic) to £344 (Advanced) a month, Plus from £1,800 | monthly, or yearly upfront |
| Payment fees (Shopify Payments) | 1.3% to 2% + 25p per online card payment; international and Amex cards 2.3% to 3.1% + 25p | per order |
| Third-party transaction fee | 2% (Basic) to 0.2% (Plus) of the order value, on top of your provider’s own fees | per order |
| Apps | free to $499 a month per app in our examples, billed in USD according to the provider | monthly |
| Theme | free themes at no cost, $100 to $360 one-time for the paid themes we sampled (billed in USD), custom themes quote-based | one-time |
| Domain and email | domain from a few pounds a year depending on the extension, plus an email provider such as Google Workspace | yearly and monthly |
| VAT | UK VAT at the standard rate of 20% on your sales once you are VAT-registered; Shopify’s tax settings calculate it, you file with HMRC | per VAT return |
| Agency implementation | quote-based, driven by theme, data migration and integrations | one-time |
| Ongoing support | monthly retainer or hourly billing | monthly |
Hosting, SSL, platform updates and checkout are included in every plan, and there’s no setup fee. That’s why Shopify looks cheaper than a self-hosted platform at first, and it’s also why so many merchants underestimate the per-sale fees.
Shopify bills UK merchants in pounds sterling. The figures below come from the Shopify pricing page for the UK, accessed November 2026.
| Plan | Billed monthly | Billed yearly | Online card rate (Shopify Payments) | Third-party transaction fee | Staff accounts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | £25 | £19 a month | 2% + 25p | 2% | none |
| Grow | £65 | £49 a month | 1.7% + 25p | 1% | 5 |
| Advanced | £344 | £259 a month | 1.5% + 25p | 0.6% | 15 |
| Plus | from £1,800 a month on a fixed-term contract | 1.3% + 25p | 0.2% | unlimited | |
Details of the Plus contract are on Shopify’s help page on the Plus plan. Paying yearly saves around 25% on Basic, Grow and Advanced, but the full year is charged upfront, and plan charges are generally non-refundable according to Shopify’s help centre.
Your binding price is the one shown in your Shopify admin under Settings, then Plan.
Basic includes the online store with theme editor, blog, SSL, reports, sales channels and international selling tools. According to the Shopify help centre, two things are missing: staff accounts and third-party carrier-calculated shipping rates.
If you run the store on your own, Basic will carry you a long way. As soon as a second person needs their own login, you’re looking at Grow.
Grow adds five staff accounts and a lower card rate of 1.7% + 25p. A difference of 0.3 percentage points sounds small, but it covers the £40 monthly price gap once you process about £13,300 in card sales a month (about £10,000 if you pay yearly).
Advanced gives you 15 staff accounts, carrier-calculated shipping, advanced reporting and a card rate of 1.5% + 25p. On fees alone, Advanced only pays off against Grow at around £140,000 in card sales a month, roughly £1.7 million a year. On yearly billing, the break-even drops to about £105,000 a month.
According to Shopify’s UK pricing page, Shopify Plus starts at £1,800 a month. It includes unlimited staff accounts, expansion stores, a fully customisable checkout, B2B features and 20 POS Pro locations (up to 200 with Shopify Payments), plus priority support.
Higher-volume businesses may also pay a variable platform fee, which Shopify says depends on revenue and business model. Shopify doesn’t publish a threshold, so the actual price comes from its sales team. Plus is booked on a fixed term, and you can only cancel once the term commitment expires.
Shopify earns money on every order, either through Shopify Payments fees or through a transaction fee when you use a third-party payment provider. In a growing store, this line item is many times larger than the plan.
Shopify Payments is the built-in payment processor. When it’s your primary provider, the third-party transaction fee doesn’t apply. Rates depend on your plan and are listed on the UK pricing page:
Card fees and currency conversion fees aren’t returned to you when you issue a refund.
Here’s an example for a £100 card order from a UK customer: you pay £2.25 on Basic, £1.95 on Grow, £1.75 on Advanced and £1.55 on Plus.
If you process cards through another provider, you pay that provider’s fees plus a fee to Shopify: 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced and 0.2% on Plus. According to the Shopify help centre, no third-party fee applies to Shopify Payments, Shop Pay, manual methods such as bank transfers or cash on delivery, and PayPal, as long as Shopify Payments is your primary provider.
Two details merchants often miss:
Shopware doesn’t charge this kind of transaction fee at all.
If you sell in other currencies through Shopify Markets, for example in euros to customers in the EU, Shopify Payments charges UK stores a 2% currency conversion fee on payments captured in a non-domestic currency, according to the help centre. The fee is built into the price your customer pays, and you don’t get it back when you issue a refund.
Since Brexit, parcels to the EU are exports with customs declarations. If you collect duties and import taxes at checkout, Shopify charges an additional fee per order; check the current rate in the help centre before you calculate your EU margins.
For UK VAT, Shopify’s tax settings can calculate VAT at the standard rate of 20% once you are registered; you remain responsible for registration and VAT returns with HMRC. Shopify Tax, the paid tax service, is aimed at US sales tax and only matters if you also sell to customers in the United States.
A UK merchant with £1.2 million in annual sales is on Grow with yearly billing (£588 a year) and processes cards through an outside provider because of an existing contract. This is a worked example using the rates in this section, not a specific client case.
Your payment mix is a bigger lever than your plan here. Before any upgrade, check whether the contract with the outside provider is really necessary.
Shopify leaves a lot of functionality to its App Store, which lists more than 16,000 apps, and almost every useful one charges a monthly fee. A few examples with prices from the Shopify App Store, accessed November 2026, billed in USD according to the providers:
Ten apps add up fast. App charges are billed in USD, so your costs in pounds move with the exchange rate, and some developers bill extra charges separately from your Shopify invoice. Check each listing before you install.
Shopify Messaging (formerly Shopify Email) lets you send up to 10,000 emails a month for free. After that, every additional 1,000 emails costs $1 according to Shopify. For small stores, that can replace a separate newsletter app.
The Theme Store lists more than 800 free and paid themes. The paid themes we sampled in November 2026 cost between $100 and $360 one-time, with many priced at $320.
Once product pages, configurators or B2B pricing need to look different from what your theme provides, custom development in Liquid begins, and that’s where budgets grow quickly. Tips on choosing the right theme are in our post How to choose a Shopify theme.
A custom domain isn’t included in any plan. You can buy one through Shopify or any registrar, and for a UK store a .co.uk or .com domain usually costs a modest yearly fee. Shopify doesn’t offer email hosting, only forwarding addresses, so you’ll need a provider such as Google Workspace; check its current UK pricing per user.
The platform gives you hosting and checkout, not the store itself: design, product data, apps, payment methods, store policies and integrations are still work to be done. For UK stores that includes VAT settings, delivery options and legally compliant terms, such as the 14-day cancellation right under the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013. The scopes and timelines below are based on our project experience. Budgets depend on the hours involved, so ask for a quote broken down by line item.
| Project type | Scope | Timeline |
|---|---|---|
| Starter store | Purchased theme customised, standard processes, product import via CSV, apps and payment methods set up | 3 to 6 weeks |
| Midsize store | Custom theme in Liquid, app setup, ERP integration, data migration, multiple markets (for example UK and EU) | 2 to 4 months |
| Plus project | Checkout extensions, Shopify Functions, expansion stores, ERP and PIM integration, B2B | 4 to 8 months |
Rates vary widely. Upwork lists a median of $15 to $29 an hour for Shopify developers on its platform worldwide, while agencies usually charge more. Compare quotes by hours per line item, not just by the total. The build happens in a development store that the agency sets up through the Shopify Partner Program.
After launch, plan for an ongoing retainer that covers theme changes, app maintenance, conversion optimisation and smaller features. Hosting and platform updates aren’t part of it, because Shopify handles them. You’ll find what we offer on our Shopify services page and under CRO services for Shopware and Shopify. We support UK merchants from our teams in Bremen, Prishtina and New York.
These examples show how costs split up in typical UK stores. Sales, order volume and app stacks are assumptions; plan prices, fees and app prices are the November 2026 list prices cited above. Keep the limits in mind: payment fees assume every order is paid online by a UK card through Shopify Payments, so international cards, Amex, buy now, pay later methods or foreign currencies would push them higher. Apps and themes are billed in USD and shown separately. Agency implementation, ongoing support, domain and email aren’t included, because they depend on your setup and quote.
| Item | Starter store (Basic) | Midsize store (Advanced) | Plus store |
|---|---|---|---|
| Assumptions | £150,000 in sales, 2,500 orders | £1.5 million in sales, 30,000 orders | £5 million in sales, 80,000 orders |
| Plan per year | £300 (£25 a month) | £4,128 (£344 a month) | £21,600 (from £1,800 a month) |
| Payment fees | £3,625 (2% + 25p) | £30,000 (1.5% + 25p) | £85,000 (1.3% + 25p) |
| Plan and payment fees, per year | £3,925 | £34,128 | £106,600 |
| Apps, billed in USD | $480 (Judge.me Awesome, Klaviyo up to 500 profiles) | $2,328 (Judge.me Awesome, ShipStation Standard, Recharge Starter) | $10,368 (Judge.me Awesome, ShipStation Premium, Recharge Scale) |
| Theme, one-time, billed in USD | $320 (paid theme) | part of the project | part of the project |
The app totals don’t include ShipStation usage charges or Recharge’s per-transaction fees, and the Plus figure uses the entry price; a variable platform fee may come on top.
In all three cases, the plan makes up only about 8 to 20% of plan and payment costs, while payment fees account for the rest. When you compare Shopify plans, you’re comparing the smallest line item; your payment mix matters a lot more.
Yearly billing saves the starter store £72 a year (£19 instead of £25 a month) and the midsize store £1,020.
We build on both platforms, so here’s our take without a favourite. Shopify is cheaper to start and faster to launch, because hosting, updates and security are part of the plan. Shopware’s Community Edition has no licence fee, but it needs hosting and someone to install updates, and both add recurring monthly costs.
From year two on, the picture flips for two kinds of merchants: stores that need an outside payment provider and pay transaction fees for it, and stores that need Shopify Plus features such as a fully customisable checkout or multiple stores. In the UK, Plus costs at least £21,600 a year (from £1,800 a month). For comparison, Shopware lists Rise from €600 a month and Evolve from €2,400 a month on its pricing page, with prices shown in EUR excluding VAT according to the provider.
Our take: For UK brands with a manageable catalogue, Shopify Payments as their primary provider and no in-house IT team, we recommend Shopify, because hosting and updates are taken care of and launch is fast. As soon as an outside payment provider becomes mandatory, B2B processes come into play or Plus features become necessary, we run the numbers on Shopware with our clients.
If you’re thinking about moving off Shopify, you’ll find the process on our page about migrating from Shopify to Shopware 6.
| Situation | Recommendation | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Starting out, one operator, up to about £10,000 in card sales a month | Basic, billed yearly | £19 a month, all core features, upgrade any time |
| Team with several logins, £10,000 to £105,000 in sales a month | Grow | 5 staff accounts, lower card rate pays off from about £10,000 in card sales (yearly billing) |
| From £105,000 in sales a month, or a need for advanced reporting and carrier-calculated shipping | Advanced | 1.5% + 25p card rate, 15 staff accounts, advanced reports |
| Custom checkout, B2B, multiple stores, more than 15 staff accounts | Plus | Features, not fees: on card rates alone, Plus only pays off at roughly £9 million a year in sales |
| Outside payment provider with more than about £840,000 in annual sales | Advanced instead of Grow | The lower transaction fee (0.4 percentage points less) outweighs the £3,348 yearly price difference on monthly billing |
We recommend these KPIs. The thresholds come from the calculations in this post:
In the UK, Shopify costs £25 (Basic), £65 (Grow) or £344 (Advanced) when billed monthly, or £19, £49 and £259 a month when billed yearly. Shopify Plus starts at £1,800 a month on a fixed-term contract. On top of that come payment fees per order, apps and possibly agency costs.
With Shopify Payments, there’s no extra transaction fee; you only pay the card rate of 1.3% to 2% plus 25p per online payment with a UK card. With a third-party payment provider, Shopify adds 2% (Basic), 1% (Grow), 0.6% (Advanced) or 0.2% (Plus) of the order value. PayPal is exempt as long as Shopify Payments is your primary provider.
If you build the store yourself with a free theme, a few hundred pounds covers the plan and domain in year one, plus payment fees. A small store doing £150,000 in sales comes to about £3,900 in plan and payment fees in year one, and a midsize store doing £1.5 million to about £34,000, most of it payment fees. Apps (billed in USD) and agency implementation come on top.
When you sell without an in-house IT team, your catalogue fits the standard model, and Shopify Payments handles most of your payments. It gets expensive with an outside payment provider, lots of apps, heavy sales in other currencies or requirements that only Plus covers.
Basic, Grow and Advanced for online stores, and Shopify Plus for large and complex businesses. For retail shops, POS Pro is available as an add-on at £69 per location a month.
From £1,800 a month according to Shopify’s UK pricing page, on a fixed-term contract. High-volume or complex businesses may also pay a variable platform fee, which Shopify quotes individually.
Nothing is hidden, but the costs are spread out: monthly app fees billed in USD, a 2% currency conversion fee on sales in other currencies, the transaction fee for third-party payment providers, the premium in mixed provider setups, fees for collecting duties at checkout, card fees that aren’t returned on refunds, and yearly billing that’s charged upfront and generally non-refundable.
Etsy is a marketplace with built-in reach and fees per listing and per sale. Shopify is your own store with a monthly fee and your own customer relationships. For handmade products sold as a side business, Etsy is cheaper; for a brand with its own look and repeat customers, Shopify is the better foundation. You can run both in parallel and feed Etsy from Shopify through an app.
Planning a Shopify store in the UK, or wondering whether your current plan and payment mix still make sense? Get in touch or call us at +49 421 438 1919-0. We’ll run the numbers on plan, fees, apps and implementation with your data, and we’ll also tell you if Shopware would be the cheaper option.
Already running a store? Our free store audit shows where you’re leaving revenue on the table and which running costs you can cut.
Besar Bilalli is co-founder and Co-CEO of solution25, a Shopware and Shopify agency with offices in Bremen, Prishtina and New York that also works with merchants in the UK. Before founding the agency in 2017, he and Besnik Bilalli built their own online store without any startup capital and grew it to more than 500 orders a day. Since then, he has guided merchants through e-commerce projects, from platform selection to day-to-day operations. Questions about this article? He’s happy to answer them personally: get in touch.
Responsible for content and updates: Besar Bilalli. Last updated: November 2026. Next content review: January 2027.
