Shopify vs WooCommerce Cost: Real 2026 Breakdown

Shopify costs $39/month on the Basic plan plus apps and transaction fees; WooCommerce is free software but needs hosting, plugins and maintenance. For a store doing real volume (around $200K a year in sales), both land at roughly $7,000–$15,000 in year one, including payment processing. Shopify is usually cheaper for non-technical owners; WooCommerce is cheaper only if you do the maintenance yourself.

The shopify vs woocommerce cost question sounds simple. It isn't. The sticker price on either platform ($39/month for Shopify Basic, "free" for WooCommerce) has little to do with what you'll actually pay to run a real store. Once you add hosting, apps, plugins, themes, transaction fees, developer time and maintenance, the true total cost of ownership can be several times the advertised price.

This breakdown walks through every line item you'll face in year one on both platforms. By the end, you'll know which platform fits your situation, and where a newer alternative now beats both on cost.

Shopify vs WooCommerce cost at a glance

Shopify charges a predictable monthly fee that grows quickly once you add apps. WooCommerce charges nothing for the software but bills you in hosting, plugins, developer hours, and the time you spend keeping everything from breaking.

Here's a realistic year-one cost range for a store doing about $200K a year in sales. These are our own modeled estimates, built from the plan prices published on Shopify's pricing page, the vendor prices listed on the WooCommerce and Shopify marketplaces, and the hosting plan prices published by managed WordPress hosts. They are not audited store data. The $5K–$50K/month band we use for "small-to-mid" stores is our own working assumption, not an industry statistic. Card processing at 2.9% (about $5,800 on $200K, before the 30¢ per-order fee) is shown as its own row because it's the same on both platforms when you use each one's native processor.

Cost category	Shopify (Basic + apps)	WooCommerce (self-hosted)
Platform / hosting	$468/year ($348 with annual billing)	$360–$1,200/year
Theme	$0–$350 (one-time)	$0–$200 (one-time)
Apps / plugins	$600–$2,400/year	$500–$2,000/year
Card processing at 2.9% (same on both)	$5,800	$5,800
Developer / maintenance	$0–$3,000/year	$1,200–$6,000/year
Realistic year-one total	$6,900–$12,000	$7,900–$15,200

Totals are the sum of the rows above (Shopify low: 468 + 0 + 600 + 5,800 + 0; WooCommerce high: 1,200 + 200 + 2,000 + 5,800 + 6,000). Strip out processing and the platform-specific cost is roughly $1,100–$6,200 on Shopify and $2,100–$9,400 on WooCommerce.

Two takeaways. First, "free" WooCommerce isn't free; it's often more expensive than Shopify once you count developer time. Second, both platforms commonly run into five figures a year for any store with real traction. That's the number to benchmark alternatives against.

A worked example

This is an illustrative scenario we built for the article, not a real merchant's books. Take a hypothetical home-goods store selling 4,000 orders a year at a $50 average order value ($200K GMV). On Shopify Basic with annual billing ($348), a $120/month app stack ($1,440), a $200 theme and Shopify Payments, platform and app costs come to about $2,000 plus roughly $7,000 in processing (2.9% plus 30¢ per order). On WooCommerce with $60/month managed hosting ($720), $1,000 in plugins, $200 in security and backups, and a $100/hour developer for 2 hours a month ($2,400), the platform side comes to about $4,300 plus the same processing. The gap is mostly maintenance labor. Do it yourself and WooCommerce drops below Shopify in cash terms, but you've added roughly 10 hours a month to your workload (our estimate for updates, testing and troubleshooting, not a measured figure). Swap in your own order count and app list to rerun the math.

Shopify vs WooCommerce cost: is WooCommerce cheaper?

Only sometimes. WooCommerce is cheaper if you handle updates and troubleshooting yourself and your store is small; Shopify is cheaper once you value your time or would otherwise hire a developer. Higher revenue shifts the balance toward WooCommerce when you use a third-party gateway on Shopify, because of Shopify's extra surcharge.

Your situation	Cheaper option	Why
Non-technical, under $10K/month	Shopify	No developer or hosting bills
Technical or in-house developer	WooCommerce	No subscription, DIY maintenance
$500K+ GMV on a third-party gateway	WooCommerce	No platform surcharge on payments
Many apps needed (reviews, loyalty, upsells)	Roughly even	Shopify bills apps monthly; WooCommerce bills plugins yearly

Shopify pricing: what you actually pay

Shopify publishes four main plans. The advertised numbers tell maybe a third of the story.

Subscription tiers

• Basic: $39/month — 2.9% + 30¢ online card rate, 2% fee on non-Shopify Payments gateways
• Shopify: $105/month — 2.7% + 30¢, 1% non-Shopify Payments fee
• Advanced: $399/month — 2.5% + 30¢, 0.5% non-Shopify Payments fee
• Plus: from $2,300/month — negotiated rates, enterprise SLAs

You can verify current pricing on the official Shopify pricing page. For a deeper plan-by-plan view, see Shopify costs in 2026, and for enterprise needs, Shopify Plus pricing explained.

WooCommerce vs Shopify fees: transaction costs compared

Shopify charges an extra 2% (Basic) on top of processor fees when you don't use Shopify Payments. WooCommerce adds no platform fee on any gateway. That 2% is the line item most merchants underestimate: on $500K GMV it's $10,000 a year just to use a processor you'd use anyway. The underlying processor fee itself (2.9% + 30¢) is the same on both platforms; only the surcharge differs.

Fee type	Shopify Basic	WooCommerce
Card rate (native processor)	2.9% + 30¢ (Shopify Payments)	2.9% + 30¢ (WooPayments, U.S. cards)
Third-party gateway surcharge	2%	0%
Surcharge on $500K GMV	$10,000	$0

Our full explainer on Shopify transaction fees covers every tier.

The annual billing discount

One Shopify cost lever most comparison articles ignore: paying annually instead of monthly cuts your subscription by roughly 25%. Per Shopify's pricing page, annual billing works out to about $29/month on Basic, $79 on Shopify and $299 on Advanced. That's $348/year instead of $468 on Basic (a $120 saving), $312 saved on the Shopify plan, and $1,200 saved on Advanced. The trade-off is a 12-month commitment: fine if you're past the pilot stage, risky if you're still validating the business. If you're confident you'll stay for the year, switch to annual billing.

The app tax

Shopify's base plan is missing things most merchants consider essential: real abandoned cart recovery beyond the basic email, wishlist functionality, customer reviews with photos, advanced product filtering, loyalty programs, customer Q&A, upsells, and bundle builders. Most of these sit behind paid apps in the Shopify App Store rather than in core functionality. Exact counts vary by store, but established stores commonly end up with several paid apps; treat five to ten as a rule of thumb, not a measured average.

Typical monthly app stack (price ranges taken from each vendor's public pricing page and they change often, so check each before budgeting):

• Reviews app (Judge.me, Yotpo, Loox): $15–$199/month
• Email + abandoned cart (Klaviyo): $30–$300/month depending on list size
• Upsell / bundles (ReConvert, Bold): $30–$100/month
• Loyalty (Smile, LoyaltyLion): $49–$300/month
• SEO / page speed (Plug in SEO, Booster): $20–$50/month
• Subscriptions (Recharge, if relevant): $99/month + 1% transaction fee

A lean Shopify stack of two to four of these lands at $50–$200/month on top of the base subscription. That's $600–$2,400/year before you've sold anything.

How much does WooCommerce cost? The "free" platform that isn't

WooCommerce software costs $0. Running a store typically costs about $800–$2,000 a year in cash if you do everything yourself (plus roughly 10 hours a month of your own time, by our estimate), and $5,000–$10,000 if you outsource. The plugin itself is free; everything around it is not.

The unavoidable WooCommerce stack

To run a WooCommerce store you need:

1. Domain: $10–$20/year
2. Hosting: $30–$100/month for managed WordPress hosting (Kinsta, WP Engine, SiteGround). Cheap shared hosting at $5/month exists but crumbles at any real traffic. See WooCommerce hosting cost for a full breakdown.
3. SSL certificate: usually included with hosting now
4. Theme: $0–$200 (Astra, Kadence, custom)
5. Premium plugins: $300–$2,000/year depending on what you need
6. Security + backups: $100–$300/year (Wordfence Premium, Jetpack, UpdraftPlus)
7. Payment processing: Stripe or PayPal at standard 2.9% + 30¢ with no WooCommerce surcharge

The WooCommerce extension marketplace sells add-ons for things Shopify bundles into apps: WooCommerce Subscriptions ($199/year), Product Add-Ons ($79/year), Bookings ($249/year), Memberships ($199/year). These are list prices from the marketplace and can change. Each one is annual, each one renews, each one has to stay compatible with WooCommerce core and your theme.

WooPayments changes the transaction math

WooCommerce now ships with WooPayments (formerly WooCommerce Payments), Automattic's built-in payment processor. Standard rates are 2.9% + 30¢ for U.S. cards with no platform surcharge, the same headline rate as Shopify Payments. The practical effect: the "non-Shopify Payments" 2% penalty disappears as an argument for Shopify when you compare native options. If you use Stripe or another processor on WooCommerce, you still pay zero platform fee. On $500K GMV, that's the difference between paying the processor alone and paying it plus $10,000 in Shopify Basic's surcharge.

The hidden cost: maintenance

This is where the pricing comparison gets honest. WooCommerce updates frequently. WordPress core updates. PHP versions update. Themes update. Each plugin updates. When versions collide, things break: checkout fails, products vanish, the cart throws errors. The WordPress.org version stats page breaks down which WordPress and PHP versions active sites run, and you can see for yourself that a meaningful share of sites sit on older releases. Outdated components are a common source of plugin conflicts and downtime.

You either learn to fix this yourself or pay a developer. For the DIY route, we assume about 10 hours a month; valuing that at an assumed $50/hour gives roughly $6,000 a year in opportunity cost. Both numbers are our assumptions, so substitute your own hourly value. For outsourcing, we use $50–$150/hour for freelance work and $500–$5,000/month for managed support retainers; these are ranges we see quoted by agencies and freelancers, and quotes vary by region and scope. That cost doesn't appear on any WooCommerce comparison chart, but it's the single biggest line item for serious stores. Details in WooCommerce maintenance cost and WooCommerce developer cost.

Shopify vs WooCommerce cost for small business

For a small business doing under $10K/month, the answer depends on one variable: your time. The figures below exclude card processing (which is about the same on both) so you can compare platform costs directly.

If you're non-technical

Shopify wins on total cost. You'll pay more in subscriptions and apps, but you won't pay a developer to keep the site running or spend evenings debugging a broken plugin. Expected year-one platform spend: roughly $1,000–$3,200 if you stay disciplined about apps and use annual billing, before processing fees.

If you're technical (or have a developer)

WooCommerce can be cheaper, but only if you genuinely enjoy the maintenance work or already have someone in-house. Expected year-one spend: $800–$2,000 in cash if you DIY everything (plus roughly 10 hours a month of your time), $5,000–$10,000 if you outsource.

If you sell internationally or run subscriptions

WooCommerce's 0% platform transaction fee on Stripe (or WooPayments) becomes real money fast. On $500K GMV, you save $10,000/year versus Shopify Basic with a non-Shopify Payments processor. That savings can cover a developer retainer and then some.

WooCommerce vs Shopify Plus: what changes at scale?

Shopify Plus starts around $2,300/month, so it only beats WooCommerce on cost when your team would otherwise spend heavily on engineering and uptime. Below roughly seven figures in revenue, self-hosted WooCommerce or an advanced Shopify plan is usually the cheaper route. Plus buys negotiated payment rates, support and scalability rather than lower software cost.

See Shopify Plus cost breakdown for the full numbers.

WooCommerce Shopify migration cost

Migrating between the two typically costs from a few hundred dollars for a DIY product import to several thousand with an agency, depending on catalog size, customers, redirects and custom features. The biggest hidden cost is SEO: missing 301 redirects can drop rankings. Budget time for testing orders and checkout before switching DNS.

Guides that cover the process: how to migrate from WooCommerce and how to migrate from Shopify. Rovela migrates an existing store in about 30 minutes with branding, catalog and customers preserved.

Compare payment plugin options for Shopify and WooCommerce

Both platforms accept Stripe, PayPal and their own native processors, but the cost differs by platform surcharge, not processor. Shopify adds a surcharge unless you use Shopify Payments; WooCommerce never does.

Option	On Shopify	On WooCommerce
Native processor	Shopify Payments: no surcharge	WooPayments: no surcharge
Stripe	Processor fees + 2% (Basic)	Processor fees only
PayPal	Processor fees + 2% (Basic)	Processor fees only

Shopify or WooCommerce: the real WooCommerce vs Shopify comparison

Cost is only half the question. Here's how the two platforms compare across the dimensions that determine whether your store grows or stalls. For a usability angle, read Shopify vs WooCommerce ease of use.

Dimension	Shopify	WooCommerce
Setup speed	Hours to days	Days to weeks
Technical skill required	Low	Medium to high
Maintenance burden	Shopify handles it	You handle it
Customization ceiling	High (with Liquid + apps)	Unlimited (open source)
Page speed out of the box	Slow once apps stack	Depends entirely on host + plugins
SEO control	Decent, restricted URLs	Full control
Vendor lock-in	High: leaving is painful	Low: you own the code
Predictable monthly cost	Yes	No

The Shopify vs WordPress ecommerce debate usually ends here: Shopify trades flexibility for simplicity, WooCommerce trades simplicity for flexibility. Both come with a tax. Shopify taxes you monthly in apps. WooCommerce taxes you in time and developer bills.

The 2026 cost reality nobody mentions

The 2026 platform conversation now happens with a third option on the table. The choice used to be "rented store on Shopify" or "owned store on WooCommerce." Both made sense in a world where every store had to be assembled from a stack of subscriptions and plugins.

That world is ending. AI-built stores now ship with the features that used to require six apps (abandoned cart, wishlist, reviews, loyalty, Q&A, marketing automations, full analytics) included by default in a single subscription. The cost math changes completely when there's nothing to bolt on.

For context, here's what a typical small-to-mid store spends per year across the three options, using the modeled ranges above (including card processing for Shopify and WooCommerce):

• Shopify with a normal app stack: about $7,000–$12,000/year
• WooCommerce with managed hosting + developer: about $8,000–$15,000/year
• Rovela (everything included): a single flat subscription with no commission on sales and no per-app billing. See the current rate on the Rovela pricing page

Rovela was built by e-commerce operators who have scaled stores to eight figures in sales, alongside veterans of the PrestaShop ecosystem. The pitch is straightforward: 100+ features that Shopify charges apps for and WooCommerce requires plugins for, all included, plus standard Next.js code you can download and own outright. If you decide to leave, any developer can take over, with none of the Shopify lock-in and none of the WooCommerce maintenance tax.

The cost ceiling matters as much as the floor here. On Shopify, every new feature you add (a loyalty program, a bundle builder, a subscription product) adds another monthly line item. On WooCommerce, it adds a plugin to maintain and a potential conflict to debug. On a fully-included platform, it adds nothing. That's the structural difference, and it compounds over years.

If you want to see the comparison playbooks in detail, the guide to Shopify alternatives and the platform migration checklist walk through the trade-offs without the marketing gloss.

Which is better, Shopify or WooCommerce, for your situation?

If you've read this far, you already know the answer isn't universal. Here's the honest decision framework:

Choose Shopify if

• You want predictable monthly billing and zero server maintenance
• You're fine paying $50–$200/month in apps to fill feature gaps
• You use Shopify Payments and don't run heavy non-Shopify integrations
• You value speed-to-launch over long-term ownership

Choose WooCommerce if

• You have technical resources or a developer on retainer
• You need deep customization beyond what Liquid allows
• You sell subscriptions, memberships, or B2B with complex pricing
• You want to own your code and avoid vendor lock-in

Consider an AI-built platform if

• You don't want to assemble or maintain an app stack at all
• You want abandoned cart, reviews, loyalty, and automations included from day one
• You want to launch in hours, not weeks, without sacrificing ownership
• You'd rather describe changes in plain words than open a theme editor

The verdict on Shopify vs WooCommerce cost

Both platforms are more expensive than they look. Shopify hides cost in the app stack. WooCommerce hides cost in your time and your developer's invoices. A realistic year-one budget for either lands between roughly $7,000 and $15,000 for a store doing about $200K in sales, and that number grows with revenue and with every new feature that means another app or plugin.

If predictability matters and you don't mind the app tax, Shopify is the safer pick (and switch to annual billing to claw back about 25%). If ownership matters and you have technical chops, WooCommerce wins on customization, especially now that WooPayments removes the transaction-fee gap. But if you're starting fresh and the whole point was to sell things, not to spend evenings assembling integrations or approving developer invoices, there's a better answer than either.

Want to see what your store would look like without the app tax or the maintenance bill? Describe your business to Rovela and watch a complete store get built in minutes, with every feature Shopify and WooCommerce make you pay extra for already included. You keep the code. You skip the stack. You actually go sell things.