Shopify Advanced
vs Shopify Plus, and
the GMV where Plus
pays for itself.

What is the difference
between Shopify Advanced
and Shopify Plus?

Advanced is the top standard plan at $299 a month billed yearly. Plus starts at $2,300 a month and is sold on a one or three year contract. For roughly eight times the fee, Plus gets a lower card rate, unlimited staff, a fully customizable checkout, unlimited B2B catalogs and nine expansion stores included.

Everything in the table comes from Shopify's own US pricing page, checked on October 22, 2026, and from the Plus plan and Advanced plan help pages. Rates are for a US store on Shopify Payments. Other countries have their own rate cards.

Read the table as two groups. The rate rows are the cost case for Plus: all but the international surcharge are a little lower, and at enough volume a little adds up. The rest are the capability case, and that is where most brands actually decide. Neither group means much until you know your own monthly card sales, so start with the math.

When people say Shopify
vs Shopify Plus, which
Shopify do they mean?

"Shopify" in that question means the three standard plans, Basic, Grow and Advanced, as opposed to Plus. In practice the comparison that matters is Advanced against Plus, because Advanced already carries the lowest standard rates, 15 staff accounts and carrier-calculated shipping. A brand weighing Plus has usually outgrown Grow already.

There is a second source of confusion. Shopify's middle plan used to be called Shopify, and it is now called Grow, at $105 a month or $79 billed yearly. If you are on Basic or Grow and wondering about Plus, start with the Basic, Grow and Advanced breakdown, because the step to Advanced usually pays for itself long before Plus does.

Basic, Grow and Advanced are self-serve subscriptions you can change from the admin in a minute. Plus is a sales-led contract with a term commitment, and Shopify's pricing FAQ says you can cancel a one or three year Plus subscription when the term expires. Upgrading is easy, but getting back down is a contract conversation.

How much do Shopify
Advanced and Shopify
Plus cost in 2026?

Advanced is $399 a month on monthly billing or $299 a month billed yearly, a 25% discount. Plus starts at $2,500 a month on a one-year term or $2,300 a month on a three-year term, per Shopify's Plus pricing page. So the fee gap runs from $1,901 to $2,201 a month, depending on how each side is billed.

The Plus figure is a starting price. Shopify's Plus help page says the flat fee covers standard setups. More complex, higher-volume businesses might pay a variable platform fee based on revenue and business model, with different rates for B2B and direct-to-consumer orders. Shopify does not print that rate on the page. It tells you to talk to sales.

The full Plus invoice, with the variable fee, the cap, apps and implementation line by line, is in what Shopify Plus really costs. For this comparison, what matters is that the flat fee is fixed, while a variable fee, once it applies, grows with your sales at about the same rate your card savings do. That is what caps the fee case for Plus.

At what GMV does
Shopify Plus pay
for itself on fees?

In this illustrative example, Plus covers its extra fee at about $957K a month in online card sales, roughly $11.5M a year. To find it, divide the extra platform fee by the card rate gap. On a three-year term the line falls to about $870K a month, and with only standard cards, about $800K.

The assumptions, so you can swap in your own. A US brand on Shopify Payments, all online sales, 80% standard consumer cards and 20% premium cards (business cards and Amex). Advanced billed yearly at $299, Plus on a one-year term at $2,500. That makes the blended rate 2.62% on Advanced and 2.39% on Plus, a gap of 0.23 points. The 30 cent fee is the same on both plans, so it drops out.

Most brands sit in the first three rows. At $250K a month, Plus costs you about $19,500 a year more than Advanced on fees. At $500K it is still about $12,600 a year. The gap closes as volume rises, and the lines only cross a little under $1M a month. Below that, every Plus dollar has to be earned by something other than the card rate.

Then look at the dashed line. If your contract moves to a variable fee, which the Plus pricing breakdown puts at 0.25% of sales at the low end, the fee rises with volume about as fast as the card saving does. In this example the net saving peaks near $100 a month at $1M and then drifts to zero.

What moves the Plus
breakeven up or down?

Five things move the line more than anything else: the contract term, your card mix, whether you use Shopify Payments, how many POS Pro locations you run, and how many separate stores you keep. A retail-heavy brand or one on a third-party gateway can reach breakeven well below $957K a month.

• Term. A three-year Plus contract at $2,300 cuts the fee gap to $2,001, which moves breakeven to about $870K a month on the same card mix. You trade flexibility for $200 a month.
• Card mix. The premium card gap is only 0.15 points (3.1% against 2.95%), smaller than the 0.25 point standard gap. More business cards and Amex push the line higher. All standard cards on a three-year term bring it to about $800K.
• Third-party gateway. If you process outside Shopify Payments, you pay Shopify 0.6% on Advanced and 0.2% on Plus. That 0.4 point gap brings breakeven to about $550K a month on a one-year term.
• POS Pro. Advanced charges $89 a month per POS Pro location, and Plus includes 20. Ten locations is $890 a month off the gap, and breakeven drops to about $570K.
• Extra stores. On Advanced, each regional or B2B store is another plan. Plus includes nine expansion stores, so two extra stores on Advanced add $598 a month to the case for Plus.

International cards do not move the line. Shopify's pricing page shows the same 1% surcharge on every plan, so a heavy cross-border mix raises your effective rate on both sides equally. In-person cards help only a little, since the gap is 0.1 points. If you sell in stores, the POS Pro fee does far more work in this math than the in-person card rate.

Together they give a range. A domestic, online-only brand on Shopify Payments with a one-year term needs close to $1M a month. A brand with ten POS Pro locations, a three-year term and mostly consumer cards can get there under $500K. The Shopify plan picker runs your seats, volume and billing term through this if you would rather not do it by hand.

What can Shopify Plus
do that Advanced
cannot?

Five things on Plus have no Advanced equivalent. They are checkout apps on the information, shipping and payment steps, custom apps built with Shopify Functions, B2B at scale, nine included expansion stores, and unlimited staff. If one of those is blocking revenue today, the fee math above matters less.

The checkout

Shopify's checkout customization page draws the line clearly. Every plan gets the checkout editor and apps on the thank you and order status pages. Only Plus can put apps on the information, shipping and payment steps, or use the Checkout Branding API. That is where upsells, delivery date pickers, gift options and B2B purchase order fields sit.

Functions follow the same pattern. Shopify's developer docs say any plan can use public App Store apps that contain functions, but only Plus stores can run custom apps that contain them. If your discount, shipping or payment logic is specific enough that no public app does it, you need Plus. The Functions and checkout extensibility post covers what those APIs can do.

B2B, stores and people

Plus also lifts three ceilings. B2B goes from three catalogs to unlimited, with catalogs assigned to individual companies, deposits and partial payments. You get a main store plus nine expansion stores for regions, product lines, wholesale or staff, under one contract. Staff accounts go from 15 to unlimited, with custom user groups for permissions. Launchpad for scheduled sales, 200 locations and priority phone support come with it.

Which old reasons to
move to Plus no longer
apply in 2026?

B2B is the big one. Since April 2, 2026, Basic, Grow and Advanced include native B2B with up to three catalogs, company profiles, payment terms, volume pricing and vaulted cards, per Shopify's changelog. Flow automation, Markets and calculated carrier rates are also available below Plus.

That changes the old sales pitch. "You need Plus for wholesale" now means you need it for more than three price lists, or for deposits. Shopify's B2B plan comparison also gives Advanced contextual checkout and storefront by market, which Basic and Grow lack. I go through when three catalogs stop being enough in do you still need Plus for B2B.

International selling moved the same way. Every plan includes Shopify Markets, local currencies, translation and duty collection, and the Plus help page says all plans include unlimited country markets. Separate expansion stores are still a Plus feature, but most brands do not need them. Markets vs expansion stores lays out when a region really needs its own store.

Two more that come up a lot. Shopify Flow is a free app, and Shopify's B2B table marks it available on every plan. Advanced also allows one headless storefront, against 25 on Plus. If your Plus case rests on any of these, test it on Advanced first, where the same feature costs about $2,000 a month less.

Is Shopify Plus worth it,
or is the answer
not yet?

For most brands under about $10M a year online, Plus can wait. The fee math does not cover Plus below roughly $800K to $957K a month in card sales, and the B2B, Flow and Markets features that used to force the move are now on Advanced. Move when a specific Plus feature unlocks revenue you can name.

I helped build and scale the Partner Program at Shopify, and I have since run brands on both Advanced and Plus. The pattern I keep seeing is a brand that moves to Plus because it feels like the grown-up plan, then runs the same checkout and the same apps it ran on Advanced. That is $2,000 a month for a logo on the sales deck.

If none of those apply, stay on Advanced, bill it yearly, and spend the $2,000 a month on something that moves conversion. Revisit the question every quarter, because the answer changes as volume grows. When to move to Shopify Plus has the operational triggers in more depth, and the full enterprise picture is in the Plus enterprise TCO comparison.

Before you sign, remember that Plus is a contract, so negotiate it like one: the term, the variable fee and the card rate all move at volume. If the comparison has widened to other platforms, BigCommerce vs Shopify Plus covers the mid-market alternative. A real alternative in the room is the best leverage you will have in that negotiation.

Pay for Plus when you
can name the wall.

Most of the Advanced vs Plus decision is about capability. The lower Plus card rate covers its fee only near $1M a month of card sales, and a variable fee can cancel that out. So buy Plus for the checkout, the B2B depth, the stores or the seats, and only once you have hit that wall.

Write down the one thing Advanced will not let you do, put a revenue number next to it, and compare that number with the roughly $2,000 a month Plus adds. If the number is bigger, move. If you cannot fill in the blank, that is your answer for this quarter, and it is the same answer I give most brands who ask me as a Shopify Plus consultant.

Questions brands ask
about Advanced vs
Shopify Plus.