How much does a Shopify store cost in 2026?

The short answer

A Shopify store has two costs: the monthly plan and the build. Shopify’s own cost guide, published in September 2026, lists Basic at $29 a month, Grow at $79 and Advanced at $299, all paid yearly. Shopify Plus starts at $2,300 a month on a three-year term.

For the build, the same guide puts prebuilt themes at $0 to $500 and a custom-built store at $2,000 to $20,000 or more. Card fees, apps and your own time come on top. Our online store prices are in the last section.

Plans and card fees

Prices are Shopify’s US prices, read on 23 October 2026. Card rates are for online payments through Shopify Payments, from Shopify’s card fee guide.

When does a bigger plan pay for itself? Shopify’s help centre estimates that upgrading from Basic to Grow saves money on fees once a US store sells about $200,000 a year through Shopify Payments, or about $60,000 a year without it. Below that, Basic is usually the cheaper plan.

The other costs

• Apps. Reviews, subscriptions, bundles and email tools are often paid apps. Clutch’s budget guide puts plug-ins at $0 to $600 a month across platforms.
• A theme. Free themes work; paid themes cost up to $500 once.
• Product content. Photos and descriptions for every product take time or money, and they sell the product more than the design does.
• Tracking. Without GA4 and the ad platforms’ tags set up properly, you cannot tell which ads bring sales.
• A domain. Clutch puts a domain name at $0 to $20 a year, whether you buy it through Shopify or elsewhere.
• Your time. Running a store means answering customers, packing orders and updating stock. Count those hours as a cost when you compare options.

A worked example

Take a store on Basic that sells $100,000 a year in 1,000 online orders of $100 each, all through Shopify Payments. The plan costs $348 a year ($29 × 12). Card fees at 2.9% + 30¢ come to $2,900 plus $300, or $3,200. On Grow, the plan costs $948 a year and card fees come to $2,700 plus $300, or $3,000. Grow saves $200 in fees but costs $600 more, so Basic is still cheaper at this size, which matches Shopify’s own estimate.

Add a theme, the apps you need and the build, and the first year costs far more than the plan alone. After that, the plan, card fees and apps are the running costs. This is why it pays to check app prices before you build, rather than after launch.

How the options compare

Where Blue Leopard Media fits

We build online stores on Shopify from $2,999. Your products are added, payments are connected, and the product pages and checkout are built to load fast on phones. GA4, the Google Ads tag and the Meta Pixel with Conversions API are set up before launch, so every sale can be traced to the ad that brought it.

The final price is confirmed in a written quote, with the pages, features and timeline, and you approve the design before any code is written. The Shopify plan and card fees are paid to Shopify directly. See the prices.