Shopify takes a cut of every sale in one of two ways, and which one you pay depends on how you process payments. If you use Shopify Payments, the built-in processor, Shopify takes only the card processing rate: 2.9% + 30 cents per online order on the Basic plan, dropping to 2.5% + 30 cents on Advanced, with no separate transaction fee. If you use a third-party gateway like Stripe or PayPal instead, you pay that gateway's card rate and Shopify adds a transaction fee on top, from 2% on Basic down to 0.2% on Plus. That second fee is the one that quietly eats margin, and it is avoidable.
The three fees people confuse
Most "how much does Shopify take" confusion comes from stacking three separate costs into one number. They are not the same thing, and only two of them are per-sale.
- The plan fee. A flat monthly subscription for the platform, not a cut of sales: Basic is $39 a month, Grow (the plan formerly called Shopify) is $105, Advanced is $399, and Shopify Plus starts around $2,300. Paying annually lowers these to $29, $79, and $299.
- The card processing rate. What it costs to actually run a customer's card. This is per sale, and every ecommerce platform has some version of it because card networks charge it.
- The transaction fee. An extra percentage Shopify charges when you process payments through a provider other than Shopify Payments. This is the avoidable one.
When someone says Shopify "takes too much per sale," the culprit is almost always the third fee stacking on top of the second.
What Shopify takes per sale with Shopify Payments
Using Shopify Payments, there is no separate transaction fee. You pay the card rate and nothing else per order. Rates improve as you move up plans, which is the real reason to upgrade once volume is high enough.
| Plan | Online card rate | In-person card rate | Transaction fee |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic ($39/mo) | 2.9% + 30¢ | 2.6% + 10¢ | 0% (none) |
| Grow ($105/mo) | 2.7% + 30¢ | 2.5% + 10¢ | 0% (none) |
| Advanced ($399/mo) | 2.5% + 30¢ | 2.4% + 10¢ | 0% (none) |
| Plus (from $2,300/mo) | Negotiated rates | Negotiated rates | 0.2% when applicable |
On a $100 online order, that is $3.20 on Basic, $3.00 on Grow, and $2.80 on Advanced. The card rate is the whole cost per sale when Shopify Payments runs the transaction.
What Shopify takes if you use a third-party gateway
Choose a provider other than Shopify Payments, such as Stripe, PayPal, or Authorize.net, and two things happen. You still pay that provider's own card processing rate, which is usually similar to Shopify's, and Shopify adds its transaction fee on top for routing the payment outside its system.
- Basic: 2% per transaction
- Grow: 1% per transaction
- Advanced: 0.6% per transaction
- Plus: 0.2% per transaction
On that same $100 order on Basic, a third-party gateway charging roughly 2.9% + 30 cents plus Shopify's 2% fee comes to about $5.20, versus $3.20 with Shopify Payments. That is a 60% increase in what you pay per sale to route around the built-in processor. For most brands there is no upside that justifies it. The fee disappears when you use Shopify Payments, and Shopify also excludes Shop Pay, Shop Pay Installments, and PayPal Express Checkout from third-party transaction fees when Shopify Payments is active.
The fees that do not show up in the headline rate
A few more costs are per-sale or close to it, and they are easy to miss when you budget from the sticker price.
- Currency conversion. Selling internationally can add about 1% on online orders that convert currency on Basic, Grow, and Advanced. The applicable currency conversion fee depends on the store's market and setup.
- Chargebacks. A disputed order can carry a fee on top of the lost revenue, the same as with any processor.
- Apps and themes. Not a cut of each sale, but many stores run several paid apps a month, and that recurring cost changes the real economics of every order more than a tenth of a percent on the card rate does.
How to actually pay Shopify less per sale
The levers are simple, and they matter most for brands with thin margins where a point or two decides whether an order is profitable.
- Use Shopify Payments. This is the single biggest one. It removes the transaction fee completely. Unless you have a specific reason you cannot use it, a brand paying the third-party fee is leaving money on the table on every order.
- Match the plan to your volume. Higher plans cost more monthly but cut the card rate. There is a crossover point where Advanced's lower rate more than pays for its higher fee. Do the math on your actual monthly volume rather than defaulting to Basic forever.
- Bill annually. It does not change the per-sale cut, but it lowers the plan fee, which lowers your true cost per order.
- Consider Plus at scale. Once you are doing serious volume, the negotiated Plus rates and the 0.2% third-party fee can outweigh the higher monthly cost. We break the tiers down in how much a Shopify Plus agency costs.
Why this matters for your margins
For a brand doing meaningful volume, the difference between 2.9% and 2.5%, or between paying the transaction fee and not, is real money over a year. It matters most in low-margin categories like CPG and beverage, where the first order is often the least profitable one and every point of processing cost comes straight out of contribution margin. At Liquid Lemon, a Shopify / Shopify Plus design + development studio, we build the store and retention system around that math, so the fee you pay per order is a smaller share of a larger, repeatable one. That is the same reason the best Shopify agencies for CPG brands treat the store as a retention engine, not a catalog: the money is in the repeat order, and fees compound on every one.
Payment fees are one line in the bigger question of what running on Shopify actually costs. For the full picture, see how much a Shopify store costs, and if you are weighing a rebuild, how much a Shopify redesign costs.
Written by Andrew Zam, co-founder of Liquid Lemon. Rates and plan prices reflect Shopify's published pricing as of 2026; check Shopify's current pricing for your region before you budget.
