BigCommerce vs Shopify in 2026: the fee maths after BigCommerce's June changes
BigCommerce renamed its plans and added an Open Payment Provider fee on 1 June 2026. This guide puts it next to Shopify's third-party fee, works through four annual-sales scenarios, and compares Shopify Plus with BigCommerce Performance, headless options and migration.
Key takeaways
- 01Since 1 June 2026, BigCommerce's self-serve plans are Core, Growth and Scale, with an Open Payment Provider fee of 2.0%, 1.0% and 0.6% unless orders go through an embedded provider.
- 02Shopify charges a similar third-party fee (2%, 1%, 0.6% and 0.2% on Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus) unless you use Shopify Payments.
- 03BigCommerce plans have sales thresholds: Core $30K and Growth $100K trailing 12-month Inclusive GMV, then automatic upgrades; Scale adds a 0.9% overage above $33,333 a month.
- 04Shopify's pricing page lists no sales thresholds for Basic, Grow or Advanced; Plus may add a variable platform fee for larger businesses.
- 05Your payment provider and growth path decide which is cheaper, so model your own sales before you choose.
Since 1 June 2026, BigCommerce charges an Open Payment Provider fee on self-serve plans unless you use an embedded provider, and its plans cap annual sales. Shopify charges a similar fee unless you use Shopify Payments, but its standard plans have no sales caps. Your payment setup and growth path decide the cheaper option.
Several popular comparisons still say BigCommerce has "no transaction fees" and use plan names it retired in June 2026. Others quote Shopify's third-party fee wrongly or describe a 100-variant limit that no longer exists. This guide uses official pages read on 23 October 2026 and shows the arithmetic, so you can rerun it with your own numbers. Elgrith builds on both through our BigCommerce development and Shopify Plus development teams, and we hold no partner status with either.
How do BigCommerce and Shopify compare at a glance?
| BigCommerce | Shopify | |
|---|---|---|
| Company | Commerce.com, Inc. (renamed from BigCommerce in July 2025) | Shopify |
| Self-serve plans | Core, Growth, Scale | Basic, Grow, Advanced |
| Enterprise plan | Performance, "Custom pricing starting as low as $1,499/mo" | Plus, $2,500 USD a month (1-year term) |
| Fee when you use an outside payment provider | Open Payment Provider fee: 2.0% / 1.0% / 0.6% | Third-party fee: 2% / 1% / 0.6% / 0.2% |
| How to avoid that fee | Use an embedded payment provider | Use Shopify Payments |
| Sales thresholds | Yes, on every plan | None listed on Basic, Grow or Advanced |
| Variants per product | Check BigCommerce's current docs | Up to 2,048, with up to three options |
| Headless storefront | Catalyst (Next.js) | Hydrogen toolkit |
| Share of e-commerce systems (W3Techs, Oct 2026) | 0.6% | 32.3% |
Sources: BigCommerce plan updates, Shopify UK pricing, Shopify Plus plan, Shopify variants, W3Techs for BigCommerce and Shopify, and the SEC filing announcing the Commerce.com name.
What do the plans cost in 2026?
BigCommerce. BigCommerce's official plan-update page says: "Starting June 1, 2026, BigCommerce is updating its plan structure and pricing." We read it on the company's Australian domain because the US page returned an error to our checks, and the page shows "$" without naming a currency, so confirm the price in your own region before budgeting.
| BigCommerce plan (replaces) | Billed monthly | Billed annually (per month) | Sales threshold | Open Payment Provider fee |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Core (Standard) | $39 | $29 | $30K trailing 12-month Inclusive GMV | 2.0% |
| Growth (Plus) | $105 | $79 | $100K trailing 12-month Inclusive GMV | 1.0% |
| Scale (Pro) | $399 | $299 | $33,333 Inclusive GMV a month, 0.9% overage above it | 0.6% |
| Performance (Enterprise) | From $1,499 | Contract | $250K Inclusive GMV a month, 0.6% overage above it | Not charged on contracted Performance plans |
Shopify (UK, GBP). We verified Shopify's prices in pounds; Shopify shows local currency by location, and US readers should check shopify.com/pricing for dollar prices of the standard plans.
| Shopify plan | Billed monthly | Billed yearly (per month) | Third-party payment fee | Shopify Payments online card rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | £25 | £19 | 2% | 2% + 25p |
| Grow | £65 | £49 | 1% | 1.7% + 25p |
| Advanced | £344 | £259 | 0.6% | 1.5% + 25p |
| Plus | From £1,800 | — | 0.2% | 1.3% + 25p |
For US billing, Shopify's Help Center lists Plus at "$2,500 USD" a month on a 1-year term and "$2,300 USD" on a 3-year term, and says higher-volume businesses might pay "a variable platform fee based on your revenue and business model".
How do transaction and payment-provider fees compare?
On the first three paid tiers the two platforms now charge the same percentages when you bring an outside payment provider: 2%, 1% and 0.6%. The difference is how you avoid them.
- Shopify: "Third-party transaction fees apply to all transactions processed through third-party and alternate payment gateways" (Shopify Help). Use Shopify Payments, where it is available, and the fee doesn't apply. Plus drops the fee to 0.2%.
- BigCommerce: "An Open Payment Provider Fee applies to all self-serve plans." Orders processed through an embedded provider "are not subject to the Open Payment Provider Fee" (BigCommerce). BigCommerce's own explainer lists more than 20 embedded providers, including Stripe, Adyen, Checkout.com, PayPal (Braintree, Complete Payments and Wallet), Klarna, Worldpay and BigCommerce Payments.
This matters more for BigCommerce than many merchants realise: if you already use one of the large processors on the embedded list, you can usually keep it with no extra fee. On Shopify, keeping a non-Shopify gateway always costs you the third-party fee on top of that gateway's own processing charges.
When do BigCommerce's sales thresholds force an upgrade?
BigCommerce measures plan thresholds with Inclusive GMV, which it defines as "your gross order value after a 10% reduction". It says: "Your plan can change automatically if your trailing twelve-month Inclusive GMV grows beyond your current plan's threshold." GMV is checked on the first of each month, and monthly-plan merchants move up at the start of their next service period, with notice.
Here is what that means at four sales levels. This is illustrative arithmetic on the list prices above, assuming steady monthly sales and, for the fee column, an outside payment provider on both platforms.
| Annual online sales | Inclusive GMV | BigCommerce plan you end up on | BigCommerce outside-provider fee a year | Shopify plan options and third-party fee a year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $25,000 | $22,500 | Core ($39 or $29 a month) | 2.0% = $500 | Any plan; Basic at 2% = $500 |
| $90,000 | $81,000 | Growth ($105 or $79), because Core's $30K is exceeded | 1.0% = $900 | Any plan; Basic at 2% = $1,800 or Grow at 1% = $900 |
| $400,000 | $360,000 | Scale ($399 or $299); $30,000 a month stays under $33,333, so no overage | 0.6% = $2,400 | Any plan; Advanced at 0.6% = $2,400 |
| $2,000,000 | $1,800,000 | Scale with overage: about $116,667 a month above $33,333 × 0.9% ≈ $12,600 a year; or a Performance contract from $1,499 a month | Scale 0.6% = $12,000 (none on a contracted Performance plan) | Advanced at 0.6% = $12,000, or Plus at 0.2% = $4,000 plus the Plus fee |
Three things stand out:
- Small stores pay about the same, and on both platforms the fee disappears if you use the native or embedded payment option.
- Growth is where BigCommerce pushes you up. A store passing $30K or $100K of Inclusive GMV moves plan whether or not it needs the extra features. On Shopify, you can stay on Basic as long as you like, though a higher plan cuts the third-party fee.
- At $2 million and above, compare enterprise plans. BigCommerce's Scale overage makes Performance worth quoting, and Shopify's Plus becomes the natural comparison. Ask both for written quotes on the same sales forecast.
Shopify Plus vs BigCommerce Performance: which suits mid-market and B2B?
For mid-market direct-to-consumer brands, the comparison is now fairly clean:
| Shopify Plus | BigCommerce Performance | |
|---|---|---|
| Published starting price | $2,500 USD a month (1-year), $2,300 (3-year); from £1,800 in the UK | "Custom pricing starting as low as $1,499/mo" |
| Volume pricing | Possible variable platform fee based on revenue | $250K Inclusive GMV a month, then 0.6% overage |
| Outside payment provider fee | 0.2% | Not charged on contracted Performance plans |
| B2B | Shopify B2B is on all plans; unlimited B2B catalogs on Plus only | B2B Edition |
| API limits | Check Shopify's current API rate-limit docs for your plan | Check your contract; self-serve Scale is "60k per hour" |
On B2B, Shopify says "Shopify B2B is available on all plans", with "Unlimited B2B catalogs and direct catalog assignment to company locations" reserved for Plus. BigCommerce sells B2B Edition for complex buyer accounts and quoting. On either platform, gaps are usually filled with custom apps; our Shopify app development team builds custom and public Shopify apps. If your integrations make heavy API calls (ERP, PIM, marketplaces), check limits early: BigCommerce's API rate limits list Scale at "60k per hour (450 / 30sec)" and Growth and Core at "20k per hour (150 / 30sec)".
Headless: how do Catalyst and Hydrogen compare?
Both platforms support headless builds, where a custom front end talks to the commerce back end by API.
- BigCommerce Catalyst: BigCommerce says it "built Catalyst with Next.js, React storefront components, and our GraphQL Storefront API" (Catalyst docs). It gives developers a storefront starting point to build on rather than a blank project.
- Shopify Hydrogen: "Hydrogen is Shopify's headless toolkit" (shopify.dev). Shopify now positions it as a layer of commerce features for frameworks such as Next.js, React Router, Nuxt, Astro and SvelteKit, with a React Router starter that deploys to Shopify's Oxygen hosting.
Go headless only if you need a custom, high-performance front end or one content source for several channels. For most stores, a well-built theme is faster to launch and cheaper to run. Our headless CMS development team can help you decide.
Where does WooCommerce fit?
WooCommerce is the self-hosted alternative to both. It is a free, open-source plugin for WordPress; WooCommerce itself adds no platform fee on orders, and you pay your payment provider, hosting, extensions and maintenance instead. It suits content-led brands that already run WordPress. See our WooCommerce development service and the Shopify vs WooCommerce comparison.
Which should you choose?
| If this describes you | Lean towards | Why |
|---|---|---|
| You want to keep Stripe, Adyen or PayPal as your processor | BigCommerce | Embedded providers avoid the Open Payment Provider fee |
| You are happy to use the platform's own payments | Either | Both remove the outside-provider fee |
| You expect fast growth on a self-serve plan | Shopify | No sales thresholds listed on Basic, Grow or Advanced |
| You need the widest choice of apps, themes and developers | Shopify | Far larger installed base (32.3% vs 0.6% of e-commerce systems) |
| You sell B2B with complex buyer accounts and quotes | Compare Plus with B2B Edition | Both have mature B2B options at the enterprise tier |
| You plan a headless Next.js storefront | Either | Catalyst is built on Next.js; Hydrogen supports Next.js and other frameworks |
If the rows split, let the payment setup decide: it is the line that changes your bill most at every sales level.
Does Shopify still limit products to 100 variants?
No. Shopify's help center now says "You can create up to 2,048 variants for a product", with "up to three options" per product. Older comparisons that count the 100-variant limit as a reason to choose BigCommerce are out of date. If your catalogue needs more than three options per product, check how each platform models it before you decide.
How do you migrate between BigCommerce and Shopify?
Both directions follow the same pattern:
- Export and map data: products, variants, customers, orders, gift cards, blog posts and pages. Use the platform's import tools, a migration app or the APIs.
- Rebuild the storefront: theme, navigation, product templates and checkout settings. Themes do not transfer.
- Recreate integrations: payments, shipping, tax, ERP, email and reviews.
- Redirect every changed URL with 301 redirects, and carry over titles, meta descriptions and structured data.
- Test orders end to end, then launch and watch Search Console for 404s.
Our ecommerce development team and the website migration checklist cover each step.
How can Elgrith help?
Elgrith has delivered 1,000+ projects for 250+ clients since 2015, from our New Delhi headquarters and client centers in New York, London and Shanghai. We build and migrate stores on BigCommerce, Shopify Plus and WooCommerce, and we'll model both platforms' fees on your real sales before you commit. For the Shopify plan decision, read Shopify vs Shopify Plus. You get a fixed written quote after a free call. Book a call or start a project.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Sources 13 linked
- 01BigCommerce — Plan and pricing updates 2026 (official page, read on the .com.au domain, 23 Oct 2026)bigcommerce.com.au(opens in a new tab)
- 02BigCommerce blog — Self-serve pricing changes (11 May 2026)bigcommerce.co.uk(opens in a new tab)
- 03BigCommerce — Embedded payment providersbigcommerce.co.uk(opens in a new tab)
- 04BigCommerce Dev Center — API rate limitsdocs.bigcommerce.com(opens in a new tab)
- 05BigCommerce Dev Center — Catalystdocs.bigcommerce.com(opens in a new tab)
- 06Shopify — UK pricing (GBP, read 23 Oct 2026)shopify.com(opens in a new tab)
- 07Shopify Help Center — Shopify Plus planhelp.shopify.com(opens in a new tab)
- 08Shopify Help Center — Third-party payment providershelp.shopify.com(opens in a new tab)
- 09Shopify Help Center — Adding variantshelp.shopify.com(opens in a new tab)
- 10shopify.dev — Hydrogenshopify.dev(opens in a new tab)
- 11W3Techs — BigCommerce usage statistics (Oct 2026)w3techs.com(opens in a new tab)
- 12W3Techs — Shopify usage statistics (Oct 2026)w3techs.com(opens in a new tab)
- 13SEC — Commerce.com, Inc. EX-99.2 (31 Jul 2025)sec.gov(opens in a new tab)
