Shopify vs Shopify Plus: pricing and when to upgrade in 2026

Shopify Plus starts at $2,300–$2,500 a month in the US and £1,800–£1,950 a month in the UK, depending on whether you sign a three-year or one-year term, according to Shopify's own pricing pages in October 2026. Standard plans cost far less. Plus pays off when you need checkout customization, expansion stores or lower third-party fees at scale.

Most "Shopify Plus pricing" articles were written for an older Shopify. Two changes in the last 18 months shift the decision. B2B selling is no longer a Plus-only feature, and the old checkout.liquid customizations are gone for every store. This guide uses Shopify's own pages only, puts US dollars and pounds side by side and dates every figure. Prices change, so check the linked pages before you sign anything. None of the figures here are Elgrith fees: we build and migrate Shopify Plus stores for brands that hold their own plan.

How much does Shopify Plus cost in 2026?

Shopify publishes two Plus prices per currency. The difference is the contract term.

Monthly fees from the Shopify Help Center (USD) and Shopify UK's Plus pricing page (GBP), read 22 October 2026. Yearly totals are our arithmetic.

The Help Center says that "Pricing is subject to change" and that USD prices apply in the US and in places without a supported local currency. Over a full three-year term, the US list price adds up to $82,800.

What the platform fee includes

Shopify UK's pricing page says: "Your main store and 9 expansion stores are included as part of your monthly platform fee." Expansion stores are separate storefronts, often used for different countries, brands or wholesale. Beyond those ten, Shopify charges "an extra £250 GBP per month per store, or a revenue share across all stores".

Shopify also offers "a variable platform fee for more complex business structures". It does not publish the formula on that page. Agency blogs quote percentages and revenue thresholds that disagree with each other, so we don't repeat them here. If you sell at high volume, ask Shopify for a written quote and compare it with the fixed fee.

What the platform fee does not include

The monthly fee is the platform only. Your total cost of ownership also includes:

• payment processing fees, which depend on your provider and country
• paid apps (reviews, subscriptions, search, loyalty, ERP connectors)
• theme design and development
• migration from your current platform
• ongoing development, testing and support

We cover these in the hidden costs section below.

Shopify vs Shopify Plus: what's the difference?

Here is how Plus compares with the standard plans on the points that change the decision in 2026.

Sources: Shopify pricing comparison for fees and staff accounts; Shopify Help Center for Plus features; shopify.dev for Functions; Shopify News for B2B. Read 22 October 2026.

Transaction fees

The percentages in the first row are charged only when you take payments through a third-party payment provider instead of Shopify Payments. If you use Shopify Payments, this fee does not apply on any plan, and the Plus saving on this line is zero. Card processing rates are a separate charge.

Checkout customization and Shopify Functions

The Help Center puts it simply: "With Shopify Plus, you can customize the checkout experience to align with your brand." Other plans can change checkout branding and use apps from the Shopify App Store, but not build the same level of custom checkout logic.

Shopify Functions let developers change how discounts, shipping, payments and cart validation work on Shopify's servers. Shopify's developer docs say: "Stores on any plan can use public apps that are distributed through the Shopify App Store and contain functions." But "Only stores on a Shopify Plus plan can use custom apps that contain Shopify Function APIs." If your business rules are unusual enough that no public app covers them, that is a Plus reason.

Staff accounts

The Help Center says Plus "supports unlimited staff accounts to help you grow your personnel without additional costs." Advanced allows 15. For a brand with a large customer service team, warehouse staff and agency users, the cap on Advanced can become a real constraint.

What changed for Shopify in 2025–2026?

Three dated changes reshape the Plus decision. Most ranking articles predate at least one of them.

Sources: shopify.dev, checkout.liquid and Shopify News, B2B for all.

Shopify's developer docs also say "checkout.liquid is now unsupported for the Information, Shipping, and Payment checkout steps." In practice, any store still relying on old checkout scripts, including Plus stores that customized checkout years ago, needs a rebuild with checkout UI extensions, Shopify Functions and web pixels.

The B2B change matters most. A few years ago, "we sell wholesale" was one of the most common reasons to upgrade. Today a store on Basic, Grow or Advanced gets B2B at no extra cost. Shopify still says that "the Shopify Plus plan includes additional B2B capabilities", such as unlimited catalogs, so complex wholesale setups may still need Plus. Check the specific features you need against the Help Center list rather than assuming.

When does upgrading to Shopify Plus pay off?

Start with the one saving you can calculate: the third-party transaction fee. It only applies if you use a third-party payment provider instead of Shopify Payments.

Worked example: transaction fees on Advanced vs Plus

On Advanced, the third-party fee is 0.6% of sales. On Plus it is 0.2%. The saving is 0.4 percentage points.

Fee rates from Shopify's pricing comparison. The arithmetic is ours.

To cover the $30,000-a-year Plus fee (1-year term) from this saving alone, you need about $7.5 million a year through a third-party provider ($30,000 ÷ 0.004). On the 3-year term ($27,600 a year), the break-even is about $6.9 million. You also stop paying for Advanced when you upgrade, so subtract your current Advanced bill from the Plus fee before you run the numbers. We haven't quoted Advanced's USD price here because Shopify's page served us local-currency prices; read yours from your admin.

The conclusion: for most brands, the fee saving is a bonus, not the business case. The real reasons are operational.

Upgrade checklist

Plus is worth a serious look if two or more of these are true:

• Your checkout needs logic that no public app provides, such as custom discount stacking, B2B payment terms or shipping rules.
• You run, or plan to run, several storefronts for different countries, brands or wholesale, and want them on one contract.
• You need more than 15 staff accounts.
• You need advanced B2B features beyond what Shopify now includes on every plan.
• You put several million dollars a year through a third-party payment provider.
• You need custom apps with Shopify Functions, built for your rules only.

If none of these apply, stay on Advanced and spend the difference on conversion work, content or your ecommerce development roadmap.

What are the hidden costs of Shopify Plus?

The platform fee is often the smallest line in a Plus project's first year. Plan for these as well:

• Apps. Plus stores tend to run more paid apps: subscriptions, loyalty, search, reviews, ERP and 3PL connectors. App fees are monthly and add up.
• Theme design and build. A custom Online Store 2.0 theme or a headless storefront with Hydrogen or Next.js is a project in its own right.
• Checkout rebuild. Any old checkout scripts must be replaced with checkout UI extensions, Functions and pixels.
• Migration. Moving from Magento (Adobe Commerce), WooCommerce, BigCommerce or Salesforce Commerce Cloud means data mapping, URL redirects and testing.
• Integrations. ERP, CRM, PIM and warehouse systems usually need middleware or custom code.
• Ongoing development. Plus stores change often: new markets, promotions and B2B rules all need a developer.
• Payment processing. Card fees are separate from the platform fee and vary by provider.

Ask any agency for these lines as separate items in a written quote. A quote that only shows the build is incomplete.

Shopify Advanced vs Plus: which should you choose?

Choose Advanced if you run one store (or a couple of markets handled by Shopify Markets), your checkout needs are met by public apps, your team fits within 15 staff accounts and you use Shopify Payments. Since April 2026, you can also sell B2B on Advanced.

Choose Plus if checkout is part of how you compete, you need several storefronts on one contract, you need unlimited staff or advanced B2B features, or your business rules call for custom Shopify Functions. High third-party payment volume strengthens the case.

Not sure? Write down the three features you'd use on Plus in your first year. If you can't name three, you probably don't need it yet. If you can, price them with an agency and add the Plus fee to see the real first-year cost.

For a wider platform decision, see our Shopify vs WooCommerce comparison.

How do you move to Shopify Plus without losing SEO?

Upgrading an existing Shopify store to Plus is a billing change: your theme, products and URLs stay where they are. Migrating from another platform is different, and that is where rankings are lost.

A safe migration has five parts:

1. A full URL map. Every product, collection, page and blog URL on the old site, mapped to its new Shopify URL with a 301 redirect.
2. Data migration with checks. Products, variants, customers and order history, with record counts compared before and after.
3. Checkout and payments rebuilt with checkout extensibility, then tested with real orders.
4. A planned cutover at a low-traffic time, with DNS, apps and tracking switched in a written order.
5. Post-launch monitoring of crawl errors, rankings and conversion for several weeks.

Our website redesign SEO checklist covers the redirect and monitoring steps in detail.

How can Elgrith help with Shopify Plus?

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. Our Shopify Plus development team builds Plus themes, rebuilds checkout customizations with checkout extensibility and Shopify Functions, sets up B2B and multi-store setups, connects ERPs and CRMs, and migrates stores to Plus with every URL redirected. UK brands can start with our London Shopify agency page, and smaller stores start with our ecommerce development service.

When you compare agencies, ask what they have shipped on Plus: checkout extensions, Functions, B2B and migrations. You own the code and IP, and we give a fixed written quote after a free call. Book a call or start a project.