Quick answer: Shopify charges two different per-sale fees, and most articles blur them together. The credit card fee (2.5–2.9% + 30¢ online in the US, depending on plan) applies to every card sale — it's the cost of moving money. The transaction fee (2%/1%/0.6% by plan) applies only if you use a third-party payment gateway, and drops to $0 with Shopify Payments. On a $100 order with Shopify Payments, Shopify takes $3.20 on Basic, $3.00 on Grow, $2.80 on Advanced. Start a Shopify free trial and activate Shopify Payments on day one to keep the second fee off your books permanently.
"How much does Shopify actually take per sale?" is one of the most-searched Shopify questions for a reason: the official pricing page lists a subscription, a card rate, and a transaction fee, and it's genuinely unclear which ones stack. The short version — as of 2026 — is that only one of them has to apply to you.
This guide walks through every fee with worked math: the exact rates per plan, what a $100 order costs on each, the break-even revenue where upgrading plans pays for itself purely on rates, and how Shopify's take compares to marketplace fees like Etsy's and Amazon's.
What's the difference between Shopify's credit card fee and its transaction fee?
Shopify has two distinct per-sale fees, and conflating them is the single most common mistake in fee comparisons. They are charged for different things, at different rates, and one of them is entirely avoidable.
1. The credit card processing fee. This is the cost of accepting a card payment — the fee every processor on earth charges to move money, cover interchange, and eat fraud risk. If you use Shopify Payments (Shopify's built-in processor), this is the only per-sale fee you pay. In the US in 2026, it's 2.9% + 30¢ per online transaction on Basic, 2.7% + 30¢ on Grow, and 2.5% + 30¢ on Advanced. In-person rates via Shopify POS are lower, in the 2.4–2.7% range, because card-present transactions carry less fraud risk.
2. The third-party transaction fee. This is a separate fee Shopify charges only when an order is processed through an outside payment gateway — an external processor you've connected instead of (or alongside) Shopify Payments. It runs 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, and 0.6% on Advanced, and it stacks on top of whatever that gateway charges for processing. Activate Shopify Payments and this fee is $0.
So when someone says "Shopify takes almost 5% per sale," what they usually mean is: they're on Basic, using a third-party gateway that charges its own ~2.9% + 30¢, plus Shopify's 2% transaction fee on top. That's a configuration choice, not Shopify's baseline. We break down when a third-party gateway is ever worth that surcharge in our Shopify Payments vs Stripe vs PayPal comparison — the short answer is: rarely, and usually only when Shopify Payments isn't available for your country or product category.
Shopify fees by plan in 2026
Here is the complete US fee table as of 2026 — subscription, online card rate, in-person rate, and the third-party gateway transaction fee — in one place.
| Basic | Grow | Advanced | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly subscription | $39 | $105 | $399 |
| Online card rate (Shopify Payments) | 2.9% + 30¢ | 2.7% + 30¢ | 2.5% + 30¢ |
| In-person card rate | ~2.7% | ~2.5% | ~2.4% |
| Third-party gateway transaction fee | 2% | 1% | 0.6% |
| Transaction fee with Shopify Payments | $0 | $0 | $0 |
Two other tiers bracket this table. The $5/month Starter plan trades the full storefront for link-in-bio selling at a higher card rate, and Shopify Plus (from roughly $2,300–2,500/month) negotiates rates individually — if you're doing the volume where Plus math matters, our Plus vs Advanced breakdown covers that decision. For everything else in this post, the three core plans above are the ones that matter. And note that new stores don't pay full subscription price immediately: after the free trial, Basic, Grow, and Advanced run on a $1/month promo for the first three months.
For the full picture of what each plan includes beyond rates — staff accounts, reporting, markets — see our complete 2026 Shopify pricing guide.
How much does Shopify take on a $100 order?
On a $100 online order paid by card through Shopify Payments, Shopify takes $3.20 on Basic, $3.00 on Grow, and $2.70 on Advanced. Here's the arithmetic, plus what happens if you route the same order through a third-party gateway instead.
| $100 order | Basic | Grow | Advanced |
|---|---|---|---|
| Card fee (Shopify Payments) | 2.9% + 30¢ = $3.20 | 2.7% + 30¢ = $3.00 | 2.5% + 30¢ = $2.80 |
| You keep | $96.80 | $97.00 | $97.20 |
| — | — | — | — |
| Via third-party gateway: gateway's own fee (often ~2.9% + 30¢, varies) | ~$3.20 | ~$3.20 | ~$3.20 |
| + Shopify transaction fee | 2% = $2.00 | 1% = $1.00 | 0.6% = $0.60 |
| Total per-sale cost | ~$5.20 | ~$4.20 | ~$3.80 |
Three things worth internalizing from that table:
- The Shopify Payments column is the real Shopify fee. $2.70–$3.20 per $100 is competitive with standard online processing rates anywhere — Shopify isn't marking up payments beyond the industry norm.
- The third-party route costs Basic merchants roughly 60% more per sale. ~$5.20 vs $3.20 on the same $100 order. Whatever loyalty you have to an outside gateway, price it against that gap at your monthly volume.
- The 30¢ fixed fee punishes small orders. On a $100 order, 30¢ is 0.3% — noise. On a $15 order, it's 2%, effectively doubling your percentage cost. If your average order value is low, raising AOV (bundles, free-shipping thresholds) reduces your blended fee rate as a side effect.
One more piece of honest math: at low volume, the subscription — not the card fee — dominates your true per-order cost. A Basic store doing 25 orders a month is paying $39/25 ≈ $1.56 per order in subscription on top of each $3.20 card fee. That amortization problem fades fast as orders grow, and it's the same on any platform with a monthly fee. Our true first-year cost breakdown runs this math across themes, apps, and everything else.
When does upgrading your plan pay for itself on rates alone?
Purely on card rates, Grow pays for itself at about $33,000/month in card sales, and Advanced at about $147,000/month — and the math is simple enough to run on a napkin. Each upgrade costs a fixed amount of extra subscription and saves a fixed percentage on every card dollar, so the break-even is just (extra subscription) ÷ (rate savings).
With Shopify Payments:
| Upgrade | Extra subscription | Rate savings | Break-even monthly card volume |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic → Grow | +$66/mo | 0.2 pts (2.9% → 2.7%) | $66 ÷ 0.002 = $33,000/mo |
| Grow → Advanced | +$294/mo | 0.2 pts (2.7% → 2.5%) | $294 ÷ 0.002 = $147,000/mo |
(The 30¢ per-order fee is identical on every plan, so it drops out of the comparison entirely.)
Sanity check at $50,000/month on Grow vs Basic: you save 0.2% × $50,000 = $100 in card fees and pay $66 more in subscription — $34/month ahead, plus whatever Grow's extra features are worth to you. At $20,000/month the same move costs you $26/month on rates, so you'd only upgrade for the features, not the fees.
If you're stuck on a third-party gateway, the break-evens collapse dramatically, because the transaction fee gaps between plans are much wider than the card-rate gaps:
| Upgrade (third-party gateway) | Extra subscription | Transaction fee savings | Break-even monthly volume |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic → Grow | +$66/mo | 1.0 pt (2% → 1%) | $6,600/mo |
| Grow → Advanced | +$294/mo | 0.4 pts (1% → 0.6%) | $73,500/mo |
A Basic store doing $10,000/month through an external gateway is donating $200/month in transaction fees; upgrading to Grow cuts that to $100 and costs $66 — instantly profitable. But notice the better move hiding in that table: switching that same store to Shopify Payments eliminates the entire $200 without upgrading anything.
These break-evens isolate rates deliberately. In practice, plan upgrades also buy reporting, staff accounts, and shipping discounts, so many merchants upgrade before the pure-rate break-even. But knowing the rate math means you'll never upgrade expecting fee savings that aren't there.
How do you avoid Shopify's transaction fee entirely?
Use Shopify Payments. That's the whole answer: activate it as your payment provider and the third-party transaction fee — the 2%/1%/0.6% line — never applies to orders it processes. There's no form to file and no threshold to hit; it's the default recommendation during store setup for exactly this reason.
Shopify Payments is built on the same processing infrastructure as major standalone gateways, supports the standard card networks plus wallets, and — importantly — is what powers Shop Pay, Shopify's accelerated checkout. Shop Pay stores a customer's payment and shipping details across every Shopify store they've ever bought from, so returning buyers check out in a tap or two, and Shopify publishes that it lifts conversion versus guest checkout. That's a revenue argument stacked on top of the fee argument; we cover how it works for both sides of the counter in our Shop Pay guide.
When does a third-party gateway still make sense? Honestly, in a few narrow cases: Shopify Payments isn't available in your country, your product category isn't supported by its terms, or you have a genuinely negotiated enterprise rate elsewhere that beats Shopify Payments even after adding the transaction fee. If none of those describe you, the transaction fee is a self-inflicted cost. Run the comparison for your own situation in Shopify Payments vs Stripe vs PayPal before committing either way — and if you're starting fresh, sign up for Shopify, activate Shopify Payments during setup, and the question never comes up again.
What about international and currency-conversion fees?
Selling across borders adds fee layers that don't show up in the domestic rate table, and they're worth knowing about before your first international order — not after. Keep these qualitative rules of thumb in mind as of 2026:
- Currency conversion carries a fee. When a customer pays in their local currency and Shopify converts the money to your payout currency, a conversion fee applies on top of the card rate. It's a small percentage, but on international-heavy stores it's a real line item.
- International cards can cost more to process. Card networks price cross-border transactions higher, and that's reflected in what merchants pay on those orders.
- Exchange-rate movement is on you. Between the sale and the payout, currency values move; pricing your international markets with a small buffer is standard practice.
None of this is unique to Shopify — every processor passes through cross-border costs somehow — but it belongs on the same mental ledger as the headline rates. If international is a large share of your revenue, check the current conversion and international rates for your specific country in Shopify's pricing terms, because they vary by region. These quieter fees are exactly the category we catalog in hidden Shopify costs and how to avoid them.
How do Shopify's fees compare to Etsy and Amazon?
Per sale, Shopify is dramatically cheaper than marketplaces — because the business models are inverted. Shopify charges you a flat subscription and near-cost payment processing, then takes nothing else from the sale. Marketplaces charge little or nothing up front, then take a percentage of every single order, forever.
The rough shape of it: Etsy layers a 6.5% transaction fee on top of payment processing and per-listing fees, so a meaningful slice of every sale is gone before processing costs. Amazon's referral fees typically land around 8–15% of the sale depending on category, plus fulfillment fees if you use FBA. Against Shopify's ~2.4–2.9% + 30¢ with everything else flat, a store doing even modest volume keeps several extra points of margin on every order.
The honest counterweight: marketplaces include the traffic. Etsy and Amazon fees buy you placement in front of buyers who are already searching; on Shopify, customer acquisition is your job and your budget. The pattern that plays out constantly — and the reason Etsy-to-Shopify migration is a well-worn path — is sellers validating demand on a marketplace, then moving their repeat business to Shopify where the margin actually lives. Fees are the forcing function: at scale, 6.5–15% per order funds a lot of your own marketing.
Bottom line: what Shopify really takes per sale
As of 2026, a US merchant using Shopify Payments pays exactly one per-sale fee: 2.9% + 30¢ on Basic, 2.7% + 30¢ on Grow, or 2.5% + 30¢ on Advanced — $3.20, $3.00, or $2.80 on a $100 order. The infamous "Shopify transaction fee" (2%/1%/0.6%) only exists for merchants who route payments through a third-party gateway, and for most stores it's fully avoidable with a settings choice.
The plan-upgrade math is equally clean: on rates alone, Grow beats Basic above ~$33,000/month in card sales, and Advanced beats Grow above ~$147,000/month. Below those lines, upgrade for features or don't upgrade at all.
If you're starting from zero, the fee-minimizing path is simple: start your Shopify free trial, activate Shopify Payments during setup, ride the $1/month promotional pricing for your first three months, and revisit your plan only when the break-even math above says the numbers work. Everything else in your fee structure follows from those first-day choices.