Tools / Shopify Plus vs Advanced
At what revenue does Shopify Plus actually pay for itself?
Published answers to this range from about $1.5M to $9.1M in annual revenue — a spread of roughly six times, for the same question. Almost all of them ignore the one variable that decides it: the share of your revenue running through a third-party gateway, where Advanced charges 0.6% per transaction and Plus charges 0.2%. This one asks.
JavaScript is off, so these controls will not recalculate. The result was computed on the server from this page’s address — every scenario has its own link.
B2B / wholesale, checkout extensions, Scripts equivalents — the categories Plus most often absorbs. Add up what you pay for the ones you would actually drop. Starts at zero because we have no way to know your app bill, and guessing it upward would flatter Plus at your expense.
$399 is the widely-reported figure for Advanced billed annually — it is not a price Shopify publishes in USD, and its pricing page redirects by country, so we could not confirm it. Enter what you actually pay; the number is on your invoice.
Result
−$13,788
Plus costs you $13,788 more per year at this volume. You would need about $9.27M in annual revenue at 68% third-party processing to break even.
- Subscription delta
- −$25,212
- Gateway saving (0.4%)
- +$11,424
- Apps replaced
- $0
- Expansion stores
- $0
What we don’t know
Above a certain volume Shopify moves merchants to a variable platform fee. It publishes neither the rate nor the threshold, and the 0.25–0.40% figures circulating online are third-party guesses, not Shopify’s. We have left it out of the maths rather than guess.
Pricing verified · source: shopify.com/plus/pricing
No email required · assumptions published below
Advanced and Plus, line by line
| Line | Shopify Advanced | Shopify Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly platform fee | Not published in USD on a Shopify-owned page. Widely reported at $399/mo billed annually; this calculator asks you instead. | $2,500/mo on a 1-year term, $2,300/mo on a 3-year term. |
| Third-party gateway fee | 0.6% per transaction | 0.2% per transaction |
| Expansion stores included | None | Your main store and 9 expansion stores |
| Each additional expansion store | — | $300/mo, or a revenue share Shopify publishes no rate for |
| Variable platform fee at higher volume | Not applicable | Applies, but Shopify discloses no rate and no threshold for it. Excluded from the calculation above. |
| POS Pro locations included | — | Up to 200 locations, with POS Pro included on the first 20. Excluded from the calculation: the price per location beyond those 20 is not published in USD. |
| Card processing rates | Vary by country | Vary by country. Excluded — they apply to Shopify Payments volume, a different base from the gateway fee above. |
What this assumes
- Four lines are modelled and no others: the subscription difference, the third-party gateway fee difference, the app spend Plus lets you drop, and expansion stores beyond the 9 included. Everything is annual, in US dollars.
- Advanced’s monthly price is your input, not our constant. The $399 default is widely reported by third parties; it is not a price we could read from a Shopify-owned page in USD.
- App spend is your figure too, and it starts at zero. We list the categories Plus usually absorbs, but we put no number against them: those are third-party apps Shopify does not sell, so there is no price we could verify, and guessing one upward would flatter Plus at your expense.
- The variable platform fee Shopify applies to higher-volume merchants is excluded, because Shopify discloses neither its rate nor the volume at which it starts.
- POS Pro is excluded, which understates Plus for multi-location retail merchants. Plus includes it on the first 20 of up to 200 locations; what is not published in USD is the price per location beyond those 20.
- Card processing rates are excluded. They apply to Shopify Payments volume, which is a different base from the third-party gateway fee — mixing the two is a modelling error, not a shortcut.
- Nothing here models taxes, negotiated discounts, migration cost, or the revenue-share alternative to per-store expansion pricing.
Questions
At what annual revenue does Shopify Plus pay for itself?
There is no single figure, which is why published answers disagree so widely. It depends almost entirely on how much of your revenue runs through a third-party payment gateway: Advanced charges 0.6% per transaction on that volume and Plus charges 0.2%, a 0.4% difference that scales with revenue while the subscription difference does not. At the scenario this calculator opens with — $4,200,000 in annual online revenue, 68% of it through a third-party gateway, a 1-year Plus term and $399 a month for Advanced — Plus breaks even at about $9.27M a year. Change any input and the answer moves.
Why do published answers to this question differ by so much?
Because most of them model only the subscription difference, which makes the answer a fixed number, and then quietly assume every merchant processes the same way. The third-party gateway fee is the term that actually scales with revenue. A merchant with none of their volume on a third-party gateway may never break even at any revenue; a merchant with most of it there breaks even far earlier than the published figures suggest.
What does Shopify Plus cost?
$2,500 a month on a 1-year term and $2,300 a month on a 3-year term, in USD, as published on shopify.com/plus/pricing and corroborated on Shopify’s Help Center. Your main store and 9 expansion stores are included; additional stores are $300 a month each. Higher-volume merchants are moved to a variable platform fee that Shopify does not publish.
Does this calculator include the variable platform fee?
No. Shopify states that higher-volume merchants move to a variable platform fee based on revenue and business model, but discloses neither the rate nor the volume at which it starts. The 0.25% to 0.40% figures circulating online come from agencies, not from Shopify, and they disagree with each other. Including a guessed rate would change the answer without improving it, so the fee is excluded and named here instead.
Why does it ask what I pay for Advanced instead of just knowing?
Because we could not read Advanced’s USD price from a Shopify-owned page: shopify.com/pricing redirects by country and would not render US dollars. The widely reported figure is $399 a month billed annually, and that is the default, but it is a third-party figure rather than a verified one. You have the exact number on your invoice, so asking is more accurate than asserting — and it keeps the tool correct on grandfathered pricing, outside the US, and after Shopify’s next price change.
Does it model POS Pro?
No, and the reason is narrower than it first looked. Plus supports up to 200 locations and includes POS Pro on the first 20 of them — those are two different numbers answering two different questions, capacity and inclusion, not a contradiction. What is genuinely missing is the standalone USD price per location beyond those 20: shopify.com/pos/pricing redirects by country and would not render US dollars, so we have no verified figure to put against them. Rather than model part of the line and guess the rest, it is left out. That understates Plus for multi-location retail, which is why it is said here rather than left implicit.
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