BigCommerce vs Shopify: Which Costs Less as You Grow?

How Each Platform's Bill Grows With Sales

The two price lists look almost identical at first glance. BigCommerce charges $39 a month for Core, $105 for Growth and $399 for Scale, and Shopify charges $39 a month for Basic, $105 for Grow and $399 for Advanced in the US, both as read on October 22, 2026.

What differs is who decides when you move up. That one rule is why a store with the same sales can end up on very different bills.

When Does BigCommerce Force a Plan Upgrade?

Each BigCommerce self-serve plan has a sales ceiling, and crossing it changes your plan without you asking. BigCommerce's pricing FAQ says that once trailing-12-month GMV passes $30,000, “you’ll be notified before anything changes and your plan upgrades from Core to Growth,” and that past $100,000 it “upgrades from Growth to Scale.”

Scale's monthly cap doesn't switch your plan by itself. Instead, a 0.9% overage applies on GMV above $33,333 a month, and, as a separate rule, once trailing-12-month GMV reaches $2,000,000 the account moves to Performance, a custom-priced plan quoted from $1,499 a month billed annually.

The ceilings are not measured in the revenue figure your reports show. BigCommerce counts product prices net of discounts plus taxes and shipping, converts other currencies to dollars at the rate in effect at the time of each order, and then takes a share off the total:

That reduction changed with the June 1, 2026 plan update, when BigCommerce raised it from 3% to 10% for self-serve plans. In gross terms it lifts each ceiling: Core holds until about $33,333 in sales and Growth until about $111,111.

Four more rules decide when a change lands:

• Monthly check. GMV is evaluated on the first of each month.
• Per store. Each store on an account is evaluated on its own and may get its own notice.
• Monthly plans move at the start of the next service period, after advance notice.
• Downgrades stay subject to the same GMV ceilings, though you can choose a higher plan without crossing one.

What Moves a Shopify Bill Instead?

Shopify's Help Center puts the plan in the merchant's hands: “You can change your Shopify plan at any time,” and an upgrade or a downgrade must be authorized by the store owner or a staff member with the Manage plan permission.

On Basic, Grow and Advanced, what grows with sales is the payment cost. On Shopify Payments, US online standard card rates are 2.9% + 30¢ on Basic, 2.7% + 30¢ on Grow and 2.5% + 30¢ on Advanced. The lower rate on Grow covers its higher subscription once online card sales pass about $33,000 a month on monthly billing, roughly $396,000 a year, so a store at $200,000 a year is still cheapest on Basic and one at $500,000 is cheapest on Grow.

Plan prices are only one input to that choice; staff accounts, markets and B2B needs weigh in too, and our guide to choosing the right Shopify plan walks through them by stage of business.

Payment Fees: Two Price Lists That Mirror Each Other

Both platforms run a card processor of their own and charge extra when you bring someone else's. On Shopify, the surcharge applies whenever a payment goes through a third-party provider, with the exemptions and limits listed below. BigCommerce instead exempts a named list of 21 “Embedded” providers, Stripe, Adyen, PayPal Braintree and BigCommerce Payments among them, and charges its Open Payment Provider Fee of 2.0%, 1.0% or 0.6% of eligible order GMV on Core, Growth and Scale for any provider not on that list.

Which Orders Carry the Surcharge?

The exemptions decide who actually pays. Shopify's Help Center lists them on its side:

• Shopify Payments, Shop Pay and Shop Pay Installments orders carry no third-party fee.
• PayPal payments are exempt when you use Shopify Payments as your primary provider.
• POS orders and manual payment methods carry no transaction fee: cash on delivery, bank deposits, checks, test orders, and draft orders marked as paid or pending.
• Gift card and store credit payments are exempt only on stores created before May 12, 2025; newer stores pay the fee on them too.

On BigCommerce the fee follows the processor, not the checkout button. Listing an Embedded provider at checkout is not enough if another provider handles the payment:

Three more BigCommerce rules shape the bill:

• Offline orders count. Orders processed outside the BigCommerce platform are subject to the fee.
• Monthly billing. The fee is calculated on the prior calendar month and billed monthly, even on an annual subscription.
• Shoppers can't be charged for it. BigCommerce says the fee “must not be passed through to shoppers at checkout,” so it comes out of your margin.

BigCommerce Payments vs Shopify Payments

BigCommerce Payments, powered by PayPal, is BigCommerce's own processor and one of the 21 Embedded providers that carry no Open Payment Provider Fee, and BigCommerce says it is “initially” open only to US-based merchants on self-serve and retail plans. Its online card rates are 2.89%, 2.59% and 2.39% + $0.30 on Core, Growth and Scale, a little under Shopify Payments tier for tier; the way Shopify's surcharge works on each of its plans is set out in our breakdown of Shopify's third-party gateway fees.

What Each Platform Costs at $50K, $200K and $500K a Year

This is the arithmetic of the comparison, done once. It takes a US store selling online by card, billed month to month, at three yearly sales levels, and each level lands on a different BigCommerce plan because the ceilings above are not optional.

• Sales are gross, with taxes and shipping, the way BigCommerce counts them; its plan comes from GMV, gross minus 10%.
• Shopify gets its cheapest plan for each level; BigCommerce gets the plan its ceilings set.
• Payment costs are the percentage part only. The fixed 30¢ per order is the same on both platforms, so it changes neither side's lead.
• Left out on both sides: apps, themes, domains, taxes and annual billing.

BigCommerce's card rate drops as it moves you up, but the forced subscription costs more than the rate saves. At $50,000 in sales, Growth's 2.59% against Basic's 2.9% saves $155 a year, while Growth's subscription costs $792 more than Basic's.

At $200,000 the gap is widest, $3,300 a year, because BigCommerce has already moved the store to Scale at $399 a month while Shopify's Basic plan still costs $39.

If You Keep Your Own Payment Processor

Some stores can't move to the platform's own processor: they have a negotiated rate elsewhere, or a processor that also runs their other channels. For them the processor's own charge is the same on either platform and drops out, which leaves the subscription plus each platform's surcharge. Without Shopify Payments as your primary provider, Shopify's fee also applies to PayPal.

Between those rows the cheaper side follows BigCommerce's ceilings. With an Embedded processor, BigCommerce costs less below its Core ceiling, about $33,333 in sales, from about $39,600 up to its Growth ceiling near $111,111, and again from about $353,000 through the $500,000 level we modeled. In the gaps between those bands, Shopify costs less.

With an Open processor, BigCommerce costs less below its Core ceiling and from about $72,000 up to its Growth ceiling; between those bands and above the Growth ceiling through the $500,000 level we modeled, Shopify costs less.

With an Embedded processor, the swing at $200,000 comes from the ceiling. BigCommerce has already put that store on Scale at $4,788 a year, while Shopify's Grow plan cuts the third-party fee to 1% for a $1,260 subscription. At $500,000, Scale's flat price beats Shopify's 1% on half a million dollars of sales, even with the $450 overage.

What Each Plan Unlocks Beyond Price

Price is not the only reason a store outgrows a plan. These are the limits most likely to decide the choice for a growing store, as each platform documents them in October 2026.

B2B: Shopify Catalogs vs BigCommerce Price Lists

If you sell wholesale, this can outweigh the price tables above. Shopify's B2B tools are not a Plus-only feature, as its Help Center states:

Below Plus, catalogs come with two conditions: up to 3 active catalogs across all your B2B markets, and the store must use the new Shopify Markets. Contextual checkout and storefront customization through Markets start on Advanced, and Plus adds unlimited catalogs, direct assignment to companies and locations, and deposits and partial payments. Our guide to B2B without Shopify Plus covers what the lower plans include.

BigCommerce splits the same ground differently. Customer groups appear from Growth, while Price Lists, which give “custom pricing at the SKU level for customer groups,” are marked for Performance only in its plan comparison. Its B2B Edition, which BigCommerce says takes its Enterprise plan “to the next level,” showed “Contact us for pricing” instead of a price when we read it on October 22, 2026.

Variants, Options and Modifiers

Shopify's Help Center sets the ceiling at 2,048 variants per product and three options, and on Plus the Combined Listings app can group separate products into one listing. The limits that matter in practice, and the work-arounds, are in our guide to Shopify variant limits.

BigCommerce caps a product at 600 variants but adds a second layer: modifiers, add-on choices that don't create variants, with “no limit to the number of modifiers that can be added to a product.” A product with engraving, gift wrap and several optional parts is easier to express there.

When BigCommerce Is the Better Pick

This page is written for merchants weighing Shopify, and the honest answer still has BigCommerce rows in it. BigCommerce is the better pick when:

• Your processor is fixed and on its Embedded list. In our model BigCommerce charged $208 less a year at $50,000 and $1,022 less at $500,000 in sales.
• Your products are assembled from add-ons. Unlimited modifiers fit configurable products better than three options.
• You want extra storefronts before an enterprise contract. Core, Growth and Scale sell them as add-ons.
• You plan a headless build. BigCommerce promotes a headless storefront built on Next.js.

Shopify is the better pick when:

• You will use the platform's own payments. It cost $637 to $3,300 less a year at every level we modeled.
• You sell wholesale on a mid-tier plan. B2B catalogs and payment terms start on Basic.
• You want a POS app from the platform itself. Shopify POS is its own app rather than an integration.
• You need bigger variant grids. 2,048 variants against 600.

Shopify's weak spot sits right in its strongest argument. Its price lead depends on Shopify Payments: using a third-party payment provider instead adds 2% to 0.6% on the standard plans, where BigCommerce adds nothing for 21 providers. Our list of how Shopify ties its pricing to its own payment system covers that trade-off in full.

What About Shopify Plus and BigCommerce Performance?

At the top, both platforms price by contract. BigCommerce moves Scale accounts to Performance automatically past its GMV trigger, and Performance is the plan with Price Lists that BigCommerce says includes “powerful B2B capabilities”; Shopify Plus adds unlimited B2B catalogs and deposits, and Shopify's Plus pricing page says more complex, higher-volume businesses “switch to a variable platform fee based on their revenue and business model.” Because neither plan is priced like the self-serve tiers, the model above stops below them; our Shopify enterprise guide covers what Plus includes.

Already on BigCommerce?

If the ceilings are what's pushing you, moving is a project of its own. As of October 22, 2026, neither the Store Migration app listing nor the Help Center migration guides we read name BigCommerce as a source, and Shopify's Help Center lists five ways to move data: copying content, CSV files, a migration app from the Shopify App Store, a Shopify Partner or a custom build on the Shopify API. Our BigCommerce to Shopify migration guide covers the tools, the redirects and what data carries over.

The Bottom Line

The headline prices match, so the decision comes down to two questions: will you take payments through the platform's own processor, and how fast will your sales cross BigCommerce's ceilings?

Frequently Asked Questions