What happens to pending app charges when you deactivate a Shopify store?

What Shopify charges when you deactivate

Cancelling the subscription does not park the balance for later. Shopify's app-charge page says any outstanding app amounts are charged immediately, and the store deactivates at the end of the current billing cycle after payment for them is received. Apps are uninstalled automatically at cancellation, and outstanding usage charges are charged then too.

Which document they land on is a separate question — whether one-time app charges arrive on their own bill. And this is the voluntary route; an unpaid bill is a different event with its own clock.

What stops — and what keeps charging — after the store closes

Deactivation reaches only what rides Shopify's own billing. Once a store is successfully deactivated, app charges billed through Shopify stop automatically.

The other half is not Shopify's to stop. Some third-party apps charge you directly outside of Shopify; those charges don't display on your Shopify bill, so you manage them separately with the app developer.

What to do before you press Deactivate

The instruction Shopify puts ahead of the button concerns exactly those apps:

Shopify's deactivation page makes the same point in its own considerations list: review any apps that are charged outside of Shopify billing, so that you are not charged for the app after your store closes. On the Plus plan deactivation is not self-serve — Shopify routes it through its own team, naming both Plus Support and a Merchant Success Specialist.

And deactivating isn't permanent. The recurring app charges Shopify itself bills are frozen rather than cancelled: re-open the store within 30 days and they resume. Separately, reactivate within 30 days of your most recent bill and there is no new bill until your next scheduled billing date. The window to reactivate at all runs up to 2 years.