Shopify Plus vs BigCommerce Enterprise: which is cheaper at your GMV

Shopify Plus and BigCommerce Enterprise look similar on a feature sheet and price very differently underneath. Which is cheaper depends on your monthly GMV and how you take payments.

How each one charges

• Shopify Plus: a platform fee that is the greater of a flat monthly minimum or about 0.25% of monthly revenue, capped at a ceiling. On top, sales taken through a non-Shopify gateway carry roughly a 0.2% transaction fee.
• BigCommerce Enterprise: a flat negotiated monthly platform fee, and zero platform transaction fee on any payment gateway.

Where the difference shows up

Shopify Plus's fee scales with revenue, so it climbs as you grow, and the off-gateway transaction fee specifically punishes stores running an outside processor. BigCommerce's zero per-sale fee compounds in exactly that case, which is why a high-GMV catalog store on a third-party gateway often lands cheaper on BigCommerce. At lower GMV, the Shopify Plus banded fee can be the smaller number.

Because both the banded percentage and the negotiated flat fee depend on your exact numbers, the honest answer is to run your GMV and gateway through the calculator and see where the lines cross.

The fee comparison leaves two costs out

Both totals above are platform and transaction fees only, and that is not the whole bill. The line that often dwarfs the fee gap is the app stack. Shopify runs the larger marketplace, over 8,000 apps, and it gets there partly because several things a store commonly needs are paid monthly add-ons rather than native features. BigCommerce has a smaller catalogue, around 1,000 apps, but bundles capabilities like faceted search, gift cards, abandoned-cart recovery, customer groups and price lists into the core, so you reach for paid apps less often. A realistic enterprise app stack lands anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars a month on either platform. That range is wide enough that a lower platform fee can be cancelled out by a heavier paid-app stack, so the fair comparison prices the apps you actually need, not just the platform line.

The second omission is the contract itself. Neither platform is month-to-month at this tier. Shopify Plus is a committed term, typically a 3-year term at the lower monthly minimum, around 2,300 dollars, or a 1-year term at a higher one, around 2,500 dollars. BigCommerce Enterprise is an annual custom contract quoted mainly against your annual GMV and reviewed at renewal: grow significantly and expect a renegotiated higher rate, and the rate does not automatically drop if your revenue falls. So whichever fee is lower today is a snapshot, not a fixed gap, because both the app stack and the contract reprice as you grow.