Shopify vs WooCommerce: which actually costs less to run a store

WooCommerce is free. Shopify is not. That is the least useful sentence in this comparison, because the software licence is the smallest line on either side.

What Shopify's monthly fee actually buys

Shopify charges a single monthly plan, and 2026 pricing runs Basic at 39 dollars a month (29 on annual billing), Grow at 105, and Advanced at 399. That one fee already includes the hosting, the SSL certificate, PCI compliance, security patching, software updates and support. You do not buy, size or maintain any of it.

There is one variable line on top: a per-sale platform surcharge of 2 percent on Basic, 1 percent on Grow and 0.6 percent on Advanced. It applies only when you take payments through an outside processor. Use Shopify Payments instead and that surcharge is zero, which is why on Shopify the surcharge is a line you can delete rather than a fixed cost.

What "free" WooCommerce actually costs

The WooCommerce plugin is free and open source, and it runs on WordPress. What it needs to become a working store is not free, and none of it is bundled:

• Hosting. WooCommerce runs on your own WordPress hosting. Managed WooCommerce hosting commonly runs about 40 to 300 dollars a month depending on traffic; budget shared hosting is cheaper but leaves more of the tuning and security to you.
• A domain and the usual WordPress housekeeping (a theme, backups, a staging copy).
• Premium extensions. Core WooCommerce covers a basic store, but subscriptions, bookings, advanced shipping and many payment or tax add-ons are sold as separate annual licences.
• Your own time. Updates, plugin conflicts, security and the occasional broken checkout are your job, or your developer's. That maintenance line is the one that does not appear on any pricing page.

This is the same shape that makes self-hosted WordPress cost more to run than a hosted website builder over three years: the subscription is the smallest number and the upkeep is the largest. The website platform TCO calculator models exactly that maintenance line for a WordPress build, and it is the honest place to price the WooCommerce side rather than assuming free means zero.

Payment processing is roughly a wash

People expect the payment fees to separate the two platforms. They do not. Shopify Payments and WooPayments both charge about 2.9 percent plus 30 cents for a standard domestic online card, because both sit on top of the same card networks. WooPayments adds the usual 1.5 percent for international cards and 1 percent for currency conversion, and Shopify Payments has its own equivalents. On the card itself, the two are close enough that processing is not the deciding factor.

The one processing line that is genuinely Shopify-specific is the platform per-sale surcharge, and it only bites if you route payments through a third party. On a store doing serious volume that surcharge can dwarf the plan fee, which is the whole point of the fee calculator: it shows what the plan plus per-sale fees actually come to at your revenue. WooCommerce has no platform per-sale surcharge to delete, because there is no platform taking a cut of each order.

The paid add-on line runs both ways

It is easy to read the two sections above as "Shopify is one clean fee, WooCommerce is a fee plus a pile of extensions." That is only half true. WooCommerce does sell subscriptions, bookings, advanced shipping and many tax add-ons as separate annual licences, and that is a real line. But Shopify has the same dynamic, just billed monthly and off the pricing page: core Shopify runs a basic store, and several things a growing store commonly reaches for are paid apps rather than native features.

The Shopify App Store lists well over 15,000 apps, and the typical merchant runs about six installed apps. Subscriptions, product reviews with automation, bundles, upsells, loyalty programs and advanced shipping rules are common examples that arrive as paid monthly subscriptions from the store rather than something the plan already covers. Some apps are free and core Shopify covers more of a basic store out of the box than core WooCommerce does, so this is not a hidden tax so much as the symmetric fact: a realistic Shopify total is the plan plus its app stack, exactly as a realistic WooCommerce total is the hosting plus its extensions.

The honest comparison, then, counts the apps and extensions you actually need on each side, not the bare plan against the loaded plugin. The plan fee is where Shopify looks simplest and the extension list is where WooCommerce looks busiest, but both platforms let you stack monthly add-ons until the app bill rivals the platform bill. Price the specific features your store needs on each, because that is the line that tends to decide the total once the store is doing real work.

The one add-on that runs only one way: AI

The apps-and-extensions line above is genuinely symmetric, but the AI line is not, and in 2026 it is worth calling out because every store is being sold AI. On Shopify it is bundled; on WooCommerce it is another paid part you add yourself.

• Shopify includes its AI in the plan. Shopify Magic, the built-in generative features for product descriptions, email copy and image editing, and Sidekick, the store assistant that answers questions and can take actions, are available across the plans at no extra cost, with no per-generation charge and no separate AI meter running on top of the monthly fee as of the 2026 editions. A few advanced Sidekick abilities, such as generating a custom app, are gated to higher plans and carry their own usage quota, but the everyday AI writing and assistant features are part of the plan you already pay for.
• WooCommerce ships no built-in AI. Core WooCommerce has no native AI assistant, so AI arrives the way every other capability does on that side: as a plugin, most on their own subscription. Automattic, the company that makes WooCommerce, sells its Jetpack AI Assistant at about 10 dollars a month per site after a free trial of a limited number of requests, and the third-party plugins that write product copy or run an on-site chat assistant carry their own monthly fees. It is a real recurring line, billed per site, that the free plugin does not include.

So AI is the rare place where the bundled-versus-parts split tips clearly toward Shopify: its AI is folded into the plan while WooCommerce meters it as one more extension. It does not overturn the totals on its own, but if you expect to lean on AI for product copy, support replies or store tasks, price it as included on Shopify and as an added subscription on WooCommerce.

The tax line: metered on Shopify, a plugin choice on WooCommerce

Sales tax calculation is another cost axis the plan fee hides, and unlike AI it does not land cleanly on one side. Both platforms will work out the right rate at checkout; the difference is how each charges for that and where the real bill sits.

• Shopify meters it past a threshold. Shopify Tax gives automated, address-level rate calculation on every plan and is free on your first 100,000 dollars of sales in a calendar year. Above that it becomes a variable line: a 0.35 percent calculation fee (0.25 percent on Shopify Plus) on orders in regions where you have switched on tax collection, capped at 0.99 dollars per order and 5,000 dollars a year per region. It is charged to you on your Shopify invoice, not added to the customer. So the calculation is free until you are a sizeable store, then a small capped meter.
• WooCommerce makes it a plugin choice. The free WooCommerce Tax plugin calculates rates at checkout at no charge, but it stops at calculation: it does not track where you owe tax, register you, or file and remit. Stores selling across many US states or several countries generally move to a paid compliance service. TaxJar starts around 19 dollars a month for up to 200 orders; Avalara is a custom enterprise quote that for a small store often starts around 1,000 dollars a year.

The honest read: for basic rate calculation the two are close, effectively free at low volume on either side. The line that costs real money on both platforms is compliance, the filing and remittance across every jurisdiction you owe, and neither Shopify nor WooCommerce folds that into the base fee. Price it the moment you sell into more than one tax jurisdiction, because that is where an "it is built in" or "just add a plugin" assumption quietly turns into a subscription.

The cost the comparison skips: leaving

Every line above is the cost of running the store. The one the sticker never shows is the cost of getting back out, and it runs the opposite way from the monthly fee: Shopify is the cheaper platform to run for most stores, and the more expensive one to leave.

On Shopify you can export the core records, products, customers and orders, as CSV, so the catalogue and the customer list are genuinely portable. What does not come with you is the operating history built around them. The analytics, the attribution and the abandoned-cart sequences live inside Shopify and stay there, and third-party apps see only a recent window of orders by default (about 60 days unless an app is specifically granted more), so even your integrations never held the full record. Customer passwords are never exportable, for security reasons, so returning shoppers have to reset and log in again on the new store. The theme and the app-driven functionality do not transfer at all, they are rebuilt. And Shop Pay, the one-tap checkout that lifts Shopify conversion, is Shopify's own network, so it does not travel either: the saved wallets that made repeat checkout fast are left behind.

WooCommerce is the mirror image. Because it is open source and you hold the database and the files yourself, leaving is a migration between hosts rather than a rebuild on someone else's platform: you can move the whole store, history included, to new hosting and keep running. That portability is part of what the maintenance burden actually buys, since you own the store and its data outright and nobody can scope your exit for you. It is not effort-free, moving a live WordPress store still takes care, but it is a move you control rather than an export someone else defines.

For most stores this stays hypothetical: you pick a platform, stay for years, and the running cost is what you actually pay. But if data portability or the option to leave without a rebuild matters to you, price it as a real difference, the same way the three-year website-platform comparison prices lock-in for site builders. Shopify bundles the convenience and keeps part of your operating history when you go; WooCommerce hands you the upkeep and, with it, an exit you own.

One new 2026 cost that lands on both the same

One line worth pricing in for 2026 sits outside the platform question entirely. On 1 July 2026 the EU ended the long-standing exemption that let a parcel worth up to 150 euro enter duty-free, and replaced it with a temporary flat customs duty of 3 euro per item, in force until 1 July 2028. Any store that imports low-value stock from outside the EU now carries a per-parcel cost that used to be zero. It is a duty on the goods, not on the platform, so it falls identically on a Shopify store and a WooCommerce store and does not tilt the comparison either way. It is still real money on every qualifying order, and it is exactly the kind of per-order line the ecommerce fee calculator is meant to total, so add it to your landed cost on whichever platform you choose.

So which is cheaper

There is no single honest "X dollars versus Y dollars" answer, and quoting one would mislead. Shopify's total swings on whether you use Shopify Payments; WooCommerce's swings entirely on your hosting tier, how many premium extensions you need, and whether you count your own maintenance time as free. What you can say cleanly is the cost shape:

• Shopify is one predictable fee that bundles hosting, security, updates and PCI, plus a per-sale surcharge you can zero out with Shopify Payments. You rent a managed store and never touch the plumbing.
• WooCommerce is a free plugin plus the bill for everything it needs: hosting, extensions and your own upkeep. You own the store and its data outright, which also means you own the maintenance.

If you already run WordPress, or your hosting and time are cheap or already spent, WooCommerce can come in under Shopify and hand you full control and portability on top. If you would otherwise pay someone to host, patch and babysit the site, Shopify's bundled fee usually wins because it absorbs the line WooCommerce leaves on your desk. Model the Shopify plan-plus-fees side in the calculator, price the WooCommerce hosting and maintenance side honestly, and compare the two totals rather than the two licence prices.