# The total cost of running a Shopify store in the UK

What a UK Shopify store really costs each month in 2026: plan fees, card rates, the third-party transaction fee, apps, and a worked example to copy.

The total cost of running a Shopify store in the UK is the sum of five things: the plan fee, card processing on every sale, app subscriptions, a one-off theme, and a domain. The worked example below puts a Basic store with Shopify Payments at £336.25 a month on £10,000 of monthly sales, built line by line from Shopify's published UK rates. Copy it with your own numbers.

**Who this is for:** UK merchants already running a Shopify store — or costing one seriously — who want the full monthly figure, not just the plan price.

Every figure below is taken from the published rate cards as at August 2026. Shopify and the payment providers change rates without notice, so treat this as the method and check the live [UK pricing page](https://www.shopify.com/uk/pricing) before you model a decision on any single number.

## What are Shopify's UK plan fees?

Three plans matter for most independent stores: Basic, Grow and Advanced. Each has two prices — a lower rate when you pay for a year upfront, and a higher rate month to month. All prices exclude VAT.

| Plan | Billed annually (per month) | Billed monthly |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Basic | £19 | £25 |
| Grow | £49 | £65 |
| Advanced | £259 | £344 |

Two notes on the headline number. First, the annual price only wins if you keep the store for the year — paying £228 upfront for Basic is a commitment, not a discount, if you fold in month seven. Second, VAT treatment depends on your registration: the advertised prices are net, so a store that cannot reclaim VAT should budget the gross figure.

The plan fee is the most visible cost and, for a trading store, usually the smallest of the big three. Processing and apps normally overtake it quickly.

## How much does card processing cost on each plan?

With Shopify Payments — the built-in gateway most UK stores use — the published online rate for standard UK cards steps down as the plan steps up. Higher rates apply to some card types, including American Express and cards issued outside the UK; the full schedule is on the rate card.

| Plan | Online card rate (standard UK cards) | Third-party transaction fee (if you use another gateway) |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Basic | 2% + 25p | 2% |
| Grow | 1.7% + 25p | 1% |
| Advanced | 1.5% + 25p | 0.6% |

On a £50 order on Basic, Shopify Payments costs £1.25. Across 200 such orders a month, that is £250 — ten times a Basic plan's monthly fee. Processing, not the plan, is where most of your Shopify money goes.

## What is the third-party transaction fee, and when do you pay it?

The third-party transaction fee is a percentage Shopify charges on each order when you process payments through an external gateway — Stripe, PayPal or another provider — instead of Shopify Payments. It sits on top of whatever the gateway itself charges, and it is waived entirely while Shopify Payments is active.

The arithmetic rarely favours the external gateway. Stripe's published standard UK online rate is 1.5% + 20p — lower than Shopify Payments on Basic — but add Shopify's 2% fee and the same £50 order costs £1.95 instead of £1.25. Use the calculator with your own card turnover:

There are legitimate reasons to run a different gateway — an existing merchant account, specific payment methods, platform-agnostic checkout plans. If that is your situation, the fee is a known cost to price in, not a mistake. We compare the gateways properly, including PayPal and the card types where the gap narrows, in our [card fees guide for Shopify, Stripe and PayPal in the UK](/blog/card-fees-shopify-stripe-paypal-uk).

## What does a real store pay per month?

Here is the full stack for an illustrative store: £10,000 a month in sales, 200 orders at a £50 average, Basic plan on monthly billing, Shopify Payments, and four paid apps totalling £60 a month (the apps line is an example — audit your own installed apps for the real figure).

| Cost line | Basis | Monthly cost |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Plan fee (Basic, monthly billing) | Fixed | £25.00 |
| Card processing | 2% of £10,000 + 200 × 25p | £250.00 |
| Apps | Example: four paid apps | £60.00 |
| Domain | ~£15 a year, spread monthly | £1.25 |
| Theme | One-off; free themes are available and paid themes are priced per theme on the Shopify Theme Store, excluded from monthly | £0.00 |
| **Total** |  | **£336.25** |

That is 3.4% of revenue, or £1.68 per order, before shipping, stock and advertising. To rebuild it with your numbers: plan fee + (card rate × monthly sales) + (per-transaction pence × order count) + your actual app bill + domain. The percentage lines scale with sales; the plan and apps do not — which is why the same stack at £30,000 a month is a smaller share of revenue.

## When does upgrading your plan pay for itself?

Only when the processing saved exceeds the extra plan fee. Because the published online rates step down by fixed percentages, the breakeven is simple arithmetic on your card turnover. Both billing bases are shown, because the plan prices differ:

| Upgrade | Billing | Extra plan fee per month | Rate saving | Breakeven card turnover |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Basic → Grow | Monthly (£25 → £65) | £40 | 0.3 points | ~£13,333/month |
| Basic → Grow | Annual (£19 → £49) | £30 | 0.3 points | ~£10,000/month |
| Grow → Advanced | Monthly (£65 → £344) | £279 | 0.2 points | ~£139,500/month |
| Grow → Advanced | Annual (£49 → £259) | £210 | 0.2 points | ~£105,000/month |

Below the breakeven, the cheaper plan wins on total cost; above it, the upgrade is paying you. Plans also differ on features and reporting, so cost is not the only axis — but it is the one that should stop a £4,000-a-month store paying for Advanced.

## Which costs do merchants forget?

The rate card is not the whole bill. Four lines routinely surprise people at reconciliation:

- **Chargeback fees.** When a customer disputes a payment, Shopify Payments charges a fixed fee per chargeback on top of the disputed amount — check the current GBP figure in the Help Centre, and treat repeated chargebacks as a problem to fix, not a cost to absorb.
- **Currency conversion.** When a customer pays in a currency other than your payout currency, Shopify Payments applies a conversion fee on top of the card rate — 2% for UK stores on the published schedule. Selling to the EU in euros is quietly more expensive than the domestic rate suggests.
- **Refunds.** When you refund an order, the original processing fee is not returned to you. High refund rates mean paying card fees on revenue you no longer have.
- **Shipping recovery gaps.** If your checkout charges £3.95 flat while your carrier invoices average £5.20, the difference is an unbudgeted cost on every order. Compare a month of carrier invoices against a month of shipping charged — it is one of the fastest margin checks a store can run.

None of these appears in a plan comparison, and all of them land on the same bank statement. A quarterly pass over your Shopify invoices, payment provider statements and carrier bills is the cheapest cost audit available.

## Where to start

Pull your last full month: Shopify invoice, payment statement, app bills, carrier invoices. Rebuild the worked example with those numbers and you have your real cost per order — the figure every pricing and plan decision should rest on.

True Noise is a UK digital agency in Peterborough working with small UK businesses, including UK Shopify merchants.

We will rebuild your true cost per order from your actual invoices — plan, processing, apps and the forgotten lines — and show you where the margin is going.

Two costs deserve their own reading: shipping, covered in [Royal Mail's new charges](/blog/royal-mail-surcharges-peak-2026), and the apps and tracking you are paying for, which is [analytics and tracking setup](/services/audience/analytics-tracking-setup). If the conclusion is that the store itself needs rebuilding rather than re-costing, that is [e-commerce stores](/services/presence/ecommerce-stores).