Shopify Profit Calculator

On Shopify Payments, the online card rate is 2.9% + 30¢ on Basic, 2.7% + 30¢ on Grow, 2.5% + 30¢ on Advanced, and ~2.15% + 30¢ on Plus. On top of that you pay your monthly plan fee ($39 / $105 / $399 / ~$2,500), amortized across your orders. If you use a third-party gateway instead of Shopify Payments, add a 2% / 1% / 0.6% / 0.2% surcharge by plan. So on a $50 order on Basic, Shopify takes about $1.75 in processing plus your share of the monthly plan.

It depends heavily on your model. Dropshipping often runs thin at 5–10% net margin; private-label and print-on-demand stores typically target 15–25%; strong brands with good AOV and repeat customers can clear 25%+. Anything under 5% net is fragile — a small rise in ad costs or returns can wipe it out. Use this calculator to see your real net margin after every Shopify and payment fee, not just gross margin.

No extra transaction fee — only the standard card-processing rate for your plan (2.9% / 2.7% / 2.5% / 2.15% + 30¢). The separate "transaction fee" (2% / 1% / 0.6% / 0.2% by plan) ONLY applies if you process payments through a third-party gateway like Stripe or PayPal instead of Shopify Payments. For most stores, using Shopify Payments is the single easiest way to cut fees.

A higher plan costs more per month but charges a lower processing rate, so it only pays off above a break-even revenue. The math: break-even revenue = (higher plan fee − lower plan fee) ÷ (lower rate − higher rate). Basic→Grow breaks even at about $33,000/month in revenue (Grow saves 0.2% but costs $66/mo more). Grow→Advanced breaks even at about $147,000/month. Below those thresholds, the cheaper plan is more profitable — this tool computes the exact crossover for your numbers and names the cheapest plan at your volume.

No. When you issue a refund, Shopify returns the order amount to the customer but keeps the payment-processing fee it originally charged. So a refunded $50 order still costs you roughly $1.75 in non-recoverable processing fees on Basic. Across a 10% return rate on a busy store, that "refund leakage" adds up to real money every month — which is why this calculator breaks it out as its own cost.

Shopify publishes localized plan prices by country and its Shopify Payments processing rates vary by region. This calculator uses the US baseline rates and converts the USD plan fee into your currency at today's exchange rate, so you get a sensible answer anywhere. For foreign-card orders, Shopify adds a ~1.5% currency-conversion surcharge (US stores; ~2% elsewhere) — set your international sales share to model it. If you know your exact local processing rate, treat our processing figure as an approximation.

For Basic, Grow, and Advanced, paying annually saves about 25% — Basic drops from $39 to about $29/mo, and Advanced from $399 to about $299/mo, which is $1,200/year back. The catch is you commit to a year up front. Shopify Plus is different: it uses 1-year versus 3-year contract pricing (about $2,500/mo vs $2,300/mo) rather than a simple annual discount. Toggle annual billing in the calculator to see the exact impact on your monthly profit.

Shopify Starter is a $5/month plan for selling through social media, links, and chat without a full online store — but it charges a flat 5% fee per transaction instead of the standard card rates. It can beat Basic for very low-volume sellers: at a 5% fee, $5/mo is cheaper than Basic's $39/mo + 2.9% until you're doing a meaningful monthly volume. Once you're running a real storefront, Basic's lower rate wins. We model Basic and up as the main options; Starter is best for true side-hustle volume.

No — and that's deliberate. Sales tax, VAT, and GST are collected from the buyer and remitted to the government; the money never belongs to you, so it is not a cost and should not reduce your profit. Many calculators wrongly subtract it, which makes your margin look worse than it is. If you pay a platform tax-service fee (for example Shopify Tax's ~0.35% over $100k in US sales), add it under "other monthly costs."

The rate data is verified against Shopify's published pricing page and Help Center and stored in a versioned file (`shopify.json`, last verified 2026-05-29). Plan prices and standard online card rates and third-party gateway surcharges are high-confidence. Shopify Plus rates are negotiated (we use a conservative 2.15% baseline), and per-country processing rates vary — so for non-US stores, treat the processing figure as a close approximation. We never invent a rate we can't cite.

Gross margin is revenue minus COGS only, as a percentage — it ignores fees and overhead. Net margin is what's left after EVERYTHING: COGS, payment fees, your plan, ads, and other costs — the number that actually matters. Profit per unit is your net profit divided by units sold, including each unit's share of fixed costs like the plan fee. This calculator reports net margin and fully-loaded profit per unit, because a healthy gross margin can still hide a loss once fees and ad spend are counted.

The usual suspects: paid apps and themes (they creep to $100+/mo), the 30¢ per-order fixed fee (brutal on cheap products), the third-party gateway surcharge (avoidable with Shopify Payments), refund processing leakage, chargeback fees, Shopify Tax (~0.35% over $100k US revenue), and POS Pro hardware/software if you sell in person. Put recurring ones in "other monthly costs" so they show up in your real margin instead of surprising you at month-end.