"How much does a Shopify store cost?"
I get the question on almost every first call. And the honest answer, the one nobody likes, is that it depends on who does the work and what you want at the end. A store can cost you 39 € a month or 60,000 €. Both are called "a Shopify store."
So I'll break it down. First what Shopify charges you no matter what. Then what building the site costs, depending on whether you do it yourself or pay someone. With the ranges I actually see on the market, not brochure numbers.
What Shopify charges you every month
The subscription first. In 2026, the Basic plan runs around 27 € a month if you pay yearly, a bit more monthly. The Shopify plan sits near 79 €, Advanced climbs toward 384 €. And Shopify Plus, built for high volume, starts around 2,300 € a month. Most of the stores I meet live perfectly well on Basic or Shopify.
Transaction fees next. If you use Shopify Payments, you mostly pay card fees (around 1.4 % to 1.8 % plus a few cents in Europe). If you go through another payment provider, Shopify adds a 0.5 % to 2 % cut depending on your plan. At volume, that hurts, and it's a reason to move up a plan or stay on Shopify Payments.
The domain is about 15 € a year. Negligible.
That's the base layer. Count 30 to 400 € a month in fixed costs depending on your plan, before you've even talked about the site itself.
The line item that really swings the bill: apps
A bare Shopify store does the minimum. The moment you want customer reviews, upsell, a loyalty program, a decent search engine or ERP sync, you add apps. Some are free. Many cost between 10 and 100 € a month, each.
I've seen stores stack 15 apps and pay 400 € monthly on that alone, often without knowing which ones were still doing anything. It's a recurring budget that grows on its own if nobody watches it. And it's one of the first causes of a slow store, I measured the real cost of apps on performance here.
What building the site costs
This is where who codes decides everything. Four paths, four budgets.
You build it yourself, on a free theme. Zero in fees. But count weeks of your time, and a result that plateaus fast once you step outside what the theme planned for. To test an idea, it's enough. For a brand that needs to hold up, rarely.
A paid theme set up by a freelancer. The premium theme costs around 300 to 400 € once. Setup, importing your products and a few customizations by a freelancer: count 1,500 to 4,000 €. That's the sweet spot for a clean launch without breaking the bank.
A serious, custom store. Custom theme, sections built for your brand, integrations, speed and SEO work. With a specialized freelancer, the range runs from 5,000 to 15,000 €. At an agency, for the same scope, you're more in the 15,000 to 40,000 € bracket, because you also pay for the structure (sales reps, project managers, offices).
The big project. Multi-country, headless, complex configurator. Now you're between 30,000 and over 100,000 €. Before signing that kind of quote, read who headless actually serves, because most stores don't need it.
Freelancer, agency or collective: what you actually pay
The price gap between a freelancer and an agency doesn't tell the whole story. Part of an agency budget pays for the organization before it pays for the work on your store. A freelancer mostly bills their time and expertise, with fewer middlemen. I laid out the real differences in my freelancer versus agency comparison.
There's a third model, the one I work with. A collective of freelancers: me on dev, and depending on the project, growth, design, content. You get the service an agency sells you, without paying for the structure around it, and you talk straight to the people working on your store.
The costs nobody budgets for upfront
Maintenance. A site lives. Shopify pushes updates, your apps evolve, you'll want to add things. Plan an evolution budget, even a modest one, rather than letting the store freeze.
The redesign. Every 2 to 3 years, a working store deserves a refresh. It's not a surprise expense if you plan for it, I explain when and why here.
Migration. If you're coming from WooCommerce or PrestaShop, moving products, customers and above all SEO is a project of its own, covered in my migration guide.
How much for your case, concretely
| Your project | Build | Monthly costs |
|---|---|---|
| Testing an idea, small catalog | 0 to 2,000 € | 30 to 60 € |
| Brand launching seriously | 4,000 to 15,000 € | 60 to 250 € |
| Established store redesigning | 8,000 to 30,000 € | 150 to 500 € |
| Group, multi-country, headless | 30,000 € and up | 1,000 € and up |
These numbers are orders of magnitude, not quotes. Your catalog, your integrations and the level of finish move all of it.
How I price it
My Shopify audit is 590 €, flat. You know exactly what you pay and what you get: a full read of your store and a costed plan. For one-off dev, it's 90 € an hour, with a low and high range given before we start, and I commit to not going past the high one.
The real advice, before you even contact me: list what you want your store to do, and separate the vital from the nice-to-have. Half the bloated quotes I see come from features nobody will ever use. A clear budget starts with a clear scope.
