How Much Does a Shopify Store Cost in Canada? (2026 Breakdown)

A Shopify store in Canada costs $37 to $389 CAD a month for the platform itself on the standard plans (billed yearly, as of October 2026), plus payment processing of roughly 2.4% to 2.8% + 30¢ per online card sale, plus whatever you spend on a theme, apps, a domain and the build. A careful do-it-yourself store can run its first year for a few hundred dollars plus processing fees. A professionally built store adds a one-time build cost on top. Most of the long-term money goes to processing fees and apps, not to the plan.

This guide breaks every line down so you can see which costs are fixed, which scale with your sales, and which are choices. It is an informational guide. If you want someone to build the store, that is what our Shopify development service does. If you want a range for your own project, the project cost calculator gives one without a sales call.

Shopify plan prices in Canada (October 2026)

These figures are from Shopify's Canadian pricing page, which shows prices in CAD. We checked them in October 2026. Shopify changes pricing and promotions from time to time, so confirm on that page before you budget.

| Plan | Billed yearly (per month) | Billed monthly | Online card rate (Shopify Payments) | Third-party provider fee | |---|---|---|---|---| | Basic | $37 CAD | $49 CAD | 2.8% + 30¢ | 2% | | Grow | $99 CAD | $132 CAD | 2.6% + 30¢ | 1% | | Advanced | $389 CAD | $517 CAD | 2.4% + 30¢ | 0.6% | | Plus | — | from $3,400 CAD | 2.15% + 30¢ | 0.2% |

A few things the table doesn't show:

• Yearly billing is about 25% cheaper. On Basic, that's $444 a year paid annually against $588 paid monthly. Monthly billing is worth paying for only while you're still testing whether the store will last.
• There's an introductory offer. As of October 2026 the Canadian page advertises a 3-day free trial, then $1 a month for 3 months on the standard plans. Shopify's help centre says you can only test a payment gateway after you choose a paid plan, so the trial is for building, not for taking orders.
• Plus is a different conversation. It has 1- and 3-year term options, and Shopify sells it as an enterprise plan. If you're asking what a Shopify store costs, you almost certainly don't need Plus yet.
• Staff accounts differ. Grow includes 5 additional staff accounts and Advanced includes 15. The pricing page doesn't list extra staff accounts as included on Basic, which matters if more than one person runs the store.
• Retail is separate. If you also sell in person, POS Pro is an add-on listed at $119 CAD a month per location.

Which plan most Canadian stores should start on

Basic. The upgrade to Grow saves 0.2 percentage points on online card rates, and on yearly billing it costs $744 more a year ($1,188 against $444). Rate savings alone cover that difference only at about $372,000 a year in online card sales. Below that, upgrade only if you need what Grow adds, such as the staff accounts. The same arithmetic between Grow and Advanced puts the break-even near $1.74 million a year. These numbers ignore every feature difference. They only show that the per-transaction discount isn't a good reason to upgrade early.

Payment processing: the cost that grows with you

Processing is the line most new store owners underestimate, because it's small per order and constant forever.

With Shopify Payments on Basic, a domestic online card sale costs 2.8% + 30¢. A $60 order costs about $1.98 to process. That 30¢ fixed portion hurts low-priced items most. On a $15 order it's 2% of the sale before the percentage fee is even applied.

Rates are higher for some cards. As of October 2026 the Canadian pricing page lists American Express and international cards at 3.5% + 30¢ on Basic, 3.4% + 30¢ on Grow, 3.3% + 30¢ on Advanced and 3.15% + 30¢ on Plus. If you ship to the US or sell to many Amex holders, model your fees at the higher rate.

In-person card rates are separate and lower: 2.6% on Basic, 2.5% on Grow and 2.4% on Advanced. None of them has a fixed per-transaction fee.

Third-party payment gateways

You can use a different payment provider instead of Shopify Payments. If you do, Shopify charges its own third-party transaction fee of 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced and 0.2% on Plus. That fee is on top of whatever your provider charges. Shopify's help centre says these fees apply to every transaction processed through a third-party or alternate gateway, even when Shopify Payments is also activated. One exception: if Shopify Payments is your primary provider, PayPal transactions are exempt. The pricing page lists the fee only for third-party providers. Orders processed through Shopify Payments don't carry it.

On $60,000 a year of sales, a third-party gateway on Basic adds $1,200 in Shopify fees before the gateway's own charges. Use a third-party gateway only for a concrete reason: a high-risk product category Shopify Payments won't accept, a negotiated rate that beats the fee, or a payment method your customers actually ask for.

Themes: free or a one-time purchase

The Shopify Theme Store listed 24 free themes when we checked in October 2026. Paid themes on the store ranged from about $170 to $400, paid once. The listing shows the dollar sign without naming the currency, so check the price at checkout. A paid theme includes that theme's updates. It isn't a subscription.

Free themes are not a compromise. Shopify's own free themes are fast, well maintained, and built on Online Store 2.0 sections, so you can rearrange most pages in the theme editor without code. Paid themes mostly buy you a design direction and specialist layouts, such as large catalogues, lookbooks or single-product stores. Pick the theme that fits your catalogue's shape, then decide whether it's worth paying for.

A custom-coded theme is a different category of spend. It means development hours, not a purchase price. It's worth it when the store's brand or product presentation can't be expressed in any existing theme. Usually it isn't needed on day one.

Apps: the cost that quietly compounds

Apps are where Shopify budgets drift. Most apps are monthly subscriptions, and many are priced by order volume or plan tier, so the bill rises as you grow. A store that installs an app for every problem can easily pay more for apps than for Shopify.

We won't quote typical app prices here because they vary too much and change often. Check each app's listing in the Shopify App Store before installing. Ask three questions of every app:

1. Does Shopify already do this? Product reviews, email marketing, translations, discounts, metafields and basic bundles all have native or Shopify-built options that cost nothing or very little.
2. What happens to the store when I uninstall it? Many apps leave code in your theme after removal, which slows pages and costs a developer's time to clean up.
3. Does the price scale with orders? If it does, model it at twice your current volume.

Our guide on when you actually outgrow Shopify covers what bloated app stacks do to a store over time. It's usually the real cause when a Shopify store feels slow or expensive.

Domain

A custom domain is an annual fee that depends on the extension (.ca, .com and so on). You can buy one through Shopify or connect one you already own. A .ca domain requires meeting the Canadian Presence Requirements. For most Canadian businesses, owning both the .ca and the .com and redirecting one to the other is cheap insurance. Domain pricing is a small line in any budget, but buy the domain before you announce the store name.

Design and development: DIY, freelancer or agency

This is the line with the widest range, because it's labour, not software.

Do it yourself. Your cost is time. A small catalogue on a free theme with Shopify's own policies and settings is a realistic DIY project. Our step-by-step guide on how to build a Shopify store walks through it in order. The hidden cost is in things beginners skip: tax registrations, shipping profiles, product SEO fields and collection structure. Those are cheap to set up correctly and expensive to fix later.

A freelancer. Usually the right fit for a defined task, such as theme customization, a product import or a specific integration. Quality varies widely. Ask to see live stores they built, not mockups. Our comparison of Shopify Partners, Experts and freelancers explains what those labels do and don't mean.

An agency or studio. You pay for a configured store: theme work, catalogue structure, payments, shipping and tax set up, analytics, and technical SEO handled as one job. Our own pricing lists a properly configured Shopify store from $4,250 CAD at a written, fixed price. Our Canadian website cost guide puts the wider market for ecommerce builds at roughly $5,000 to $30,000+, depending on catalogue size, custom theme work, integrations and bilingual content. Those are market observations, not quotes.

Bilingual stores and Québec

If your business has a Québec address and sells to customers in Québec, French isn't optional. Éducaloi explains that such a business must provide a French version of its website. The Office québécois de la langue française has prosecuted businesses whose French version wasn't available on terms at least as good as the English one. Get legal advice on your specific situation. For a Montréal store, plan French from day one.

On Shopify, the platform side is inexpensive. You add a language under Settings > Languages (Shopify Help). Shopify's Translate & Adapt app installs automatically when you do, and you can translate manually or use Shopify's AI translations (Shopify Help). Shopify Markets controls which languages, currencies and domains each audience sees.

The real cost of a bilingual store is translation quality, not the software. Machine translation is a draft. Product descriptions, policies, checkout-adjacent copy and URL handles all need a human pass in proper Québec French. Budget for translation as content work. Treat the French pages as their own SEO surface, because French-language searchers in Québec search with their own phrasing.

Sales tax: GST, HST, PST and QST

Tax doesn't change what Shopify charges you, but getting it wrong is the most expensive setup mistake a Canadian store can make.

• GST is 5% federally. Participating provinces charge a harmonized HST instead.
• Québec charges QST at 9.975% on top of GST, administered by Revenu Québec.
• British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Manitoba charge their own PST, each with its own registration rules.
• The federal small supplier threshold is $30,000 in taxable sales over four consecutive calendar quarters. Below it, GST/HST registration is generally optional. Above it, registration is required.

In Shopify, tax settings live on the Taxes and duties page in Settings. Shopify can calculate the rates for the regions where you've entered a registration. But Shopify's Canadian tax documentation is explicit that it doesn't file or remit your taxes for you. Deciding where you must register is your responsibility, or your accountant's. One notable change: Shopify's Basic Tax service in Canada is only available to stores that were set up to collect Canadian tax before May 13, 2026. New stores use Shopify Tax or manual tax settings. We describe tax rules here for orientation only. Confirm your obligations with the CRA, Revenu Québec or a tax professional.

Ongoing costs after launch

Once the store is live, the recurring budget is:

• The plan, monthly or yearly
• Processing fees, which scale with every sale
• App subscriptions, which often scale with orders
• The domain renewal, yearly
• Content and SEO: product photography, collection copy, guides. This is the line that decides whether the store gets organic traffic. Our Shopify SEO guide explains what to spend it on.
• Maintenance: theme updates, app clean-up, fixing whatever broke after an app update. Small, but not zero.
• Marketing: paid ads, email, shipping subsidies. Often the largest line of all, and outside the scope of this guide.

A worked example (year one)

Here are two first-year scenarios for the same hypothetical store, priced from Shopify's published Canadian rates as of October 2026.

Assumptions: $60,000 in online sales in year one, 1,000 orders at a $60 average, all paid with domestic cards through Shopify Payments, yearly plan billing, and no Plus or POS. The app figures are placeholders. Replace them with the actual prices of the apps you choose.

| Cost line | Scenario A: DIY on Basic | Scenario B: Built by a studio on Grow | |---|---|---| | Plan (12 months, billed yearly) | $444 | $1,188 | | Payment processing | $1,980 (2.8% + 30¢) | $1,860 (2.6% + 30¢) | | Theme | $0 (free theme) | $350 (assumed paid theme within the $170–$400 band) | | Apps (placeholder) | $0 (native features only) | $480 (assumed 2 apps at $20/month) | | Domain | Annual fee (varies) | Annual fee (varies) | | Build | Your time | From $4,250 (our published starting price) | | Year-one total, before domain | ~$2,424 | ~$8,128 |

What the example shows:

• Processing is the biggest recurring cost in both scenarios. It's larger than the plan, the theme and the apps combined in Scenario A.
• The Grow upgrade costs $624 more in year one at this volume ($744 more for the plan, minus $120 saved on processing). It's justified by the features you need, not by the lower rate.
• Amex and international cards raise the processing line. At 3.5% + 30¢, the same $60,000 would cost $2,400 to process on Basic.
• From year two, Scenario B costs about the same as A. The build is a one-time cost. After that, only the plan, processing, apps and domain recur.

Is Shopify the cheapest option?

Not always, but it's the most predictable one. A self-hosted WooCommerce store has no platform subscription. It does move hosting, security, updates and plugin conflicts onto you or a developer. Our Shopify vs WooCommerce comparison goes through that trade-off honestly. For most small Canadian retailers who want to sell rather than maintain software, Shopify's monthly fee costs less than the hours it saves.

What this looks like in a real store

Blackwater Aquatics Canada is our own Shopify store, not a client project. It sells live fish food and breeding cultures. The case study documents a 17-product catalogue supported by 64 education pages and four intent-mapped collections. That's a reminder that the long-term spend on a niche store is mostly content, not software. The case study shows how that architecture performed in Search Console, with every figure dated.

Next step

If you're budgeting a new store or deciding whether to build it yourself, start with the project cost calculator for a range. If you'd rather have the store configured properly from the start, including payments, tax registrations, shipping profiles, bilingual content and SEO structure, see how we approach Shopify development.