What is the difference between Basic, Shopify and Advanced plans?

Basic, Grow, and Advanced are three of Shopify’s core US-pricing plans. The real differences come down to staff accounts, card processing rates, shipping and market features, and developer API access. Reporting isn’t one of them, since all three plans include the same analytics suite. One naming note: the “Shopify” plan was renamed “Grow” in 2026. This comparison treats “Shopify” and “Grow” as the same tier. Basic suits a solo store just starting out. Grow becomes worth it once you need staff logins or lower card processing rates. Advanced only pays for itself once transaction volume is high enough for its lower rate to outweigh the price jump.

Basic vs. Grow vs. Advanced: Side-by-Side (USD Pricing)

These are the starting card rates shown on Shopify’s own US pricing page. Actual rates can vary slightly by card type, such as standard cards versus American Express or corporate cards. Confirm your exact rate under Settings → Payments in your own account.

What’s Identical Across All Three Plans

It’s worth knowing what doesn’t change before worrying about what does. None of the following is a reason to pick a higher tier, since Basic, Grow, and Advanced all include:

• A full-featured online store with unlimited products
• The same checkout, plus selling on social channels, marketplaces, and AI chat surfaces
• Up to 3 Shopify B2B catalogs
• Unlimited web hosting with a free SSL certificate
• The full marketing suite: email campaigns, automations, abandoned checkout recovery, discount codes
• The same 200+ real-time reports and custom analytics
• POS Lite for casual in-person selling

What Actually Changes Between the Plans

1. Staff Accounts

Basic gives only the store owner admin access, with no additional staff logins included. A Shopify Partners Collaborator account is a workaround for outside help. It isn’t the same as a real staff account. Grow adds 5 staff accounts. Advanced adds 15. Neither is unlimited; unlimited staff access is Plus-only.

2. Card Processing and Transaction Fees

Even with Shopify Payments, the online card rate itself drops with each tier: 2.9% on Basic, 2.7% on Grow, 2.5% on Advanced, plus a flat 30¢ per transaction. That’s a real saving independent of which gateway you use. If a store uses a third-party gateway instead of Shopify Payments, Shopify adds its own fee on top of the gateway’s processing fee: 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced.

3. Developer and API Access

Basic only gives limited data access for building custom apps against Shopify’s APIs. Grow and Advanced both unlock full data access. Advanced additionally gets up to 2x the standard API rate limit on select endpoints. That matters if you’re running custom integrations or a high-traffic headless build, not just a standard theme storefront.

4. Shipping Discounts and Global Markets

Basic includes carrier shipping discounts of up to 77%. Grow and Advanced both go up to 88%, plus shipping insurance and third-party calculated rates that Basic doesn’t include. All three plans come with 3 localized selling markets built in. Advanced lets you add more markets individually at $59/month each, which matters if you’re expanding into new countries incrementally rather than all at once.

5. Support

Basic and Grow both get standard 24/7 live chat. Advanced gets enhanced live chat with priority handling.

6. In-Person Selling

All three plans support casual in-person selling out of the box through POS Lite. Full POS Pro, for an actual retail location, is a paid add-on on any of the three plans, priced separately from the base subscription. [INSERT: confirm current POS Pro monthly add-on price in USD].

Which Plan Is Right for You?

• Just launched, solo, low volume → Basic
• Consistent sales, small team, need staff logins or custom API access → Grow
• High order volume, building custom integrations, want the lowest transaction fee → Advanced
• Enterprise, multi-market, complex B2B → Shopify Plus

When It’s Worth Upgrading

• Your projected transaction fee savings on a higher plan would exceed the jump in monthly subscription cost
• You need to give staff members their own admin access instead of sharing one login
• You’re building custom functionality against Shopify’s APIs and Basic’s limited data access is blocking you
• You expect high-traffic events, like flash sales, and need Advanced’s 10x checkout capacity
• You’re running a physical retail location and want POS Pro

New to Shopify’s platform itself, not just the pricing tiers? Our answer on what Shopify is and how it works covers the fundamentals these plans build on top of.

The short version: start on Basic. Move to Grow once staff access, API access, or card processing fees start actually costing you something. Only justify Advanced with a real transaction-fee calculation for your own sales volume, not because it’s the biggest number on the pricing page. If you want that math run against your actual numbers, our Shopify development team can walk through it with you.