BigCommerce vs Shopify in 2026: Pricing, Fees and Which Platform Fits Your Store

Shopify is the better fit for most growing DTC brands. Its plans have no sales caps, and its app ecosystem and developer pool are the larger of the two. BigCommerce still makes sense for catalog-heavy and B2B stores that take payments through one of its Embedded providers and can rely on built-in features instead of apps.

The BigCommerce vs Shopify comparison needs a fresh look because BigCommerce changed its pricing on June 1, 2026. Plans were renamed, revenue limits dropped, and orders paid through gateways outside its Embedded list now carry a platform fee. Below we compare plan prices, payment fees at three revenue levels, apps and developers, B2B, SEO, and the cases where BigCommerce is still the right call.

BigCommerce vs Shopify at a Glance

The short version: Shopify is ahead on ecosystem and predictable pricing, while BigCommerce is ahead on native catalog and B2B tools for stores that use its Embedded payment providers.

Sources: BigCommerce pricing, Shopify pricing, Shopify Plus pricing, Shopify B2B features by plan. Checked October 2026.

Pricing in 2026: Plans Side by Side

On self-serve plans both platforms charge $39 to $399 a month, or $29 to $299 a month billed annually. The difference is what decides your plan. On Shopify you choose it. On BigCommerce revenue moves you up automatically, Scale adds a 0.9% overage above its monthly GMV allowance, and any order paid through a non-Embedded gateway carries the Open Payment Provider Fee. Shopify Plus starts at $2,300 a month on a three-year term.

BigCommerce Plans After June 2026

Since June 1, 2026, BigCommerce has four plans: Core, Growth, Scale and Performance, the plan formerly called Enterprise. Your plan is set by trailing twelve-month GMV, which BigCommerce calculates as gross order value minus 10%. Taxes, shipping, marketplace orders from Amazon and eBay, and social commerce orders all count toward it. When GMV passes a plan’s limit, BigCommerce notifies you and upgrades the account.

The Open Payment Provider Fee applies from the first order processed through a gateway outside BigCommerce’s Embedded list. It is calculated on the GMV of those orders and billed as a separate line item. The Embedded list has more than 20 providers, including Stripe, PayPal, Braintree, Adyen, Klarna, Affirm, Afterpay, Amazon Pay and BigCommerce Payments. BigCommerce says the list can change, so check it against the gateway you actually use.

Shopify Plans and What Changes Between Them

Basic, Grow and Advanced have no sales caps. You pick the plan yourself, and moving up lowers the card rate and the third-party gateway fee and adds features.

Shopify Plus is quoted per merchant. Larger or more complex businesses can be offered a variable platform fee based on revenue instead of the flat price, and Shopify does not publish that rate. Every plan includes unlimited products and 24/7 support.

Transaction and Payment Fees

As revenue grows, platform fees on payments matter more than the subscription price. On Shopify, Shopify Payments carries no extra platform fee. Any other gateway adds 2%, 1%, 0.6% or 0.2% depending on the plan, on top of what the gateway itself charges. On BigCommerce the platform fee is $0 only for orders processed by an Embedded provider. Every other order pays the Open Payment Provider Fee.

The table shows yearly subscription plus platform fees at three revenue levels. Card processing fees are left out on both sides, so the numbers show only what each platform charges. BigCommerce GMV is gross sales × 0.9, and subscriptions use annual billing.

How the BigCommerce numbers work. At $250K in gross sales, GMV is $225K. That is above the $100K Growth limit, so the store is on Scale. At $1M, monthly GMV is about $75,000. Scale includes $33,333 a month, and the remaining $41,667 is billed at 0.9%, which comes to $375 a month or $4,500 a year. At $5M, GMV is past $2M, so the account moves to Performance and the price is negotiated.

Compared like for like, Shopify costs less at $250K and $1M. There is one exception. A store tied to a gateway that is Embedded on BigCommerce but counts as third-party on Shopify pays less on BigCommerce at $1M: $8,088 against $9,588. Check how your current gateway is classified on each platform before you compare. At $5M, BigCommerce Performance starts below Shopify Plus, although at that level both prices come out of a negotiation.

Sources: BigCommerce pricing, Shopify pricing, Shopify Plus pricing.

Apps, Themes and Development Talent

Shopify’s App Store is the larger of the two, so subscriptions, loyalty, reviews and marketing tools usually come from an existing app rather than custom code. Themes are built in Liquid, and the pool of Shopify developers in the US and UK is big enough that hiring is rarely the bottleneck.

BigCommerce has a smaller app marketplace and builds more into the core product, such as customer groups, price lists and product filtering. Standard storefronts run on its Stencil theme framework, and headless builds use Catalyst, its Next.js storefront, on top of the platform APIs. Because the ecosystem is thinner, complex custom work can take longer to staff.

For specialised B2B or multi-storefront setups, BigCommerce’s built-in tools can mean fewer apps to pay for and maintain. On Shopify the same gaps are usually filled with apps, or with custom Shopify development when no app does the job.

B2B and Enterprise: Shopify Plus vs BigCommerce Performance

Both platforms now handle B2B natively, so the choice comes down to how much you need to customise. Shopify includes B2B on every plan from Basic, with company accounts, net payment terms and up to three B2B catalogs. Plus removes the catalog limit and adds catalogs assigned to specific companies, deposits and partial payments. On Plus, Checkout Extensibility and Shopify Functions also let developers change checkout and cart logic.

BigCommerce Performance covers price lists, customer groups and multiple storefronts out of the box. If your buyer segments and pricing rules already fit those tools, you will run fewer apps. Headless is mature on both platforms, and Shopify’s higher API limits on Plus and its Hydrogen framework give it the edge for large headless builds.

For B2B that depends on custom checkout logic or company-specific pricing, Shopify Plus gives more room to build. If you are planning that kind of store, our Shopify Plus development team can scope it with you. BigCommerce stays competitive when its native features already cover most requirements and the Performance contract terms suit your payment setup.

SEO Control on Each Platform

Both platforms let you edit title tags, meta descriptions, canonical tags, structured data and robots.txt. The main difference is URLs. Shopify keeps products and collections under fixed /products/ and /collections/ paths, while BigCommerce lets you set your own path structure. Shopify’s built-in blog is enough for most content SEO without extra tools.

URL structure only becomes a real issue when you change platforms, because every old path needs a redirect. The same applies to stores coming from WooCommerce, which we covered in our guide on moving to Shopify from WooCommerce.

When BigCommerce Is Still the Better Choice

BigCommerce remains the better option in four situations.

1. Catalog-heavy stores with thousands of SKUs that already use an Embedded payment provider and want customer groups, price lists and filtering without stacking apps.
2. Multichannel sellers who rely on BigCommerce’s marketplace and feed tools and whose GMV sits well inside one plan.
3. Wholesale and B2B businesses whose pricing rules map onto BigCommerce’s native features and who can agree workable Performance contract terms.
4. Teams that prefer fewer moving parts and do not need Shopify’s larger app ecosystem.

In every case, run your own GMV and payment mix through the June 2026 rules before you commit.

Making the Switch

If the numbers point to Shopify, the move itself needs planning. Redirects, customer data, metafields and app replacements all have to be sorted before launch. Our step-by-step BigCommerce to Shopify migration guide walks through each stage, and our Shopify migration services team can take the project on.