For a $5M-$10M/year merchant still on Advanced (not yet Plus), what's the realistic full monthly spend including apps, processing, and a part-time freelance developer?
Short answer
Shopify Advanced costs a $5M to $10M merchant $299 a month billed yearly, plus 2.5% + 30¢ per standard US online card (shopify.com/pricing, October 2026). Shopify Tax adds 0.35% of US orders from states where you collect tax, capped yearly at $5,000 on stores created before 13 May 2026 (Shopify Help Center, October 2026). Apps and developer time have no published total, so your invoices and quotes set them.
- Advanced plan fee
- $299 a month yearly, $399 monthlyBilled yearly at $299 USD a month or month to month at $399 USD.Source: Shopify (Pricing)
- US online card rates on Advanced
- 2.5% + 30¢ standard, 3.1% + 30¢ premiumPremium means business cards and American Express; international cards add 1%; in-person cards cost 2.4% + 10¢.Source: Shopify (Pricing)
- Effective standard card rate
- 3.25% at a $40 order, 2.65% at $200The fixed 30¢ is a bigger share of a small order: about $45,000 a year apart at $7.5M in sales (Deploi arithmetic from the figures above).Deploi arithmetic from the figures above
- Shopify Tax on Advanced, US
- 0.35% of orders where you collect taxAfter a $100,000 sales threshold, at most $0.99 an order; capped at $5,000 a year for stores created before 13 May 2026, and Shopify's pricing page names no yearly cap for newer stores.Sources: Shopify Help Center (Shopify Tax pricing, Understanding Shopify Tax transaction fees)
Deploi’s call
A $5M to $10M merchant's realistic monthly spend on Advanced starts with card processing, its largest published line: about $17,187 a month at $7.5M and a $120 average order, against a $299 plan fee (Deploi arithmetic from Shopify's published rates, October 2026). So price the processing and the app overages first, price the developer last, and price the plan fee never, because the plan fee is under 2% of the published bill. The ordering is the whole discipline, and it is the reverse of how these conversations usually start.
CustomizeAudit processing and apps first when
- Premium cards are a large share of your sales: business cards and American Express cost 3.1% + 30¢ against 2.5% + 30¢ for standard cards (shopify.com/pricing, October 2026).
- A metered app bills overages, such as Gorgias at $36 per additional 100 tickets (Gorgias on the Shopify App Store, October 2026).
- Your average order value sits under $75, where the fixed 30¢ adds 0.4 points or more to the card rate (Deploi arithmetic).
- Nobody has exported twelve months of app charges from Shopify's bill, the starting point of Deploi's app stack audit record.
WaitPrice the freelance developer last, after
- Twelve months of development requests are counted and sorted into break-fix, small change and project.
- Three suppliers have quoted the same written list of five real past requests.
Basis: Should You Build or Buy a Shopify App Stack Audit?, our Build vs. Buy decision record, scored CUSTOMIZE.
What does the published half of a $5M to $10M Advanced store's bill include?
The published half of a $5M to $10M Shopify Advanced bill is one plan fee plus card, tax, conversion and dispute fees (shopify.com/pricing, Shopify Help Center, October 2026). So most of it scales with orders. The Advanced vs. Plus total-cost comparison at $500K a month weighs Plus with fewer apps; this table prices Advanced:
| Line | Advanced (USD) | When it applies |
|---|---|---|
| Plan fee | $299 a month billed yearly, $399 billed monthly | Every month |
| Online standard card | 2.5% + 30¢ | Shopify Payments orders in the US |
| Online premium card (business cards, American Express) | 3.1% + 30¢ | Shopify Payments orders in the US |
| Online international card | An extra 1% | Cards issued outside the US |
| In-person card | 2.4% + 10¢ | Retail sales only |
| Third-party transaction fee | 0.6%, plus the processor's own fee | Orders a third-party gateway processes, plus store credit and gift card amounts on stores created since 12 May 2025 |
| Shopify Tax | 0.35% of US orders from states where you collect tax, after a $100,000 sales threshold, at most $0.99 an order | Once Shopify Tax collects |
| Currency conversion | 1.5% for US stores; 2% elsewhere per the Help Center, but 1.5% on Shopify's Canadian international pricing page | Sales in a non-domestic currency |
| Chargeback fee | $15, returned if you win | Each dispute on a US store's Shopify Payments orders |
How much does average order value change an Advanced store's card processing cost?
Average order value (AOV) moves an Advanced store's effective US card cost by 0.6 points of revenue between a $40 and a $200 order, because the 30¢ per order is fixed. One published standard rate, 2.5% + 30¢ (shopify.com/pricing, October 2026), gives four different effective costs:
| Average order value (USD) | Percentage fee | 30¢ as a share of the order | Effective rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| $40 | 2.50% | 0.75% | 3.25% |
| $75 | 2.50% | 0.40% | 2.90% |
| $120 | 2.50% | 0.25% | 2.75% |
| $200 | 2.50% | 0.15% | 2.65% |
So a $40-AOV brand at $7.5M a year pays about $45,000 a year more in processing than a $200-AOV brand with the same revenue (Deploi arithmetic). Shopify charges the same 30¢ on every plan from Basic to Plus, so no plan change removes it; basket size does. At $7.5M a year and a $120 AOV, processing runs about $17,187 a month: $15,625 in percentage fees plus $1,562 on 5,208 orders. That is 57 times the $299 plan fee.
How do you price a part-time freelance Shopify developer when no rate is published?
Price a part-time freelance Shopify developer from your own request history, because no published rate fits your store. Shopify's Partners Directory shows partner-set price ranges such as “Starting from $199” or “Contact for pricing”, not hourly or billed rates (Shopify Partners Directory, October 2026). In Deploi's judgment, every circulating benchmark is a survey of advertised rates or a vendor's rate card presented as a market. So build the number in four steps, the same quote method as pricing one custom Shopify Function:
- Count the last twelve months of development requests from your ticket system or inbox. Count requests, not hours.
- Sort them into three buckets: break-fix, small change and project. In Deploi's judgment, break-fix is usually the majority by count and the minority by cost.
- Get three quotes on the same written list of five real past requests. Same list, same scope, three suppliers. The spread is your market rate, specific to your theme, stack and time zone.
- Agree a fixed monthly fee only after step 3. A monthly fee priced before anyone knows the request volume is a number somebody made up, whichever side made it up.
Which cost line do most $5M to $10M Advanced stores under-count?
App overages are the line most $5M to $10M Advanced stores under-count, because they grow with order volume while the subscription stays flat. Gorgias, a helpdesk app, includes 5,000 tickets in its own $900 a month Advanced tier and charges $36 per additional 100 (Gorgias on the Shopify App Store, October 2026). So 7,000 tickets in a month adds $720 to that $900 without a new install (Deploi arithmetic).
Some apps also bill outside the Shopify bill: Shopify says “Some third-party apps charge you directly outside of Shopify” (Shopify Help Center, October 2026). So reconcile vendor invoices with Shopify's, as the unused-app spend audit does.
Which costs are not worth optimizing for a $5M to $10M Advanced store?
The plan fee, and Shopify Tax on older stores, are not worth optimizing at $5M to $10M a year, because both are small or capped next to processing.
Deploi’s point of view
Our own position, from building on Shopify. Kept apart from the sourced facts above.
- What we’ve seen
- In cost audits, the largest recoverable line at this revenue band is almost never the plan and almost always a usage-metered app whose allowance was set at a traffic level the store passed two years ago.
- Where we disagree
- The category publishes a "realistic full monthly spend" for this profile, as a single figure, with no basket-size input. Basket size moves the effective processing rate by more than half a point, so a figure that ignores AOV is not realistic for anybody. We will not publish one.
- What this page adds
- that average order value, not plan or app count, sets the effective processing rate at this band, and by how much, which the parent's flat-percentage arithmetic at $500K a month does not surface.
Decision records behind this answer
When this answer changes
- Shopify changes Advanced's plan fee or its published US card rates, including the 30¢ per order.
- Shopify aligns its two Shopify Tax pages on which stores get the $5,000 yearly cap.
- A metered app in your stack changes its allowance or overage rate, as Gorgias prices tickets per 100.
- Your average order value moves by $20 or more, which shifts the effective card rate.
- Your monthly sales grow to the point where Plus's published card cut covers its plan-fee gap.
Related questions
- How much does the typical mid-market Shopify store actually overspend per month on apps that are installed but genuinely unused?
Installed-but-unused Shopify app spend has no credible published benchmark, because the figures in circulation estimate total app spend from listed prices, not bills.
- What does it realistically cost to have an agency build a custom Shopify Function for one discount use case?
An agency-built Shopify Function, the custom code Shopify runs at checkout, has no published market rate for one discount rule.
Sources
Every figure on this page traces to one of these. Official and vendor pages are checked on the date shown; Deploi records are our own published decisions.
- Shopify, Pricing
- Shopify Help Center, Third-party transaction fees on your Shopify bills
- Shopify Help Center, Shopify Tax pricing
- Shopify Help Center, Understanding Shopify Tax transaction fees
- Shopify Help Center, Fees and costs
- Shopify Help Center, Responding to chargebacks and inquiries
- Shopify Partners Directory, See All Services
- Gorgias Inc., Gorgias: AI, Helpdesk & Chat on the Shopify App Store
- Shopify Help Center, App charges on your Shopify bills
- Shopify, Pricing for international sales tools (Canada)
- Deploi Build vs. Buy, Should You Build or Buy a Shopify App Stack Audit?