What Shopify costs a Canadian store each month, in CAD, checked 4 September 2026

Shopify pricing in Canada, read from shopify.com/ca/pricing on 4 September 2026. Basic is CA$49 a month billed monthly, or CA$37 a month billed yearly. Grow is CA$132 or CA$99. Advanced is CA$517 or CA$389. Plus starts at CA$3,400 a month on a three-year term. Those are the subscription fees, and for most stores they are the smaller half of the bill.

The larger half is card processing. Most pages on Shopify pricing Canada skip it. Two of the three top-ranking guides for this query quote at least one plan price that is not on Shopify's Canadian page today. None of the three works out a real monthly bill at a given level of sales.

This page does. It covers Shopify plans in Canada, Shopify fees in Canada and the real Shopify cost in Canada at three sales levels. Every figure below carries its source and the date we checked it. The worked examples use only rates Shopify publishes, so you can redo them with your own numbers.

Shopify pricing in Canada at a glance (CAD, checked 4 September 2026)

All prices are in Canadian dollars, as shown on shopify.com/ca/pricing on 4 September 2026. Card rates are Shopify Payments rates for online, domestic, non-Amex cards. The third-party transaction fee only applies when you take payment through a gateway other than Shopify Payments.

Plus is a term contract, not a monthly plan. The Plus pricing page shows CA$3,650 a month on a one-year term and CA$3,400 on a three-year term. Larger or more complex businesses get a variable platform fee instead (shopify.com/ca/plus/pricing, 4 September 2026). Basic, Grow and Advanced get 10 inventory locations; Plus gets 200. Standard plans include up to 3 B2B catalogues. Plus has no limit (shopify.com/ca/pricing, 4 September 2026).

The Canadian pricing page shows no Starter plan card today, so this article does not quote a Starter price. Other guides say CA$5 or CA$7 a month. Treat those as unverified until Shopify shows the figure again. Shopify publishes a separate pricing page for each country. This article uses only the Canadian page.

Monthly or yearly billing: what the discount is worth

Yearly billing charges the full year up front in exchange for a lower monthly rate (help.shopify.com, pricing plans and billing overview, 4 September 2026). You save close to a quarter on every standard plan. The table uses the 4 September 2026 prices.

Two conditions before you take it. Shopify says subscription charges are generally non-refundable, citing section 5.10 of its Terms of Service (help.shopify.com, pricing plans and billing overview, 4 September 2026). And you cannot switch back from yearly to monthly in the admin. You have to contact Shopify Support before the annual cycle ends (help.shopify.com, billing plan changes, 4 September 2026).

The practical rule: pay monthly for the first few months while you confirm the plan fits. Switch to yearly once your sales volume tells you which plan you are staying on. The break-even table further down shows which plan that is.

Shopify Payments card rates in Canada

Every plan charges a card rate on each sale processed through Shopify Payments. On most bills it is the largest line. The rates below come from the compare-all-features table on shopify.com/ca/pricing, 4 September 2026.

Two details matter for Canadian stores. Interac debit taken in person costs a flat 15¢ per transaction, with no percentage. That makes a retail counter cheaper to run than the online store at any order value. Some older guides still quote 10¢ for Interac. The pricing page today says 15¢.

Shopify does not return card processing fees when you refund an order (help.shopify.com, pricing plans and billing overview, 4 September 2026). A store with a high return rate pays processing on revenue it does not keep. Budget for that when you compare Shopify Payments with a gateway that refunds its fees.

What "third-party transaction fee" means

This is the line that confuses most people reading the pricing page. It is not the card processing rate. Shopify's own definition:

The fee is 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced and 0.2% on Plus (shopify.com/ca/pricing, 4 September 2026). Shopify charges it when you take payment through a gateway other than Shopify Payments, on top of whatever that gateway bills you itself. It shows up on your Shopify bill, not on the gateway's statement.

With Shopify Payments active, it does not apply to orders paid through Shopify Payments, Shop Pay, Shop Pay Installments, PayPal Express Checkout or manual payment methods such as cash, cash on delivery and bank transfer (help.shopify.com, pricing plans and billing overview and third-party providers pages, 4 September 2026). Every other third-party or alternative gateway pays it, even with Shopify Payments switched on.

One newer rule catches merchants out. For stores created on or after 12 May 2025, Shopify also charges the fee on the portion of an order paid with store credit or a gift card (help.shopify.com, pricing plans and billing overview, 4 September 2026). Shopify's own example: a customer pays with a card plus CA$10 of store credit. The fee applies to the CA$10 only.

Shopify Payments or an external gateway: which is cheaper

Use Shopify Payments and the third-party fee is zero. For most Canadian stores that is the whole answer. The arithmetic shows why.

Take CA$25,000 a month in online sales on Basic with yearly billing: 250 orders at an average of CA$100. Through Shopify Payments the processing cost is 2.8% × 25,000 = CA$700, plus 250 × 30¢ = CA$75. That is CA$775. Total bill: CA$37 + CA$775 = CA$812.

Through an external gateway, Shopify's third-party fee alone is 2% × 25,000 = CA$500, before the gateway charges anything. To beat CA$775 in total, the gateway would have to charge under CA$275 on CA$25,000. That works out to under 0.8% plus 30¢ an order. Compare that ceiling with your processor's quoted rate before you sign.

The same test on Grow (1%) and Advanced (0.6%) is less severe, but the logic holds. The external gateway has to undercut Shopify Payments by more than the plan's third-party percentage just to break even. On Plus the charge is 0.20% per transaction. Shopify describes it as covering security and compliance costs (shopify.com/ca/plus/pricing, 4 September 2026).

The one solid reason to run a second gateway is a payment method your customers want that Shopify Payments does not offer. Then the third-party fee applies to those orders only. Shopify Payments keeps handling the rest.

The 3-day trial and the $1 a month offer

The Canadian pricing page reads: "Try 3 days free, then $1/month for 3 months" (shopify.com/ca/pricing, 4 September 2026). Its FAQ adds two points. The trial needs no credit card, and "most plans" get the $1 rate for the first 3 months before standard monthly pricing kicks in.

During the trial the store is in private mode, or its checkout is inactive. You cannot take a live order until you pick a paid plan (help.shopify.com, free trial page, 4 September 2026). You can switch between plans during the trial, and Shopify does not charge you until it ends. If the trial ends and you have not chosen a plan, Shopify pauses the store.

So a new Canadian store pays CA$0 for three days, then CA$1 a month for months one to three, then the standard price of the plan it picked. On Basic that is CA$49 a month from month four. Switch to yearly billing and it is CA$37 a month, paid as CA$444 up front.

On the search "Why is Shopify charging me $40?": there is no single published cause, so nobody can diagnose it from a blog post. The published Canadian price points are CA$37, CA$49, CA$99, CA$132, CA$389 and CA$517 before tax. Prices differ by billing country and currency. Open the bill under Settings, Billing. Read the plan name, the billing period and the currency before you assume an error.

The real monthly cost at three revenue levels

Assumptions, stated once. Average order CA$100. Every order paid online with a domestic non-Amex card through Shopify Payments. Yearly billing unless noted. Rates are the shopify.com/ca/pricing, 4 September 2026 figures. Change the order value and only the 30¢ line moves.

CA$5,000 a month in sales

Basic wins by CA$52 over Grow and CA$332 over Advanced. On monthly billing Basic costs CA$49 + 140 + 15 = CA$204, so yearly billing saves CA$12 a month at this size, about 6% of the bill. All in, the cost is 3.8% of sales. The subscription is under a fifth of it.

CA$25,000 a month in sales

Basic still wins, by CA$12 over Grow. Grow's 0.2-point card rate cut saves CA$50 a month. That is CA$12 short of the CA$62 extra subscription. All in, the cost is 3.2% of sales.

This is where the third-party fee bites if you use an external gateway: Basic 2% = CA$500, Grow 1% = CA$250, Advanced 0.6% = CA$150, all before the gateway's own charge. With an external gateway, Grow beats Basic here. The CA$250 fee saving is more than the CA$62 subscription difference.

CA$100,000 a month in sales

Grow is cheapest at CA$2,999: CA$90 under Advanced and CA$138 under Basic. The effective cost is 3.0% of sales. Advanced only wins at this level if you need its features: 15 staff accounts, live third-party shipping rates at checkout or region-specific pricing (shopify.com/ca/pricing, 4 September 2026).

Where each plan breaks even

Each step up cuts the online card rate by 0.2 points. So the break-even revenue is the subscription difference divided by 0.002. On yearly billing, Basic to Grow breaks even at (99 − 37) / 0.002 = CA$31,000 a month. Grow to Advanced breaks even at (389 − 99) / 0.002 = CA$145,000 a month.

On monthly billing the thresholds rise: (132 − 49) / 0.002 = CA$41,500 and (517 − 132) / 0.002 = CA$192,500. On an external gateway the step from Grow to Advanced saves 0.6 points, 0.2 on cards and 0.4 on the third-party fee. It breaks even at (389 − 99) / 0.006, about CA$48,300 a month.

Shopify Plus in Canada, briefly

Plus starts at CA$3,400 a month on a three-year term or CA$3,650 on a one-year term, with a variable platform fee for more complex businesses (shopify.com/ca/plus/pricing, 4 September 2026). The Canadian pricing page lists card rates from 2.15% + 30¢, a 0.2% third-party fee, unlimited staff accounts and 200 inventory locations (shopify.com/ca/pricing, 4 September 2026). The price includes your main store and 9 expansion stores. Each further store is CA$450 a month (shopify.com/ca/plus/pricing, 4 September 2026).

On the published gateway fee alone, the CA$3,011 gap between Advanced yearly and the Plus floor needs about CA$750,000 a month of external-gateway volume to pay for itself: 3,011 / 0.004 = CA$752,750. The feature-by-feature table, including what only Plus can do at checkout, is in Shopify Plus vs Shopify. If someone is selling you the upgrade, read whether a Shopify Plus migration is worth it first.

The full Plus budget, with the variable platform fee, the per-sale fees, three worked first-year totals and the payback arithmetic, is in Shopify Plus pricing in Canada.

Costs that are not on the pricing page

Themes. Paid themes on the Shopify Theme Store are a one-time purchase of US$100 to US$500. Most sit between US$180 and US$420, and free themes exist (themes.shopify.com, 4 September 2026). The Theme Store prices in US dollars, so convert before you budget.

Apps. Priced per app, from free upward, and billed through your Shopify bill. No verified range fits every store. Budget from the specific apps you will install, not from a generic figure.

POS Pro. CA$119 a month per location on Basic, Grow and Advanced. Plus includes 20 locations, up to 200 with Shopify Payments (shopify.com/ca/pricing, 4 September 2026). Every plan includes casual in-person selling at pop-ups and events at no extra cost.

Promotional credits. The pricing page advertises "Earn 1% back on all sales" up to CA$6,000 on Basic, CA$9,500 on Grow, CA$13,000 on Advanced and CA$18,000 on Plus (shopify.com/ca/pricing, 4 September 2026). It is a promotion with its own terms, so do not build a budget on it.

Build and design. The pricing page says there are no setup fees. That is true of Shopify itself. Hiring someone to build the store is a separate budget. Our Shopify development cost in Canada guide and our breakdown of what it costs to hire a Shopify expert cover it. EVDEV publishes fixed-price Shopify migrations from CA$2,000 and maintenance from CA$299 a month (evdev.dev, 4 September 2026).

Tax on your Shopify bill

Shopify's billing help states: "If your business is located in a Canadian or American jurisdiction where Shopify has a business presence, then Shopify is required by law to charge applicable taxes on your subscription." It names GST, HST and PST as taxes that can apply in Canada (help.shopify.com, tax exemptions and charges on Shopify billing in North America, 4 September 2026). The store's billing address sets the tax. Address changes apply to future invoices only.

So the CA$37 to CA$517 figures above are before tax. The tax line depends on your province. The same page notes that from 1 January 2026 Shopify is required to charge 7% Manitoba RST on applicable Shopify charges. Read the tax line on your own invoice under Settings, Billing, not a rate table from a third-party blog.

Tax exemption on the bill is narrow. The page names Indigenous Peoples and First Nations bands in Canada, with specific requirements. Applications go through Shopify Support and take up to two weeks (help.shopify.com, tax exemptions and charges on Shopify billing in North America, 4 September 2026).

Which plan to start on

Start on Basic unless you already process more than about CA$31,000 a month in card sales through Shopify Payments. The other reason to skip it is a Grow feature you need on day one: five staff accounts, or shipping discounts up to 50% instead of 45% (shopify.com/ca/pricing, 4 September 2026). Move to Grow at CA$31,000 a month on yearly billing, CA$41,500 on monthly.

Move to Advanced at about CA$145,000 a month on yearly billing, or earlier if you need 15 staff accounts, live third-party shipping rates at checkout or region-specific pricing. Those are the Advanced features the pricing page lists that Grow does not have.

Upgrades take effect immediately, with a prorated bill. Downgrades wait until the end of the current billing cycle, because the plan is pre-paid (help.shopify.com, billing plan changes, 4 September 2026). That asymmetry is another reason to start low and step up.

If you are moving an existing store rather than starting one, the platform fee is the small number. Our Shopify migration cost guide covers what moves a migration quote. EVDEV's Shopify migration services come with a fixed price before work starts, from CA$2,000 (evdev.dev, 4 September 2026).

If you want a second opinion on plan choice, or a fixed quote for a build or a migration, book a call with EVDEV. We are a Shopify Select Partner in Toronto with 200+ stores launched since 2021 and a 5.0 rating on Clutch (evdev.dev, 4 September 2026).

Shopify pricing Canada FAQ

How much does Shopify really cost?

Subscription plus card processing, plus a third-party fee if you use an external gateway. On the 4 September 2026 Canadian rates with yearly billing and CA$100 orders: CA$192 a month at CA$5,000 in sales on Basic, CA$812 at CA$25,000 on Basic, and CA$2,999 at CA$100,000 on Grow. Call it 3% to 4% of sales. Themes, apps, POS Pro and any build work are on top.

How much is Shopify per month in Canada?

The Shopify plans in Canada are Basic CA$49, Grow CA$132 and Advanced CA$517 on monthly billing; CA$37, CA$99 and CA$389 a month on yearly billing; Plus from CA$3,400 a month on a three-year term (shopify.com/ca/pricing, 4 September 2026). All before tax and before card processing.

How much does a Shopify plan cost?

Paid for a year up front, Basic is CA$444, Grow CA$1,188 and Advanced CA$4,668 (shopify.com/ca/pricing, 4 September 2026, yearly rates × 12). Paid monthly, the same year costs CA$588, CA$1,584 and CA$6,204. Shopify charges card processing at 2.8%, 2.6% or 2.4% + 30¢ per sale on top.

Why is Shopify charging me $40?

No published Canadian price is exactly CA$40 before tax. The amount depends on your plan, billing period, currency and the tax on your billing address. The $1 a month introductory rate lasts 3 months, then standard pricing applies (shopify.com/ca/pricing, 4 September 2026). Open Settings, Billing and read the plan, period and currency on the bill.

How do I avoid Shopify transaction fees?

Activate Shopify Payments. Shopify transaction fees in Canada follow the same rule as everywhere else. With Shopify Payments active, the third-party fee is not charged on orders paid through Shopify Payments, Shop Pay, Shop Pay Installments, PayPal Express Checkout or manual payment methods (help.shopify.com, pricing plans and billing overview, 4 September 2026). Card processing rates still apply. The third-party fee is the only line you can remove.

Is Shopify still worth it in 2026?

The cost side is knowable: CA$37 to CA$517 a month for the standard plans, card rates from 2.4% to 2.8% + 30¢, a free 3-day trial and CA$1 a month for the first 3 months (shopify.com/ca/pricing, 4 September 2026). You can cancel a standard plan at any time; Plus is a one- or three-year term (shopify.com/ca/pricing, 4 September 2026, FAQ). Whether the store earns that back depends on the store. That is why the worked examples above show cost as a share of sales.

What is the downside of using Shopify?

On cost: a monthly fee plus a per-sale card rate, a third-party fee of 2% to 0.2% if you use an external gateway, subscription charges that are generally non-refundable, and downgrades that wait until the end of the billing cycle (shopify.com/ca/pricing and help.shopify.com, 4 September 2026). On features: customising the information, shipping and payment steps of checkout with UI extensions requires Plus. Apps are priced separately. See Shopify Plus vs Shopify for the full feature split.

Do Shopify subscription fees have GST?

Shopify says it is required by law to charge applicable taxes on your subscription if your business is in a Canadian jurisdiction where Shopify has a business presence. It lists GST, HST and PST as taxes that can apply (help.shopify.com, tax exemptions and charges on Shopify billing in North America, 4 September 2026). Your billing address determines the tax. Check the tax line on your invoice for the rate that applies to you.

What is the best plan for Shopify?

For a Canadian store using Shopify Payments: Basic until about CA$31,000 a month in card sales, Grow until about CA$145,000, then Advanced. Move to Advanced earlier if you need 15 staff accounts, live third-party shipping rates or region-specific pricing. The thresholds come from dividing the subscription difference by the 0.2-point card rate step, on the shopify.com/ca/pricing, 4 September 2026 rates with yearly billing.