Shopify vs BigCommerce (2026)

Pick Shopify if you sell in person as well as online, want the biggest app store (more than 16,000 apps) and want a plan price that doesn't rise with your sales. Pick BigCommerce if you want to keep Stripe, Adyen or PayPal Braintree without paying the platform a fee, sell wholesale, or want more built in on the entry plan, such as 70-plus discount types, a blog and product reviews. Both start at $29 a month on yearly billing, as checked November 4, 2026. The catch with BigCommerce is its sales caps: Core covers $30,000 a year and Growth $100,000, and it moves you up a plan once you pass them.

Pricing compared

The two price lists line up almost plan for plan. On yearly billing, Shopify charges $29 a month for Basic, $79 for Grow and $299 for Advanced, and BigCommerce charges $29 for Core, $79 for Growth and $299 for Scale. Both vendors put the saving for paying yearly at 25%. We checked both on November 4, 2026.

BigCommerce lists its monthly prices in US dollars: $39, $105 and $399. Shopify's pricing page sets the currency by location and showed us euros, so we can't give you its US month-to-month prices. Its yearly US prices come from Shopify's own blog, updated September 3, 2026. Check shopify.com/pricing from the US before you buy.

At the top end, Shopify Plus starts at $2,300 a month on a three-year term. BigCommerce Performance starts at $1,499 a month billed yearly, with custom sales limits and payment terms.

The bigger difference is what makes your bill go up. BigCommerce measures your sales over the last 12 months and upgrades you when you pass a plan's cap: Core covers up to $30,000 and Growth up to $100,000. Scale includes $33,333 of sales a month, charges 0.9% on sales above that and moves you to Performance once you reach $2 million a year. So a Core store that sells $45,000 in a year goes from $29 to $79 a month on yearly billing, whether or not it wanted Growth's extras.

Shopify's pricing page ties no plan to a sales figure. You upgrade when you want what the next plan adds, usually staff accounts (none extra on Basic, 5 on Grow, 15 on Advanced) or lower card rates. Shopify's extra costs come from elsewhere: paid apps, paid themes and the POS Pro add-on, priced per location. BigCommerce's extras are phone support on Core at $29 a month and extra storefronts at $30, $50 or $100 a month depending on the plan.

Payment fees and providers

This is where BigCommerce has the clearest lead. It lists more than 20 embedded payment providers, including BigCommerce Payments, Stripe, PayPal Braintree, Adyen, Klarna, Affirm, Checkout.com and Worldpay, and charges no fee on orders through any of them. Only orders through a provider outside that list carry a BigCommerce fee: 2.0% of those orders on Core, 1.0% on Growth and 0.6% on Scale, worked out monthly. On Performance it drops to nothing under contract. BigCommerce's page also gives PayPal Braintree card processing from 2.89% plus $0.29 a transaction.

Shopify wants you on Shopify Payments. If you use it, Shopify adds no extra fee, and you get local currencies and local payment methods in Shopify Markets, which need Shopify Payments. If you use any other provider, Shopify adds 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced and 0.2% on Plus, on top of what that provider charges. Shopify showed us only its European card rates, so we can't quote the US rates for Shopify Payments.

In practice, if Shopify Payments works in your country and for your products, the fee gap mostly disappears. If you already have a negotiated rate with Stripe or Adyen, or your products need a specialist processor, BigCommerce lets you keep it without paying the platform a share.

Selling in person and on other channels

Shopify wins clearly for shops with a counter, a market stall or pop-ups. Its POS app runs on a phone or tablet with a Shopify card reader, and every plan can take in-person payments, with stock, payments and customer records synced to the online store. POS Pro, an add-on priced per location, adds unlimited staff roles and permissions, in-store inventory tools and in-store pickup. BigCommerce has no point of sale of its own. Every plan connects to POS systems such as Square, Clover and Vend, which means a second account and a second bill.

For marketplaces, BigCommerce sells on Amazon, eBay and Walmart from every plan, and its Feedonomics Surface product feeds are free on a basic plan for up to 100,000 SKUs. Shopify imports unlimited marketplace orders, but only the first 50 synced orders each month are free; after that Shopify charges 1%, up to $99 a month. Shopify also has an Agentic channel that lists your products in AI chat apps with no monthly fee and charges only when you make a sale. BigCommerce has agentic checkout, which lets shoppers buy inside AI shopping tools while you stay the merchant of record.

For selling abroad, Shopify Markets on every plan translates the storefront, shows local prices, assigns local domains and collects duties and taxes. BigCommerce accepts more than 100 currencies through the provider you choose.

Built-in features versus apps

BigCommerce puts more into the box. Core includes more than 70 discount options, coupons and gift cards, a blog, product ratings and reviews, multi-currency and real-time shipping quotes. Some things you might expect on the entry plan sit higher up, though: the abandoned cart saver, customer groups and stored cards start on Growth, and product filtering starts on Scale.

Shopify's entry plan is leaner on store features but stronger on marketing. Every plan includes abandoned checkout recovery, discount codes, gift cards, email campaigns, marketing automations and more than 200 real-time reports. Shopify's blog says each store gets 10,000 free email sends at the start of each month. Sidekick, Shopify's AI assistant, comes on every plan with millions of AI tokens. When you want something Shopify lacks, you pick it from more than 16,000 apps, many of them paid.

For wholesale, BigCommerce is the stronger choice. B2B Edition gives business buyers a self-service portal for quotes, orders and invoices, with customer-specific catalogs and prices, net terms and credit limits, company accounts with roles, and bulk ordering by CSV. We couldn't find a price for B2B Edition on BigCommerce's pages. Shopify includes up to 3 B2B catalogs on Basic, Grow and Advanced, and unlimited catalogs on Plus, which covers simple trade pricing.

If you run several brands or regional shops, BigCommerce sells extra storefronts from one dashboard: up to 3 on Core at $30 a month each, 5 on Growth at $50 and 8 on Scale at $100. Shopify keeps one store per plan until Plus, which includes up to 9 free expansion stores. For headless builds, BigCommerce has Catalyst, a storefront framework on Next.js, plus the Makeswift visual editor. Shopify allows one headless storefront below Plus and 25 on Plus.

Ease of use and setup

Both are hosted, so you never touch a server, and both have iPhone and Android apps for checking orders away from your desk. Shopify is quicker to get running for a first store. Its admin is smaller, you can start from a theme or a text prompt with the AI website builder, and Sidekick answers questions inside the admin. The cost of that small admin is that you add features through apps, and each app has its own settings and often its own bill.

BigCommerce's control panel has more settings to work through before launch, because more of the store lives there. It has its own AI help: BigAI writes product descriptions, and BigCommerce Companion is a chat assistant inside the control panel. The longer trial helps here. BigCommerce gives you 15 days with every feature and no card, lets you take real orders once you connect a payment provider, and keeps your data for 90 days if you don't pick a plan. Shopify gives 3 days with no card. From Europe its pricing page then offered the first 3 months at €1 a month; we couldn't confirm the US offer.

Support

Shopify offers 24/7 chat on every plan, enhanced 24/7 chat on Advanced and priority 24/7 phone support only on Plus.

BigCommerce gives 24/7 chat and email on every plan. Phone support costs $29 a month on Core and comes included on Growth and Scale. Scale can add priority support for $199 a month, and Performance includes a customer success manager and API support. If being able to phone someone on a $79 plan matters to you, BigCommerce is the one that offers it.

Which one to pick

Choose Shopify if in-person selling is part of the plan, if you want your monthly price to stay where it is as sales grow, or if you expect to add features through apps over time. It is the easier place to start a first store.

Choose BigCommerce if you already have a payment provider you want to keep, sell to trade buyers, run more than one storefront, or want promotions, reviews and a blog without installing anything. Check your yearly sales against its caps before you commit, because passing $30,000 or $100,000 moves you up a plan automatically. If you'd rather own the code and hosting outright, look at WooCommerce instead.