On paper these two are priced identically. At the time of verification (2026-09-09), both start at $39 a month on monthly billing ($29 annual), step to $105 ($79 annual), then $399 ($299 annual). The difference is what those tiers are gated on and what you have to buy on top.
Pricing at realistic volume
Shopify's tiers are feature tiers: Basic for a solo store, Grow for staff accounts and lower rates, Advanced for custom reporting. Nothing about your revenue forces an upgrade. BigCommerce's tiers are revenue tiers: Core covers up to $30K in trailing-twelve-month sales, Growth up to $100K, and Scale caps at $33,333 a month in GMV with a 0.9% overage. Performance starts at $1,499 a month on annual billing, typically for stores past $1M a year.
Run the numbers on a store doing $150K a year. On Shopify you could still be on Basic at $39 if you do not need staff accounts. On BigCommerce you are on Scale at $399 whether or not you use its features. That is the single largest cost difference between the two, and it lands on exactly the stores that are growing.
Payment fees are closer than the marketing suggests. Shopify charges 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow and 0.6% on Advanced for orders processed through third-party gateways; Shopify Payments avoids the fee and its online card rate starts at 2.9% plus 30 cents. BigCommerce charges the same 2.0%, 1.0% and 0.6% "open payment provider" fee on eligible orders unless you use one of its embedded providers. So both waive the surcharge on their preferred gateways and both charge it otherwise. The real fee difference is at the top: BigCommerce's Performance tier contracts the fee away entirely, while Shopify Plus still carries 0.2%.
Then there are apps. Shopify's known weakness is that monthly cost climbs quickly once you add paid apps and premium themes. BigCommerce ships more natively, so a store that would need three or four Shopify apps can come out cheaper on BigCommerce at the same tier, revenue gating aside.
Feature depth
Shopify's depth is in the ecosystem: if a feature exists in ecommerce, someone sells it as a Shopify app. Its checkout is restricted below Plus, which matters if you want to customise it, and its blog and content tools are thin. BigCommerce's depth is native: B2B and multi-storefront on higher tiers, and a headless, API-first posture for teams building their own front end. Its theme and app catalog is smaller, so a gap that Shopify fills with an app may need custom work on BigCommerce.
Ease of use
Shopify is the easier platform. Setup is guided and templated; complexity only appears when you customise themes or stack apps. BigCommerce has a solid admin but more settings and terminology to learn. If nobody on the team has run a store before, that gap is worth a tier of pricing on its own.
Exit cost
Both are hosted platforms, and migrating a live store is expensive on either side. Shopify's lock-in is app-shaped: the subscriptions, reviews and upsell logic you bought as apps do not travel. BigCommerce's lock-in is contract-shaped at Performance and architecture-shaped for headless builds. Neither is easy to leave, so decide as if you are choosing for five years.
Scenario by scenario
A first physical-product store or a dropshipping test: Shopify Basic. The 3-day trial and $1-a-month first three months make the cost of finding out negligible, and the app store covers whatever the supplier integration needs.
A wholesale or B2B seller with price lists and customer groups: BigCommerce, where that is native on higher tiers rather than an app stack.
A DTC brand growing fast toward seven figures: Shopify. Revenue gating on BigCommerce means your bill rises with your success on a schedule you do not control; Shopify's tiers rise only when you want the features.
A developer-led team building a custom storefront: BigCommerce for the open API, unless the team already knows Shopify's stack and wants its checkout.
A content-heavy site where the shop is secondary: neither. Both are stores first. See /tool/squarespace or /tool/webflow, which sell on cheaper site plans and handle the writing side properly.
What neither does well
Neither is fee-free, whatever the landing pages say; you avoid the surcharge only by using the platform's preferred payments. Neither is a good blog or content platform. And neither is cheap at scale once you add the real costs: apps on Shopify, forced tier jumps on BigCommerce. One practical note for anyone reading our recommendations: BigCommerce shut its affiliate program in 2025, so no commission shapes our pick there.
Full profiles at /tool/shopify and /tool/bigcommerce; other options at /alternatives/shopify.