About the Shopify Fee Calculator
This calculator estimates the Shopify Payments processing fee and resulting net proceeds on an online sale, based on the percentage-plus-flat-fee rate structure tied to your Shopify plan tier. It's built around Shopify's standard online rates, which combine a percentage of the sale with a fixed per-transaction charge.
How It Works
Enter the selling price and select your Shopify plan: Basic, Shopify, or Advanced. The calculator applies that plan's percentage rate to the sale price and adds a flat $0.30 per-transaction charge to get the total fee, then subtracts that fee from the selling price to show net proceeds. Basic uses 2.9%, the Shopify plan uses 2.6%, and Advanced uses 2.4%.
Formula & Methodology
The percentage rate and flat fee both apply to every transaction, so the flat $0.30 component matters proportionally more on small sales and less on large ones. To estimate fees across a batch of orders rather than one sale, calculate the fee for each price point, or an average order value, and multiply by transaction count, since the flat fee doesn't scale with order size the way the percentage portion does. In-person card-present rates and third-party payment gateway surcharges follow different fee structures than the ones used here.
Examples
Basic Plan Sale
A $45 sale on the Basic plan incurs a fee of (45 × 0.029) + 0.30 = $1.605, rounded to about $1.61, leaving net proceeds of roughly $43.40.
Advanced Plan Sale
A $120 sale on the Advanced plan incurs a fee of (120 × 0.024) + 0.30 = $3.18, leaving net proceeds of $116.82.
Advantages
- Shows the exact dollar impact of the flat $0.30 fee alongside the percentage rate, rather than just quoting a percentage.
- Makes it simple to compare net proceeds across Shopify's three plan tiers for the same sale price.
- Helps merchants price products with actual take-home proceeds in mind rather than the sticker price.
Common Mistakes
- Forgetting to add the flat $0.30 per-transaction fee on top of the percentage rate, which understates the true fee, especially on lower-priced items.
- Applying online rates to in-person or card-present sales, which are billed under a different fee schedule.
- Not weighing the higher monthly subscription cost of an upgraded plan against the per-transaction savings its lower percentage rate provides.
Edge Cases to Watch For
- Selling price must be greater than zero; the calculator returns an error if it's left at zero or blank.
- If an unrecognized plan value is passed in, the calculator defaults to the Basic rate of 2.9%.
- The rates used are Shopify Payments' standard online card rates only; in-person transactions and sales processed through a third-party payment gateway instead of Shopify Payments carry different fee structures not reflected here.
Common Use Cases
- Shopify merchants pricing products to hit a target net margin after payment processing fees.
- Store owners deciding whether upgrading to a higher plan tier would pay for itself in reduced transaction fees.
- Finance teams reconciling expected payout amounts against gross sales figures.