Shopify Plus vs Advanced comes down to capabilities, not fees. Plus starts at GBP 1,950 a month on a one-year term against GBP 259 for Advanced, and its lower card rate only pays that back at roughly GBP 10 million a year through Shopify Payments. Upgrade when you need checkout extensions on the payment steps, custom Functions or higher API limits.
The arithmetic comes first below, then the list of what Plus unlocks for the people building on the store. That list changed during 2026, so an older comparison will mislead you.
What does Shopify Plus cost compared with Advanced?
All figures here are the UK prices on Shopify’s pricing page and Plus pricing page as of October 2026.
Advanced is GBP 344 a month billed monthly, or GBP 259 a month billed yearly. Plus starts at GBP 1,950 a month on a one-year term and GBP 1,800 a month on a three-year contract. Those Plus figures are a floor. Shopify says that “more complex, higher volume businesses switch to a variable platform fee based on their revenue and business model”, and it does not publish the percentage, the threshold or any cap. Agency blogs quote numbers for all three. None of them is a Shopify source, so treat any variable-fee figure you read as a guess until a Plus sales rep puts one in writing.
Payment fees are where the gap narrows. The pricing page lists UK online card rates of 1.5% + 25p on Advanced and 1.3% + 25p on Plus. If you use a third-party payment provider instead of Shopify Payments, Shopify adds its own transaction fee: 0.6% on Advanced and 0.2% on Plus. The Plus page also notes that Plus card rates vary by country, so get a quote for your market before you build a spreadsheet on them.
Expansion stores matter if you run several brands or regions. Plus includes the main store plus nine expansion stores; each one after that is GBP 250 a month. On Advanced, every store is a separate subscription.
When do the lower Plus fees pay for the upgrade?
Later than the headline rates suggest. The fixed 25p per transaction is the same on both plans, so only the percentage difference counts. Here is the break-even point as a function you can run with your own numbers:
type Plan = { monthlyFee: number; cardRate: number; thirdPartyFee: number };
// UK list prices, October 2026 (shopify.com/pricing, shopify.com/plus/pricing)
const advanced: Plan = { monthlyFee: 259, cardRate: 0.015, thirdPartyFee: 0.006 };
const plusOneYear: Plan = { monthlyFee: 1950, cardRate: 0.013, thirdPartyFee: 0.002 };
/** Annual online GMV (GBP) at which Plus's lower percentage fees cover its higher subscription. */
function breakEvenGmv(from: Plan, to: Plan, gateway: "shopify-payments" | "third-party"): number {
const extraSubscription = (to.monthlyFee - from.monthlyFee) * 12;
const rateSaving =
gateway === "shopify-payments"
? from.cardRate - to.cardRate
: from.thirdPartyFee - to.thirdPartyFee;
return extraSubscription / rateSaving;
}
console.log(Math.round(breakEvenGmv(advanced, plusOneYear, "shopify-payments"))); // 10146000
console.log(Math.round(breakEvenGmv(advanced, plusOneYear, "third-party"))); // 5073000The subscription difference is GBP 20,292 a year. On Shopify Payments the saving is 0.2 percentage points, so you need about GBP 10.1 million of annual online sales before the rates cover it. With a third-party gateway the saving is 0.4 points and the break-even drops to about GBP 5.1 million. A three-year contract at GBP 1,800 brings those to roughly GBP 9.2 million and GBP 4.6 million.
And by the time a store is doing that volume, it may be on the variable fee, which moves the target again. So do not upgrade to save on fees. Upgrade because a feature on the list below is blocking something you need to ship.
What can developers do on Plus that Advanced blocks?
Five. Four are hard gates, where the platform refuses outright on Advanced. The fifth, API throughput, is a ceiling you can sometimes design around.
Checkout UI extensions on the information, shipping and payment steps
The checkout UI extensions docs say it directly: “Checkout UI extensions for the information, shipping, and payment steps are available only to stores on a Shopify Plus plan.” Advanced stores can still run extensions on the Thank you and Order status pages. So a gift-message field, a delivery-date picker or a B2B PO number input in the middle of checkout means Plus. Our guide to checkout UI extension targets goes through what runs where.
Custom apps that contain Shopify Functions
From About Shopify Functions: “Stores on any plan can use public apps that are distributed through the Shopify App Store and contain functions. Only stores on a Shopify Plus plan can use custom apps that contain Shopify Function APIs.”
This is the gate that changes how you scope a build. On Advanced you can still have a bundle, a tiered discount or a hidden delivery rate, but only if an App Store app already does it. The moment the logic is specific to one merchant, such as pricing pulled from their ERP or a delivery rule built on their warehouse metafields, you are writing a custom app, and that custom app needs Plus. A cart transform function for bundles is a typical example.
Admin API throughput
The GraphQL Admin API rate limits restore at 200 points per second on Advanced and 1,000 on Plus, per app per store. The legacy REST Admin API goes from 4 to 20 requests per second. If an ERP or PIM sync is spending its night waiting on throttles, five times the restore rate is a real fix. Bulk operations sidestep the limit for large exports, though, so check whether the job could use them before you pay for headroom. Our post on budgeting Shopify GraphQL rate limits by query cost shows how to read the throttle status.
Checkout branding through the API
The checkoutBrandingUpsert mutation “requires access to checkout branding settings and the shop must be on a Plus plan or a Development store plan”, per the Admin API reference. On other plans the mutation is refused, so styling stays inside the checkout editor in the admin. If a design system needs typography, corner radii and colour schemes beyond what the editor exposes, that is a Plus requirement.
Wholesale at scale
B2B used to be the headline reason to move to Plus. That has changed. Shopify’s B2B plan comparison now gives Basic, Grow and Advanced companies, catalogs, net payment terms, self-serve ordering and Flow automations. The limits are what remain. Non-Plus plans get up to three active catalogs across all B2B markets. Plus gets unlimited catalogs, catalogs assigned directly to individual companies and locations for customer-level pricing, and deposits, partial payments and per-fulfilment payment requests. A wholesaler with one trade price list fits on Advanced. One with a negotiated price list per account does not.
Which old reasons to choose Plus no longer apply?
Four of them.
Shopify Scripts were Plus-only, and they stopped executing on 30 June 2026. Their replacement is Functions, which any plan can use through a public app.
checkout.liquid is gone on every plan, so “full checkout control” now means the extension targets above, nothing more.
Multipass is “no longer available to new stores”. Stores that already use it keep it, but a new Plus contract will not get it. For single sign-on on a new build, Shopify points you at a third-party identity provider.
And basic B2B, as covered above, no longer needs Plus.
How do you check which plan a store is on?
If your app behaves differently per plan, ask the API rather than trusting a setting someone typed in. This query works against the current stable Admin API version, 2026-10, which shipped on 1 October 2026:
query ShopPlan {
shop {
plan {
publicDisplayName
shopifyPlus
partnerDevelopment
}
}
}shopifyPlus is the field to branch on. publicDisplayName returns values such as Advanced, Plus or Plus Trial, and partnerDevelopment is true on dev stores, which can use some Plus-gated features, the checkout branding API among them, for testing. That matters: an extension that works on your dev store can still fail on the merchant’s Advanced store, so check the plan before you promise a feature.
Shopify Plus vs Advanced: should you upgrade?
Stay on Advanced if your checkout changes fit the Thank you and Order status pages, every Function you need exists as an App Store app, your syncs finish inside 200 points a second, and your B2B pricing fits in three catalogs.
Move to Plus when one of the five gates above is blocking a specific piece of work you can name, or when you are close to the GBP 5 to 10 million band and you also run several stores. If the only argument is “we are growing”, wait. The plan can change later; a three-year contract cannot.
If you are weighing the upgrade alongside a replatform, the gates above are also the questions to ask in a Magento to Shopify migration.
We build Shopify stores, custom apps and Functions on both Advanced and Plus, and we can tell you which gate, if any, your roadmap actually hits. Our Shopify development page covers how we work on either plan.