Shopify Pricing in Australia: What You'll Actually Pay (2026)

Shopify’s Australian pricing page says the Basic plan costs $56 a month. True — and not what you’ll pay. Between payment processing, apps, and a GST quirk most owners miss, the real number sits comfortably higher.

Quick disclosure before the maths: I’m a Shopify Partner. Take that as both a credential and a bias, then check my working — every number here is Shopify’s current published Australian rate, laid out so you can budget properly before you sign up.

What are Shopify’s plans in Australia?

Two things the pricing page won’t shout about. Annual billing saves 25%, which on Basic is real money — about A$168 a year. And GST is added to your subscription unless you enter a valid ABN in your billing settings. Ten percent, every month, for skipping a two-minute form. Go and check yours now; I’ll wait.

What does Shopify take from each sale?

Using Shopify Payments (the built-in option), Australian domestic card rates by plan:

Here’s the trap to know about: use any payment gateway other than Shopify Payments and Shopify adds its own fee on top — 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced — in addition to whatever your gateway charges. That penalty is why almost everyone uses Shopify Payments, and honestly, for most stores it’s the right call anyway.

One 2026 note: with card surcharges ending on 1 October, you can’t pass these processing costs on as a checkout fee — they belong in your prices.

What do apps really add?

This is where “fifty-six dollars a month” quietly becomes something else. Most customisation beyond the basics — product configurators, date pickers, subscriptions, bundles — needs an app, and paid apps average around US$60 a month each. Most stores keep it to a handful (the median is only two or three), which still puts typical small-store app spend somewhere between US$50 and US$200 a month.

The pattern I see with clients: it’s rarely one big app. It’s three small “essential” ones that each felt reasonable at $19, $29 and $39 — and now the app bill outruns the plan. More on the sneaky ones in the hidden costs of running an online store.

So what’s the real monthly cost?

A worked example, assumptions stated so you can adjust for your own numbers. Say you’re a small store on Basic (annual billing), running two paid apps, selling A$5,000 a month across 50 domestic orders:

Roughly four times the headline price — and completely fine, if you budgeted for it. Processing scales with sales (a good problem), apps are a choice, and the plan is the smallest line on the bill. The trouble only starts when someone plans around $56 and meets $235.

For the build cost side — getting the store designed, configured and launched in the first place — that’s a separate number, and I publish mine.

When is Shopify worth it?

Genuinely, for most trading stores: yes. Day to day it’s straightforward to run — orders come in, you fulfil them, the software stays out of your way. That reliability is what you’re paying for, and once you’re selling steadily, it earns its keep.

Where I pump the brakes: if you’re testing a single product or taking pre-orders, a monthly platform bill before your first sale is the wrong shape for the job — that’s the launch-without-Shopify path. And remember the plan gets you an empty store. “Once it’s set up” is carrying a lot of weight in every Shopify success story — the setting up is the part people underestimate, in both hours and dollars.

Want this maths done for your actual situation? Bring your product count and rough monthly sales to a free 15-minute chat — we’ll land on your real number together, and whether Shopify is the right home for it. The bigger picture of store costs beyond Shopify lives in my online store cost guide.