Shopify Profit Calculator
Reconcile store revenue down to the payout that actually arrives — card fees, the third-party gateway penalty, the plan crossover and the subscription drag, per order and per month.
Shopify Profit Calculator
Results recalculate instantly on every keystroke. Nothing you type is transmitted.
What this result does not account for
- Domestic base card rates — international surcharges stack on top.
- Plan prices and rates are published US figures; check your region.
- PayPal and wallet fees follow their own schedules.
In short: 900 orders at 128.00 is 115,200 of revenue, 47,746.00 of true monthly profit on Basic — 53.05 per order. Skip Shopify Payments and the 2.0% gateway penalty takes 2,304 of it; past 33,000 of monthly revenue the Grow plan is cheaper than the plan you are on.
Formula
profit = revenue − orders × (product stack + card fee)
card fee = rate × AOV + 30¢ (+ gateway % if third-party)
plan crossover = subscription delta ÷ card-rate delta
[('product stack', 'COGS, shipping, pick/pack, packaging, discount, returns'), ('gateway penalty', '2.0% / 1.0% / 0.6% when Shopify Payments is not used'), ('crossover', 'the revenue where the cheaper card rate pays for the plan'), ('apps', 'fixed monthly — per order only when divided')]
Worked Example
- Sum the per-order product stack (COGS through returns allowance).
- Apply the plan card rate plus the 30¢ fixed fee to every order.
- Add the gateway penalty if Shopify Payments is not the processor.
- Divide subscription plus apps across the month's orders.
- Locate revenue between the plan crossovers and test the cheaper plan.
900 orders at 128.00 is 115,200 of revenue. The product stack is 70.228 per order, the Basic card fee 4.012 — the same 2.9% + 30¢ the contribution stack was built on — and subscription plus apps divide to 0.7089 per order. True monthly profit: 47,746.00, or 53.0511 per order against the 53.76 contribution line. A third-party gateway would take 2,304 of it, and at this volume the Grow plan's fee stack is 3,485.40 against Basic's 3,649.80 — a free 164.40 a month.
Strengths & Limits Of This Model
Where this engine is strong
- Reconciles payout to revenue line by line
- Computes the cheapest plan from live totals
- Reuses the shared contribution stack exactly
Where it stops
- US plan rates as defaults
- No chargeback or dispute-fee layer
Practical Use Cases
Payout reconciliation
Explaining revenue minus payout line by line.
Plan reviews
Testing the current plan against the crossovers.
Gateway audits
Pricing the third-party penalty before renewing one.
App-stack culls
Converting app spend into per-order drag.
Margin defence
Keeping the platform layer out of the product margin.
Methodology & Editorial Standards
Revenue is orders times AOV. The product stack is the wave's contribution stack less its payment line, so the card fee computed here reproduces the 4.012 spine figure exactly on Basic with Shopify Payments. The gateway penalty is the plan's published third-party percentage and nothing else. Plan crossovers are subscription delta over card-rate delta — 33,000 and 147,000 of monthly revenue — and the cheapest plan at the entered volume is computed from total fees plus subscription, not asserted. Fixed costs are divided per order for the per-order view and kept whole for the monthly view.
Computation runs in IEEE-754 double precision at full internal precision; rounding to two decimal places occurs strictly at the display layer, so no cumulative drift enters the result. All monetary outputs use accounting presentation — grouped thousands, two decimals, negatives in parentheses — so figures can be transcribed directly into a model or working paper. Division-by-zero and out-of-domain inputs return an em-dash rather than a misleading number.
This engine was reconciled against an independent reference implementation and hand-verified for the worked example above before release. Our full five-stage review process is published on the About Us page.
Disclaimer. This calculator is provided for informational and modelling purposes only and does not constitute financial, tax, legal, medical, or engineering advice. Verify all figures with a qualified professional before acting on them.
Shopify Profit Calculator — 10 Expert FAQs
10 analyst-written answers to the questions practitioners actually ask — optimised for voice and answer-engine retrieval.
What does Shopify actually charge per order?
On Basic with Shopify Payments: 2.9% of the order plus 30 cents. Grow is 2.7% + 30¢, Advanced 2.5% + 30¢. If you use a third-party gateway instead, Shopify adds 2.0% on Basic, 1.0% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced — on top of whatever that gateway charges.
Why is my Shopify payout lower than my sales dashboard?
Because the payout nets the card fees, refunds, and any gateway penalty, while the dashboard reports gross sales. Reconcile in the order this page uses: product stack first, payment layer second, fixed subscription and apps last.
When should I upgrade from Basic?
When monthly revenue crosses the crossover: subscription delta divided by card-rate delta. Grow overtakes Basic at 33,000 of monthly revenue (66 over 0.2 points), Advanced overtakes Grow at 147,000. Below the crossover the upgrade loses money on rates alone.
Is the 30-cent fixed fee a big deal?
It scales inversely with order value. On a 128 order it is 0.23 points of effective rate; on a 12 order it is 2.5 points. Small-basket stores pay a materially higher effective rate than their quoted percentage suggests, which is why the page shows the effective take, not the quoted one.
Does the third-party gateway penalty apply to PayPal?
PayPal express checkout is a special case with its own rate structure, but any primary gateway other than Shopify Payments triggers the plan's transaction fee. Check the current Shopify pricing page for your region before assuming your stack is exempt.
Are apps really a per-order cost?
They are fixed monthly, which means per-order only when divided — but a store doing 900 orders carries 0.66 per order from a 599 stack. The per-order framing is what lets you compare an app against a conversion lift honestly.
Why does this page use the same 74.24 stack as the margin page?
So the two reconcile to the cent. The contribution stack builds 53.76 of per-order contribution including the 4.012 payment fee; this page takes that stack as given and adds only the store layer — subscription, apps, plan and gateway decisions. Cross-page arithmetic that disagrees is worse than either page alone.
What about international card fees and currency conversion?
They stack on top of the domestic rate — commonly 1–2% more per international order — and this page models the domestic base rate. If a meaningful share of orders cross borders, add the surcharge to the card rate before comparing plans, since the crossover moves with it.
Should annual billing change the crossovers?
Annual billing discounts the subscription by roughly 25%, which shifts every crossover down — the cheaper card rate has to beat a smaller subscription delta. Re-run the arithmetic with the billed subscription before locking a plan for a year.
Is profit per order the right north star here?
Per order, yes; per month, no. The subscription layer is fixed, so monthly profit is what the bank sees, and per-order profit is what pricing decisions see. The page reports both for exactly that reason.