BigCommerce Pricing 2026: Core, Growth, Scale and the GMV Caps

BigCommerce costs $29/mo on Core, $79/mo on Growth and $299/mo on Scale billed yearly in 2026, or $39, $105 and $399 billed monthly, with Performance starting at $1,499/mo on a yearly contract. The catch is that you do not pick the plan: BigCommerce moves you up by trailing 12-month sales, so a store past about $9,300 a month in orders lands on Scale. Prices verified Oct 2026.

Every figure here was read on BigCommerce's pricing page on 17 October 2026, and the Shopify comparison on Shopify's pricing page the same day. Toolradar data: Toolradar, the software directory we run, evaluated 108 ecommerce platforms for its October 2026 ranking, and BigCommerce is one of them. Our view: the list prices match Shopify's almost to the dollar, so the real comparison is the sales caps, not the sticker.

The arithmetic that matters is the cap. By our calculation, Core ends at roughly $2,800 a month in gross orders and Growth at roughly $9,300, so most stores that are serious about ecommerce pay Scale money within their first year.

BigCommerce plans at a glance

Every plan includes a 15-day free trial with no credit card, unlimited products, file storage and bandwidth, staff accounts, a single-page checkout, real-time shipping quotes and a free dedicated SSL. Core, Growth and Scale have no contract and can be cancelled from the control panel; only Performance is sold on a contract. Our BigCommerce review covers the product; this page covers the bill.

How BigCommerce decides which plan you are on

BigCommerce's plans are priced by sales, not by features you choose. The pricing page defines GMV as gross order value minus 10%, calculated on a trailing 12-month basis, and the plan thresholds are set in that number. That 10% haircut means the caps are a little more generous than they look: $30K of GMV is about $33,300 of actual orders, and $100K of GMV is about $111,100.

Divide by twelve and the plans map to monthly order volume. Core covers a store doing up to about $2,800 a month, Growth one doing up to about $9,300 a month, and anything above that is Scale. When your trailing 12-month GMV crosses a threshold, BigCommerce notifies you and upgrades the plan automatically; the page says there is no overage charge on Core and Growth, only the move to the next tier.

Scale works differently. It includes $33,333 of GMV a month (about $37,000 of orders) and charges 0.9% on GMV above that, with no tier jumps or block charges. A store doing $100,000 of orders a month, so $90,000 of GMV, pays 0.9% on the $56,667 above the cap, which is $510 on top of the $299 or $399 subscription. Once trailing 12-month GMV reaches $2 million, the account moves to Performance, where the price and the payment terms are negotiated.

The Scale description on the page targets "fast-growing businesses with $1M in annual sales", and the economics bear that out. A $1M store sits at about $75,000 of GMV a month, so it pays roughly $375 of overage plus the plan, and still avoids the Performance contract.

What a store really pays at $2,500 to $150,000 a month

The scenario: a US store selling online, paying with standard cards through PayPal Braintree at BigCommerce's published base rate of 2.89% + 29¢, with a $60 average order and yearly billing. Gross sales are converted to GMV at 90%, the plan is the one BigCommerce's caps assign, and the Scale overage is added where it applies. Totals exclude apps, themes, shipping and sales tax, and they are our arithmetic, not a BigCommerce quote.

The jump that hurts is the one from $5,000 to $10,000 a month, where the subscription almost quadruples because trailing GMV passes the Growth cap. Card fees are the bigger line at every volume: at $10,000 a month they are more than the plan, and at $150,000 they are four times the subscription and overage combined. The overage itself stays modest, at $105 a month for a $50,000 store and $915 for a $150,000 store.

Growth and Scale merchants can apply for negotiated Braintree rates below the 2.89% base, but the pricing page says eligibility requires a US business, an accepted plan, a Braintree application and a signed pricing contract, and it does not publish the negotiated rate. Treat the base rate as your planning number until a contract says otherwise.

The open payment provider fee

BigCommerce charges nothing extra when orders run through an embedded payment provider, a list of 20 names on the pricing page that includes BigCommerce Payments, Stripe, PayPal Braintree, PayPal Complete Payments, Adyen, Klarna, Affirm, Afterpay, Amazon Pay, Checkout.com and Worldpay. Any processor not on that list is an open payment provider, and BigCommerce bills a monthly fee on the GMV of those orders: 2.0% on Core, 1.0% on Growth, 0.6% on Scale and 0% on Performance with a contract.

The fee is charged by BigCommerce to the merchant as a separate line on the invoice, on top of whatever the processor charges. For the smallest Scale store in our table it is 0.6% of $9,000 of GMV, so $54 a month; for a $2,500 store on Core it is $45 a month, which is more than the plan itself. Any store on a processor outside the list should check the price of switching before it checks anything else. BigCommerce notes that the embedded list can change over time and that updates apply to future orders only.

Hidden costs beyond the plan

The subscription and the card rate are the start of the bill, and these items sit outside the plan grid:

• Extra storefronts. Multi-storefront is an add-on at $30/mo per storefront on Core (up to 3), $50/mo on Growth (up to 5) and twice that again on Scale (up to 8), with Performance quoted by sales.
• Phone support on Core. 24/7 phone support is included from Growth up; Core customers get chat and email, and the page says a paid phone add-on for Core is coming with pricing to be shared separately.
• Priority support. Express routing and priority support is an add-on on Growth and Scale, priced on request.
• Monthly billing. Paying month to month adds $10 on Core, $26 on Growth and $100 on Scale compared with the yearly rate, which is a 25% difference on the yearly plan. Monthly billing makes sense only if you expect to leave inside a year.
• Apps and themes. BigCommerce's own figure is over 1,200 apps, each with its own price, and paid themes are a one-time cost on top. An email, reviews and loyalty stack can outgrow the plan the way it does on Shopify; our cart abandonment guide shows which tools earn their fee.
• Inventory locations. Core allows up to 4 locations, Growth up to 5 and Scale up to 8, so a retailer with more stores than that needs Performance. See best POS systems for the in-store side.
• Feedonomics Surface. Ad-channel feeds for Google, Meta, TikTok, Microsoft and Pinterest are free on every plan up to 100,000 SKUs, one of the few add-ons that costs nothing.

Which features change between plans

Core includes the storefront, checkout, coupons and gift cards, multi-currency, real-time shipping quotes, reporting, a blog, product reviews and the ShipperHQ shipping rules engine. What it lacks is the conversion kit: customer groups and segmentation, the abandoned cart saver, persistent cart and stored credit cards all start on Growth. For a store doing $5,000 a month, the abandoned cart emails alone can justify the $50 step up from Core, and in practice the sales cap forces the step at $2,800 anyway.

Scale adds Google customer reviews, product filtering and custom product filtering on top of Growth. Faceted search matters once a catalog is large enough that shoppers cannot scroll it, which is often the same point at which sales pass $100K. Price lists for B2B customer groups and advanced promotions management are Performance-only, so a wholesaler who needs SKU-level pricing by customer group is a Performance buyer whatever their volume.

BigCommerce vs Shopify on price

The subscriptions are identical at the first three tiers: Shopify's Basic, Grow and Advanced carry the same three yearly prices as Core, Growth and Scale, read on the US pricing page on 17 October 2026. Online card rates through Shopify Payments start at 2.9% + 30¢ on Basic, 2.7% on Grow and 2.5% on Advanced, against a flat 2.89% + 29¢ base through PayPal Braintree on BigCommerce. Shopify's third-party gateway fees are 2%, 1% and 0.6% by plan, the same ladder as BigCommerce's open provider fee.

The difference is who chooses the plan. Shopify lets a store at the top of our table stay on Basic if it accepts the higher card rate; BigCommerce's caps put that store on Scale with $915 of overage. On our $60-order scenario with yearly billing, the three larger stores in our table pay about $369, $1,679 and $4,799 a month on Shopify Basic, Grow and Advanced, against $636, $2,091 and $6,274 on BigCommerce. The gap is mostly the plan the caps force, not the card rate.

BigCommerce answers with features Shopify charges for. Unlimited staff accounts come on every plan, where Shopify gives none on Basic and 5 on Grow; multi-currency, customer groups and B2B price lists are built in rather than app purchases. Our Shopify pricing guide prices the Shopify side in full, the Shopify vs BigCommerce page weighs the two end to end, and Toolradar's Shopify vs BigCommerce comparison gives the data view.

Is there a free BigCommerce plan?

There is no free plan. The 15-day trial is fully functional, needs no credit card, and can take live orders once a payment provider is connected. At the end of the trial BigCommerce keeps the store data for 90 days while the storefront is closed to shoppers, then deletes it. A seller who wants $0 a month for longer than two weeks should read our free ecommerce website comparison, where WooCommerce and the free tiers are priced out.

Which BigCommerce plan should I choose?

• You will be on Core if trailing orders are under about $33,000 a year. Pay yearly, use an embedded processor, and expect the upgrade notice when sales pass $2,800 a month.
• You will be on Growth between about $33,000 and $111,000 of orders a year. The abandoned cart saver and phone support arrive here, and the open provider fee halves to 1.0%.
• You will be on Scale above that, at the Scale rate plus 0.9% of monthly GMV over $33,333. Budget the overage from the start: $105 a month at $50,000 of orders, $915 at three times that.
• Ask about Performance at $2M of trailing GMV, or earlier if you need B2B price lists, more than 8 inventory locations or a zero open provider fee.
• Reconsider BigCommerce if the caps are the problem. Our cheaper Shopify alternatives page prices the rivals at the volume where BigCommerce starts charging Scale money, WooCommerce pricing prices a self-hosted store, and best ecommerce platforms ranks the field. The product verdict on Shopify is in our Shopify review.

How we built this page

We read BigCommerce's US pricing page, its plan feature grid and its payment processing table on 17 October 2026, and Shopify's US pricing page the same day. Totals are our arithmetic on the published rates in the scenario above, with GMV taken as 90% of gross orders as BigCommerce defines it, and are not a BigCommerce quote. We did not run a BigCommerce store for this page. Toolradar's catalog count comes from its October 2026 ecommerce platforms ranking. We re-check the page when BigCommerce changes a plan, a cap or a fee. Louis Corneloup, who founded Toolradar and Dupple, edited it.

FAQ

How much does BigCommerce cost per month in 2026?

Core is $29/mo billed yearly or $39/mo billed monthly, Growth is $79/mo or $105/mo, and Scale is $299/mo or $399/mo, as read on BigCommerce's pricing page on 17 October 2026. Performance starts at $1,499/mo on a yearly contract. Card processing and apps come on top.

What is a GMV cap on BigCommerce?

BigCommerce calculates GMV as gross order value minus 10%, over the trailing 12 months. Core covers up to $30K of GMV and Growth up to $100K, after which the plan upgrades automatically. Scale includes $33,333 of GMV a month and charges 0.9% on GMV above that, and accounts move to Performance at $2M.

Does BigCommerce charge transaction fees?

Not on orders through its embedded payment providers, a list that includes Stripe, PayPal Braintree, Adyen, Klarna and Amazon Pay. Orders through any other processor carry an open payment provider fee of 2.0% on Core, 1.0% on Growth and 0.6% on Scale, billed by BigCommerce on top of the processor's own charge. Card processing through Braintree starts at 2.89% + 29¢.

Is BigCommerce cheaper than Shopify?

At list price they are equal: the three self-service tiers cost the same on both, billed yearly. BigCommerce usually costs more in practice because its sales caps assign the plan: the smallest Scale store in our table pays about $636 on BigCommerce Scale against $369 on Shopify Basic in our scenario. BigCommerce includes unlimited staff accounts and B2B features Shopify sells as apps or on higher plans.

Does BigCommerce have a free trial?

Yes, 15 days with no credit card, and the trial store can take live orders once a payment provider is connected. After the trial, the data is kept for 90 days while the store is offline, then deleted. There is no permanent free plan.

Can I cancel BigCommerce at any time?

Core, Growth and Scale have no contract and cancel from the control panel, with billing stopped immediately. Performance is sold on a contract, and its starting price of $1,499/mo is billed annually.

Cite this: Retailpresso, "BigCommerce Pricing 2026: Core, Growth, Scale and the GMV Caps", October 2026.

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