Shopify Basic or Grow in India? Do the Fee Maths First
Most Indian Shopify stores choose between Basic and Grow by looking at the monthly price. That is the wrong number to start with. Shopify Payments is not available in India, so most stores take payments through Razorpay, Cashfree or another third-party gateway, and Shopify charges a transaction fee on those orders that falls as you move up a plan. Past a certain level of prepaid sales, the bigger plan costs less overall. This guide shows where that line sits, and the other reasons to upgrade.
Prices and fee rates below are from Shopify's India pricing page and Help Centre, checked on 29 September 2026. Check your own admin before deciding, because prices change.
Why do Indian stores pay a Shopify transaction fee?
Because Shopify Payments is not offered in India. Shopify's list of supported countries does not include it, so Indian stores use third-party providers. Shopify's help page on third-party transaction fees says the fee applies "when you use a third-party payment provider to accept customer payments," and that "the rate for third-party transaction charges varies depending on your pricing plan."
This fee is Shopify's, and it is charged on top of what your gateway charges you. We compare the gateways themselves in our Razorpay and Cashfree guide.
Which orders does the fee apply to?
Only prepaid orders through a gateway. Shopify states that "transaction fees don't apply for POS orders or for manual payment methods, which include cash on delivery (COD), bank deposits, checks, test orders, and draft orders marked as paid or pending."
For Indian stores that detail changes the whole calculation. A store where most orders are COD pays very little in transaction fees, whatever its total sales. Two stores with the same revenue can reach completely different answers depending on how many customers pay online.
The fee is calculated on more than the product price. Shopify's formula is "[(cost of products - discounts) + tax + shipping charges] x rate," so shipping and tax count towards it.
What do Basic, Grow and Advanced cost in India?
From Shopify's India pricing page at the time of writing:
| Plan | Monthly billing | Yearly billing (per month) | Third-party fee | Staff accounts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | Rs 1,994 | Rs 1,499 | 2% | No additional staff |
| Grow | Rs 7,447 | Rs 5,599 | 1% | Up to 5 |
| Advanced | Rs 30,164 | Rs 22,680 | 0.6% | Up to 15 |
All three list 10 inventory locations. Advanced adds live third-party shipping rates.
When does Grow cost less than Basic?
When your monthly prepaid gateway sales pass about Rs 4.1 lakh on yearly billing, or about Rs 5.45 lakh on monthly billing.
The working, so you can check it against your own numbers. On yearly billing, Grow costs Rs 4,100 a month more than Basic (Rs 5,599 minus Rs 1,499). Grow's fee is one percentage point lower (1% instead of 2%). One percent of Rs 4.1 lakh is Rs 4,100, so at that level of prepaid sales the saving on fees exactly pays for the higher plan. Above it, Grow is cheaper overall. On monthly billing the gap is Rs 5,453, which gives the higher break-even.
Remember that the figure to compare is your prepaid gateway sales, including tax and shipping, not your total sales. Take last month's orders, remove COD and POS, and use what is left.
What does that look like for a real store?
Here are two illustrative stores, not client figures, with the same revenue and different payment mixes. Both do Rs 10 lakh a month in sales, and both are comparing Basic and Grow on yearly billing, where Grow costs Rs 4,100 a month more.
Store A: 45 percent of sales are COD. That leaves Rs 5.5 lakh a month through the gateway. On Basic, the 2% fee comes to Rs 11,000. On Grow, the 1% fee is Rs 5,500. The fee saving of Rs 5,500 is larger than the Rs 4,100 extra for the plan, so Grow is cheaper by Rs 1,400 a month, before counting any of Grow's other features.
Store B: 80 percent of sales are COD. Only Rs 2 lakh a month goes through the gateway. The fee on Basic is Rs 4,000 and on Grow Rs 2,000. The Rs 2,000 saving does not cover the Rs 4,100 difference, so Basic is cheaper by Rs 2,100 a month on fees alone.
Same revenue, opposite answers. That is why the number to work from is prepaid gateway sales, and why a store that is moving customers away from COD should revisit this decision every few months. The more of your customers pay online, the sooner the bigger plan pays for itself.
Store B is also the more common shape for a young Indian D2C brand, and for it the stronger reasons to consider Grow are usually staff access and features rather than fees.
When does Advanced cost less than Grow?
Much later. On yearly billing, Advanced costs Rs 17,081 a month more than Grow, and its fee is 0.4 percentage points lower. The break-even is about Rs 42.7 lakh a month in prepaid gateway sales, or about Rs 56.8 lakh on monthly billing.
Very few stores should move to Advanced for fees alone. The reasons to go there are usually staff accounts, live carrier rates for international shipping, or reporting needs. If you are weighing Advanced against Plus, our Plus versus Advanced guide covers that decision.
What else does Grow give you besides a lower fee?
Several features that growing stores run into before they hit the fee break-even:
- Staff accounts. Basic includes no additional staff accounts. Grow includes up to 5. If your team currently shares one login, that is a security problem as well as an inconvenience.
- Rollouts experiments. Shopify's Rollouts requirements state that "Experiments are available to stores on the Grow plan or higher." That is Shopify's native A/B testing for themes and checkout, explained in our Rollouts guide.
- Custom apps that use customer personal data. Shopify's custom apps documentation says that to access Custom Level 2 PII apps "your store must be on the Grow plan or higher," and warns that downgrading to Basic removes that access. If you are planning an integration that reads customer details, such as a CRM or loyalty sync, check this before building.
What should you check before upgrading?
- Your prepaid share. Pull the last three months of orders and split them by payment method. If you are actively moving customers from COD to prepaid, which most Indian D2C brands are, use where the share is heading, not only where it is. Our guide to reducing COD and RTO explains why that shift pays off in its own right.
- Your seasonality. A store that crosses the break-even only in festive months may still come out ahead on Grow for the year, or may not. Add up twelve months, not the best one.
- Yearly or monthly billing. Yearly billing lowers the break-even considerably, but commits you for the year.
- The features you need soon. Staff accounts, experiments or a planned integration can justify Grow before the fee maths does.
- Your gateway's own fees. These do not change with your Shopify plan, but they matter when comparing total payment costs across gateways.
How do you find your prepaid sales figure?
From your own orders, not an estimate. Export the last full month of orders from the admin, then split them by payment method. Add up the order totals, including tax and shipping, for everything paid through a gateway. Leave out COD, bank transfers, POS sales and draft orders marked as paid, since Shopify does not charge the fee on those.
Repeat it for two or three months so a single sale or a quiet week does not decide the plan for you. If the figure sits close to the break-even, the other features are usually what tips the decision.
Can you move back down later?
Yes, but check what you lose first. Shopify warns that a store moving to Basic loses access to Custom Level 2 PII apps, so any integration built on that access would stop working. Staff accounts beyond Basic's allowance would also need to be dealt with. Plan changes are simple in the admin. Undoing the things you built because of the higher plan is not.
Want the maths done on your real numbers?
Free plan check. Get in touch or email hello@exactwhy.com with the subject "Plan check" and your store URL. Share a rough monthly split between prepaid and COD. We reply within 4 hours with which plan costs you least today, where your break-even sits, and what would change the answer.
Payments and checkout review. If the bigger opportunity is moving more customers to prepaid, we review your checkout, gateway setup and COD rules together and show where the fees and the RTO losses are coming from.