Transaction Fees Compared Across 8 Store Builders (2026)

Ecommerce transaction fees are quoted in a dialect designed to resist comparison: some builders lead with a low plan fee and claw it back per order, others advertise 0% fees that turn out to be conditional, and one charges nothing a month while running the highest online rate in the table. So we audited all eight on identical terms. One table, one $50 order, every fee on the receipt.

Method first, then the ledger, then the three species of fee you are actually paying, then what moved in 2026 — a busier year for fee schedules than the previous three combined.

Methodology: identical terms for all eight

Each builder is priced on its cheapest plan that runs a real store, on annual billing, using its own or default payment gateway, for a US standard-card transaction. The test order is $50. The columns keep the percentage, the fixed cents, and the platform surcharge separate, because the three behave differently as your order size changes — a distinction most comparisons flatten into a single misleading number.

Where a figure could not be fully verified, it is marked approximate. Everything else was checked against official fee schedules and current pricing pages in August 2026.

GoDaddy Commerce appears in the table for completeness — around $20.99 a month at the time of checking, with GoDaddy Payments at 2.7% + $0.30 producing the ledger's lowest $50-order cost at $1.65 — but it sits outside our regular audit rotation, so treat that row as a courtesy entry.

Two readings of the last column. As a share of the order, the fees run 3.50% effective for the 2.9% + $0.30 platforms, 3.57% for BigCommerce, 3.90% for Square Free, and 5.50% for Squarespace Basic once its 2% physical surcharge posts. And note what the column excludes: the plan fee. Amortized over our standard 40 orders a month, a $29 plan adds $0.725 to every order — nearly half again the processing cost on a $50 sale — which is exactly why a $0-plan builder with a worse rate can still win at low volume.

One caveat travels with every row: the plan-fee column assumes annual billing. Month-to-month, Shopify Basic and BigCommerce Core both step from $29 to $39, Wix Core to $36, and Squarespace Basic to $25 — differences worth $72–$120 a year that the headline stickers do not volunteer.

The three species of fee

Species one: the processing percentage, charged by the payment gateway on every order. The modal rate is 2.9% — five of the eight charge exactly that through their default gateways — with outliers at 2.59% (BigCommerce's default Braintree pricing) and 3.3% (Square's Free plan after its January hike). This is the fee you feel at every order size equally.

Species two: the fixed cents — $0.30 nearly everywhere, $0.49 at BigCommerce. Fixed fees are regressive: $0.30 is 0.6% of a $50 order but 3% of a $10 order, so a sticker-and-prints store pays roughly double the effective rate of a furniture store on the same schedule. BigCommerce's $0.49 is also why its lower percentage still loses the $50-order contest to the 2.9% platforms, $1.79 to $1.75.

Species three: the platform surcharge, charged by the builder on top of processing. Squarespace Basic takes 2% on physical goods — 0% from Core up, and past roughly $500 a month in physical sales that 2% costs more than the $10 upgrade to Core. Shopify takes 2.0% on Basic only if you decline Shopify Payments. BigCommerce takes 2.0% on Core only if you process outside its roughly 21 approved embedded providers. The 2026 pattern: platform surcharges are now penalties for using the wrong gateway, not blanket taxes.

What moved the table in 2026

January 13: Square raised online processing from 2.9% to 3.3% + $0.30 on the Free plan and from 2.6% to 2.9% + $0.30 on paid plans — the year's largest single hike, and the reason the only $0-a-month store now carries the worst online rate we track.

March 2: Ecwid discontinued its free plan; the entry point is now Starter at $5 a month for up to 10 products. June 1: BigCommerce renamed its plans, added trailing-12-month GMV thresholds with automatic upgrades — Core trips at $30K — and introduced the Open Payment Provider Fee, 2.0% on Core for gateways outside its approved list, ending the old blanket 0%-fees pitch.

Early July: Squarespace raised plan prices by up to 26% without an announcement — Basic moved from $16 to $19 a month on annual billing, Core from $23 to $29. The processing rates held; the fixed line underneath them rose.

Net effect of 2026: no headline processing rate fell, two entry costs rose, one free tier died, and two builders converted 0%-fee promises into conditional ones. Audit annually; the table does not hold still.

How to read your own numbers

The formula is four terms: monthly cost = plan fee + (revenue × processing %) + (orders × fixed fee) + (revenue × platform %). Worked at $2,000 a month across 40 orders: Square Free $78.00, WooCommerce about $85.00, then Shopify Basic, Wix Core, and Squarespace Core all at $99.00, BigCommerce Core $100.40, and Squarespace Basic $129.00 — a $51 monthly spread on identical sales, before a single feature is compared. Order size moves the total more than most sellers expect: the same $2,000 taken as 200 ten-dollar orders quintuples the fixed line from $12.00 to $60.00 without touching the rate.

Your store is not the average store — order size moves the fixed fee, and revenue moves everything else. Run your own volume and order count through our fees calculator: it prices all eight builders on your numbers, ranked cheapest first, using exactly the rates in the table above.

Fees are half the decision; the machine attached to them is the other half. For the full weighting — checkout quality, ecosystems, ceilings — see our ranking of the best ecommerce website builders, where this fee table is one input among several.