Every Shopify-vs-WooCommerce cost comparison you will find is written for a merchant in the United States. If you are selling from India, one of the biggest line items in that comparison does not exist for you and another one does not exist for them. Here is what is actually on the bill, with the numbers each company publishes.
The software itself
WooCommerce is free. Not freemium-with-a-catch — its makers state it plainly on their own pricing page:
WooCommerce is the free, open-source ecommerce platform for WordPress. Build a custom online store and only pay for the added features you use — no platform fees, no revenue share.
Their own cost breakdown lists the core platform as "Free, with no monthly subscription", hosting at "$25 – $350/month for most stores", and paid extensions at "$29 – $299/year per extension". In their comparison table the monthly platform fee line is "$0 platform fee" and the revenue-share line is "None".
Shopify is a subscription. On the India price list (shopify.com/in/pricing), the monthly/yearly rates are:
| Plan | Pay monthly | Pay yearly |
|---|---|---|
| Basic | ₹1,994/mo | ₹1,499/mo |
| Grow | ₹7,447/mo | ₹5,599/mo |
| Advanced | ₹30,164/mo | ₹22,680/mo |
| Plus | from ₹1,75,000/mo | — |
Shopify's own FAQ confirms "There are no setup fees on any of our plans." One gotcha if you go check: the page shows the yearly rate by default on the plan cards, so if you read only the big number you will quote yourself a price you are not paying unless you commit for a year.
The fee Indian sellers usually discover after the first payout
Shopify Payments — Shopify's in-house card processor, the one that makes the "no transaction fee" claim work — does not operate in India. India is not on Shopify's own list of supported countries for Shopify Payments (the list runs to about 40 countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, … the UK and the US; India is not among them).
That has a direct consequence. Every Indian Shopify store has to take payments through a third-party gateway — Razorpay, PayU, Cashfree — and Shopify's own FAQ says:
Third-party transaction fees may apply when you use a third-party payment provider (instead of Shopify Payments). The rate depends on your plan.
So an Indian merchant pays the gateway's percentage and Shopify's third-party transaction fee on top, on every order. A merchant in a Shopify Payments country pays one of those, not two. Worth noting honestly: Shopify no longer publishes the actual third-party percentages on the India pricing page — the comparison-table row is gone and the FAQ string in the page source is an unresolved template. So plan for the fee to exist; get the current rate from Shopify before you commit, not from a blog (including this one).
The gateway, which you pay either way
Razorpay's published headline on its pricing page is 2% platform fee on domestic payments, currently with a 0%-for-the-first-90-days promotion, and 2.15% + GST specifically for credit card on UPI. This one is not a Shopify-vs-WooCommerce difference — you pay it on both. It just makes the Shopify stack a fee on a fee.
So what repeats every month?
WooCommerce: hosting + gateway percentage. That's it. No licence, no plan, no cut of sales. What you are really buying with the missing monthly fee is a maintenance obligation — somebody has to keep WordPress, the theme and the plugins patched, and if that somebody is not you, it is a bill.
Shopify: plan + gateway percentage + Shopify's third-party transaction fee. In exchange, hosting, updates and security are not your problem at all.
The crossover
The honest version is that neither is "cheaper" in the abstract — it depends entirely on your sales volume, because one cost is fixed and the other is a percentage.
Below roughly ₹13 lakh a year in online sales, Shopify tends to win: ₹1,994/month is ₹23,928 a year and the transaction percentage on small volume is small, while a maintained WooCommerce store costs roughly the same in upkeep whether you sell ₹2 lakh or ₹20 lakh. Above that, the percentage keeps climbing and the maintenance bill doesn't.
And below about ₹2 lakh a year in expected online sales, the honest answer is neither — sell on Instagram and WhatsApp with a payment link and build the store when there is volume to justify it.
Sources
- WooCommerce pricing — https://woocommerce.com/pricing/
- Shopify India pricing — https://www.shopify.com/in/pricing
- Shopify Payments requirements / supported countries — https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/payments/shopify-payments/shopify-payments-requirements
- Razorpay pricing — https://razorpay.com/pricing/
Disclosure: I write for ZoopCoder, an Indian development studio that builds on both platforms and is paid either way — though not equally, so read the recommendation with that in mind. For reference, our fixed prices are ₹19,999 for a WooCommerce store with 30 products and Razorpay, and ₹14,999 for a Shopify setup; the platform fees above are billed to you by Shopify/Razorpay, never by us. The full crossover arithmetic at four revenue levels is in our e-commerce cost guide.
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