What does a Shopify order actually leave me?
Every figure on this page is a share of that number.
Display only. Your figures are read in the currency you pick — nothing is converted and no exchange rate is applied.
What the shopper paid, before anything is taken out.
Enter what the shopper paid, before anything is taken out. Every figure on this page is a share of that number, so there is nothing to compute until it is supplied.
- • Needed: the order value, before anything comes out
- • Needed: your card rate, as a percentage
- • Needed: your per-transaction fee
- • Needed: cost of goods as a share of the order, for the margin pair
Third-party provider surcharge percentages: Shopify, shopify.com/pricing, checked 20 September 2026. Those percentages are set by plan rather than by country, so the currency picker does not change them. The card rate and per-transaction fee are whatever you enter above, never a rate this page supplies. The currency is a label: your figures are read in the currency you choose and nothing is converted. The worked examples further down the page are a fixed illustration and stay in US dollars whichever currency you pick here.
Nothing you type is sent anywhere. There is no account, no install and no store connection — the arithmetic runs where you are reading it.
The fee is per order. The basket is the lever.
A fixed per-transaction fee costs the same on a $40 basket as on a $90 one, so order value is the only term on this page you control. Cart total is a targeting condition in Nudgesmart, so the offer can go to the baskets that are short.
How it's calculated
Your Shopify payout is what is left of an order once payment processing has been taken out, so a $60 order processed at a rate of 2.9 percent plus 30 cents settles at $57.96.
This page does not publish a card rate. Shopify card rates differ by country, by plan and by card type, and shopify.com/pricing is geo-localised — checked on 20 September 2026 it served pricing for a different country with no card rate on it at all. So the rate and the per-transaction fee are yours to enter, from your own billing page. The one rate used here is the third-party provider surcharge, which is set by plan: Basic 2%, Grow 1%, Advanced 0.6%, Plus 0.2% — Shopify, shopify.com/pricing, checked 20 September 2026.
Subtraction, in the order the money leaves. The only difficult part is knowing your own rate, and that is deliberately something this page asks you for rather than tells you.
- Order value
- What the shopper paid, before anything comes out. Every percentage on the page is a share of this figure, including the ones you supply, so a discount applied at checkout belongs here as the discounted amount rather than the list price.
- Card rate and fixed fee
- YOUR figures, not ours. Payment processing is charged as a percentage of the order plus a fixed amount per transaction. This page will not tell you what Shopify charges you: the rates vary by country, plan and card type, and a wrong fee figure is worse than no tool. Take yours from your own billing page and type it in.
- Third-party provider surcharge
- The one rate this page does assert, because it is set by plan rather than by country: Basic 2%, Grow 1%, Advanced 0.6%, Plus 0.2%. It is added by Shopify when the order is taken through a gateway other than Shopify Payments, on top of what that gateway charges you, and it is zero on Shopify Payments.
- Payout
- Order value minus every fee above — what reaches your bank for this order. It is not profit and it is not margin; it is the last figure before your own costs start.
- Contribution
- Payout minus the cost of the goods and minus the shipping and handling you absorb. This is the number that actually pays for advertising, rent and everything else, and it is the one a generic margin calculator never reaches because it stops before the fees.
- Margin on paper against margin after everything
- The margin you would quote from the product page, beside the margin the order really produced. The distance between them is the fee drag, reported in percentage points so it can be read straight across to the break-even ROAS your advertising has to clear.
Nudgesmart is available on the Shopify App Store. Browse the template library or see what it costs.
What different orders actually leave behind
Illustrative arithmetic, not customer data, and the card rate in every row is an input chosen to keep the arithmetic legible rather than a rate published for anybody. Every output is produced by the same function the calculator above runs.
| Scenario | Order | Fees | Fee share | Payout | Contribution | Margin after fees |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Typical basket, Shopify Payments | $60.00 | $2.04 | 3.4% | $57.96 | $33.96 | 56.6% |
| Small basket, same rate | $24.00 | $1.00 | 4.2% | $23.00 | $12.20 | 50.8% |
| Same order through a third-party gateway, Basic | $60.00 | $3.24 | 5.4% | $56.76 | $32.76 | 54.6% |
| Same order through a third-party gateway, Advanced | $60.00 | $2.40 | 4% | $57.60 | $33.60 | 56% |
| High order value, very thin margin on the goods | $180.00 | $5.52 | 3.1% | $174.48 | $26.88 | 14.9% |
| Low-price order with free shipping absorbed | $18.00 | $0.82 | 4.6% | $17.18 | -$1.22 | -6.8%loses money |
Rows three and four are the same order through a third-party gateway on two different plans, which is the only thing the plan changes here. Row six is the one to sit with: a small order with free shipping absorbed, where the goods and the postage together cost more than the payout — and where the fee is the smallest part of the problem even though it is the part everyone looks at. The margin after fees is the figure to carry into break-even ROAS.
What this number doesn't tell you
The subscription is not in here, on purpose
A monthly plan fee does not scale with an order, so folding it into a per-order figure produces a number that changes with your order count rather than your economics. Work out the per-order picture here and treat the subscription as the fixed cost it is.
Rates vary by country, plan and card type
International cards, currency conversion, in-person sales and premium card types are all charged differently in most markets. The rate you enter is one rate; your real blended rate across a month of orders will differ, and your payouts report is where to find it.
Refunds and chargebacks are not modelled
A refunded order does not always return the processing fee, and a chargeback carries its own charge. A catalogue with a high return rate has an effective fee drag well above anything this page will show for a single clean order.
One order is not one month
This is per-order arithmetic on a single basket. Stores with a wide spread of order values have a blended picture that no single row represents — run it at your smallest basket and your largest and the honest answer is somewhere between.
Cost of goods is rarely one percentage
Entering a single figure for the whole catalogue hides the products where the real answer is uncomfortable. The row worth running is your worst-margin product at your most common order value.
Questions
What are Shopify fees on an order?
Two separate things. A payment processing fee, charged as a percentage of the order plus a fixed amount per transaction, and — only if you take payment through a gateway other than Shopify Payments — a third-party provider surcharge set by your plan. The subscription is a monthly cost and does not scale with the order, so it is not part of this arithmetic.
What card rate should I enter?
Your own. This tool deliberately does not print a rate as though it were yours, because Shopify card rates differ by country, by plan and by card type, and they change. The figure you want is on your Shopify billing page, or in the payouts report next to an order you already shipped.
How much is the third-party payment provider fee?
It is set by plan: Basic 2%, Grow 1%, Advanced 0.6%, Plus 0.2%, as published on shopify.com/pricing and checked on 20 September 2026. It applies on top of whatever the gateway itself charges you, and it does not apply at all to orders processed through Shopify Payments.
Why is my margin lower than I calculated?
Because a margin taken from the product page is the margin before payment processing, before the shipping you absorb and before pick and pack. Fees are a percentage plus a fixed amount, so they take a bigger bite out of a small order: on a low-value basket the fixed part alone can be several points of margin.
Do fees hurt small orders more?
Yes, and it is the fixed part that does it. A per-transaction fee is the same on a $12 order as on a $200 one, so as a share of the order it is many times larger on the small basket. That is the arithmetic behind free-shipping thresholds and minimum order values, and you can watch it move by changing the order value in the calculator.
Does this tool need my store, an account or an install?
No. It runs in the page, takes figures you already have, and sends nothing about your store anywhere.
The fee is fixed per order. The basket is not.
Cart value is a targeting condition in Nudgesmart, so the offer that lifts a basket can fire on the baskets that need lifting.
