The short version: Shopify Basic is $29 a month billed annually, or $348 a year, and its card rate starts at 2.9% plus 30¢ through Shopify Payments. Big Cartel Platinum is $15 a month, or $180 a year, takes no commission at all, and does not set your processing rate because you connect your own provider. Big Cartel also has something Shopify does not: scheduled product drops, built into its $30 Diamond plan. For a small food business selling a limited batch on a schedule, that one feature is worth more than the $168 a year Shopify costs on top.
Figures came from each company's own pricing pages in July 2026.
They are built for different sizes of business, and it shows in every part of the product.
Shopify is infrastructure. It scales from a first sale to a nine-figure brand, with an app ecosystem, multi-channel selling, warehouse integrations, and payment processing it operates itself. It is the default answer when someone asks what to build an online store on, and mostly for good reason.
Big Cartel is a shop for one maker. It has been aimed at artists and small producers since 2005, priced accordingly, and deliberately does less. You connect your own payment provider, the themes are simple, and there is no app marketplace to get lost in.
For a food seller, the differences that actually matter:
Same four disclosures on both.
| Shopify | Big Cartel | |
|---|---|---|
| Subscription | $29/mo Basic billed annually, $39 monthly · Grow $79 · Advanced $299 | $15/mo Platinum · $30/mo Diamond. A limited free Gold plan also exists. Annual billing is offered |
| Free trial | 3 days free, then $1/month for 3 months | 7 days free on Platinum, then $15/mo |
| Platform fee | $0 with Shopify Payments. 2% per order if you use any other processor | $0. No commission on any plan |
| Card processing | From 2.9% + 30¢ on Basic · 2.7% on Grow · 2.5% on Advanced | Not set by Big Cartel. You connect your own provider; checkout accepts cards, PayPal, and Afterpay |
That third row is the one people miss. Shopify's 2% is not a payment fee, it is a penalty for not using theirs. If you already have a processor you like, or a rate you negotiated, Shopify charges you 2% of every order for the privilege of keeping it.
At $1,500 a month in sales across 60 orders, so $18,000 a year:
Shopify Basic with Shopify Payments
Shopify Basic with an outside processor at 2.9% + 30¢
Big Cartel Platinum with an outside processor at 2.9% + 30¢
Big Cartel Diamond
So Big Cartel Platinum saves you $168 a year against Shopify Basic. Not nothing, but not enough on its own to decide anything. The interesting comparison is Diamond against Shopify Basic, where the money is a wash and the question becomes purely which product you want.
Two things about that arithmetic are worth flagging before anyone leans on it. First, the processing rate is the same in both Big Cartel columns only because I assumed the same provider. Big Cartel does not set that rate, so your actual number depends entirely on who you connect, and if you can get 2.6% somewhere, Big Cartel lets you keep it while Shopify would charge you 2% for the same choice. Second, Shopify's own rate improves on higher plans, reaching 2.5% on Advanced. That only matters at volume: the $299 tier costs $3,240 more a year than Basic, and a 0.4-point processing saving does not cover that until you are past $810,000 in annual sales. Below that, the cheaper plan wins every time, which is the same trap Square's tiers set.
Worth thinking about before you start, because it is the strongest argument for over-buying and it deserves a straight answer.
Big Cartel does less by design, so there are real ceilings: no app ecosystem, no multi-channel selling into marketplaces or social storefronts, and abandoned-cart recovery only at $30. A business that grows into wholesale, subscriptions, or serious inventory management will feel those limits.
What that migration actually costs is smaller than people fear. Your product data exports, your customer list is yours, and your domain moves with a DNS change. What genuinely hurts is losing accumulated search placement on product URLs, which is a real asset and the reason to plan redirects properly rather than to pick the bigger platform now. Paying $168 a year extra for three years to avoid one afternoon of migration is a bad trade, and it is the trade most first-time sellers make.
Big Cartel, and this is the finding worth the whole comparison.
Big Cartel's Diamond plan lists scheduled product drops as a feature. You set when a product becomes available, and it appears then. For a food business that bakes on Fridays and sells on Saturdays, that is the mechanic the entire week is built around.
Shopify has no native equivalent. You can approximate one by publishing products manually, using a scheduling app from the App Store, or building it with a bit of code. Apps for this exist and work, but they are a recurring cost on top of $29, and the total quietly becomes $40 or $50 a month for something Big Cartel includes at $30.
The honest caveat: Big Cartel's drop scheduling is timed availability, not the full drop apparatus. There is no countdown, no live demand display, no waitlist when you sell out, and no automatic text reminder. If that is what you need, a dedicated drop tool does more than either of these.
Our guide to running a weekly food drop covers what the model actually requires, which is usually less than vendors expect. Our breakdown of what Shopify really costs a cottage food business works the app-stacking problem through in more detail, and our look at Shopify alternatives for cottage food covers who outgrows it in the other direction.
Both list something here and neither is doing the whole job, so read the wording carefully.
Big Cartel's pricing page lists a feature called "Sales tax autopilot" on its plans. What that covers is not defined on the page, so it is worth asking directly whether it calculates, files, or remits. Those are three genuinely different things and the difference is hours of your life every quarter.
Shopify has nexus detection and tax calculation, and can flag where you may have crossed a threshold. Filing and remitting are still yours, either by hand or through a paid app.
Neither one, on the published evidence, files a return for you. The obligation is yours in every state where you have one, and no feature name on a pricing page changes that.
That last point is worth stating because Big Cartel is often described as bare-bones and it is not. At $15 you get digital products, unlimited discounted shipping labels, inventory tracking, discount codes, and Google Shopping. Assuming otherwise is the most common mistake in this comparison.
This is where both start to strain, because both were built for shipping boxes rather than handing someone a loaf.
That first one causes the most trouble. A vendor selling at a Wednesday market, a Saturday market, and from home on Sunday needs three schedules, three cutoffs, and three lists on order day. On either platform you end up either running the whole thing in the order notes or creating products that encode the pickup point, which then breaks your inventory.
If that is your week, Homegrown is $10 a month billed annually with 0% commission and 2.9% plus $0.30 processing published up front, and it handles pickup at each place you sell with its own schedule and cutoff, local delivery with a radius and a route, and sales tax calculated, filed, and remitted in all 50 states. The honest bounds: it does not ship nationally, has no app ecosystem, no abandoned-cart recovery, and no drop scheduling since drops are in development rather than live. If you ship across the country or need a specific integration, Shopify does things it does not. You can run a week of real orders through it alongside whatever you use now and compare directly.
Six questions, in the order that resolves this fastest.
If you want a number for question six rather than a feeling, put one month of your actual orders through a flat-fee storefront alongside the two on this page. Three real totals beat any amount of forecasting about the business you might have.
Question six is where most people over-buy. Choosing Shopify because you might be big in three years means paying $168 a year more now for capability you are not using, and platform migration is far easier than the anxiety around it suggests. Buy for the business you have.
One thing worth doing before you build on either: settle your shop name. Both platforms give you a storefront under your own brand, and a maker who has been trading for two years under a name someone else has registered has an expensive problem. The USPTO's trademark basics covers how to search and what registration actually protects. If you sell recipe cards, e-books, or any downloadable alongside the food, which Big Cartel supports natively at $15, the Copyright Office's registration guidance covers what protection you have and what registering adds.
Basic is $29 a month billed annually, or $39 monthly. Grow is $79 and Advanced $299. Card rates start at 2.9% plus 30¢ on Basic, 2.7% on Grow, and 2.5% on Advanced. The trial is 3 days, then $1 a month for 3 months.
Platinum is $15 a month after a 7-day free trial. Diamond is $30. There is also a limited free Gold plan. Big Cartel takes no commission on any plan, and annual billing is offered.
It applies to every order when you use a payment processor other than Shopify Payments. It is waived entirely if you use theirs. At $18,000 a year in sales that is $360 for no additional service.
No. Big Cartel takes 0% commission on every plan. You connect your own payment provider and pay that provider's rate directly, so what you pay depends on who you connect.
Big Cartel, on the $30 Diamond plan, which lists scheduled product drops. Shopify has no native equivalent and needs an app. Neither offers countdowns, waitlists, or SMS, so neither is a full drop tool.
Its pricing page lists "Sales tax autopilot" but does not define the scope. Ask directly whether it calculates, files, or remits, because those are different obligations and only one of them removes work from your quarter.
Big Cartel for most, at half the price with drop scheduling and no commission. Shopify if you ship nationally, sell across several channels, or need a specific app. Neither handles multi-location pickup well.
Big Cartel Platinum costs $180 a year against Shopify Basic's $348 and takes no commission, which makes it the cheaper answer for a small food business by a clear margin. Add Diamond's scheduled product drops at $30 a month and the total lands within $12 of Shopify Basic while doing something Shopify needs an app to do.
Shopify earns its price when you outgrow a simple shop: multi-channel selling, an app for every gap, and payments handled in-house. If you are shipping nationally and building a brand, that is worth $348 a year and more.
The trap to avoid is Shopify's 2% penalty. If you have a processor you want to keep, that clause costs $360 a year at $18,000 in sales and buys you nothing at all. Big Cartel does not have it.
