Shopify app pricing strategy: choosing plans, a free trial and a pricing model

What Shopify App Pricing lets you set

Shopify App Pricing (called Managed Pricing until May 12, 2026) is the default way for a new public app to charge merchants. You set plans in the Partner Dashboard, merchants choose on a plan page Shopify hosts in their admin, and Shopify handles trials and proration. App Store apps must bill through App Pricing or the older Billing API (requirement 1.2.1) and let merchants upgrade or downgrade without contacting support or reinstalling (requirement 1.2.3). As of October 20, 2026:

The mechanics are in Shopify App Pricing: how the new billing works.

What the App Store requires on your listing

Prices go in the Pricing details section of your listing and nowhere else. Requirement 4.2 forbids them in the listing's images, including the app icon, and in other areas such as the logo, and asks for complete information, including the trial length and the details of each charge. Shopify's listing best practices add three points:

• Choose a primary billing method: Free to install, Recurring charge or One-time payment.
• With free and paid plans, choose Recurring charge and mark one plan as Free: search results then show "Free plan available".
• Put enterprise plans in the "Description of additional charges" field.

On the listings we read on October 20, 2026, the pricing section ended with two notes: "All charges are billed in USD" and "Recurring and usage-based charges are billed every 30 days". For the rest of the listing, see how to optimize a Shopify App Store listing.

What Shopify keeps, and why a low price weighs more

Shopify takes 0% of your first $1,000,000 of lifetime gross app revenue, counted since January 1, 2025, then 15%, after a one-time $19 registration. A 2.9% processing fee applies to all billing, separately. Developers with $20 million or more of App Store revenue the previous year, or $100 million or more of company revenue, pay 15% from the first dollar.

These are percentages: they take the same share of a $9.99 plan as of a $49.99 one. A low price changes the number of paying stores you need, and each store brings support and hosting costs that are not percentages. A made-up example, to keep $5,000 a month:

Sales tax, refunds and currency conversion are left out. Try your own prices in the revenue share calculator.

Five choices, and what to measure after each

Shopify gives you the settings, not the answer. Treat each choice as a bet to check against your own numbers a few months later:

• Free plan: a move from a paid plan to a free one takes effect at the end of the billing cycle, and the store keeps your app. Count it in revenue churn, not store churn (see how to measure churn).
• Trial: Shopify's billing docs suggest aligning with the free trial or $1 plan Shopify itself offers merchants. If you change a trial's length, days already used are subtracted from the new total. A trial converts when the first charge is billed, which the Partner API records as an AppSubscriptionSale. Since April 2026, merchants must pick a reason when they uninstall, and "Too expensive" is one of them.
• Plans: for the Built for Shopify badge, a feature reserved to a higher plan must look and behave disabled on lower plans, and the plan it needs must be obvious (requirement 4.3.7, see Built for Shopify). The churn and LTV calculator turns churn by plan into a lifetime value.
• Usage: with no cap, a merchant cannot limit the bill. Shopify advises showing the fee and possible usage charges before a merchant subscribes, letting merchants follow their usage in the app, and including some usage in the base fee. Usage charges are revenue but not recurring: follow them next to your MRR, not inside it (how to calculate MRR).
• Annual: you enter a monthly and a yearly price, and the gap is your discount. Usage charges cannot be added to a yearly-only plan, and in MRR an annual plan counts as its price divided by twelve.

Plan changes, discounts and price increases

Shopify handles plan changes: the merchant picks a new plan on the hosted page and Shopify applies proration. The Partner API records a change as SUBSCRIPTION_UPDATED, and a downgrade to a free plan as SUBSCRIPTION_CANCELLATION_SCHEDULED until it takes effect. For one merchant, the Partner Dashboard offers a discount (type, value and duration, applied from the next billing cycle) or extra trial days; Shopify's documentation suggests these before a private plan when all you need is a price incentive.

Raising a price is less documented. Shopify's App Pricing page lists price updates among the tasks it automates without saying what current subscribers see. The Partner Program Agreement (version of February 27, 2026) requires developers who change an app's price or pricing structure to notify merchants, with no set delay. On Shopify's developer forum on October 15, 2025, when App Pricing was still Managed Pricing, a Shopify staff member explained that you change the public plan's price and keep current merchants at their old price with a permanent discount or a private plan. When Billing API subscriptions move to App Pricing on new terms, merchants get at least 30 days before the change and an email from Shopify comparing the old and new terms.

The benchmarks that are public

Few, and none by category with a stated method. What we found, as of October 20, 2026:

We found no public source with a method for trial conversion by trial length, churn by plan or prices by category. A figure without a date, a sample and a definition is not a benchmark: compare your own cohorts month to month.

How to read your competitors' prices

Open their App Store listing. The Pricing section shows each public plan with its monthly price in US dollars, the yearly price if any, the trial length, the features and any additional charges, often with a "See all pricing options" link. On category pages, each app card carries a note such as "Free plan available", "Free trial available" or "Free to install".

Compare what the first paid plan includes, not only its price, and whether usage charges come on top. Private plans and single-merchant discounts never appear on a listing, so merchants may pay a competitor less than its listed prices. Date each reading: prices can change at any time.

Luseri shows your MRR and what moved it (new subscribers, plan changes, cancellations) and, for each store, its plan and history, so you can see what a price change did. Its competitor readings put each rival's entry price next to its rating and rank.