BigCommerce prices on annual billing and attaches a revenue ceiling to each tier. Core is $29 a month billed annually, for new businesses up to $30,000 in trailing-twelve-month sales, and the page notes the plan auto-upgrades to Growth when you cross it. Growth is $79 a month annually, for businesses scaling toward $100,000, with the same auto-upgrade behaviour to Scale. Scale, marked most popular, is $299 a month annually and caps at $33,333 a month of GMV with 0.9% charged on GMV above the cap. Performance is custom pricing starting at $1,499 a month billed annually, with custom payment terms and a dedicated customer success manager. The page defines annual sales as trailing-twelve-month GMV calculated as gross order value minus 10%, and advertises 25% savings for annual over monthly billing. All published tiers include zero transaction fees with embedded payment providers and 24/7 support, with live phone and chat from Growth upward.
TL;DR
BigCommerce is a hosted platform with published prices and sales-volume ceilings: Core $29 a month billed annually up to $30K of trailing revenue, Growth $79 up to $100K, Scale $299 with a $33,333 monthly cap and 0.9% charged above it, and Performance from $1,499 a month. Shopware is open-source with commercial editions: Community Edition free to self-host, Rise from EUR 600 a month, Evolve from EUR 2,400 and Beyond by quote. BigCommerce is the faster route to a store; Shopware is the route for teams that want the code and are selling in Europe.
Shopware prices by edition and keeps the floor at zero. Community Edition is free: open source with access to the source code, visual page builder, product and order management, Shopware Payments support and community support channels. Rise is from EUR 600 a month excluding VAT, with the first 30 days free, adding AI-assisted content creation, product customization, returns management and direct support from Shopware. Evolve is from EUR 2,400 a month excluding VAT, adding B2B components such as quotes and purchasing approvals, advanced product search, customer-group content targeting and phone support. Beyond is quoted, and covers customer-specific pricing, multi-location inventory and digital sales rooms. Shopware publishes its catalogue in euros and states prices exclude VAT.
The decision is hosted convenience against owned code. BigCommerce gives you checkout, hosting, PCI scope, updates and a channel feed out of the box, and charges you for growth through the GMV ladder rather than through add-on apps; the ceiling on each tier is the part to read twice, because crossing it either moves you up a plan or adds a percentage. Shopware gives you a German-engineered, open-source platform you can host yourself or buy as a managed edition, which suits European retailers with developers and B2B complexity, and which asks for a five-figure monthly commitment once you leave the free tier.
| Feature | BigCommerce | Shopware |
|---|---|---|
| Free option | Free trial on the hosted plans | Community Edition, free, self-hosted, open source |
| Entry paid plan | Core, $29 a month billed annually, up to $30K trailing sales | Rise, from EUR 600 a month excl. VAT, first 30 days free |
| Mid tier | Growth, $79 a month annually, up to $100K trailing sales | Evolve, from EUR 2,400 a month excl. VAT |
| High tier | Scale, $299 a month annually, $33,333 monthly GMV cap | Beyond, quoted by sales |
| Enterprise | Performance, custom from $1,499 a month annually | Beyond, with customer-specific pricing and multi-location inventory |
| Revenue ceilings | Yes: $30K and $100K trailing, 0.9% above the Scale cap | None on the published editions |
| Platform | Hosted SaaS with managed checkout, PCI and hosting | Open source core; managed editions sold by Shopware |
| Payment fees | Zero fees with embedded payment providers on published tiers | Shopware Payments listed across editions, subject to its own terms |
| B2B tooling | Available through the platform and app ecosystem | Quotes, purchasing approvals, customer-group content from Evolve |
| Support | 24/7 chat and email on Core, live phone and chat from Growth | Community support on Community Edition, direct and phone support on Rise and Evolve |
| Currency of published prices | US dollars, annual billing required for the listed rates | Euros, excluding VAT |
Pick BigCommerce if
Choose BigCommerce if the priority is launching and selling rather than running infrastructure. Core at $29 a month on annual billing covers a real store with zero platform fees on embedded payments, and Growth at $79 is where live phone support arrives. Read the ceilings before you commit: the $30,000 and $100,000 trailing-sales caps, and the 0.9% above $33,333 a month on Scale, mean the plan you start on is not necessarily the plan you scale on.
Pick Shopware if
Choose Shopware if you have developers, want to own the platform, or are building European B2B commerce. Community Edition is free and self-hosted with full source access, which is the cheapest way to evaluate the platform seriously. Rise at EUR 600 a month is where support and managed operations begin, and Evolve at EUR 2,400 a month is the tier where quotes, approvals and customer-group content earn their keep.
We did not collect an independent review corpus for this pair, so nothing above is user sentiment. Every figure comes from the two vendors' own pricing pages, fetched on the date shown at the top of this page.
BigCommerce, by a distance. Core is $29 a month billed annually, and Shopware's cheapest commercially supported edition, Rise, starts at EUR 600 a month excluding VAT. Shopware's Community Edition is free, but it assumes you supply the hosting and the engineers.
Core is for up to $30,000 in trailing-twelve-month sales and auto-upgrades to Growth at $79 a month when you cross it; Growth covers up to $100,000 and auto-upgrades to Scale. Scale allows $33,333 a month of GMV and charges 0.9% on GMV above that cap. The page defines GMV as gross order value minus 10% over a trailing 12 months.
Community Edition is free and open source, with source code access, a visual page builder, product and order management and community support. What it does not include is hosting, upgrades, security patching or a support contract, and the commercial Rise edition is where those arrive.
Shopware, for organisations with customer-specific pricing, approval workflows and mixed wholesale patterns: Evolve adds quotes, purchasing approvals, advanced search and customer-group content targeting, and Beyond adds customer-specific pricing and multi-location inventory. BigCommerce handles B2B through its platform and app ecosystem, which is a lighter-touch route.
BigCommerce states zero fees with embedded payment providers on its published tiers, and Scale adds 0.9% only on GMV above its monthly cap. Shopware lists Shopware Payments across its editions, with its own payment terms, and Community Edition users typically pay their chosen payment provider directly.
Because that is what the vendors served: BigCommerce's pricing page published US dollars with annual billing, and Shopware's published euros excluding VAT for its editions. Each vendor localises, so check the figures for your own billing country before budgeting.
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