Shopware's pricing page lists four plans. Community Edition is free: visual page builder, product and order management, Shopware Payments, community support, access to the source code, your choice of hosting and implementation partner, and no platform licence fee. Rise starts at EUR 600 a month excluding VAT with the first 30 days free, and adds AI-assisted content creation, product customization, returns management and direct support from Shopware. Evolve starts at EUR 2,400 a month and adds B2B components such as quotes and purchasing approvals, advanced product search, customer-group content targeting and extended support with phone access. Beyond is quoted and adds a personal account manager, one-hour service reaction times and personal onboarding. Community support runs through a Discord channel with more than 6,000 users, and the free tier includes up to two written developer support tickets a month.
TL;DR
Both are open source and free to download: Shopware's Community Edition and WooCommerce's WordPress plugin cost nothing. The divergence is what surrounds them. Shopware's hosted tiers start at EUR 600 a month excluding VAT and go up quickly, aimed at B2B and mid-market stores in Europe. WooCommerce stays cheap because you assemble it yourself from hosting at $25 to $350 a month and extensions at $29 to $299 a year each.
WooCommerce prices itself as the opposite philosophy. The platform is free with no monthly subscription and no revenue share, and you pay for three things instead: hosting, which it estimates at $25 to $350 a month for most stores; extensions at $29 to $299 a year each; and payment processing, where WooPayments runs 2.50% to 2.90% plus 30 cents per transaction. Its own comparison table puts Shopify Basic at $29 a month, BigCommerce Core at $29 a month with an online revenue cap, and Adobe Commerce and Salesforce Commerce Cloud in the thousands, which is the framing it wants you to read the numbers in.
The comparison therefore is not which platform is cheaper - both have a free starting point - but how much commerce capability you buy without writing code. On Shopware, the B2B machinery, the advanced search and the customer-group content targeting arrive at EUR 600 to EUR 2,400 a month, and in return you get vendor support, onboarding and a platform roadmap. On WooCommerce, the equivalent capability is bought as individual extensions, integrated by you or a developer, at prices that stay small individually and compound collectively, with the advantage that no vendor can raise a platform fee on your revenue. If your market is European B2B, Shopware's packaged tiers map to how those projects are actually run. If your store is a catalogue, a theme and a payment processor, WooCommerce will almost always be the cheaper build.
| Feature | Shopware | WooCommerce |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Community Edition: free, self-hosted, source code access | Free plugin on WordPress, with no monthly subscription |
| First paid tier | Rise from EUR 600 a month excluding VAT | No platform tier; hosting from $25 a month |
| Upper tiers | Evolve from EUR 2,400 a month; Beyond quoted | Hosting up to about $350 a month plus enterprise hosting deals |
| Extensions | Included in the tier you buy | $29 to $299 a year per extension |
| B2B features | Quotes, purchasing approvals and budget management in Evolve | Purchased as individual extensions and custom development |
| Payments | Shopware Payments built in | WooPayments at 2.50% to 2.90% plus 30 cents, or any gateway |
| Revenue share | None on any tier | None, stated explicitly on the pricing page |
| Support | Community, Discord of 6,000+ users, direct support from Rise, phone from Evolve | Documentation, community forums and hired developers |
| Hosting | You choose the partner on Community; bundled on paid tiers | You choose, at $25 to $350 a month for most stores |
Pick Shopware if
Shopware's paid tiers are expensive because they are aimed at projects with real B2B requirements: quotes and purchasing approvals, budget management, customer-group content targeting, and a vendor who answers the phone. For a German or European mid-market build, that packaged capability plus local support is worth more than the EUR 600 monthly entry price, and the free Community Edition is a credible way to prototype before committing.
Pick WooCommerce if
WooCommerce is the cheaper path for a catalogue store, and it stays cheaper because you buy hosting and extensions instead of a platform tier, with no revenue share and no vendor who can reprice your business. Accept the trade: someone on your side has to own updates, performance, security and the compatibility between every extension you install.
No user reviews or ratings were collected for this comparison. Prices come from shopware.com's pricing page, which lists its tiers in EUR excluding VAT, and from woocommerce.com/pricing, including its hosting and extension cost ranges.
WooCommerce, in almost every small-store scenario: free plugin, hosting at $25 to $350 a month and extensions at $29 to $299 a year each. Shopware's first paid tier alone is EUR 600 a month excluding VAT. Shopware is only free if you self-host the Community Edition and do the work yourself.
Yes. The pricing page lists it at EUR 0 with source code access, a visual page builder, product and order management, community support and the freedom to choose your own hosting and implementation partners, with no platform licence fee.
WooCommerce states explicitly that there is no revenue share. Shopware's published tiers are flat monthly platform prices, with payments processed through Shopware Payments at its own processing rates rather than a revenue cut.
Shopware, out of the box: quotes, purchasing approvals, advanced product search, customer-group content targeting and budget management are packaged in Evolve at EUR 2,400 a month. WooCommerce can reach the same place, but assembles it from extensions and custom code.
Yes, in both directions, and both are open source so nothing blocks an export. Product, customer and order data moves through standard exports; the expensive part in either direction is rebuilding themes, extensions and integrations rather than moving rows.
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