BigCommerce 2026 Pricing Changes: New Plans, GMV Caps & Fees

The BigCommerce 2026 pricing changes took effect on 1 June 2026, and the headline — “base prices are unchanged” — hides where the cost actually moved. Standard, Plus, Pro and Enterprise are renamed Core, Growth, Scale and Performance; the GMV thresholds that decide your plan dropped sharply; and a brand-new Open Payment Provider Fee of up to 2.0% now applies to any order settled through a third-party gateway. For most BigCommerce merchants we work with, the real story is not the subscription line — it is the fee and the threshold maths. Here is the full breakdown and the cost model we run for clients in 2026.

What actually changed on 1 June 2026

Three mechanics changed at once, plus two that are easy to miss. Plans were renamed and repriced at the top tier; the trailing-twelve-month GMV ceilings that auto-upgrade you between tiers were cut; and an Open Payment Provider Fee now taxes any order not processed through a BigCommerce-embedded gateway. Underneath, BigCommerce also changed how it measures your GMV, and — for the first time — lets you manage your plan yourself from the account dashboard. All figures below are USD; UK merchants are billed in dollars.

The renames and the headline prices

Four plans, four new names. Core and Growth keep the exact base prices of Standard and Plus, and Scale keeps Pro's base price. The only base-price change is at the top, where Enterprise becomes Performance with custom pricing starting around $1,499/month.

If the base prices held, where is the catch? In the two mechanics most merchants will not notice until the invoice lands.

The threshold cuts are the quiet upgrade tax

Every BigCommerce plan has a GMV ceiling. Cross it on a trailing twelve-month (TTM) Inclusive GMV basis — evaluated on the first of each month — and you are auto-upgraded to the next tier. On 1 June those ceilings dropped, so the same revenue now lands you a tier higher than it did under the old names.

There is a second, subtler change underneath the thresholds. BigCommerce evaluates them on Inclusive GMV — your gross order value after a fixed reduction — and that reduction factor moved from 3% to 10% on 1 June. So the GMV figure BigCommerce now uses is your gross multiplied by 0.90 (it was 0.97), and it will not match the number in your own reports or your payment provider's dashboard. That is expected, not an error — but if you sit near a threshold, trust the account dashboard over your internal GMV.

The Open Payment Provider Fee is the real story

This is the part to read twice. BigCommerce has historically been the platform that did not tax you for using a third-party gateway — that was Shopify's model. As of 1 June, BigCommerce charges an Open Payment Provider Fee on all self-serve plans: a percentage of the GMV from any order processed through a gateway that is not on its Embedded Payment Provider list.

Three mechanics matter for finance and engineering. The fee is billed by BigCommerce to you — monthly, calculated on the prior calendar month, regardless of whether your subscription bills monthly or annually — and it is separate from whatever your gateway already charges. It must not be passed through to shoppers as a checkout surcharge; most card-network rules and local laws restrict that, and compliance is on you. And it is attributed at the order level to the provider that actually processed each payment.

That last point is the one that catches teams out. Offering an embedded provider as a checkout option does not make an order fee-free if the shopper pays another way. BigCommerce's own example: your store offers PayPal Wallet (an Embedded provider) alongside credit cards via NMI (an Open provider). A shopper who pays by card through NMI generates the fee; the same shopper paying via PayPal Wallet does not. Your checkout menu does not determine the fee — the actual processor on each order does.

How is the Open Payment Provider Fee calculated?

The fee is charged on your Open Payment Provider GMV, which BigCommerce defines as your reduced (Inclusive) GMV minus the GMV that Embedded providers processed at the order level:

Open Payment Provider GMV
  = Inclusive GMV (gross x 0.90)
  - Embedded-provider GMV (per order)

Monthly fee = Open Payment Provider GMV x rate
  (Core 2.0% / Growth 1.0% / Scale 0.6% / Performance 0%)

The result is floored at zero — if every order settles through an Embedded provider, no fee applies. So there are only two ways to bring the fee down: route more orders through Embedded providers, or move to a contracted Performance plan where the rate is 0%. Note the list of Embedded providers can change over time, and any change applies to future orders only — it never re-prices GMV you have already been billed for.

Scale's overage model is smoother — and sometimes cheaper

The old Pro plan charged a fixed fee for each $200K block of GMV above its threshold, which created unpredictable step-up charges — cross a boundary by a dollar and a whole block fee landed. Scale replaces that with a continuous rate: 0.9% on Inclusive GMV above $33,333/month, with no tier jumps and no block charges.

Concretely, a store doing $50K in a given month pays roughly 0.9% × ($50,000 − $33,333) ≈ $150 of overage that month, scaling linearly with revenue. For seasonal businesses whose GMV swings month to month, that predictability is a genuine improvement over the block model. At $2M TTM the account auto-upgrades to Performance, where overage drops to 0.6% on GMV above $250K/month.

Where your store lands after 1 June

Your destination plan is a function of your current plan and your TTM Inclusive GMV:

A few operational details that catch people out: contracted Enterprise customers are unaffected beyond the rename to Performance. Multi-store accounts are evaluated per store, so you may get a separate notification — and a separate plan — for each. Plan management is now self-serve from the account dashboard for the first time, with upgrades taking effect immediately and downgrades at the start of your next service period. And Core no longer bundles phone support (a paid add-on is coming); Growth includes it.

How do I work out my new all-in BigCommerce cost?

Model four line items against your last twelve months, not just the subscription: base plan + destination tier + Open Payment Provider Fee on your open-gateway GMV + any Scale overage. The “price unchanged” messaging only describes the first line. This is the framework we use when we run the numbers for clients:

Next steps — model it before the first invoice

This is a cost-structure change, not a feature change, so the work is modelling and routing — not migration. In order:

1. Model your real all-in cost. Subscription + destination tier + Open Payment Provider Fee on your open-gateway GMV + any Scale overage. The headline “price unchanged” messaging hides the threshold and fee deltas — put real numbers against your last twelve months.
2. Audit your payment routing. Pull the gateway behind your orders and check it against the current Embedded Payment Provider list. Every order on an Open provider now carries 0.6%–2.0% depending on your tier.
3. Decide Embedded vs Open on net cost, not the fee alone. For a UK store on an Interchange++ gateway at scale, the interchange savings can still beat an Embedded provider even after the fee; for a smaller store on blended pricing, switching to Embedded and zeroing the fee often wins. Run both.
4. Lock annual if you are staying put. Annual billing fixes your price for twelve months and lowers the monthly rate versus month-to-month.
5. If you are pushed to Scale or Performance, talk to the account team about contracted terms. Performance zeroes the Open Payment Provider Fee, which at volume can outweigh the subscription difference entirely.
6. Re-run your platform and architecture math if the all-in number moves. A new payment-routing cost changes the case for a headless Catalyst build (where you control checkout) and your wider BigCommerce-vs-Shopify decision.

Engineering action: before 1 July, run your last twelve months of GMV and your live payment-routing split through the new structure — destination tier, Open Payment Provider Fee, and Scale overage — so the first invoice under the new model holds no surprises. If you run multiple storefronts, model each one separately (they are evaluated independently). We help BigCommerce merchants model the all-in cost and re-architect payment routing — tell us your plan, GMV and gateway and we will run the numbers. If the new cost shifts your platform math, our multi-storefront and platform-decision guides cover the trade-offs.