WooCommerce runs 48.1% of all e-commerce systems that W3Techs tracks, ahead of Shopify’s 31.7%, according to the web-technology survey firm’s August 28, 2026 crawl of the open web. The two platforms together account for nearly four in five of every tracked e-commerce system. But market share alone hides the more interesting split: one platform is growing, the other is shrinking, and the reasons trace directly back to how each one is built and priced.
This article puts the two platforms head to head on market share, store counts, growth trend, cost, disclosed revenue, geography, and app ecosystem, using each metric’s own named primary source rather than a single blended “winner” score.
How do Shopify and WooCommerce compare on market share?
WooCommerce leads on every measure W3Techs publishes: 48.1% of tracked e-commerce systems, 11.7% of all websites whose content management system is known, and 8.1% of all websites outright. Shopify trails on the same three measures at 31.7%, 7.6%, and 5.3% respectively. WooCommerce’s advantage comes from being a free plugin on WordPress, the world’s most-used content management system, while Shopify is a paid, hosted service competing for a narrower slice of site owners willing to pay a monthly fee.
Figure 1: Share of all e-commerce systems W3Techs can identify, by platform. Source: W3Techs, “Usage Statistics and Market Shares of E-Commerce Systems,” August 28, 2026.
Warning
W3Techs updates this crawl daily, and its own numbers move week to week. A companion article on this site cited 48.4% and 31.2% using July 30, 2026 data; the 48.1% and 31.7% figures here reflect the same live survey four weeks later. Treat any single-day snapshot as directional rather than fixed.
Every platform below the top two is a rounding error by comparison: PrestaShop holds just 2.9% of tracked systems, OpenCart 1.9%, and no other named platform clears 2%. In practical terms, the e-commerce platform market is a two-horse race, even though W3Techs tracks more than a dozen systems individually.
| Platform | Share of e-commerce systems | Share of all websites |
|---|---|---|
| WooCommerce | 48.1% | 8.1% |
| Shopify | 31.7% | 5.3% |
| PrestaShop | 2.9% | 0.5% |
| OpenCart | 1.9% | 0.3% |
| Nuvemshop/Tiendanube | 1.6% | 0.3% |
| Adobe Commerce (Magento) | 1.5% | 0.3% |
| Cafe24 | 0.9% | 0.2% |
Source: W3Techs, “Usage Statistics and Market Shares of E-Commerce Systems,” August 28, 2026.
Which platform has more live stores, and which is growing?
Store Leads, which verifies activity using DNS data rather than counting any domain with the platform’s code present, counted 4,091,670 live WooCommerce stores as of August 21, 2026, well ahead of Shopify’s 2,898,351 live stores in its mid-2026 report. On raw store count, WooCommerce is still the larger platform by a wide margin.
The direction of travel tells a different story. WooCommerce’s live store count fell 8% year over year in Q2 2026, while Shopify’s grew 11% year over year and 1.1% quarter over quarter over the same period. WooCommerce is not shrinking because merchants are abandoning WordPress outright; a large, mature, decade-old installed base naturally loses more marginal, abandoned, or consolidated stores each year than a newer platform still in its growth phase. Shopify’s smaller base has more room to keep compounding.
If both trends hold at their current pace, the store-count gap between the two platforms narrows every year from here, even though WooCommerce starts 2026 with 1.4 times as many live stores as Shopify.
How much do Shopify and WooCommerce cost to run?
The two platforms use fundamentally different pricing models. Shopify is a hosted subscription: its Basic plan costs $39 a month ($29 a month billed annually), Grow costs $105 a month ($79 annually), and Advanced costs $399 a month ($299 annually), each tier adding lower Shopify Payments transaction rates, from 2.9% + 30 cents on Basic down to 2.5% + 30 cents on Advanced. A merchant who routes payments through a third-party processor instead of Shopify Payments pays an additional 2%, 1%, or 0.6% surcharge depending on plan.
WooCommerce core software is free, with 0% revenue share on sales, according to WooCommerce’s own pricing page. That does not make a WooCommerce store free to run: a merchant still needs to buy hosting separately, typically $25 to $350 a month depending on traffic and performance needs, pay a payment processor’s own rate (commonly 2.5% to 2.9% plus a fixed fee, depending on the gateway chosen), and often add premium extensions priced $29 to $299 a year each for features Shopify bundles into its subscription tiers.
| Cost item | Shopify | WooCommerce |
|---|---|---|
| Core platform fee | $39 to $399/mo | $0 |
| Hosting | Included | $25 to $350/mo |
| Online card rate (own processor) | 2.5% to 2.9% + 30c | ~2.5% to 2.9% + fee |
| Third-party payment surcharge | 0.6% to 2% | None |
| Add-on features | Often included by tier | $29 to $299/yr each |
Sources: Shopify, pricing page, 2026; WooCommerce, pricing page, 2026.
The practical read is that Shopify’s price is fixed and predictable before a store even launches, while WooCommerce’s real monthly cost depends entirely on hosting choice, extension count, and payment gateway, three variables a merchant controls directly instead of buying as a bundle.
How much money moves through each platform?
Shopify merchants sold $378.4 billion worth of goods (GMV) through the platform in 2025, up 29% year over year, according to Shopify’s FY2025 SEC filing. The company’s own revenue, the cut it takes through subscriptions and merchant solutions, reached $11.5 billion, up 30% year over year. That figure exists because Shopify is a single hosted company that can total every transaction that passes through its own checkout and Shopify Payments.
Warning
WooCommerce publishes no equivalent platform-wide GMV or total-sales figure, and none of the aggregator estimates circulating online (commonly $30 to $35 billion) trace back to a disclosed primary source. WooCommerce is free, open-source software installed on independently hosted WordPress sites, each using its own choice of payment gateway; no single company processes those transactions, so no single company has the data to report a total. Treat any precise WooCommerce GMV figure you encounter elsewhere as unsourced.
That architectural gap, one company that owns the checkout versus thousands of independently hosted stores that do not report to anyone, is the real reason a side-by-side GMV comparison does not exist for these two platforms, not an oversight on either company’s part.
Where are Shopify and WooCommerce stores located?
Shopify’s live store base concentrates heavily in the United States: Store Leads’ mid-2026 data puts the US at 38% of all live Shopify stores (1,101,981 stores), more than the next several countries combined. WooCommerce’s base is far more globally distributed. The US accounts for just 12.4% of live WooCommerce stores (506,104), followed by the UK at 4.3% (177,518), India at 3.1% (126,680), Germany at 2.9% (119,704), and Italy close behind.
Figure 2: Share of each platform’s live store base located in the United States. Source: Store Leads, mid-2026 (Shopify) and August 21, 2026 (WooCommerce) reports.
The gap makes sense given how each platform reaches merchants. Shopify markets itself directly as a hosted product with a strong US and Canadian sales presence, while WooCommerce rides on WordPress’s already-global install base, so wherever a WordPress site exists, adding a store is a plugin install away rather than a new platform decision.
How big is each platform’s app and extension ecosystem?
Shopify’s own App Store lists more than 16,000 apps, spanning marketing, shipping, accounting, and storefront customization, according to Shopify’s current app store page. WooCommerce’s official marketplace advertises a smaller, curated set, described on WooCommerce’s own pricing page only as “hundreds” of free and paid extensions, priced $29 to $299 a year for the paid ones. That gap widens further once independent, free plugins tagged “woocommerce” on the WordPress.org plugin directory are counted; WordPress.org does not publish an exact total for that tag, but its results run to dozens of listing pages beyond WooCommerce’s own official count.
The practical difference is curation versus volume. Shopify’s app store is larger and centrally reviewed; WooCommerce’s ecosystem splits between a smaller official marketplace and a much larger, less centrally vetted pool of community plugins.
How did each platform get here?
Shopify launched in 2006 as a hosted storefront platform and went public in 2015. WooCommerce launched in 2011 as a free WordPress plugin built by WooThemes, and Automattic, WordPress.com’s parent company, acquired it that same year. Both platforms have spent the years since building out the payments, apps, and hosting layers that define today’s comparison.
Figure 3: Key milestones for both platforms. Source: authors’ synthesis of public company histories, Shopify SEC filings, and Automattic’s own WooCommerce acquisition announcement.
Does either platform provide your store’s terms and conditions?
No. Neither Shopify’s Terms of Service nor WooCommerce’s licensing terms cover the contract between an individual merchant and that merchant’s own customers. Shopify’s terms govern use of its hosting, checkout, and admin tools; WooCommerce’s terms govern use of free, self-hosted software. Neither addresses product descriptions, shipping timelines, payment disputes, or liability between a specific store and its shoppers.
Figure 4: Platform terms, whether hosted or self-hosted, never substitute for a store’s own customer-facing terms and conditions. Source: authors’ synthesis of platform documentation.
That gap applies equally to the 2,898,351 live Shopify stores and the 4,091,670 live WooCommerce stores counted above; none of those millions of merchants get a customer-facing contract from their platform by default. A T&C Generator fills that gap directly, producing store-specific language a Shopify or WooCommerce merchant can publish regardless of which platform’s checkout is underneath. For a closer look at Shopify’s own numbers, see our Shopify statistics for 2026 breakdown of store counts and GMV, and our Shopify conversion rate benchmarks for what happens after a shopper lands on the checkout page.
The Bottom Line
WooCommerce remains the larger platform by raw store count and market share in 2026, 48.1% of tracked e-commerce systems and 4,091,670 live stores against Shopify’s 31.7% and 2,898,351. But WooCommerce’s count fell 8% year over year while Shopify’s grew 11%, a genuine divergence that tracks the two platforms’ different economics: Shopify sells a fixed, predictable hosted subscription and discloses $378.4 billion in GMV to prove it, while WooCommerce sells nothing at the platform level, which keeps its floor low but also means no single company is fighting to keep every marginal store alive. Neither difference changes what any individual store still needs to publish for itself. Shopify’s Terms of Service protect Shopify, and WooCommerce’s license protects the software, not the relationship between either platform’s millions of merchants and their own customers.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is WooCommerce’s market share compared to Shopify’s in 2026? WooCommerce runs 48.1% of the e-commerce systems W3Techs tracks, versus Shopify’s 31.7%, as of W3Techs’ August 28, 2026 crawl. That works out to 8.1% of all websites for WooCommerce and 5.3% for Shopify.
Which platform has more stores, Shopify or WooCommerce? WooCommerce has more live stores, 4,091,670 as of August 21, 2026, versus Shopify’s 2,898,351 in mid-2026, per Store Leads. But WooCommerce’s count fell 8% year over year in Q2 2026, while Shopify’s grew 11% year over year over the same period.
Is Shopify or WooCommerce cheaper to run? WooCommerce core software is free with 0% revenue share, while Shopify’s Basic plan costs $39 a month plus a 2.9% + 30 cent transaction fee. WooCommerce still needs separate hosting, typically $25 to $350 a month, and extensions priced $29 to $299 a year each, so the real cost gap depends on how a store is built.
Does Shopify or WooCommerce publish how much money moves through their stores? Shopify discloses $378.4 billion in gross merchandise volume for 2025 in its SEC filing, up 29% year over year. WooCommerce publishes no equivalent platform-wide figure, because it is self-hosted software that never processes a payment itself, so no single company has the data to report.
Sources and References
- W3Techs. (2026). “Usage Statistics and Market Shares of E-Commerce Systems.” Full platform ranking table, August 28, 2026.
- W3Techs. (2026). “Usage Statistics and Market Share of WooCommerce.” Data for August 28, 2026: 48.1% of e-commerce systems, 11.7% of CMS-known sites, 8.1% of all websites.
- Store Leads. (2026). “The State of WooCommerce” report, data current as of August 21, 2026. DNS-verified live store counts by country.
- Store Leads. (2026). “The State of Shopify,” mid-2026 report. DNS-verified live store counts by country.
- Shopify Inc.. (2026). Form 10-K, fiscal year ended December 31, 2025. Official SEC filing.
- Shopify Inc.. (2026). Pricing page. Plan tiers, monthly and annual rates, transaction fee schedule.
- WooCommerce. (2026). Pricing page. Core platform cost, extension pricing, hosting budget guidance.
- Shopify App Store. (2026). App marketplace landing page, total app count.
Note: All figures verified as of August 2026. Market share, store count, and pricing figures are updated on rolling or quarterly cycles by their respective sources and will be refreshed here at least twice a year.
