Big Cartel vs WooCommerce Comparison 2026
Both cover digital products & storefronts. Here is what separates them on price, billing, what you can take with you, and coverage.
A small shop for people who make things
A free store plugin that takes no cut at all
Why people weigh these two
- WooCommerce instead of Big Cartel
- A free store plugin that takes no cut at all, for people who already run a site and will trade Big Cartel's evening setup for owning the stack.
At a glance
- Both have a genuinely free tier.
Side by side
Big Cartel | WooCommerce | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | From $15 | Free |
| Pricing model (they differ) | Free plan, paid tiers | Free |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Billing | Monthly or annual | Not stated |
| Free trial | 7 days | Not stated |
| API | Not stated | Yes |
Big Cartel
A small shop for people who make things
Big Cartel has sold for artists and bands since before most of this category existed, and the product still reflects that: a handful of themes, a product limit rather than a transaction limit, and no upsell machinery. Setting up a shop takes an evening. The free plan is genuinely usable for a first release, and the paid ones are cheaper than any general storefront. Anybody who wants apps, subscriptions or a hundred variants should look elsewhere.
Our note
Count your products before choosing, because that single limit is the whole pricing model and it is easy to outgrow in a month if you sell variants as separate listings. For a catalogue that stays small this is cheaper than any general storefront in this directory and stays that way as sales grow.
Only on this side
- Covers merch & print on demand
WooCommerce
A free store plugin that takes no cut at all
WooCommerce turns a WordPress site into a shop and states plainly that it charges no platform fee and takes no share of sales. The software is free and open source; the money goes on hosting and on whichever extensions a shop actually needs. That makes the total cost a range rather than a number, and the range depends on traffic more than on features. Running it means owning the hosting, the updates and the security, which is the trade against a platform that does all three and bills monthly.
Ratings are the average of reviews readers left. The facts are stated by each tool’s own listing and are not verified by CloutStack. How we make money.