BigCommerce vs WooCommerce Comparison 2026
BigCommerce is a hosted storefront starting at $29 a month for up to $30,000 in yearly sales, with no separate hosting bill and no cut taken beyond the payment provider's rate. WooCommerce is a free plugin with no platform fee and no revenue share at all, but it needs a WordPress site and its own hosting, which its own page prices at $25 to $350 a month plus extensions from $29 to $299 a year. One bill is fixed. The other depends entirely on how much hosting the traffic actually needs.
A hosted store priced against how much you sell
A free store plugin that takes no cut at all
At a glance
- Only WooCommerce has a free tier.
Side by side
BigCommerce | WooCommerce | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | From $29 | Free |
| Pricing model (they differ) | Free trial, then paid | Free |
| Free tier (they differ) | No | Yes |
| Billing | Not stated | Not stated |
| Free trial | Not stated | Not stated |
| API | Yes |
BigCommerce
A hosted store priced against how much you sell
BigCommerce is a hosted storefront whose tiers are drawn around sales volume rather than around features, so the question at signup is what a shop turns over rather than which capabilities it needs. Crossing a tier's ceiling moves the account up on its own, which is worth knowing before the first busy quarter. The platform adds no transaction fee of its own on top of the payment provider's. Anybody below the first threshold is paying for headroom they will not use for a while.
Our note
The automatic upgrade is the thing to plan for, because a good quarter moves you a tier without anybody approving it and the jump from $29 to $79 arrives at $30,000 of sales. Compare with Shopify on the card rate rather than the subscription, since that is where the two platforms actually differ.
Only on this side
- Covers monetization & payments
WooCommerce
A free store plugin that takes no cut at all
Why people weigh these two
- WooCommerce instead of BigCommerce
- A free store plugin that takes no cut at all, bolted onto a site you run yourself rather than a hosted platform priced against turnover.
- BigCommerce instead of WooCommerce
- BigCommerce is a hosted store priced against how much you sell, at $29 with no free tier, the monthly bill WooCommerce's zero platform fee is built to avoid.
Which one should you pick
Choose BigCommerce for a fixed bill and nothing to patch. Core is $29 a month for up to $30,000 in yearly sales, moving to $79 and $299 automatically as volume grows, with hosting and updates handled entirely by BigCommerce. It is wrong for anyone who wants to own their store outright, since the platform and the account remain BigCommerce's.
Choose WooCommerce to own the store outright and pay no percentage on any sale, provided the site already runs on WordPress. The real cost is hosting at $25 to $350 a month plus extensions at $29 to $299 a year each. Somebody has to own that upkeep. It is wrong for anyone who wants a shop to simply work without becoming its administrator, since the saving here is paid for in maintenance time.
Common questions
- Is WooCommerce cheaper than BigCommerce?
- It depends on hosting. WooCommerce's plugin is free, but hosting runs $25 to $350 a month plus extensions from $29 to $299 a year each, so a busy store can cost more than BigCommerce's $299 Scale plan. A quiet WooCommerce store on cheap hosting can undercut BigCommerce's $29 Core plan instead.
- Which one takes a cut of my sales?
- Neither does, in the ordinary case. WooCommerce states plainly that it charges no platform fee and no revenue share. BigCommerce adds no fee of its own either, beyond the 0.9 percent charged only above the Scale plan's $33,333 monthly ceiling.
- Do I need to know WordPress to use BigCommerce?
- No. BigCommerce is a complete hosted platform with nothing to install. WooCommerce is a plugin that assumes an existing WordPress site and requires comfort with hosting, updates and security that BigCommerce handles for you.
- Which one lets me export all my store data?
- WooCommerce does: its data export is listed as full. BigCommerce has no equivalent claim, though it does offer an API for building integrations against the store.
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.