Shopware Pricing: What the Editions Cost – and Which One You Need
9 min read
by Marcel, Senior software engineer
"What does Shopware cost?" is a question with three answers, and most comparison articles cheerfully mix them up. The software itself is free as the Community Edition – as long as your store stays under one million euros in annual gross merchandise value. Above that you need a paid plan: Rise from €600/month, Evolve from €2,400/month, Beyond priced individually (vendor pricing per shopware.com/en/pricing, retrieved 8 September 2026). And entirely separate from all of that sit the costs of someone actually building and running your store. Those are the three blocks we'll pull apart here.
The short version
- Short answer: The Shopware Community Edition has no licence fee. Above €1M in annual GMV, Shopware requires a paid plan.
- Vendor pricing: Rise from €600/month, Evolve from €2,400/month, Beyond individual – tied to your GMV, so entry prices rather than final ones.
- For most stores under the GMV threshold, the Community Edition is the right answer. Upgrading for a single feature rarely pays off.
- Then there's the build: a Shopware store starts at €5,900 with us, a bigger build from €11,900, ongoing care from €199/month. Hosting is separate.
The short answer: Shopware only costs money above €1M in revenue
Shopware 6 is available as the Community Edition under an MIT licence, free to download. Storefront, order management, Shopping Experiences, checkout, sales channels, Rule Builder – the entire open-source core is included, and you're allowed to use it commercially. No licence fee, no transaction fee to Shopware, no user limits.
There is a ceiling, though, and it's recent enough that many comparison articles haven't caught up: since 24 March 2025 the Community Edition is governed by a Fair Usage Policy. Shopware's own summary: businesses with an annual GMV below €1 million generated through their Shopware store keep full access to the Shopware Account and Shopware Store, unchanged. Businesses above that threshold must subscribe to Rise, Evolve or Beyond to keep that access. GMV reporting is mandatory for all Community Edition users, whether they're above or below the line. Shopware also states it will talk to you individually before taking any action and allow time for a smooth transition. (Source: Fair Usage Policy, shopware.com, retrieved 8 September 2026.)
One thing to be clear about: GMV is the gross value of your orders, not your profit. A store doing €1.2M at a 6% margin falls under the rule exactly like one doing €1.2M at 40%. If you're just under the threshold and planning to grow, put the plan price into your model now – not when the email from Shopware arrives.
Shopware editions compared: Community, Rise, Evolve and Beyond
The paid plans stack cumulatively: Rise includes the Community Edition, Evolve includes Rise, Beyond includes both. Technically the extra features arrive through the Shopware Commercial extension – pre-installed in the cloud, installed by you in the self-hosted variant.
| Edition | Price (as of 8 Sep 2026) | How to get it | Who it's for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Community Edition | free (MIT licence) | download, self-hosted | Stores up to €1M GMV/year |
| Rise | from €600/month | bookable directly in the Shopware Account | Growing B2C stores, AI and automation |
| Evolve | from €2,400/month | Shopware sales only | Mid-market with B2B requirements |
| Beyond | individual | Shopware sales only | Enterprise, subscriptions, complex setups |
Vendor pricing per shopware.com/en/pricing, retrieved 8 September 2026. Shopware explicitly notes that pricing is based on your GMV and further individual factors – so treat these as entry prices, not final ones. For Beyond, Shopware publishes no reliable list price; it is negotiated individually. Prices and feature scope change, so verify before you decide.
What the plans actually add, in short – deliberately without retelling the full marketing feature list:
- Rise is mainly automation and AI: the extended Flow Builder and the AI Copilot with text generation for Shopping Experiences, product descriptions, image keywording, review summaries and customer classification. Plus faster vendor support.
- Evolve is the B2B tier: customer-specific pricing, B2B components such as approval workflows and quote management, extended permissions.
- Beyond is the enterprise tier. It's where the native Subscriptions feature for recurring orders lives – available from the Beyond plan according to the Shopware documentation.
The exact feature mapping shifts with every release. If one specific function is make-or-break for you, look it up in the official feature overview rather than trusting a blog post – including this one.
Shopware cloud or self-hosted: what you actually pay per month
The second pricing lever is how you run it, and that's tied to the edition:
Community Edition = always self-hosted. Shopware explicitly does not offer the Community Edition in the cloud; installation, updates and maintenance are on you or your service provider. In exchange you get full code access and can add your own development – the prerequisite for everything we build as custom Shopware plugins.
Cloud (SaaS/PaaS). Shopware handles hosting, updates, security and scaling. You launch faster and need fewer technical resources in-house, but you trade away control over infrastructure and deployment.
Self-hosted on a paid plan. The middle road: commercial features via the Commercial extension, but running on your own server. Hosting, backups and updates stay your responsibility.
For hosting, realistically expect somewhere between €20 and €60 a month for small stores and several hundred for busy systems with large catalogues, depending on provider. Those are market rates, not our numbers – but they belong in the calculation. We broke down how it all adds up in What does an online shop cost?.
Which edition your store actually needs: three scenarios
In our projects, the edition question almost always shows up in one of three shapes.
1. The B2C store below the GMV threshold. Somewhere between 200 and 800 products, a standard checkout, shipping through a carrier, maybe an ERP connection. Answer: Community Edition. Honestly, there's almost never a reason for a paid plan here. Whatever feature seems to be missing is usually either hidden in the standard or available as a plugin for far less than €7,200 in annual licence fees.
2. The growing store that crosses the line. At this point it's not a trade-off any more, it's a contract question: above €1M GMV the Fair Usage Policy points you to a paid plan. Practical advice: put the licence into your contribution-margin model early and talk to Shopware before you cross the threshold – prices are tied to GMV, which means they're negotiable.
3. The B2B merchant or subscription seller. If you need customer-specific price lists, approval workflows or real subscription commerce, you land on Evolve or Beyond. Run the comparison here: what does the plan cost per year, and what would it cost to build exactly the two features you genuinely need? Sometimes the plan wins because you get five things at once and Shopware maintains them. Sometimes custom development wins by a wide margin. It's arithmetic, not ideology.
Top tip
Before you change edition over a single feature, run the counter-test: what does the plan cost over three years, and what would exactly that feature cost as a custom plugin? Rise over three years is €21,600 – that buys a solid amount of tailored functionality that then belongs to you. The flip side: if you genuinely use five of the plan's features, the plan is the cheaper route. Let the number decide, not the gut feeling.
Rebuilding premium features instead of changing edition
One misunderstanding first, so nobody gets the wrong idea: a custom plugin does not replace a licence obligation. If you're above €1M GMV, the Fair Usage Policy says you need a plan. No plugin changes that.
What a plugin absolutely can replace is an edition upgrade you're only considering because of one single feature. And that's the more common case. Typical examples from practice: one specific automation, a special pricing rule for regular customers, one condition in the checkout, a report that doesn't exist.
For scale: a compact plugin with one clearly defined job starts at €990 with us, a full-scope one with its own admin interface and an integration at €2,900. Measured against €600/month, the compact plugin pays for itself in under two months. The full ranges and the break-even maths are in What does a Shopware plugin cost?, and which features are already sitting in the standard – free of charge – is covered in Shopware hidden features and premium plugins.
The honest counterpoint: a plugin needs maintenance. Shopware major versions bring adaptation work. A plan maintains itself. For one feature, the plugin almost always wins; for five, the plan almost always does.
What comes on top of the licence: build, hosting, care
This is where most calculations go wrong: the licence is rarely the biggest line item. The store still has to be built, configured, filled and operated.
| Cost block | Who charges it | Order of magnitude |
|---|---|---|
| Licence / plan | Shopware AG | €0 (CE) up to four figures monthly |
| Build (setup, theme, integrations) | agency/developer | one-off, from €5,900 |
| Hosting & domain | hosting provider | monthly, market rates |
| Payment provider | PSP | percentage per transaction plus fixed fee |
| Care & maintenance | agency/developer | monthly, from €199/month |
With us, building a Shopware store starts at €5,900, a larger build with integrations and custom features at €11,900, and a migration from Shopware 5 to 6 at €3,900. Ongoing Shopware care starts at €199/month; anything beyond that is billed by effort at €79/h. All packages and building blocks are on our pricing page.
Why we spell this out so openly: because the edition question gets abused as a sales argument. If someone recommends a paid plan without knowing your GMV and without telling you which concrete feature you need from it, that isn't advice.
Frequently asked questions
Is Shopware 6 free?
Yes – the Shopware Community Edition is MIT-licensed and carries no licence fee, and you may use it commercially. Since 24 March 2025 a Fair Usage Policy applies, though: above €1M in annual GMV through your Shopware store you need to move to Rise, Evolve or Beyond to keep access to the Shopware Account and Store. GMV reporting is mandatory for all Community Edition users. Source: shopware.com, retrieved 8 September 2026.
How much does Shopware cost per month?
The Community Edition costs €0 in licence fees per month – you only pay for hosting and care. Paid plans start at €600/month for Rise and €2,400/month for Evolve according to the Shopware pricing page; Beyond is priced individually. Shopware ties pricing to your GMV and further individual factors, so treat those figures as entry prices. As of 8 September 2026.
What is the difference between Rise, Evolve and Beyond?
The plans build on each other. Rise adds automation and AI features such as the AI Copilot on top of the Community Edition, plus faster vendor support. Evolve adds B2B capability: customer-specific pricing, quote and approval workflows, extended permissions. Beyond is the enterprise tier and includes, among other things, the native Subscriptions feature for recurring orders. Rise can be booked directly in the Shopware Account; for Evolve and Beyond you need to contact Shopware sales.
Do I need Shopware cloud or self-hosted?
The Community Edition is self-hosted only – it is not available in the Shopware cloud. In the cloud, Shopware handles hosting, updates and security, and you give up some control over the infrastructure. Self-hosted, you own the server, backups and updates, but you get full code access and can add your own development. If custom plugins or deep integrations are on the roadmap, self-hosted is usually the more workable route.
Is an edition upgrade worth it for a single feature?
Usually not. Rise over three years is €21,600. A compact Shopware plugin with one clearly defined job starts at €990 with us, a full-scope one with an admin interface and an integration at €2,900 – and it belongs to you afterwards. The reverse also holds: if you genuinely use five or more of a plan’s features in production, the plan is cheaper and needs less maintenance. Important: a plugin does not replace a licence obligation. Above €1M GMV you need a paid plan under the Fair Usage Policy.
What does a Shopware store cost in total?
Think in three blocks. Licence: €0 with the Community Edition, otherwise the plan price. Build: with us from €5,900 for the setup, from €11,900 for a larger build with integrations, from €3,900 for a migration off Shopware 5. Ongoing: hosting roughly €20 to €60 a month for small stores depending on provider and size, plus payment provider fees and care from €199/month. Further development is billed by effort at €79/h.
Not sure whether your store really needs a paid plan – or whether someone is trying to sell you one you don't need? Send us the basics: rough annual revenue, which feature you're missing, B2C or B2B. We'll take an honest look in a free first call and tell you whether the Community Edition, a plan or a custom plugin is the cheaper answer. Even if the answer turns out to be: leave everything as it is.