The median Shopify app starts at $9.99 a month — but that number is almost useless for pricing your own app. Depending on the category, the typical entry price runs from $4.99 (badges and icons) to $49 (mobile app builders), a 10x spread. And in some categories, two thirds of the competition is entirely free.
Your price is decided less by your feature list than by the category you enter. This guide shows what apps actually charge across 16 categories, which pricing model dominates where, and a simple method for setting your own price before you launch.
All figures come from AppAnalizer's database of Shopify App Store listings, refreshed daily from Shopify's official sitemap (October 2026 data). "Entry price" means the cheapest paid monthly plan an app offers.
The three pricing models on the App Store
Every Shopify app falls into one of three models:
- Freemium — a free plan plus paid upgrades. The most common model on the store: 43.4% of apps with published pricing, according to our Shopify App Store Statistics 2026.
- Paid only — every plan costs money, usually with a free trial. 42.0% of apps.
- Entirely free — 14.6% of apps. These are rarely businesses on their own: most are lead generation for a platform, a service, or a parent company.
Across the store, the median entry price is $9.99/month. A quarter of apps start at $5 or less, three quarters stay under $21, and only the top 10% start at $49 or more.
That's the store-wide picture. The useful picture is category by category.
Entry prices by category
Here is what apps charge in 16 categories, from cheapest to most expensive. Each row shows the number of apps, the middle 50% of entry prices (25th to 75th percentile — where most of your direct competitors sit), and the free / paid / freemium split. The figure on the right is the median entry price.
What the data tells you
1. Price follows what the app replaces
Read the list from top to bottom and a pattern appears. The cheapest categories are storefront decorations — a badge, a timer, a star widget. Merchants see them as small conversion tweaks, and they price them like one: $5 to $10.
The middle of the list is revenue and marketing tools — discounts, upsells, SEO, email. They promise more sales, but they are crowded, so prices cluster around $10 to $15.
Further down is back-office and business infrastructure — accounting, inventory, wholesale, subscriptions, loyalty. These apps run a part of the business every day, and merchants accept $18 to $20 as a starting point.
At the very end are apps that replace a hire or a channel: a helpdesk replaces support hours ($29), a mobile app builder replaces an agency building a native app ($49).
The takeaway: before asking "how much is my app worth?", ask "what does my app replace for the merchant?" A widget competes with doing nothing. A helpdesk competes with a salary.
2. Some categories are dominated by free apps
Shipping is the extreme case: 65% of shipping apps are entirely free. The likely reason is that many of them are owned by carriers, label platforms or logistics companies, which make money on the shipments rather than on the app. Inventory sync shows a similar pattern (42% free), probably because many marketplace connectors are monetized through the marketplace or a broader platform.
If you enter one of these categories as an independent developer, you are not competing with $9.99 apps — you are competing with free ones backed by companies that don't need the app to make money. You need a clear reason why a merchant would pay: a specific segment the free tools ignore, a workflow they do badly, or support they don't offer.
3. Freemium dominates the crowded categories
In SEO (56%), Product reviews (55%) and Upsell (49%), roughly half of all apps offer a free plan. In those categories, launching paid-only means merchants will compare your trial against a competitor they can use forever for free. Freemium is close to mandatory there — the question becomes what you put behind the paywall.
In contrast, Accounting is the only category in our sample where paid-only is the majority (54%), and Mobile app builders come close (49%). When the app touches money or requires real setup work, merchants expect to pay from day one.
4. The spread inside a category is wide
The middle 50% range is often as informative as the median. In Loyalty, apps start anywhere between $10 and $49. In Mobile app builders, between $12 and $99. A wide range means the category supports several positions — a cheap simple tool and a premium full solution can coexist. A narrow range (Countdown timers: $4.99 to $9.97) means the market has already settled on a price, and charging much more requires a very visible reason.
How to set your price: a 5-step method
Step 1 — Find your category's median and middle 50%
Start from the list above, or check your exact niche in the category explorer. This is your reference point. Merchants browsing your category have already seen these prices on your competitors' listings.
Step 2 — Decide where you sit: below, at, or above the median
- At the median is the default for a new app with no reviews. You are not asking merchants to trust you and pay a premium.
- Below the median makes sense only if you are deliberately simpler (fewer features, one clear job) or targeting smaller stores. Don't go below the 25th percentile just to look cheap — at $3/month you need hundreds of paying stores to make the app worth maintaining.
- Above the median is justified when you solve a problem competitors' 1-star reviews keep complaining about, or target a segment that pays more (high-volume stores, B2B, Shopify Plus).
Step 3 — Pick your model from the category, not from habit
If more than half the category is freemium, offer a free plan with a clear limit (number of orders, products, emails, or one key feature locked). If paid-only dominates, use a 7- to 14-day free trial instead. If the category is mostly free apps, your free plan has to be good — and your paid plan has to solve something the free apps don't.
Step 4 — Keep it to two or three paid plans
A starter plan at the category median, a growth plan at roughly 2–3x that price, and optionally a premium plan for larger stores. Tie the upgrade to something that grows with the merchant's business — orders, revenue, products, or team members — so the price feels fair as they scale. More plans than that mostly create confusion on your listing.
Step 5 — Check the math against your revenue goal
Pricing is also an arithmetic problem. At $9.99/month, reaching $5,000 in monthly revenue takes about 500 paying stores. At $29/month, it takes about 170. Shopify takes no revenue share on your first $1 million in lifetime revenue (15% above that), so at the start, what you charge is what you keep.
Before committing to a low price, check how many paying installs your category's apps actually reach. Our guide on how much Shopify apps make explains how to estimate this from public review counts.
Common pricing mistakes
Underpricing to compensate for zero reviews. A new app with no reviews feels risky, and a very low price doesn't fix that — it can even make the app look less serious. Free trials and a generous free plan reduce risk better than a $1.99 price tag.
A free plan that is too generous. If 95% of merchants never hit the limit, you have built a free app with a pricing page. Put the limit where a growing store will naturally reach it within a few months.
Copying the category leader's price. The leader can charge $49 because it has thousands of reviews and years of trust. A new app at the same price has to win on something else. Benchmark against the median and the middle 50%, not the top app.
Ignoring the free apps in your category. Especially in Shipping and Inventory sync, look at who the free apps are before you build. If they are run by companies that monetize elsewhere, your paid offer needs a precise reason to exist.
Check the pricing of any niche in AppAnalizer
The 16 categories above are a sample. For your exact niche:
- Open the app explorer and select your category or feature.
- Look at the pricing landscape: median entry price, middle 50%, and the free / paid / freemium split.
- Sort the top apps by reviews and open their pricing tiers to see where the upgrade limits sit.
- Export the list to CSV if you want to compare every plan side by side.
You can also ask for it in plain English in Claude through the AppAnalizer MCP — for example, "What's the median entry price in the Loyalty and rewards category, and how many apps are freemium?"
See also: How much do Shopify apps make? · Shopify App Store Statistics 2026 · How to find a good Shopify app idea · Is Built for Shopify worth it?