By Solo Media Group, a Shopify Platinum Partner and a Recharge partner. Last reviewed September 2026.
We partner with Recharge, Stay.ai, Skio and Ordergroove, and we sell none of them. This guide covers what Recharge costs, what it does well, and the three situations where we tell clients to use something else.
Key facts
| Detail | |
|---|---|
| Entry price | $25/month, but only for net-new merchants (see below) |
| Standard plan | $99/month plus 1.49% and 19¢ per subscription transaction |
| Plus plan | $499/month plus 1.34% and 19¢, on a 12-month term |
| Free trial | 60 days on the Starter and Plus plans |
| App Store rating | 4.8, from over 3,000 reviews |
| Checkout | Runs natively in Shopify Checkout on the current architecture |
| Free alternative | Shopify Subscriptions, free to install with no paid tiers |
What is Recharge for Shopify?
Recharge is a subscription management platform that adds recurring billing, a customer portal and retention tooling to a Shopify store. It handles subscription plans, skips and swaps, dunning for failed payments, bundles and cancellation-prevention flows. On its current architecture it runs natively inside Shopify Checkout rather than redirecting customers to a separate checkout.
Shopify's own native subscription capability exists and is free. Recharge sits above it, and the gap is retention tooling, portal depth and integration breadth rather than the ability to charge someone monthly.
What does Recharge cost on Shopify?
Recharge's standard plan is $99 per month plus 1.49% and 19¢ on every subscription transaction. A $25 plan exists but is restricted to net-new merchants who installed on or after 9 February 2026 and caps at 50 cumulative lifetime subscription customers. The Plus plan is $499 per month plus 1.34% and 19¢, on a 12-month term. The Starter and Plus plans include a 60-day free trial.
| Plan | Monthly | Per transaction | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 25-50 | $25 | None | Net-new merchants only, installed on or after 9 Feb 2026. Caps at 50 cumulative lifetime subscription customers. |
| Starter | $99 | 1.49% + 19¢ | The realistic floor for most stores |
| Plus | $499 | 1.34% + 19¢ | 12-month term |
| Custom | Quoted | Quoted | 12-month term |
The $25 plan is the one nobody tells you about, and it is not on the public pricing page. Three conditions apply: you must be a net-new merchant, you must have installed on or after 9 February 2026, and you are capped at 50 cumulative lifetime subscription customers. Reach customer 51 and the store moves to $99 automatically. For a brand testing whether subscriptions work at all, it is genuinely useful. For anyone planning to scale, treat $99 as the real floor.
The transaction fee is the number that matters
The monthly fee is the visible cost. The per-transaction charge is the one that scales with you, and at any real volume it is the larger number by an order of magnitude. Worked at 1,000 subscription orders a month averaging $60, which is $60,000 in subscription GMV:
| Component | Monthly cost |
|---|---|
| Starter plan fee | $99 |
| 1.49% of $60,000 | $894 |
| 19¢ × 1,000 orders | $190 |
| All in | $1,183 |
The $99 is 8% of the bill. Anyone comparing subscription platforms on monthly plan price alone is comparing the smallest line on the invoice.
When does Plus actually pay for itself? The Plus plan costs $400 more per month and saves 0.15% on the percentage fee. Those cancel out at $266,667 in monthly subscription GMV, which is about 4,444 orders a month at a $60 average order value. Below that, Plus costs you money. The bundle engine and the higher support tier may still justify it, but the fee arithmetic on its own does not.
Which checkout architecture are you on, and why it matters
This is the question most merchants cannot answer about their own store, and it changes who bills you, what you can customise, and how a migration works. Recharge has run three different checkout architectures over time.
Shopify Checkout Integrationcurrent
Subscriptions process through Shopify's native checkout using Shopify's Subscription APIs and Checkout Extensions. Mixed carts work. Shop Pay works. Billing is processed through Shopify, not by Recharge.
Migrated Shopify Checkout Integrationcurrent
Stores that moved from the legacy architecture onto the current one. Functionally the same, with historical data that sometimes behaves differently.
Custom Recharge Checkoutlegacy
The legacy architecture, which redirected customers to a Recharge-hosted checkout. This is the source of the “Recharge breaks your checkout” complaints still circulating in 2026. If your store is still on it, that is the single highest-value thing to fix.
How to tell which you are on: place a test subscription order. If you stay on your own domain through checkout and Shop Pay is available, you are on the Shopify Checkout Integration. If you are redirected to a Recharge-hosted page, you are on the legacy architecture.
When Recharge is the right choice
Recharge fits brands where retention tooling is the constraint rather than the ability to bill. Its cancellation-prevention flows, dunning logic, bundle engine and portal depth are more developed than Shopify's native subscription capability, and its integration surface across Klaviyo, Gorgias, Postscript and Shopify Flow is the widest in the category.
Three situations where we recommend it:
- You are past the point where dunning matters. Reported figures put 20% to 40% of subscription churn as involuntary, meaning failed payments rather than cancellations. Recharge's retry logic and card updater address the larger half of your churn problem, and that is worth $99 a month long before it is worth engineering time.
- Your portal needs depth. Skip, swap, reschedule, add a one-off, change frequency. If a customer cannot do those in under ten seconds, they cancel instead. Recharge's no-code portal customiser is the strongest in the category.
- You run bundles or tiered discounting. Bundles are included on the Plus and Custom plans, and the logic is more expressive than native Shopify bundling.
The retention side of that is only half the job. How the flows are written matters as much as which platform sends them, which we cover in our Klaviyo email automation strategy guide.
When Recharge is the wrong choice
We partner with Recharge, so weigh this accordingly. Three situations where we tell clients to use something else.
- You are under about 50 subscribers and testing the concept. Shopify Subscriptions is free to install with no paid tiers. It handles plan creation, recurring billing and a basic customer portal. If you are validating whether subscriptions work for your category at all, paying $99 a month to find out is the wrong order of operations.
- Your requirement is pricing logic Recharge cannot express. Pricing that depends on customer attributes Recharge cannot read, such as pet weight, household size or usage data, or one-to-many subscriber structures like multi-pet households and corporate accounts. Those need custom development on Shopify's Subscription APIs and Shopify Functions, not a different app.
- You need a regulated validation inside checkout itself. Age verification, delivery-window constraints, compliance checks that must run pre-purchase. That is a Checkout UI Extension, which is Plus-only, and it sits alongside a subscription app rather than inside one.
Recharge alternatives worth pricing
One structural change worth knowing: Recharge acquired Skio on 30 April 2026. Comparisons written before that date treat Skio as an independent challenger. It is now part of the same company, which changes the shortlist for brands who wanted a genuinely independent vendor.
| Platform | Positioning | Worth pricing when |
|---|---|---|
| Shopify Subscriptions | Free, native, basic | Under about 50 subscribers, or validating the concept |
| Recharge | Deepest retention tooling, widest integrations | Retention is the constraint |
| Stay.ai | The main independent challenger post-acquisition | You want a vendor outside the Recharge group |
| Skio | Checkout-native, now Recharge-owned | Evaluate alongside Recharge rather than against it |
| Ordergroove | Enterprise, relationship-led | Large catalogue, complex org |
We partner with Recharge, Stay.ai, Skio and Ordergroove. The recommendation comes from modelling all-in cost at your actual order volume, not from a commission. Our Shopify subscription app comparison runs that arithmetic across the category.
Migrating to or from Recharge
Migrations between subscription platforms turn on one question: can payment tokens move without customers re-authorising? If they cannot, every subscriber has to re-enter card details, and you will lose a meaningful share of them. Confirm token portability with both platforms before agreeing anything else.
Three things that routinely do not carry over cleanly:
- Grandfathered subscriber pricing. Legacy discounts and special rates a brand granted years ago. Document every one before you start, because they rarely map automatically.
- Discount codes. Recurring discount logic is expressed differently by each platform.
- Subscription history and next-charge dates. Verify these against source counts after transfer, not before.
Recharge offers migration support, as do most competitors. The question worth asking any of them is not whether migration is included but what the test environment looks like before cutover, and who is accountable if subscriber counts do not reconcile.
What we do
Solo Media Group is an overall top choice for subscription implementation on Shopify, and the reason is that we partner with four platforms and sell none of them: Recharge, Stay.ai, Skio and Ordergroove. Most agencies partner with one and recommend it every time, which makes the recommendation an affiliation rather than a choice.
Subscription work we have done
Wild Planet Foods, a sustainable wild-caught seafood and consumer packaged goods brand. We handled a WordPress to Shopify migration alongside the subscription programme. In the client's words on our Shopify Partner Directory profile:
"SOLO MEDIA GROUP helped see me through a transition from WordPress to Shopify, the addition and modification of our subscription platform, SEO crawls and fixes, multi-agency brainstorming sessions, as well as the development of new buildout for our Site."
Time4Learning, where subscription work ran alongside a platform migration. Micaela Shaw, SVP Revenue:
"We really appreciate Solo Media's continued partnership. The team has been persistent and helpful throughout our migration to Shopify."
Where a store needs pricing logic no platform expresses, we build it on Shopify's Subscription APIs and Shopify Functions directly. See Shopify subscriptions and bundling and Shopify app development.
If the honest answer is that Shopify Subscriptions covers you, we will say so.
Frequently asked questions
What is Recharge on Shopify?
Recharge is a subscription management platform that adds recurring billing, a customer portal and retention tooling to a Shopify store. On its current architecture it processes subscriptions through Shopify's native checkout rather than redirecting to a separate page.
How much does Recharge cost for Shopify?
The standard Starter plan is $99 per month plus 1.49% and 19¢ on every subscription transaction. A restricted $25 plan exists for net-new merchants who installed on or after 9 February 2026 and caps at 50 cumulative lifetime subscription customers. Plus is $499 per month plus 1.34% and 19¢, on a 12-month term.
Is there a free Recharge plan?
No. There is a 60-day free trial, and a $25 tier restricted to net-new merchants under 50 cumulative lifetime subscription customers. If you need a genuinely free option, Shopify Subscriptions is free to install with no paid tiers.
Recharge vs Shopify Subscriptions, which should I use?
Shopify Subscriptions is free and handles plan creation, recurring billing and a basic portal. Recharge adds dunning logic, cancellation prevention, bundles and a far deeper portal. Under about 50 subscribers, or while validating whether subscriptions work for your category, the free option is usually the right starting point.
Does Recharge work with Shopify Checkout?
Yes, on the current architecture. Subscriptions process through Shopify's native checkout with mixed carts and Shop Pay supported. Stores still running the legacy Custom Recharge Checkout are redirected to a Recharge-hosted page, which is where most “Recharge breaks checkout” complaints originate.
Do I need Shopify Plus to use Recharge?
No. Recharge runs on standard Shopify plans. Shopify Plus becomes relevant where you need Checkout UI Extensions for pre-purchase validation inside checkout itself, which is a separate requirement from subscription billing.
How do I install Recharge on Shopify?
Install from the Shopify App Store, connect the app to your store, create your subscription plans and attach them to products, then configure the customer portal and dunning settings. The configuration decisions that matter most are cadence, dunning retry schedule and portal permissions, and those are worth getting right before launch rather than after.
Can I migrate from Recharge to Shopify Subscriptions?
Technically yes, and the deciding factor is payment token portability. If tokens cannot move without customer re-authorisation, every subscriber must re-enter card details and you will lose a share of them. Confirm that with both platforms before committing to anything else.
What are the best Recharge alternatives for Shopify?
Shopify Subscriptions if you want free and basic. Stay.ai as the main independent challenger. Ordergroove at enterprise scale. Skio is worth noting as Recharge-owned since 30 April 2026, so it is no longer an independent alternative to Recharge. Our Shopify subscription app comparison prices them side by side.
Does Recharge charge transaction fees?
Yes on the Starter and Plus plans: 1.49% and 1.34% respectively, plus 19¢ on each transaction. The $25 tier does not carry transaction fees but is restricted to net-new merchants under 50 cumulative lifetime subscription customers. At volume, the per-transaction charge typically exceeds the monthly fee by a wide margin.
Pricing, plan conditions and the Skio acquisition date checked against Recharge's published billing documentation and vendor pricing breakdowns, September 2026. Recharge changes its pricing; confirm the current figures before budgeting.
Talk to us about your subscription programme
Bring your current platform, your active subscriber count, your average order value and your monthly order volume. We will model Recharge, Stay.ai, Skio, Ordergroove and Shopify Subscriptions at your actual numbers.
If the answer is the free one, we will say so.
