How to Cancel Your Shopify Subscription (and What to Do First)

How do you cancel your Shopify subscription?

Cancel from Settings > Plan in your Shopify admin, logged in as the store owner. Here are Shopify's steps on desktop:

1. In your Shopify admin, go to Settings > Plan.
2. Click Cancel plan, or Cancel trial if you're still on a free trial.
3. Shopify may show you downgrade, Pause and build or new store options. Skip them if you want to cancel.
4. Review your domains and pending charges, select Cancel my plan and uninstall all apps, then click Continue.
5. Choose a reason for leaving, then click Continue.
6. Optionally select Save payment details to reopen your store faster.
7. Enter your password and click Cancel plan to confirm.

On the Shopify mobile app: tap the menu icon, go to Settings > Plan and follow the same steps.

You may be asked to pass two-step authentication. Deleting the Shopify app from your phone does not cancel your subscription.

What should you do before canceling?

Export your data and close out anything that bills or ships after you leave. Once your plan ends, you lose admin access to fix problems. Work through this list first:

Should you cancel, pause or downgrade?

Cancel if you're done selling, pause if you're coming back, and downgrade if the problem is cost. Here's how the options compare:

Shopify shows the exact Pause and Build price in Settings > Plan before you confirm. Shopify doesn't publish the figure, though third-party guides widely report it at $9 a month. Pause and Build is only available after your free trial, on a paid plan, and not on Shopify Plus. To switch, go to Settings > Plan > Cancel plan, then choose Pause and build. The switch takes effect at the end of your billing cycle.

How do you cancel a Shopify free trial?

If you never picked a paid plan, you don't need to do anything. The trial simply ends. If you chose a paid plan during the trial, you must cancel or pause manually through Settings > Plan > Cancel trial, or you may be charged for that plan.

Will Shopify refund your subscription?

No. Shopify has a strict no-refund policy for subscription plans under its Terms of Service. When you cancel:

• Your plan stays active until the end of the current billing cycle.
• Outstanding charges, including app usage charges, are billed at cancellation.
• Charges made during a promotional pricing period aren't refunded.

If you change your mind before the billing cycle ends, click Reactivate plan in Settings > Plan.

What happens to your store after you cancel?

Shopify keeps your store's information for 2 years, so you can reopen it without rebuilding. To reopen, log in as the owner, click Re-open your-store.myshopify.com, choose a plan and enter payment details. You'll need to reconnect any custom domain under Settings > Domains.

After the store data is deleted, the store can't be reactivated. You can also ask Shopify to delete your customers' personal data sooner.

Your customers can still see their past orders, because Shopify keeps the order status pages working.

How do you cancel a Shopify Plus subscription?

Shopify Plus stores can't cancel from the admin. Contact Shopify Plus Support to deactivate. Plus is usually sold on a 1-year or 3-year term ($2,500 or $2,300 a month), so check your agreement for the end date and notice terms before you plan the shutdown.

If you're on Plus because you outgrew a lower plan, but no longer need Plus features, ask about moving to Advanced instead of canceling. Since April 2026, core B2B features also work on Basic, Grow and Advanced.

How do you cancel a subscription you bought from a Shopify store?

Cancel it with the store you bought from, not with Shopify. Shopify runs the store's software, but the brand bills you and manages your subscription. Here's how:

1. Check your subscription emails for a Manage your subscription link.
2. Log in to your account on the store's website and open your subscriptions.
3. Contact the store if neither option works. Their contact details are usually in the footer or on the order confirmation email.

If the store uses Shopify's own Subscriptions app, canceling ends billing and deliveries immediately, and it can't be undone. To take a break instead, choose Pause or Skip your next order. Stores using other subscription apps, such as Recharge or Skio, have their own customer portals, reached through the same email link.

How do merchants cancel a customer's subscription?

In the Shopify Subscriptions app, open the contract and click Cancel subscription. The steps:

1. In your Shopify admin, go to Apps > Subscriptions > Contracts.
2. Click the customer's contract.
3. Click Cancel subscription, or Pause to stop orders temporarily.

To cancel several at once, select the contracts in the list and click Cancel. As with customer cancellations, a canceled contract can't be restored. The customer has to place a new subscription order.

Make self-service cancellation easy. The FTC's federal “click-to-cancel” rule was vacated by the Eighth Circuit on July 8, 2025, in Custom Communications, Inc. v. FTC — but on procedural grounds, not on the merits, and the FTC moved to revive the rule during 2026. ROSCA and the FTC Act never stopped applying, and state laws still do: California's Automatic Renewal Law, as amended from July 1, 2025, sets rules on consent, cancellation and renewal reminders. Treat the federal position as unsettled and check your cancellation flow with legal counsel.

Offer pause and skip before cancel. Many subscribers cancel because they have too much product, not because they dislike it. Showing pause, skip and frequency options keeps more of them. We set this up as part of our Shopify subscription setup work. For Bravo Pouches, recurring revenue grew 563% on Stay AI. If you're choosing an app, see our Shopify subscription app comparison.

Thinking of canceling because the store isn't paying off?

Check whether the problem is the plan or the store. If fees are the issue, downgrading or switching to yearly billing cuts the cost. If sales are the issue, the fix is usually conversion, not cancellation. The median Shopify store converts just 1.4% of visitors (Littledata, October 2026), and our Shopify CRO guide shows where most stores lose sales.

Frequently asked questions