In brief
- Shopify sites pass Core Web Vitals on mobile nearly twice as often as WooCommerce sites: 76.5% versus 39.5% in HTTP Archive's August 2026 data, driven mainly by loading speed.1
- WooCommerce still has more live stores (4.06 million versus 3.08 million), but in the 90 days to September 2026, 8,886 stores moved from WooCommerce to Shopify and 6,065 moved the other way, according to Store Leads.56
- Baymard Institute puts the average documented cart abandonment rate at 70.22%; trust in card handling, forced account creation and long checkouts are the reasons a platform's checkout can change.7
- No independent study compares checkout conversion across platforms; Shopify's "up to 36% better" claim comes from a Shopify-commissioned 2023 study with an undisclosed sample.8
- Both total-cost-of-ownership studies in circulation were paid for by the platform they favour, so the cost question is best answered with a store's own numbers.
The scorecard
How strong the evidence is matters as much as which way it points.
| Question | Independent evidence | Vendor claims | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Which is faster for real users? | Strong: Chrome UX Report data for about a million origins | Not needed | Shopify |
| Which checkout converts better? | None that compares platforms directly | Shopify-commissioned, sample undisclosed | Unproven |
| Which is more secure to run? | Strong on WordPress plugin risk, from security vendors | Shopify PCI Level 1 statement | Shopify |
| Which handles traffic peaks? | Depends on your WooCommerce host | Shopify BFCM figures | Shopify |
| Which costs less to own? | None | Both sides publish favourable numbers | Depends on store |
| Which is more widely used? | Strong: W3Techs and Store Leads | Not needed | WooCommerce |
| Which gives more control? | Structural: open source and self-hosted | Not needed | WooCommerce |
Market and momentum
WooCommerce is still the bigger platform by site count. W3Techs finds WooCommerce on 47.8% of the e-commerce systems in its surveys and Shopify on 32.1%.34 Store Leads counts 4,056,316 live WooCommerce stores and 3,077,514 live Shopify stores.56
The direction is the story. In Store Leads' Q2 2026 data, the WooCommerce store count fell 8% year over year while Shopify's grew 11%. Over the last 90 days, 8,886 stores moved from WooCommerce to Shopify and 6,065 moved from Shopify to WooCommerce, a net flow of about 2,800 stores toward Shopify. WooCommerce is the largest single source of stores joining Shopify.56
| Store Leads, Sep 2026 | WooCommerce | Shopify |
|---|---|---|
| Live stores | 4,056,316 | 3,077,514 |
| Store count, year over year | −8% | +11% |
| Stores gained from the other, 90 days | 6,065 | 8,886 |
Store Leads detects live stores by crawling; W3Techs surveys websites daily. Neither is paid by either platform.
Speed: the clearest gap
Core Web Vitals come from real Chrome users, which makes them the most neutral comparison available. In HTTP Archive's August 2026 data, 76.5% of Shopify origins passed all three vitals on mobile, against 39.5% of WooCommerce origins. On desktop the split is 79.4% and 39.0%.1
| Mobile pass rate | May 2026 | Jun 2026 | Jul 2026 | Aug 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shopify | 79.3% | 76.5% | 77.0% | 76.5% |
| WooCommerce | 40.1% | 39.6% | 40.1% | 39.5% |
Our percentages from HTTP Archive's published good and tested origin counts.
Where the gap comes from
The 2025 Web Almanac breaks the result down by metric. Responsiveness (INP) and visual stability (CLS) are close. Loading speed (LCP) is the difference: 86% of Shopify origins have good mobile LCP, against 39% of WooCommerce origins.2
| Mobile, July 2025 | Good LCP | Good INP | Good CLS | All three |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shopify | 86% | 90% | 92% | 76% |
| WooCommerce | 39% | 88% | 85% | 35% |
Slow loading on WooCommerce is usually a server and plugin problem: uncached pages, shared hosting, and scripts from dozens of plugins. Shopify serves storefronts from its own global infrastructure, which removes most of that variance. Google-commissioned research associated a 0.1-second mobile speed gain with an 8.4% lift in retail conversions.19
Checkout and conversion
Why shoppers abandon
Baymard Institute's 2026 survey of 1,083 US online shoppers shows which checkout problems cost sales.7
Share of respondents citing each reason; 42% also said they were just browsing. Highlighted reasons are the ones a platform's checkout directly affects.
What Shopify claims
Shopify publishes three conversion claims. All come from a study it ran with an unnamed "Big Three" management consulting firm in April 2023, and none disclose sample size or method:
- Shopify's checkout converts up to 36% better, 15% on average, than competing platforms.8
- It outperforms WooCommerce by 17% on average.9
- Shop Pay converts as much as 50% better than guest checkout.10
How to read this
No independent study compares checkout conversion across platforms. What is well evidenced is that trust, forced accounts, long forms, errors and missing payment methods drive abandonment, and a hosted, one-tap checkout addresses those directly. The size of the lift on your store is something to measure, not assume.
Reliability at peak
On WooCommerce, peak capacity is whatever your host and caching setup can hold. On Shopify it is a platform property, and Shopify publishes its Black Friday Cyber Monday numbers.
| Shopify, BFCM weekend | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Merchant sales | $11.5B | $14.6B |
| Peak sales per minute | $4.6M | $5.1M |
| Peak edge requests per minute | 284M | 489M |
| Merchants with their best day ever | 67,000+ | 94,900+ |
Shopify newsroom and investor releases.1112 Vendor-published.
Shopify states up to 40,000 checkout starts per minute per store before queuing.8 Its uptime claims vary by page: 99.9% on its WooCommerce comparison page, 99.99% on its Plus page.9
Security and compliance
The WordPress side is well measured: Patchstack recorded 11,334 new ecosystem vulnerabilities in 2025, 91% of them in plugins.16 WooCommerce's documentation places PCI DSS compliance on the store owner.17 Shopify states it is certified Level 1 PCI DSS compliant for all stores.18
The full evidence, including checkout skimmers and PCI DSS v4.0.1 payment page requirements, is in The real risks of running a WooCommerce store in 2026.
Total cost of ownership: both sides have a study
This is the least settled question, because the only published numbers come from the two platforms.
Shopify's version
Shopify commissioned an unnamed consulting firm to survey 250 enterprises in the US and Canada with $10M+ revenue between December 2023 and January 2024.13 It reports Shopify's TCO as 36% better than WooCommerce on average,9 with WooCommerce platform costs 32% higher, operating costs 41% higher and implementation costs 49% higher.14
WooCommerce's version
WooCommerce published a cost guide written by one of its agency partners, built on three client examples rather than a survey. It estimates annual running costs of about $89,500 for a $2M-revenue store, and in one case found extension and hosting fees at roughly half of comparable Shopify app and plan charges over three years.15
Our read
Neither study describes a typical small or mid-size store. The costs that decide the question are yours: hosting, premium plugin renewals, security services, developer hours and lost sales during outages, against a Shopify plan, apps and payment fees. The free scan is the fastest way to see which of your plugins Shopify includes and which need a paid app.
Where WooCommerce wins
- Control. You own the code, the database and the hosting, and can change anything, including checkout, without a plan upgrade.
- Content-first sites. WordPress remains the stronger publishing tool when commerce is secondary.
- Payment provider choice. Shopify adds a transaction fee when you use a third-party payment provider instead of Shopify Payments; WooCommerce does not charge one.
- Multi-vendor marketplaces. Shopify has no native model for them.
- Size of ecosystem. More stores and more plugins, as the market data above shows.
If those points describe your store, the numbers above may not outweigh them. If they don't, the speed and maintenance gaps are hard to argue with.
Put your own store into the comparison.
- Free readiness scan in 20 seconds
- Every detected plugin mapped to Shopify
- Fixed-price quote in writing
- Preview your Shopify store before you pay
- 301 redirects for every URL
- An honest "stay" if Shopify is the wrong fit
Sources
- HTTP Archive. Core Web Vitals Technology Report data, May–August 2026, based on the Chrome UX Report.
- HTTP Archive. Web Almanac 2025: Ecommerce, figure 13.11, July 2025 data.
- W3Techs. Usage statistics and market share of WooCommerce, 16 September 2026.
- W3Techs. Usage statistics and market share of Shopify, 16 September 2026.
- Store Leads. WooCommerce stores report, updated 11 September 2026.
- Store Leads. Shopify stores report, updated 11 September 2026, including 90-day platform migrations.
- Baymard Institute. Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics 2026.
- Shopify. Shopify Checkout, footnote 1. commissioned by Shopify
- Shopify. Shopify vs WooCommerce. published by Shopify
- Shopify. Shop Pay. commissioned by Shopify
- Shopify. BFCM 2025 data, 2 December 2025; and BFCM 2024 data, 2 December 2024. published by Shopify
- Shopify. Investor press release, BFCM 2025. published by Shopify
- Shopify. Total cost of ownership, FAQ on methodology. commissioned by Shopify
- Shopify. Shopify for enterprise, TCO comparison table. commissioned by Shopify
- WooCommerce. The total cost of running a store on WooCommerce, 2025, by a WooCommerce agency partner. published by WooCommerce
- Patchstack. State of WordPress Security in 2026. security vendor
- WooCommerce. PCI-DSS compliance and WooCommerce. published by WooCommerce
- Shopify. Is Shopify PCI compliant? published by Shopify
- Google, 55 and Deloitte. Milliseconds Make Millions, 2020. commissioned by Google
Mufatech Studio migrates stores to Shopify, so we have a stake in this comparison. That is why vendor-published sources are labelled and the cases for WooCommerce are listed.