The lean between Shopify and WooCommerce flips by criterion. WooCommerce holds tax and legal (4 judges lean WooCommerce, 0 lean Shopify, 2 tie; means 2.0 vs 1.3), extensibility (5–0, 1 tie), data control and exit (6–0; means 8.3 vs 2.7, with an open-source core, any host and 'customizations that stay yours'), sovereignty (5–0, 1 tie) and pricing transparency (5–0, 1 tie; means 8.5 vs 6.7). Shopify's one lean is operations — 6 judges to 0, means 4.7 vs 2.5 — where WooCommerce's verdict finds returns, partial shipments, stock and ERP/accounting links unevidenced; catalog and checkout is even at 4.2 vs 4.2 with 6 ties. Per-judge weighted totals: 4.5–6.5 WooCommerce, 3.3–4.4 Shopify. Sovereignty attributes: Shopify lists legal entity jurisdiction CA, US-default data residency, ownership unknown; WooCommerce lists jurisdiction, ownership and data residency unknown; both carry US Cloud Act subprocessor exposure.
Choose Shopify if
Your team handles returns, partial shipments, stock levels and ERP/accounting links day to day — operations leans Shopify 6 judges to 0 (means 4.7 vs 2.5), and WooCommerce's verdict finds those topics unevidenced.
Your procurement file requires a named vendor jurisdiction — Shopify's legal entity jurisdiction is listed as CA, while WooCommerce's is unknown.
Your data-residency policy accepts a US default but requires the residency stated — Shopify's data residency reads as a US default; WooCommerce's data residency is unknown.
Your intra-group transfers run on approved binding corporate rules — Shopify's verdict records approved binding corporate rules and an Irish recipient entity.
Choose WooCommerce if
You need to own your stack and exit without vendor metering — data control and exit leans WooCommerce 6 judges to 0 (means 8.3 vs 2.7); the verdict cites open source, any host and 0% revenue share.
Your roadmap depends on deep platform customization — extensibility leans WooCommerce 5 judges to 0 (means 7.0 vs 6.0), with per-judge scores spanning 6–8.
You want a free core with itemized cost ranges — pricing transparency leans WooCommerce 5 judges to 0 (means 8.5 vs 6.7); the verdict lists free core, hosting $25–$350/month, extensions $29–$299/year each and WooPayments ~2.5–2.9% + 30¢, though one judge notes these are ranges, not computable line items.
You need an EEA-facing controller and contractual transfer safeguards — WooCommerce's verdict records WooCommerce Ireland Ltd. as controller for Woo services in Designated Countries and SCCs for transfers outside the EEA; sovereignty leans 5 judges to 0 (means 3.2 vs 1.5).
Your buying decision rests with developers — the developer-oriented judge's weighted total reads 6.5 for WooCommerce vs 4.4 for Shopify.
Read this comparison as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.
The B2B Seller
Sells to businesses across the EU: net prices, VAT-ID validation, reverse charge, customer-specific price lists and payment on account. Reads a shop that shows gross prices to a trade customer as one that has not met a trade customer.
Shopify
WooCommerce
This judge's pick
Criterion by criterion
Catalogue & checkout
Shopify
Customer-specific price lists exist as B2B catalogues — capped at three on every standard plan, unlimited only on the top tier — and a guest checkout is referenced in the conversion claims. Beyond card fees I found no public information on payment methods such as invoice or direct debit, nor on variants, bundles, tiered pricing or promotion rules, and checkout customisation is described as limited on all plans except the top one.
WooCommerce
Unlimited variants and a checkout you can customise without forced upgrades are confirmed, with any payment gateway and no forced bundles — decent bones. But the evidence is silent on customer-group and tiered pricing, bundles and invoice/direct debit, the exact things a trade buyer needs, so it sits between the anchors at 3 and 5.
Tax & German legal correctness
Shopify
I found no public information on VAT determination, VAT-ID validation, reverse charge, OSS or the mandatory German checkout elements; B2B catalogues and localised selling via Markets are the only adjacent signals. A shop whose public pages cannot evidence net-price display for business buyers has not met the trade customer.
WooCommerce
The evidence says nothing about VAT determination, OSS, reverse charge or VAT-ID validation; the only trace of tax is the bare product name 'WooCommerce Tax' in a services list. For me that is the telling gap: no evidenced net-price handling for B2B means I cannot tell whether this shop has ever met a trade customer.
Extensibility & developer surface
Shopify
The developer surface is real and visible: a headless toolkit named Hydrogen, headless storefronts granted per plan, API rate limits published per tier, and an app store with more than 21,000 apps. I found no public information on staging environments, theme version control or webhooks, so ownership beyond themes-and-apps is only partly evidenced.
WooCommerce
Open-source core, unlimited APIs, dedicated developer resources, hundreds of extensions and themes, and 'customizations that stay yours' — a platform a team can genuinely shape. Nothing on headless storefront API, staging environments or theme version control, so it stays below the 8 anchor.
Order operations & back office
Shopify
Multi-location inventory is concrete (ten locations standard, two hundred on the top plan), marketplace order synchronisation is free for the first fifty orders a month, Collective covers sourcing, and over two hundred real-time reports are claimed. I found no public information on returns handling, named carrier integrations with label printing, or maintained interfaces to ERP and accounting systems.
WooCommerce
Unlimited orders in core, a mobile app, omnichannel online-and-offline selling and a named shipping service are evidenced. Returns, partial shipments, trustworthy multi-warehouse stock and ERP or accounting interfaces are entirely absent from the evidence, which caps it at the basic-operations anchor.
Data ownership & exit
Shopify
Leaving is priced in retention terms: store information is kept for two years after closure before deletion begins, with deletion or anonymisation promised and a right to transfer data to another provider. I found no public information on export completeness for catalogue, customers and order history; the subscription bundles hosting and I found no public information on self-hosting or a documented migration path.
WooCommerce
Ownership is structural rather than promised: open-source core, any host, 'full control: of your checkout, your data, your costs', so exit costs no licence and no lock-in. What is missing is documented export or migration detail in both directions and any contractual data-return commitment beyond a general retention principle in Automattic's privacy policy.
European sovereignty
Shopify
The vendor is a Canadian company; for EEA, UK and Swiss users the receiving entity is the Irish subsidiary, but the policy itself places the company in Canada and data is then passed on to locations including Canada and the USA, safeguarded by SCC-equivalent clauses and approved BCRs. Subprocessors appear only as categories — cloud hosting, content delivery, data analysis among others — with no named providers, and I found no public information confirming where customer and order data are hosted.
WooCommerce
The vendor is American, data residency is unknown and the subprocessor list is absent — the pipeline computes 0 — but WooCommerce Ireland Ltd. is the named controller for EU residents of Woo services and SCCs cover non-EEA transfers, which is exactly rubric level 3 territory. The ability to run the shop on any host, including one's own EU infrastructure, is real but not what the pipeline credits.
Pricing transparency
Shopify
Unusually complete: annual prices of 27, 79 and 289 euros per month, card fees per plan down to Amex rates, external-provider transaction fees from 2 to 0.2 per cent, marketplace order fees with a monthly cap, the POS add-on at 79 euros per month per location, no setup fees, and a stated one- or three-year commitment on the top tier with cancellation any time below it. What stays unknowable from the page is the cost of the apps most shops will need and whether the published prices include VAT.
WooCommerce
The licence is stated free and the money trail is honest: hosting $25–350/month, extensions $29–299/year each, WooPayments at ~2.5–2.9% + 30¢, zero revenue share, zero platform fees, costs tied to infrastructure not sales volume. Only VAT treatment of those dollar prices and contract terms are missing, which keeps annual cost derivable but not fully complete.
Sovereignty, side by side
Dimension
Shopify
WooCommerce
Legal entity
Incorporated in CA
Not determined
Ownership
Not determined
Not determined
Data residency
Not determined
Not determined
Subprocessors
Not determined
US CLOUD Act reach
Facts, side by side
Only facts both products carry under the same definition — anything else would not be a fair row.