Shopify vs WorkOS
Dominant SaaS commerce platform — Online Store + Hydrogen headless
vs. The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS
Pricing tiers
Shopify
Starter
$5/mo. Sell via social/chat links. No checkout site. Basic.
$5/mo
Basic
$29/mo ($19 annual). Full store. 2.9% + 30¢ online. 2 staff.
$29/mo
Shopify
$79/mo ($49 annual). 2.7% online. 5 staff.
$79/mo
Advanced
$299/mo ($229 annual). 2.5% online. Custom reports. 15 staff.
$299/mo
Plus
$2,300/mo (starting). Enterprise features, checkout customization, unlimited staff.
$2300/mo
Enterprise
Custom. For $1M+ GMV merchants. Dedicated support, Checkout Extensibility.
Custom
WorkOS
AuthKit Free
First 1M MAUs free. Unlimited organizations, user management, social OAuth, passwordless.
Free
AuthKit Scale
Per 1M additional MAUs.
$2500/mo
Enterprise / Annual Credits
Custom with 99.99% SLA, guided migration, dedicated support.
Custom
Free-tier quotas head-to-head
Comparing starter on Shopify vs authkit-free on WorkOS.
| Metric | Shopify | WorkOS |
|---|---|---|
| mau included | — | 1000000 users/month |
| organizations | — | unlimited orgs |
| staging environments | — | free envs |
Features
Shopify · 22 features
- Admin APIs — REST + GraphQL for management.
- App Store — 8,000+ apps.
- B2B (Plus) — Company accounts + catalogs.
- Checkout — Shopify-managed checkout (PCI-compliant).
- Checkout Extensibility — UI extensions in checkout (Plus).
- Collections — Manual + smart grouping.
- Customers — CRM-lite + B2B (Plus).
- Discounts — Automatic + code-based.
- Hydrogen — React/Remix headless framework.
- Inventory — Multi-location stock.
- Markets — Multi-region selling (currency, language).
- Online Store — Default Liquid-based storefront.
- Orders + Fulfillment — Multi-location fulfillment.
- Oxygen — Edge hosting for Hydrogen (Plus).
- Products + Variants — Full PIM.
- Shipping + Rates — Carrier integrations.
- Shopify Functions — Rust/WASM backend extensions.
- Shopify Payments — First-party payment processor.
- Shop Pay — Accelerated checkout with saved payment.
- Storefront API — GraphQL for custom storefronts.
- Theme Store — First-party + paid themes.
- Webhooks — Event subscriptions.
WorkOS · 13 features
- Audit Logs — Standardized audit log pipeline with streaming to SIEMs (Splunk, Datadog, Sumo L…
- AuthKit — Complete drop-in user management UI + hosted auth flows. Built on top of WorkOS.
- Directory Sync — SCIM-based user provisioning/deprovisioning from Okta, Azure AD, Google Workspac…
- FGA (WorkOS) — Fine-grained authorization based on Google Zanzibar / OpenFGA.
- Magic Auth — Passwordless email codes + links. Good alternative to password auth for B2B.
- Multi-Factor Auth — TOTP + SMS MFA enrollment and verification APIs.
- Organizations — Multi-tenant B2B primitive. Attach SSO/Directory/Audit to specific customer orgs…
- Passkeys — WebAuthn passkeys as a first-class factor.
- Radar — Fraud protection: device fingerprinting + risk scoring at signup and login.
- Single Sign-On — Plug-and-play SAML 2.0 + OIDC SSO with 30+ identity providers pre-mapped.
- User Management — REST API + webhooks for user CRUD, email verification, sessions, MFA, metadata.
- Vault — Secret storage for tokens + per-tenant credentials.
- Widgets — Embeddable admin portals (SSO setup, directory mapping) that your customers self…
Developer interfaces
| Kind | Shopify | WorkOS |
|---|---|---|
| CLI | shopify CLI | — |
| SDK | @shopify/admin-api-client, @shopify/hydrogen | workos-go, @workos-inc/authkit-nextjs, workos-java, workos-node, workos-php, workos-python, workos-ruby |
| REST | Admin REST API | WorkOS REST API |
| GRAPHQL | Admin GraphQL API, Storefront API | — |
| MCP | Shopify MCP (unofficial) | — |
| OTHER | Liquid Templates, Shopify Admin, Shopify Webhooks | Webhooks |
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Outbound links to Shopify and WorkOS are plain references to their official websites. Pricing is verified against vendor pages at publication time — reconfirm before buying.
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