How much does a custom Shopify theme cost?

A custom Shopify theme built from a designer's Figma files usually takes 60 to 120 hours of development, which is $2,700 to $5,400 at my $45 hourly rate. A Theme Store theme costs $100 to $500, paid once, and there are 24 free ones. Many brands do best in between: a bought theme plus custom sections.

The routes and what each one costs

On 5 November 2026 the Shopify Theme Store listed 24 free themes and 1,335 paid ones. Theme developers can price a theme from $100 to $500 in $10 steps. That's the cheap end of the table below. The rest is development time, which I've costed at $45 an hour.

Two details change the maths for some brands. A Theme Store purchase is licensed to the store it was bought for, so a brand with three stores pays three times. And the theme price is the smallest line here, since setting up even a free theme properly takes a few days of work.

What the hours in a custom theme buy

When I quote a custom build, the hours go into the items below. If a quote you've received leaves some of them out, ask why.

• Templates for the home page, collections, products, cart, search and blog, plus a few content pages.
• A header, footer and announcement bar your team can edit, built as section groups.
• Sections and theme blocks with settings, presets and sensible defaults, so your team can build new pages without calling me. The sections and blocks guide shows the code, and theme blocks explained covers the newer block format.
• Metafields and metaobjects for product data that doesn't fit Shopify's default fields, like size charts or ingredient lists. See metafields vs metaobjects.
• Responsive images and lazy loading built into the theme, as in the image optimisation guide.
• A speed and accessibility pass before launch. Shopify's own bar for Theme Store themes is an average Lighthouse performance score of 60 and accessibility score of 90 across the home, collection and product pages. I hold my builds to Lighthouse 90+ on performance as well.
• The code in a Git repository you own, connected to the store through Shopify's GitHub integration, which also records edits made in the Shopify admin.
• A handover with a Loom walkthrough of the theme editor and notes on anything unusual in the code.
• Two rounds of changes against the agreed design, and 30 days of fixes for bugs in my code after launch.

What pushes the hours up

Some projects need well over 120 hours. These are the usual reasons:

• Unfinished designs. If the mockups cover desktop only, I work out the mobile layouts while building, which takes longer. States nobody drew, such as sold out, an empty cart or a form error, add more.
• Custom product logic. Configurators, bundles, and catalogues where each product fits specific vehicles, like the Miller CAT store, need their own code and testing.
• Integrations. Reviews, subscriptions, loyalty programmes and ERP connections all reach into the theme.
• Content entry. Formatting hundreds of products or pages is real work if nobody on your side does it.
• More stores and markets. Every extra store, language or currency needs its own round of testing.

How a custom build runs

A typical build of 60 to 120 hours takes three to five weeks and moves through the same stages. The plan below is the five-week version, and it assumes finished designs and feedback within a day or two of each request.

1. Week 1: the Git repository, a development theme and the template list go in, and you sign off the list of sections.
2. Weeks 2 and 3: sections and blocks get built mobile first, each with settings for everything your team will change.
3. Week 4: product data, metafields, apps and integrations go in, along with your real content.
4. Week 5: testing on phones and desktop browsers, a Lighthouse and accessibility pass, and fixes.
5. Launch: the theme goes live, the live store gets checked, and your team gets a Loom walkthrough of the editor.

Builds near 60 hours fit in three weeks. Complex ones take longer, mostly in the middle stages. Most delays come from waiting for content and decisions, which is why the brief matters.

How to get an accurate quote

The more a developer knows up front, the tighter the range. Send these with your enquiry:

• A link to the Figma file, with mobile frames if you have them.
• Your current theme and the list of apps you plan to keep.
• Your catalogue size, the most variants any product has, and any unusual product types.
• The markets, languages and currencies you sell in.
• Two or three stores whose pages work the way you want yours to.
• Your launch date, and anything it's tied to, like a product drop.

With that, a quote can name the templates and sections it covers, and you can compare quotes line by line.

Three builds from my own work

At Louise Carter I rebuilt the main store on the premium Stiletto theme and added custom Liquid sections, the middle route in the table, with reusable sections and snippets shared across the brand's five stores (Louise Carter case study).

At Sweet Zzz Mattress I built custom, responsive Liquid themes from the ground up. The flagship moved from BigCommerce to Shopify as a pixel-perfect rebuild on a two-week deadline, with products, customers, collections and order history all moved across. The Sweet Zzz case study has the details.

For KROST, a New York streetwear label, I built a custom Shopify theme and responsive storefront in 2024, the fully custom route (Krost New York case study).

My rule of thumb from this work: if your design fits the structure of a good theme, buy the theme and add sections. Go fully custom when the design or the product pages don't fit any theme without fighting it.

What a theme costs after launch

Plan for some spending after launch too. With a Theme Store theme, updates are free and your theme editor changes carry over to the new version. Code edits only carry over when they don't conflict with the update, so the more code you change in a bought theme, the harder each update gets.

A custom theme gets no automatic updates. You own the code, so you or your developer maintain it as Shopify adds features and your apps change. Budget a few hours a month, which is what ongoing Shopify support is for.

When you don't need a custom theme

If you're launching a new store or testing a product, start with a free theme. Horizon, one of Shopify's free themes, is built on theme blocks, so a lot of layout work can happen in the editor. Since December 2025, Sidekick can generate theme blocks from a plain-language description in any Theme Store theme, which covers many small one-off additions.

If speed is your reason for wanting a new theme, find out what's slowing the store first. A new theme won't fix slow apps or huge images, and why is my Shopify store slow walks through the usual causes. And if you're unsure which way to go, customise a free theme or build a custom one compares the two in more depth.

Timelines and the starting price for a build are on my custom Shopify theme development page.