Headless e-commerce (Hydrogen or Next.js on top of Shopify) costs $50,000 to $350,000 to build, plus ongoing engineering retainer of $5K-$15K/mo. It's the right call for the top 5% of DTC brands and almost always premature for the other 95%.
Bottom: tight Hydrogen build with the standard Shopify Storefront API. Top: deep custom PDPs, multi-region routing, custom checkout extensions, and AI-driven personalization. The single biggest predictor of where a specific engagement lands is scope discipline, operators who lock the spec in the first two weeks save 20-40% of total project cost over the next three months. Operators who let scope expand mid-build pay the inverse penalty. Either way, the $50K to $350K range is descriptive, not prescriptive: it reflects what a competent US vendor charges in 2026 for the work as scoped, not what a finished engagement has to cost.
| Component | Low | High |
|---|---|---|
Discovery and architecture (paid 2-3 week sprint) | $8K | $35K |
Frontend build (Hydrogen or Next.js) | $25K | $150K |
Custom PDP / PLP / search UX | $10K | $80K |
International routing + multi-region | $5K | $40K |
Checkout extensions + custom flows | $5K | $35K |
Performance budget + Core Web Vitals SLA | $3K | $15K |
Replatform from existing theme | $5K | $25K |
Year-one engineering retainer | $60K | $180K |
Discovery and architecture (paid 2-3 week sprint)
Frontend build (Hydrogen or Next.js)
Custom PDP / PLP / search UX
International routing + multi-region
Checkout extensions + custom flows
Performance budget + Core Web Vitals SLA
Replatform from existing theme
Year-one engineering retainer
Every 'small addition' that turns up in week three is a real change order. Operators who lock scope in discovery save 20-40% of total project cost.
CRM imports, redirect maps, third-party API wiring, and content migration are the most underestimated line items in dev projects.
Conventional design is fixed-bid territory. Custom motion, bespoke components, and editorial illustration push costs up 30-100%.
Senior US engineers cost 2-3x junior engineers but ship 5-10x faster on non-trivial work. Cheap teams are usually expensive in retrospect.
Sites where the client writes all the copy ship faster and cheaper than sites where copy is in scope. Most projects underestimate this.
We scope headless builds at $90K-$250K with a 6-12-month engineering retainer. We only recommend headless when the brand has $20M+ GMV and a specific UX or international requirement that Shopify Plus cannot meet. The premium over the floor of the market reflects scope we don't itemize, measurement infrastructure, post-launch stability, and a documented handoff that survives whoever happens to be on our team six months from now. Our proposals are itemized line-by-line so you can see what you're paying for; we'd rather lose the deal on transparent pricing than win it by hiding the math.
From $22K
fixed project
Shopify and headless storefronts built to compound, not just launch.
Full E-Commerce Stores breakdownStay on Shopify Plus. Spend the budget on creative, retention, and acquisition instead. For 19 out of 20 DTC brands, the topline lift from headless is smaller than the lift from spending the same $200K on better Meta creative. The honest framing: cheaper vendors exist at every tier, Fiverr at the bottom, offshore agencies in the middle, established US-based mid-market shops at the top. The cost-quality curve is real but rarely linear. Going from a $5K vendor to a $15K vendor usually produces a meaningfully different outcome; going from $15K to $45K often produces a refinement, not a transformation. Where you sit on that curve depends on the cost of being wrong, not the budget you have available.
Project + 12-month retainer ÷ (specific UX lift × revenue) + (international revenue from new geos enabled)
Brand at $50M GMV spending $300K total. If the rebuild enables 1.5 points of conversion-rate lift ($750K/yr incremental revenue at 30% margin = $225K/yr gross profit) plus opens UK/EU markets ($2M/yr at 25% margin = $500K/yr) → payback in ~6 months. Headless rarely makes sense under those scale conditions.
We'll send back an itemized proposal, scope, line items, timeline, and the team that would actually run the engagement. No discovery call to schedule a discovery call.