WooCommerce vs Shopify Speed: An Honest Comparison for 2026

WooCommerce vs Shopify speed is one of the most searched comparisons in e-commerce — and one of the most misleading. The headline answer is that Shopify is faster out of the box. The complete answer is more nuanced: a well-optimised WooCommerce store can match Shopify, and a headless WooCommerce frontend can outperform it. Here's an honest breakdown.

Why Shopify is faster out of the box

Shopify is a managed SaaS platform. Your storefront runs on Shopify's infrastructure, which means:

• Global CDN included — all static assets (images, CSS, JS) are automatically served from edge locations
• Server infrastructure is optimised for e-commerce at scale — you benefit from the same infrastructure that powers millions of stores
• No plugin overhead — Shopify's app ecosystem doesn't load arbitrary PHP code the way WordPress plugins do
• Liquid templates render server-side, but Shopify's own template engine is significantly faster than WordPress/PHP bootstrapping with 20–30 plugins loaded

The result is that a brand new Shopify store, without any configuration, typically achieves better Lighthouse scores than a brand new WooCommerce store. This is a real and meaningful difference for stores that are not actively managing performance.

Architecture comparison

How Shopify renders pages

Shopify uses its own Liquid templating engine running on their servers. Pages are cached at Shopify's CDN layer, with dynamic elements (cart, personalised content) loaded asynchronously. Shopify Storefront API allows headless implementations via their Hydrogen framework (React/Remix) or any other frontend framework.

How WooCommerce renders pages

Traditional WooCommerce uses WordPress + PHP + your chosen theme. Every page request bootstraps WordPress, loads all active plugins, queries the database, and renders HTML via PHP templates. This process is inherently slower than Shopify's managed infrastructure, but it's also completely within your control to optimise.

Real-world speed comparison

Product pages

On product pages, Shopify typically wins by default. An unoptimised WooCommerce product page might take 2–4 seconds to load. A Shopify product page on a clean theme is usually under 2 seconds. With caching, CDN, and image optimisation, WooCommerce product pages can match or beat Shopify on TTFB — especially on LiteSpeed hosting with server-level caching.

Category pages

WooCommerce category pages with large product counts (50+ products) can be significantly slower than Shopify due to the database queries required to build the product grid. Shopify's storefront CDN caches these pages aggressively. With proper WooCommerce caching, the gap narrows considerably.

Checkout

This is where Shopify has the clearest structural advantage. Shopify's checkout is hosted on checkout.shopify.com — a heavily optimised, globally cached checkout infrastructure. WooCommerce checkout is a PHP page on your server that cannot be cached. On equivalent hosting, Shopify checkout is typically 30–60% faster than WooCommerce checkout.

Core Web Vitals comparison

Google's Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX) shows real-world field data from Chrome users across both platforms. Shopify stores consistently pass Core Web Vitals at a higher rate than WooCommerce stores. This gap is driven primarily by the out-of-the-box difference — stores that actively optimise WooCommerce close the gap significantly.

Shopify vs WooCommerce: honest pros and cons for speed

Headless WooCommerce vs Shopify Hydrogen

Both platforms offer a headless option — and this is where the comparison gets more interesting. Shopify Hydrogen is Shopify's official React framework for headless storefronts. WooCommerce headless uses the REST API or WPGraphQL with any frontend framework, most commonly Next.js.

Performance ceiling

Both headless implementations can achieve Lighthouse scores of 90+ on product and category pages with static generation and edge CDN delivery. The performance ceiling is broadly the same.

Developer experience

Shopify Hydrogen uses Remix — an excellent framework, but one with a steeper learning curve than Next.js, which has significantly more community resources, documentation, and third-party integrations. WooCommerce REST API is well-documented and widely used. WPGraphQL provides an alternative for teams that prefer GraphQL.

Cost and vendor lock-in

Shopify Hydrogen requires a Shopify subscription with associated transaction fees and Shopify's payment gateway costs. WooCommerce is open source — you control your hosting, payment gateways, and data. With headless WooCommerce, you also avoid Shopify's checkout lock — your React checkout can be fully custom.

Which should you choose?

If speed is your primary concern and you have no developer resources: Shopify is simpler and faster out of the box. The managed infrastructure takes care of CDN, caching, and checkout performance without any configuration.

If you have developer resources and want full control — or if you have an existing WooCommerce store with products, customers, and order history you don't want to migrate — a headless WooCommerce approach can deliver better performance than Shopify at a lower ongoing cost.

For more on what headless WooCommerce actually involves, read our guide to what headless WooCommerce is and the full Shopify headless vs WooCommerce comparison.