On Sharetribe's Build Plan? What to Decide Before You Launch
By Hammed Omoyele · · 3 min read
A plain-language guide to what Build includes, what only Live unlocks, and how to time the upgrade after the October 2026 pricing change.
Most coverage of Sharetribe's October 1st pricing change focused on what it did to the old higher tiers. If you are a founder who is still building your marketplace on the Build plan, the question is different: what exactly do I have now, and when should I change it?
What the Build plan covers
Build is $39 a month and is designed for building and testing your marketplace before it launches. Based on the Subscription page in Console, it includes building your marketplace without coding or with custom code, testing with test users and listing data, sandbox payments, full API access to your test and dev marketplaces, and 1 million usage credits per month. If you go past those credits, the extra usage is billed separately.
In short, Build gives you everything you need to get a marketplace ready, without needing to charge a single real customer.
What only the Live plan adds
Live costs $259 a month billed monthly, and Console offers a yearly billing option that lowers the monthly price. It includes everything in Build and adds the parts that make a marketplace a real business: real users, listings, transactions and reviews, online payments with real money, full API access to your live marketplace, a white-label platform with no Sharetribe branding anywhere, and no transaction fees. It carries the same 1 million monthly credits as Build.
The part that changed the most
Before October 1st, custom code and full API access on a live marketplace sat behind a higher tier. That gate is gone. If your plan involves custom features, you can build and prove them on Build, then launch on Live without paying for anything above it. That makes the upgrade a launch decision, not a technology decision.
How to decide when to upgrade
Three questions are enough. First, are real customers ready to pay you? Build only runs sandbox payments, so real money means Live. Second, do you need your marketplace to look fully your own? The white-label setup with no Sharetribe branding comes with Live. Third, is your usage anywhere near the included credits? The Usage section under Subscription in Console shows what you have used this month. One Build marketplace I looked at had used about 1,000 of its 1 million credits so far in October, so a test marketplace is unlikely to come close. A busy live marketplace is a different story, and Console has a Simulate usage fees link to estimate the cost before you commit.
If you can answer yes to the first question, you are ready for Live. If not, staying on Build until your first real users are lined up is a perfectly sound way to keep costs low while you finish the work.
The takeaway
The new structure rewards founders who build carefully before launching. Build at $39 a month is where you prove the idea, Live is where you run it, and the price of custom development no longer forces you to guess which tier you will need later.
I build and customize Sharetribe marketplaces for founders working through exactly these decisions, from first MVP through the custom features that come after. If you're mapping out a marketplace idea, my Fiverr gig, Upwork profile, or contact page has more on how I approach this.
This article was first published on Medium.
