Shopify Smart Pricing: How Markdown and Markup Tips Work
Shopify Smart Pricing is Shopify’s own pricing app, with AI markdown and markup tips, tips for new products and, for select stores, A/B pricing experiments. This guide covers the markdown and markup tips. For each product it forecasts how stock will move over the next 90 days at the current price, then suggests a markdown for slow sellers with too much stock, or a markup for fast sellers running low. You decide which tips to apply, one by one or in bulk, with your own rounding. The app needs at least 10 products that each have more than 25 sales a month, and it works best when every product has a cost per item.
Everything below comes from Shopify’s Help Center pages on Smart Pricing and markdowns and markups, read on October 23, 2026.
Who can use it
Requirements for markdown and markup tips:
- at least 10 products, each with more than 25 sales a month;
- selling mainly physical products, not digital ones.
Shopify adds the conditions where the app helps most: your inventory lives in Shopify and you ship the goods yourself, Cost per item is filled in where possible, you can change prices without contractual limits (and already use compare-at prices or run promotions), and you have around 10 or more active products for the model to learn from.
That makes Smart Pricing a tool for stores with steady volume. A store selling a handful of units of each product a month doesn’t meet the 25-sales threshold.
How a price tip is made
For every product, the model forecasts inventory movement over 90 days at today’s price, then weighs that against costs and seasonal demand. Four factors go in:
| Factor | What it is |
|---|---|
| Sell-through rate | Units sold per day, weighted towards the latest weeks, so it can differ from your 90-day units sold |
| Available inventory | Stock on hand and how long it lasts at the current sell-through rate |
| Seasonality and demand trends | Patterns the model sees in your category over time |
| Cost per item | What you pay per unit, used so a markdown doesn’t push a product into a loss |
From that forecast come two kinds of tip:
- Markdown: excess stock with a slow sell-through rate. The tip suggests a lower price or a deeper discount, to move the product before margin erodes.
- Markup: low stock with a fast sell-through rate. The tip suggests a higher price or removing a discount, to protect margin while demand is high and stock lasts.
Tips refresh weekly. A product without a tip this week may have one next week, and the other way round.
Without a Cost per item, the model can’t check whether a markdown keeps the product profitable, and Shopify warns it may suggest a lower price than you’d want. You can add a cost directly from the app’s product list. How to fill costs across the catalog is covered in how to price products on Shopify.
Apply, round and export
Tips are applied immediately when you accept them, without running an A/B experiment first.
- Go to Apps > Shopify Smart Pricing.
- Under Mark down prices or Mark up prices, click Review and update.
- Optional: in Price rounding, set the rounding rule for all tips, such as prices ending in .99 or whole numbers, and Save.
- In the To review list, hover over a tip to see why it was suggested; sort, filter or search the list as needed.
- Click Update on a product to accept its tip, or select several and click Update to accept them in bulk.
- Click Skip for tips you don’t want; skipped tips stay in the Skipped tab, where Review brings them back.
Markdowns and markups are reviewed separately, and Shopify suggests using both. Your choices are kept until the next set of tips is published.
To review tips outside the admin, export them as CSV. Each export covers one tip type, so export both to see everything. The file lists the product, the reason (such as Reduce discount or Lower price), days of inventory remaining and total inventory, current price and compare-at price, the suggested price and compare-at price, the currency, and the status (Included or Skipped).
A routine we’d suggest: once a week, export both files, sort by days of inventory remaining, and apply markups to the products closest to selling out before markdowns to the slowest ones. Check any markdown on a product without a cost per item by hand.
What Smart Pricing doesn’t do
- It doesn’t change prices on its own; every change is one you accept.
- Tips don’t test prices. Testing is the app’s separate A/B pricing experiments feature, in early access for select stores and covered in Shopify price testing.
- It works from cost per item; shipping, payment fees and ad costs aren’t among its four factors.
- It doesn’t help stores below the volume threshold. For rule-based or competitor-based price changes, see Shopify dynamic pricing.
The pricing and sales hub has the related guides.
FAQ
What are the requirements for Shopify Smart Pricing? You need at least 10 products, each with more than 25 sales a month, and you must sell mainly physical products. Shopify recommends filling in cost per item for each product.
Does Smart Pricing change my prices automatically? Smart Pricing only suggests markdowns and markups. You apply each tip yourself, individually or in bulk, and the change takes effect immediately.
How often do Smart Pricing tips update? Markdown and markup tips refresh weekly, based on updated sales and inventory data.
Why is Smart Pricing suggesting prices that are too low? Check whether the product has a cost per item. Without it, the model can’t verify that a markdown keeps the product profitable and may suggest a lower price than you want.