Shopify Dynamic Pricing: Smart Pricing First, Then Apps
Shopify dynamic pricing means prices that change from data instead of by hand: from your sales speed and stock, from competitors’ prices, or from rules you set in advance. Shopify’s own Smart Pricing app covers the first kind with weekly AI price tips, and only if you sell enough. Competitor-based repricing and fully automatic rules still need a third-party app.
For Smart Pricing we used Shopify’s pages on markdowns and markups and pricing experiments, plus the Price Indication Directive page (all read October 23, 2026); app prices and ratings are as their Shopify App Store listings showed them on October 23, 2026.
Four kinds of dynamic pricing and what does each on Shopify
| Kind | Price follows | Example | Done on Shopify by |
|---|---|---|---|
| Demand and inventory based | Sell-through rate and stock on hand | Mark down a slow seller with 200 days of stock | Shopify Smart Pricing (tips you approve), or an app |
| Competitor based | Other stores’ and marketplaces’ prices | Stay 3% under the cheapest competitor, never below cost | Repricing apps (Prisync, PriceMole) |
| Rule or time based | A schedule or a condition you set | 15% off a collection from Friday to Monday, then back | Shopify discounts, or apps with scheduling |
| Price testing | A test result | Show $24 to half the visitors and $28 to the other half | Smart Pricing experiments (early access), or test apps |
The third is ordinary sale scheduling: a Shopify discount with a start and end date already does it, so it needs no dynamic pricing tool.
What Shopify’s Smart Pricing app does
Smart Pricing is Shopify’s own app (Apps > Shopify Smart Pricing). It uses a machine-learning model to suggest prices, and it never changes a price by itself: every change is one you accept.
Markdown and markup tips. For each product, the model forecasts how stock would move over the next 90 days at the current price, then weighs four factors: sell-through rate (units per day, weighted to recent weeks), available inventory, seasonality and demand trends in your category, and cost per item. Too much stock selling slowly gets a markdown tip (lower price or deeper discount). Little stock selling fast gets a markup tip (higher price or remove the discount). Tips refresh weekly.
The requirements are strict, and they decide whether the app is any use to you:
- at least 10 products, each with more than 25 sales a month;
- mostly physical products, not digital;
- inventory tracked in Shopify, and at least a month of recent sales per product (new and very slow SKUs are skipped).
Fill in Cost per item on your products before you trust the tips. Without it, Shopify says the model cannot check that a markdown stays profitable and may suggest a lower price than you want.
You review tips in the Mark down prices and Mark up prices sections, can set a rounding rule (for example prices ending in .99), accept or skip them one by one or in bulk, export them as CSV, and see the last 30 days of applied changes in Publish history. Our guide to Shopify Smart Pricing markdowns walks through that review screen in detail.
Price tips for new products. Shopify lists price tips for newly added products as a separate part of the app.
A/B price experiments. In early access for selected stores: Grow plan or higher, based in the United States and selling to US customers, on the new Shopify Markets with one catalog for the US market, and the same 10-products-with-25-sales rule. An experiment splits online store visitors 50/50 between your current prices and test prices, for up to 250 products, one experiment at a time. Results appear after about four days and refresh daily. Two limits matter: the test only runs on the online store (Facebook, Instagram and Google channels keep the original price), and nothing in the admin warns staff that an experiment is running, so a manual price edit spoils it. More on that in Shopify price testing.
If your store sells fewer than 25 units a month of ten different products, Smart Pricing will show nothing, and an app is the only route to automated pricing.
Dynamic pricing apps compared
The App Store lists many repricing apps, and most have a handful of reviews. These are the ones whose listings we read on October 23, 2026, picked for review counts or for a distinct approach.
| App | What it changes prices from | Free option | Paid plans | Price grows with | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prisync AI | Competitor prices (websites, Google Shopping, Amazon), cost rules | 14-day trial | $49, $199, $399 a month | Products tracked (100, 1,000, 5,000) | 4.9 (242 reviews) |
| PriceMole | Competitor prices and stock, crawled 4 times a day | Trial | $99, $249, $499 a month | Products tracked (100, 1,000, 5,000) | 4.8 (33) |
| Pricing.AI | Your own rules, schedules, flash sales, with revert | Free plan (200 price changes a month) | $9.99, $19.99, $39.99 a month | Price changes per month | 5.0 (26) |
| SpurIT Dynamic Pricing | Sales volume (raise on fast sellers, lower on slow) | 7-day trial | $19.95 a month | Flat | 5.0 (2) |
Read the unit before you compare. Competitor tools charge by the number of products they watch, so a 3,000-SKU store pays the top tier even if only a few hundred products have real competitors; track those and leave the rest. Rule tools charge by price changes per month, which climbs fast if a rule touches every variant daily.
Set guardrails in whichever app you pick: a floor at cost plus your minimum margin, a ceiling, and a cap on how often one product’s price can change. A competitor repricer with no floor will follow a competitor’s pricing error straight down.
Rules worth automating first
- Clearance by days of stock. When a seasonal product has more than 120 days of stock at the current sell-through, mark it down a step. Smart Pricing does this if you qualify; otherwise a rule app can.
- Low-stock markup or discount removal. When a best seller drops under two weeks of stock and the restock is late, remove its discount instead of letting it sell out.
- Scheduled sales that revert. Weekend or holiday promotions with a fixed end, so nobody has to remember to undo prices on Monday.
- Competitor matching on a short list. Only for products where shoppers compare the same item across stores, with a cost floor.
For the pricing groundwork behind any of these rules, start with how to price products on Shopify.
The legal line in the EU
If you sell to customers in the European Economic Area and announce a price reduction (“20% off”, “was 100 EUR, now 50 EUR”, a Black Friday deal), the Price Indication Directive requires you to show the lowest price you charged in the previous 30 days or more as the reference. Shopify’s Help Center notes that price changes without a promotional statement, such as a change due to costs, might not fall under the directive. Automated markdowns that you advertise as a sale do. Use the compare-at price for that 30-day lowest price, and see EU price reduction rules for the details and national variations.
The pricing and sales hub covers discounts, sales and price strategy.
FAQ
Does Shopify have built-in dynamic pricing? Shopify’s Smart Pricing app suggests markdowns and markups from your sales and stock, and you approve each change. It needs at least 10 products with more than 25 sales a month each, so smaller stores need an app.
Can Shopify change prices automatically based on competitors? Shopify has no native competitor tracking. Apps such as Prisync AI and PriceMole watch competitor prices and reprice by your rules, with plans priced by the number of products tracked.
Is dynamic pricing legal? Changing prices is legal in general. In the EEA, any announced price reduction must show the lowest price of the last 30 days or more, and national laws can set a longer period, so check each country you sell to.
Will Smart Pricing experiments show different prices on Instagram or Google? Experiments run only on the online store, so other channels keep the original price during a test, and a shopper can see two prices for the same product.