Shopify App Pricing's New Store Requirements, Explained
Shopify now lets app developers block merchants whose stores lack a required capability from subscribing to a public plan at all. Here's exactly what it checks.
Shopify App Pricing has always let developers price plans differently. As of October 28, 2026, it also lets them gate plans by whether a store can actually use what the plan sells. The new Store requirements feature, added to the public-plan editor, blocks a merchant from subscribing to a plan at all if their store lacks a capability the plan depends on.
That's a different kind of control than tiering by price or usage. It moves a class of eligibility logic that developers previously had to build themselves — checking a store's configuration before letting someone pay for a plan that can't work there — into something Shopify checks natively, before the merchant ever reaches checkout.
What the two requirements actually gate
Shopify currently supports exactly two selectable requirements in the plan editor. The first is checkout UI extensions across all checkout pages, together with branding customizations: it confirms the store can run app customizations on every step of checkout. The second is direct company catalogs for B2B: it confirms the store can assign catalogs directly to its B2B customers. Nothing else is currently listed as a requirement option, and Shopify doesn't indicate whether more are planned.
When Shopify checks it
The check happens twice. The first time is on the plan selection page itself: if a store doesn't qualify for a given plan's requirements, the Select button for that plan is unavailable, and the message names the missing feature. The second check happens again when the merchant approves the charge, so a store's eligibility can't change between viewing the page and confirming payment without being caught.
Where the coverage stops
Store requirements only apply to public plans in Shopify App Pricing — private plans aren't covered, and neither are charges created directly through the Billing API. If an app mixes public plans with Billing API charges for custom arrangements, those charges won't get this gate.
One more nuance affects anonymous traffic: visitors who aren't signed in to the Shopify App Store still see all of a developer's public plans, regardless of store requirements. Shopify needs a signed-in store context to evaluate whether a store qualifies, so an anonymous browsing session simply can't be checked yet. For product teams designing a pricing page, that means the gating is a purchase-flow safeguard, not a way to hide plans from browsers who haven't connected a store.
What happens to existing subscriptions
Existing subscriptions are handled carefully rather than retroactively. Adding or changing a requirement on a plan never removes an existing active subscription — a merchant who's already subscribed keeps their plan even if their store would no longer qualify under a newly added requirement. But if that subscription gets cancelled, the merchant has to meet the current requirements to resume it. That asymmetry matters for how developers think about rolling out a new requirement: it protects current subscribers but tightens the door behind anyone who churns.