Which Shopify app niches are growing now?

Is the Shopify app market still growing today?

The Shopify app market is still growing quickly today because merchants are putting much more commerce through Shopify, even as competition between apps gets tougher.

Shopify's latest quarterly results make that unusually clear. In Q2 2026, merchants processed $115.6 billion of GMV, up 32% from $87.8 billion a year earlier. Shopify's revenue grew 34% over the same period. Q1 had already crossed $100 billion of GMV for the first time, so this was another step up rather than one unusually strong quarter.

Zoom out and the change is even bigger. Shopify processed $378.4 billion of GMV in 2025, compared with $292.3 billion in 2024 and $235.9 billion in 2023. Merchant sales grew roughly 60% in two years.

More commerce creates more problems worth paying software companies to solve. A merchant doing $30 million across five countries, two warehouses and six stores needs much more software than a merchant running one storefront from one warehouse.

There are already more than 21,000 apps in Shopify's App Store, according to Shopify's 2025 annual filing. So the opportunity today comes with a catch: demand is getting bigger, but simple app ideas are much easier to copy and much more likely to collide with something Shopify builds itself.

Why can the biggest Shopify app niches be bad niches to enter?

Some of Shopify's largest app categories are already mature enough that their size tells us very little about how attractive they are for a new developer.

Product reviews are a good example. Third-party app tracking from StoreCensus shows hundreds of thousands of active installations among leading review apps, while Judge.me alone has built a huge merchant base. Shopify's App Store also contains hundreds of review products.

Subscriptions look similar. Recharge and Appstle have each reached large installed bases, and several subscription apps have thousands of App Store reviews. Shopify now offers its own subscription app as well.

Bundles, loyalty, analytics and upsells also have mature leaders with tens of thousands of merchants.

That creates a big difference between "merchants spend money here" and "this niche is opening up right now." Reviews clearly matter. Subscriptions clearly matter. But a newcomer has to displace products with years of reviews, integrations, data and customer trust.

The more interesting niches today tend to have fresh merchant demand plus a technical or operational problem that remains difficult to standardize.

Shopify app niche	Demand today	Competition	Shopify native pressure	Opening for a new app
Product reviews	Very high	Very high	Medium	Narrow
Basic subscriptions	High	Very high	High	Narrowing
Generic analytics	Very high	Very high	High	Weak
B2B workflows	Growing fast	Medium-high	Medium	Strong
AI product discovery	Growing very fast	Medium	Medium	Strong
Complex fulfillment	Growing	Medium	Medium	Strong
POS operations	Growing fast	Medium	Low-medium	Strong

Is AI commerce really becoming a Shopify app niche now?

AI commerce is currently the fastest-moving new Shopify app niche because AI shopping traffic is starting to produce actual orders, while Shopify is opening more of the shopping stack to developers.

According to Shopify's Q1 2026 commerce data, referral sessions from AI chatbots grew more than eightfold year over year. Orders attributed to those visitors grew almost thirteenfold. Shopify has also said AI-referred shoppers were converting at nearly 50% higher rates than organic-search visitors in its dataset.

Those growth rates come from a small base, so AI shopping is not yet comparable with Google or Meta. The useful part is that traffic and orders are moving together, and moving fast.

Shopify is building infrastructure around that behavior. Its Catalog system structures merchant products for AI discovery, while the Universal Commerce Protocol lets agents interact with merchants throughout the purchase journey. Shopify now connects merchants with shopping experiences across ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot and other AI surfaces.

That creates several fresh app opportunities around product data quality, catalog enrichment, AI discoverability, recommendation logic, product compatibility and measurement of AI-driven sales.

Generic AI copywriting looks much weaker. Shopify can already generate content itself. The better opportunity is helping an AI system understand which product should actually be shown to which shopper.

Are AI shopping assistants still worth building for Shopify?

Specialized Shopify AI shopping assistants can still be attractive, but generic store chatbots are already becoming commoditized.

Shopify Inbox now includes an AI sales assistant connected to the merchant's products and store information. That gives almost every merchant access to a baseline shopping assistant without installing a specialist product.

At the same time, Shopify's App Store already contains hundreds of search and discovery apps advertising AI-powered functionality. Competition around "chat with my catalog" is getting crowded quickly.

The gap appears when choosing the right product requires knowledge beyond ordinary product descriptions. Automotive stores need fitment. Beauty stores can match routines to skin concerns. Industrial distributors may need compatibility between components. Furniture retailers deal with dimensions, materials and room constraints. Supplements can involve ingredient preferences and exclusions.

Those problems need structured domain knowledge rather than a prettier chat box.

Sidekick creates another opening. Shopify said weekly active shops using Sidekick had grown roughly fourfold year over year by Q1 2026, and Shopify has since opened Sidekick App Extensions to developers. Klaviyo, Loop, Smile, Judge.me, Matrixify and other apps can now expose their own data or actions directly inside Sidekick.

That changes how we would build a Shopify AI app today. Proprietary data, recommendations and actions matter more than owning another dashboard. If Sidekick becomes the interface merchants increasingly use to ask questions, specialist apps can sit behind it and provide the intelligence.

Is Shopify B2B one of the best app niches right now?

Shopify B2B is one of the strongest app niches right now because wholesale activity is growing extremely fast while Shopify is bringing B2B tools to a much larger merchant base.

Shopify reported 96% year-over-year growth in B2B GMV during 2025. Shopify also stressed that B2B remained a very small share of total GMV, which makes the number more interesting: the segment was nearly doubling from a relatively early base.

The next move widened the market. Shopify began extending native B2B capabilities beyond Shopify Plus, giving more merchants access to company accounts, custom catalogs, volume pricing, quantity rules, payment terms and other wholesale basics.

That removes some demand for simple B2B apps, especially apps whose whole product is wholesale pricing. Yet it also gives many more merchants the foundation needed to run a serious wholesale business.

Once those merchants grow, harder problems appear: quote requests, procurement approvals, buyer roles, purchase orders, sales reps, commissions, negotiated pricing, credit limits, deposits, ERP synchronization and EDI.

The App Store already gives us evidence that merchants pay for these workflows. BSS B2B Wholesale Pricing has accumulated more than 1,000 reviews, while Shopify now surfaces more than 200 wholesale apps with product-visibility functionality. Newer products are appearing around buyer verification, purchase-order approval, credit checking and automated reordering.

That is where the B2B opportunity is moving.

B2B Shopify niche	Why merchants need it	Native replacement risk
Quotes and RFQs	Larger orders are negotiated	Medium
Buyer approvals	Companies have several purchasing roles	Low
Sales rep management	Wholesale often remains relationship-driven	Low
ERP and EDI	Larger merchants connect several systems	Low
Credit and deposits	Large orders need custom payment rules	Medium
B2B reordering	Repeat purchasing creates automation opportunities	Low-medium

Is Shopify POS becoming an underrated app niche?

Shopify POS is quietly becoming one of the better app niches because physical retail is growing while store operations remain full of problems that Shopify cannot solve with one generic workflow.

Shopify reported 27% growth in offline revenue in 2025. The company has also continued expanding POS geographically and adding support for more complicated multi-location retail operations.

The developer surface is getting broader too. Shopify POS extensions can now appear inside areas such as customer details, product details, orders, draft orders and cart workflows. Retail staff can use third-party functionality without leaving the POS interface.

One recent example is Easyteam. Shopify gave the workforce-management app a 2026 Build Award and described it as one of the most popular Shopify POS apps. Easyteam handles staff scheduling, time tracking, payroll and commissions directly inside the retail workflow.

That says a lot about where the demand sits. Physical retailers need tools for staff commissions, appointments, clienteling, loss prevention, barcode workflows, stock transfers, cash handling, local fulfillment and store-level performance.

A merchant operating ten stores can have dozens of small operational problems every day. Those problems are hard to compress into one standard Shopify feature, which gives specialist developers room to go deep.

Is multi-location fulfillment becoming a bigger Shopify app opportunity?

Multi-location fulfillment is becoming a stronger Shopify app niche as merchants combine warehouses, stores, pickup, local delivery, international markets and split shipments.

Shopify is currently rebuilding important parts of its shipping and fulfillment architecture around these more complicated orders. Its partner guidance says the transition affects delivery profiles, market-level shipping configuration and apps connected to order and fulfillment workflows, with the broader migration continuing into 2027.

The old ecommerce model was much simpler: one order came in and one warehouse shipped it.

A modern Shopify order might contain three items stocked at two warehouses, with one available for store pickup, another better shipped locally and a third coming from a 3PL. The merchant may also care about shipping cost, delivery speed, stock balancing and warehouse capacity before choosing where anything goes.

That opens room for smarter order routing, inventory allocation, delivery-date promises, shipping rules, stock transfers, 3PL coordination and fulfillment-exception management.

Shipping-label apps already have plenty of competition. Software that decides how an order should move through a merchant's network has a much deeper problem to solve.

Are Shopify returns and compliance apps growing now?

Shopify returns and compliance apps are still growing, with some of the freshest openings coming from regulation and more complicated post-purchase workflows.

Returns themselves are already a mature category. Shopify's App Store contains hundreds of products around returns and exchanges, and established products such as AfterShip Returns and Loop have built large merchant bases.

The problem is changing, though.

European regulation has recently created demand for apps handling online withdrawal requirements, and dedicated Shopify apps have quickly appeared around that workflow. Product-safety information, consent rules, invoicing, tax documentation, recycling obligations, accessibility and market-specific disclosures can produce similar software needs.

Returns are also becoming more connected to physical retail and customer retention. A merchant may want to decide whether a shopper gets a refund, exchange, store credit or repair, whether a return looks abusive, where the item should go and whether inventory can be resold.

Some of the newer App Store products already combine returns with fraud detection, B2B returns, repair workflows or exchange incentives.

Regulation makes this category especially interesting for smaller developers. A conversion app competes for discretionary marketing budget. A merchant facing a new legal requirement may need a solution simply to keep selling in a market.

The downside is that compliance products have to be correct. A thin app built from a vague interpretation of a law can create more risk than it removes.

Is international selling still a good Shopify app niche?

International Shopify apps still have good opportunities today, although basic translation has become much harder to defend.

Shopify's geographic mix gives cross-border software a large market. At the end of 2025, only 44% of Shopify merchants were in the United States. EMEA accounted for 31%, Asia-Pacific, Australia and China 16%, Canada 5% and Latin America 5%. Shopify's international revenue grew 36% during the year.

Meanwhile, Shopify keeps absorbing basic localization. Translate & Adapt handles translations, and Markets now controls more pricing, currencies, product availability, domains and market-specific selling rules.

A developer charging merchants simply to translate product copy is therefore fighting a stronger native product every year.

Cross-border operations remain messy. Merchants still need help with product compliance, customs data, landed costs, international returns, marketplace feeds, catalog differences, local invoices, country-specific merchandising and synchronization between markets.

A store with 20 products and two countries may handle those things manually. A merchant with 20,000 SKUs selling into 12 countries cannot.

That gap is where international Shopify software becomes much more valuable.

Is Shopify merchandising becoming a new app niche?

Shopify merchandising is opening up as a more interesting app niche because developers can now feed their own product intelligence into Shopify's native collection system.

The key change is Shopify's newer collection-source model. Apps can provide product or variant logic that merchants can use inside Shopify collections.

That lets a developer build merchandising around information Shopify may not know on its own.

A fashion app could rank products using sell-through and inventory age. A grocery app could use expiration risk. A retailer could surface products differently based on local stock. Another app could build collections around contribution margin, predicted conversion, reviews or replenishment probability.

The timing is good because collections increasingly feed more than a category page. Shopify catalogs now show up across storefronts, markets, Shop and AI-driven shopping experiences.

A product-merchandising engine can therefore influence what gets surfaced across several channels rather than optimizing one page.

For stores with thousands of SKUs, that can be a real operational product rather than another small conversion widget.

Are Shopify discount and bundle apps still worth building?

Advanced Shopify discount and bundle apps can still grow, but simple promotional widgets are getting squeezed.

Shopify keeps expanding native discount combinations, Functions and bundle capabilities. That raises the minimum complexity an independent app needs to justify charging merchants.

The App Store remains packed with bundle products, and third-party tracking finds hundreds of thousands of installations among the largest ones. Apps such as Kaching Bundles and Bundler already have large merchant footprints.

Yet Shopify's 2026 Build Awards included Discount Kit, an app focused on advanced discount logic. Shopify highlighted its ability to handle complicated, combinable promotions reliably during large campaigns.

Simple percentage discounts and ordinary bundles are crowded territory. Merchants still struggle with promotions involving gifts, exclusions, customer eligibility, several markets, B2B buyers, thresholds and overlapping campaigns.

Bundles can also become much more valuable when the app understands the products themselves. Automotive parts need compatibility. Beauty routines can depend on skin type. Industrial products may require components that work together.

The more business logic involved, the less the app depends on another popup or storefront widget to survive.

Can loyalty and customer-identity apps still grow on Shopify?

Shopify loyalty apps can still grow, especially when they connect customer identity across storefronts, POS and other apps rather than relying only on points programs.

The traditional loyalty market is already crowded. StoreCensus tracks roughly 200,000 installations among its largest loyalty apps, while Smile has accumulated more than 4,500 App Store reviews and received a Shopify Build Award in 2026.

So another basic earn-and-redeem program enters a category with mature incumbents.

What has improved lately is the infrastructure underneath customer apps. Shopify opened Sign in with Shop to storefront apps, letting third-party software use Shopify's buyer identity system. Shopify explicitly points to loyalty, wishlists, reviews and back-in-stock products as potential use cases.

That can reduce the friction created when every merchant app maintains its own customer account or asks shoppers to identify themselves again.

The stronger products can use that identity across loyalty benefits, store visits, subscriptions, referrals, wishlists and customer service. For omnichannel merchants in particular, recognizing the same person online and in a physical store can be worth much more than awarding another batch of points.

Are generic Shopify analytics apps getting weaker?

Generic Shopify analytics apps are getting weaker because Shopify is making basic reporting and natural-language analysis much easier to access inside its own admin.

The category itself is huge. StoreCensus detects more than 300,000 installations among its 25 largest analytics apps, although Microsoft Clarity accounts for a large share of them.

The problem for newcomers is that merchants increasingly have native reporting plus Sidekick. They can ask questions about store performance in ordinary language and get answers from Shopify data without learning another analytics interface.

Another dashboard showing revenue, conversion rate and average order value therefore has a difficult pitch.

Analytics still works when the software knows something Shopify cannot easily calculate. Attribution using outside data, inventory forecasting, pricing recommendations, product-level profitability, merchandising decisions and industry benchmarks can all create that edge.

Automation helps too. Showing a merchant that inventory will run out is useful. Recommending the replenishment quantity, explaining why and triggering the next step is worth more.

The analytics products with the best chance today are moving closer to decisions.

Which Shopify app niches are most exposed to Shopify building the same feature?

Basic automation, chat, subscriptions, translation, bundles and general reporting currently face the most pressure from Shopify's own products.

Shopify Flow already gives merchants a native automation engine. Inbox covers messaging and AI-assisted sales conversations. Shopify also has its own subscriptions, bundles, Search & Discovery, Translate & Adapt and increasingly capable reporting.

Distribution makes that dangerous for independent developers. Shopify Flow, for example, has accumulated almost 14,000 App Store reviews. A free native app integrated directly into the admin starts with an advantage that a new developer cannot match through product quality alone.

Third-party apps can still beat Shopify in those categories. Shopify Search & Discovery, for example, has received plenty of complaints from merchants looking for more control or better relevance. Native subscriptions also leave more complicated recurring-business models to specialist providers.

But the bar has changed.

We would be cautious about any app whose value can be summarized in one ordinary Shopify feature. Products tied to messy workflows, outside systems, specialist data or industry knowledge have much more room.

Does Shopify moving upmarket change which app niches can make money?

Shopify's move toward larger merchants makes operational app niches more attractive because one complex customer can be worth dozens or hundreds of small stores.

A small merchant may debate whether a $50 monthly app is necessary. A retailer with $50 million of sales can comfortably spend thousands a month on software that prevents inventory mistakes, routes orders properly or handles wholesale approvals.

Shopify's recent platform direction increasingly reflects that customer. B2B tools, ERP connections, unified commerce, multi-location retail, international markets and more sophisticated fulfillment all become more important as merchants get larger.

The latest quarterly numbers also show that Shopify's growth is broad rather than coming from one merchant segment. In its Q2 2026 release, management said GMV growth remained strong across merchant sizes, channels and geographies.

This changes the arithmetic for app developers. A product charging $2,000 a month needs 50 customers to reach $1.2 million of annual recurring revenue. A $20 app needs 5,000 paying customers for the same result.

For a small software team, the first model can be much more realistic if the problem is painful enough.

Which Shopify app niches are actually growing fastest now?

The Shopify app niches with the strongest momentum now are B2B operations, AI product discovery, complex fulfillment, POS workflows, merchandising intelligence, international compliance and advanced commerce logic.

We would put B2B near the top because Shopify's B2B GMV almost doubled in 2025 and native B2B is reaching more merchants. The best openings sit around approvals, procurement, sales reps, ERP connections, EDI, credit and reordering rather than basic wholesale pricing.

AI commerce is moving even faster from a smaller base. Shopify measured more than eightfold growth in AI referral sessions and almost thirteenfold growth in AI-referred orders in Q1 2026. Generic chatbots are already crowded, so product intelligence, AI discoverability, vertical recommendation and catalog optimization look stronger.

POS deserves more attention than it usually gets. Shopify's offline revenue rose 27% in 2025, and the company keeps opening deeper retail surfaces to apps. Workforce management, commissions, appointments, clienteling, inventory movement and store operations can all support specialist products.

Fulfillment also has a strong setup as orders increasingly span several warehouses, stores, pickup options and markets. Shopify is actively rebuilding parts of its architecture around that complexity.

Merchandising is earlier but particularly interesting. The newer collections model gives developers a direct way to turn proprietary data into Shopify-native product groupings. That creates room for products based on margin, inventory, demand forecasting, customer behavior or industry-specific rules.

Compliance and cross-border operations offer a different kind of growth. Regulation can suddenly make software mandatory, while merchants selling across more countries accumulate product, tax, documentation and localization problems that basic translation cannot solve.

The common thread across these niches is merchant complexity. Shopify's latest quarter reached $115.6 billion of GMV, up 32% year over year, so more businesses are reaching the scale where these problems become painful.

The easiest Shopify apps to describe are increasingly the hardest ones to defend. The better opportunities today tend to sit deeper inside the merchant's business: deciding which product to recommend, who can approve an order, where inventory should move, how staff should work, which rules apply in each market or how several systems should stay synchronized.

That is where we would look first if the goal is to build into a Shopify niche that is genuinely expanding now.