Summarize with AI
Every Shopify plan now includes 200+ real-time reports, custom explorations and the ShopifyQL editor. This guide covers what each plan gets in 2026, which reports to open first (funnel, search, RFM, profit), the measurement changes that break year-over-year comparisons, Shopify vs GA4 and how we use the data in client projects.
Shopify's analytics looks very different from what most guides describe. In June 2025 Shopify made its rebuilt Analytics the default for every store, with real-time data, custom dashboards, data explorations and a ShopifyQL query editor in every report (Shopify changelog). In September 2026 it also changed how sessions are counted. The old rule "the higher your plan, the more reports you get" no longer describes how it works.
This guide covers what each plan gets in 2026, where to find the reports, which ones to open first, what changed in the data and how we use Shopify reports in client projects after 400+ Shopify and Shopify Plus projects.
Which Shopify plans include analytics and reports in 2026?
All of them. Shopify's pricing page lists "200+ real-time reports, plus custom analytics" on Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus (Shopify pricing, checked 27 October 2026). The Help Center says the main Analytics features are available on any subscription plan (Shopify Help Center: Shopify reports) and that "creating a new data exploration", which is how you build a custom report, "is available to merchants on all Shopify plans" (Shopify Help Center: data explorations).
Older articles, including an earlier version of this one, say that custom reports and some customer reports are only on Advanced and Plus. That was true of the old analytics and no longer is. What still differs by plan is mostly who can see the data: on Basic there are no extra staff accounts, Grow has 5, Advanced 15 and Plus is unlimited, and each staff member needs Analytics permissions to open reports.
| Feature | Where to find it | Plans |
|---|---|---|
| Analytics dashboard (metric cards you can rearrange) | Analytics | All plans |
| Default reports (11 categories) | Analytics > Reports | All plans |
| Custom reports (data explorations, "Save as") | Analytics > Reports > New exploration | All plans |
| ShopifyQL query editor | Top of any report | All plans (no plan limit in the Help Center) |
| Live View | Analytics > Live View | All plans (stores with an online store) |
| Conversion summary ("customer journey") of an order | Orders > order details | No plan limit in the Help Center (Online Store and Hydrogen orders only) |
| Staff accounts that can view reports | Settings > Users | Basic: owner only, Grow: 5, Advanced: 15, Plus: unlimited |
Sources: Shopify pricing, Help Center: Shopify reports, Help Center: conversion summary. Grow is the plan formerly called "Shopify". If you are comparing plans for other reasons (staff, API limits, B2B, checkout), see our Shopify Plus vs Advanced comparison and the Shopify pricing guide for 2026. If you don't have a store yet, you can start a Shopify store on any plan and all of the reports below are there from day one.
Where everything lives in the admin
- Analytics opens the dashboard: cards with single metrics (for example net sales by channel or sessions by device). Each card links to the full report behind it, and you can add, remove and reorder cards.
- Analytics > Reports lists the default reports by category: Acquisition, Behavior, Customers, Finance, Fraud, Inventory, Marketing, Order, Profit, Retail sales and Sales (Help Center: default reports). Filter by Created by > Shopify to see only the defaults.
- Live View shows what is happening in the store right now. It is most useful during a launch, a sale or a campaign send.
- The ShopifyQL editor sits at the top of every report. You can edit the query behind a default report (add a filter, a dimension, a comparison) and save the result as your own report (Shopify changelog).
- Sidekick, Shopify's AI assistant, can build a report from a plain-language request ("What do you want to explore?") or refine the query of a default report (Help Center: data explorations). Check what it built before you share the numbers; it is a starting point, not an analyst.
Two practical limits: a report view loads up to 1,000 rows (totals still cover all rows, and an export gives you the full dataset), and some reports can't be filtered or edited, including most Finance, Fraud and Order reports (Help Center: filter and edit).
Which reports to open first
There are over 200 reports, and most stores need a dozen of them. These are the ones that answer the questions we hear most often from clients:
| Question | Report | What to do with it |
|---|---|---|
| Where do shoppers drop off? | Conversion rate breakdown (Behavior) | Compare the funnel by device. A big gap between mobile and desktop at "added to cart" usually points to the product page, not to traffic. |
| Which traffic actually sells? | Performance by marketing channel (Marketing) | Compare channels by orders and sales, not sessions. Switch the attribution model to see how much each channel depends on the last click. |
| Can shoppers find products? | Searches with no results, Searches with no clicks (Behavior) | Add synonyms, fix product titles and tags, or create the collection people are looking for. |
| Is the store fast enough? | Largest Contentful Paint, Interaction to Next Paint, Cumulative Layout Shift (Behavior) | Check them by page type after every theme or app change. |
| What to bundle? | Items bought together (Order) | Use the most common combinations for bundles, upsells and promotions, or create a customer segment from a combination. |
| Who are the best customers? | RFM customer analysis, Customer cohort analysis (Customers) | Turn RFM groups into segments for email and loyalty campaigns; watch cohorts for repeat purchase rate. |
| Are we actually making money? | Gross profit by product, Profit margin by order (Profit) | Only works if cost per item is filled in (see below). |
| What is running out? | Inventory reports | Check stock against sell-through before campaigns. |
Sources: behavior reports, marketing reports, order reports, customer reports, profit reports (Shopify Help Center, checked 27 October 2026).
RFM and cohorts are now built in
Until recently, RFM (recency, frequency, monetary value) needed an app or a spreadsheet. Shopify now scores every customer and sorts them into 11 RFM groups, from Champions to Dormant. You can open a group as a customer segment or use the rfm_group attribute when you build segments. The cohort analysis groups customers by the date of their first order and can show projections, which Shopify itself says "aren't a guarantee of future sales" (Help Center: customer reports). How to turn RFM groups into campaigns is in our guide to RFM analysis, and how to measure a loyalty program in loyalty programs on Shopify.
Attribution: five models, one default
Marketing reports support five attribution models: last non-direct click, last click, first click, any click and linear. Last non-direct click is the default for marketing activity data. The old reports "Conversion by first interaction", "Conversion by last interaction" and "Attribution model comparison" are deprecated; you compare models by selecting several in the Attribution menu of a report (Help Center: marketing reports). If a channel looks great on last click and weak on first click, it closes sales that other channels started. Cutting it may still be right, but you should know that before you do.
Profit reports need cost per item
Profit reports only count items that had a cost per item recorded when they were sold. Products without a cost are left out, so net sales in profit and sales reports can differ. The cost field is static, so if your costs change often, Shopify itself suggests an ERP or accounting system, a reporting app or your own calculation (Help Center: profit reports). Fill in costs before you start trusting margin reports, and add cost to the checklist for every new product.
Changes that break year-over-year comparisons
If this year's numbers look strange next to last year's, check these changes before you look for a problem in the store (Help Center: updates from the previous analytics):
- Sessions (21–23 September 2026). Sessions no longer end at midnight UTC; they continue while the customer is active. Identified bots are filtered out of session reports by default (a "Human or bot session" filter brings them back where supported). Orders, sales and customer counts are not affected, but sessions and conversion rate are. Treat late September 2026 as a break in the series.
- Checkouts. A checkout is counted when it starts loading, from the cart, checkout links or the cart API. Draft order invoices, exchanges and POS transactions are excluded, and so are sessions without cookie consent or with ad blockers. Reached-checkout counts may go up and checkout conversion rate may go down without anything changing in the store.
- Marketing reports (September 2026). "Performance by marketing channel" now covers all store traffic grouped by channel, not only traffic from marketing activities. "Performance by marketing campaign" replaced "Performance by UTM campaign".
- Product names. Reports show a product's current title, variant title, SKU and vendor, not the values at the time of sale. Use "Product title at time of sale" if you renamed products. Finance reports still use the time-of-sale values.
- History. Session-based metrics go back to 1 October 2022 and inventory metrics to 1 October 2023.
Shopify Analytics vs GA4: which number is right?
Neither will match the other exactly, and that is expected. Shopify counts orders from its own database, so its sales numbers are the ones to reconcile with finance. GA4 depends on tags firing in the browser and on cookie consent, so it misses some purchases, but it is better for cross-site behaviour and ad platform audiences. Shopify's session reports apply only to the Online Store sales channel and are also based on cookies (Help Center: acquisition reports).
Our rule: sales and margins from Shopify, marketing optimisation from GA4 and the ad platforms, and a known, documented gap between the two. If the gap is larger than you can explain, read why Shopify and GA4 revenue numbers don't match and our guide to GA4 for e-commerce.
How we use Shopify data in client projects
Reports are only useful when they lead to a change you can test. Three examples from our public case studies:
- BlazePod (Shopify Plus). After consolidating the store into one template, we ran A/B tests in VWO with the client. The results led to changes such as showing the product in use on the product image (with the product itself on hover). We also improved cart performance and raised the PageSpeed Insights desktop score from 60 to 89 (case study). The web performance reports in Shopify Analytics are where we watch that such gains don't erode with every new app.
- Eveline Cosmetics. During the move to the latest Shopify Plus architecture, the Customer Events sandbox limited access to data and blocked standard third-party integrations. We built a custom Google Tag Manager configuration with a dedicated dataLayer, so the marketing team kept full analytics continuity from day one (case study).
- The Odder Side. After the migration to Shopify Plus and the split into separate stores for different markets, we implemented Klaviyo, GTM-based analytics and customer events, which improved campaign management and the measurement of marketing results (case study).
What we have learned from these and other projects:
- Agree on the source of truth before the launch. After a migration, the first question is always "why are sales lower in GA4?". Decide in advance which system reports which number.
- Mark every change in the timeline. Theme releases, app installs, tracking changes and Shopify's own measurement changes (like September 2026) all move the numbers. Without notes, nobody will remember why conversion dropped in a given week.
- Start from a question, not a dashboard. "Which products do mobile users abandon?" leads to a report and an action. A dashboard with 40 cards leads to nobody opening it.
- Check data before conclusions. Missing costs, test orders, a renamed product or bot traffic can each make a report misleading.
When native reports are not enough
Shopify Analytics covers most questions for most stores. You will need more when you want to join store data with an ERP, a warehouse or a CRM, report across several Shopify stores (for example one per market), or calculate margins with costs that change daily. Then the usual options are a reporting app, a data warehouse or BI tool fed by Shopify's APIs, or an ERP integration that becomes the source of truth for costs and stock.
If your reports point to a problem and you are not sure what to change, we can help with a UX and usability audit, conversion rate optimization or Shopify consulting. For segment-based email built on RFM groups, see Klaviyo for Shopify. Or simply contact us and tell us what question your data can't answer yet.
