Shopify API
Shopify's primary surface is the GraphQL Admin API, versioned quarterly, with the legacy REST Admin API being progressively sunset. Access is self-serve through the Partner Dashboard or store admin. Migrations are the tax: old versions sunset yearly and REST code must move to GraphQL.
Frequently asked questions
Shopify scores A on the API Report Card. Shopify's primary surface is the GraphQL Admin API, versioned quarterly, with the legacy REST Admin API being progressively sunset. Access is self-serve through the Partner Dashboard or store admin. Migrations are the tax: old versions sunset yearly and REST code must move to GraphQL.
Shopify has a workable official integration path. Most engineering teams can build against it directly. Open API: self-serve, documented, with SDKs
Shopify is a cloud-based commerce platform that lets merchants build and run an online store, sell across channels (web, POS, social, marketplaces, B2B, wholesale), accept payments through Shopify Payments, manage inventory and fulfillment, run email/SMS marketing, and extend functionality through a 13,000+ app marketplace.
Vertical: E-commerce platform / online store builder / unified commerce OS (horizontal, not industry-specific). Merchants set up a store from a Shopify theme (Online Store 2.0 / Liquid), import or build a product catalog, configure shipping/tax/payments (almost always Shopify Payments to avoid the third-party gateway fee), and launch on a shopify.com subdomain or custom domain.
Shopify powers 4.5M-6.8M active stores globally (depending on methodology), holds roughly 10.56% of global e-commerce and ~30% of the U.S. e-commerce market, processed ~$292B GMV in 2024 (on pace for $350B+ in 2025), and reports 875M+ buyers transacted across its stores.
Yes, for any merchant on Shopify, the platform is the system of record for the entire commerce stack: the full product catalog (titles, variants, SKUs, pricing, inventory levels per location, metafields), customer database (names, addresses, order history, marketing consent, segmentation), every order (line items, discounts, taxes, shipping, fulfillment status, returns, refunds, tracking), every payment and payout through Shopify Payments (with associated PCI scope, tax 1099-K data, and 20% rolling reserve liabilities), every checkout abandonment, every gift card and store credit balance, the B2B/wholesale price lists and net terms for Plus merchants, POS transactions for omnichannel retailers, app subscriptions and entitlements, and increasingly identity (Shop Pay accounts spanning merchants).
Founded 2004 (as Snowdevil) and officially launched as Shopify in 2006 by Tobi Lütke, Daniel Weinand, and Scott Lake in Ottawa, Canada. IPO'd on NYSE and TSX in May 2015 under SHOP.
REST Admin API rate limit of 40 requests per app per store per minute (2/sec leaky bucket) is restrictive for high-volume sync; only 10x for Plus. GraphQL calculated query cost (1,000 points/min default) is hard to predict, complex queries silently consume large shares of the bucket and trigger throttling. Full sourced list under Sources below.
Common alternatives include WooCommerce (Automattic), Wix Stores, Squarespace Commerce, BigCommerce, Adobe Commerce (Magento), Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Graded alternatives appear under "More from the report card" below.
Grades measure one thing: can a customer's engineering team get their own data out programmatically? We check six things (whether a real API exists, how access is gated, data coverage, auth quality, docs and developer experience, and stability) and roll them into a letter grade. Grades get re-verified, and they only move on evidence.