Guides
How to find Shopify stores: five methods, and what each one costs you
Shopify has never published a directory of the stores running on it, so every method below is a way of inferring the list from what stores reveal in public. They differ enormously in effort and in what they can answer. Here they are from the cheapest to the most complete.
There is no official list, and that shapes every method
Shopify reports how many merchants it has, but it does not name them. Neither does WooCommerce, Wix or any other platform — a store's relationship with its platform is private unless the merchant says otherwise. What every store does do is serve a public page, and that page carries the fingerprints of whatever built it. Every method below is a way of reading those fingerprints at some scale, from one store to millions.
Method 1 — check one store by reading its page
A Shopify storefront announces itself. Open any store, view the page source, and search for "Shopify" — you will find the platform named in a JavaScript object the store serves to every visitor, along with its theme and often the apps it runs. This is free, instant, and completely reliable for the one store in front of you.
Its limit is obvious: it answers one store at a time. It is the right method when you are checking a competitor, sizing a job before you quote, or verifying what some other tool told you.
Method 2 — search engine operators
Shopify stores carry recognisable traces you can search for: the myshopify.com domain many keep alive, the "Powered by Shopify" line in the footer, the /collections/ and /products/ URL pattern, the /cart path. Searching for those phrases surfaces stores in bulk without any tool.
- It is free and needs nothing installed.
- Results are capped, unordered and heavily deduplicated — you cannot get "all" of anything.
- Footer text is editable, so stores that removed the line are invisible to it.
- You cannot filter by country, size, revenue signals or anything else that decides whether a store is worth contacting.
Method 3 — a browser extension while you browse
Technology-detection extensions read the same fingerprints as method 1 and show them as you browse. Convenient for research sessions, and useless for building a list: they only ever see the pages you personally visit, in the order you visit them.
Method 4 — a free detector, for the details behind one store
When the question is not "is this Shopify" but "what is it running", a detector answers in one step: the theme, whether that theme came from the Theme Store or was built custom, and which apps are installed. Same public page as method 1, read properly.
This is the method that scales down well and up badly. It is perfect for qualifying a store you already care about, and hopeless for finding the thousand stores you should care about.
Method 5 — filter a database that already did the crawling
The four methods above all start from a store and work out its platform. A tracked database inverts that: the crawling is already done, so you start from the question — Shopify stores in Canada with more than 500 products that publish an email address — and get the list. That inversion is the whole difference between checking stores and finding them.
Our own data covers 5,166,019 live stores across 110 countries, of which 1,277,321 are Shopify. Every store carries the same fields, which is what makes two markets comparable at all.
Which method to use
| Method | Best for | Hard limit |
|---|---|---|
| Reading the page source | One store, right now | One store at a time |
| Search operators | A rough sweep at no cost | Capped, unordered, unfilterable |
| Browser extension | Research while you browse | Only pages you personally open |
| Free detector | Theme and apps behind one store | Still one store at a time |
| Tracked database | Building a filtered list | Only as current as its crawl |
The first four answer "what is this store". Only the last answers "which stores".
Start from a market
If you already know the market you sell into, the fastest start is the country page for it — store counts, platform mix, and the largest catalogues we track, with no sign-up.
- United States — 501,205 Shopify stores tracked
- United Kingdom — 96,966 Shopify stores tracked
- Canada — 73,283 Shopify stores tracked
- Australia — 63,179 Shopify stores tracked
- Germany — 42,720 Shopify stores tracked
- India — 36,948 Shopify stores tracked
Frequently asked questions
How can I tell if a website is built on Shopify?
Open the store, view the page source and search for "Shopify". A Shopify storefront names its platform in a JavaScript object served to every visitor, usually alongside its theme. A free detector reads the same page and reports the theme and apps too.
Is there an official list of all Shopify stores?
No. Shopify publishes merchant counts but never a store list, and no third party can have a complete one either. Every list, including ours, is a sample built by crawling public pages — the honest question is how large and how current that sample is.
Can I find Shopify stores by country?
Yes. Store location can be inferred from what a store states publicly — its address, its stated market, its language and currency. Our directory covers 110 countries, and each page names the largest catalogues it tracks there.
Why do some Shopify stores not show as Shopify?
Headless storefronts serve a front end built separately from the commerce backend, so the usual fingerprints are absent from the page. The store is still on Shopify; it simply does not say so in public. Any detection method will miss these, which is one reason no list is complete.
What is the fastest way to build a list of Shopify stores to contact?
Filter a tracked database rather than collecting stores one at a time, and filter hard before you write anything: platform plus country plus catalogue size plus whether the store publishes contact details. A short list of stores that fit beats a long list that does not.
Related reading
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