Guide
How much do Shopify stores spend on apps?
There is no honest single answer to what a Shopify store 'should' spend on apps — it depends entirely on your store's size, stack, and how many jobs you've handed to apps versus built in. Anyone quoting a precise average is guessing. The useful question isn't the benchmark; it's your own number, and whether each app in it earns its cost. Here's how to work that out.
Why there's no reliable benchmark
App spend scales with what you ask apps to do. A store running email, reviews, and a page builder looks nothing like one running subscriptions, a loyalty programme, a helpdesk, and multi-warehouse fulfilment. Because the stacks differ so much, an 'average' across all stores tells you almost nothing about whether yours is reasonable. We won't quote a figure we can't stand behind.
What actually drives the number
- Store size and order volume — many apps price on usage, so spend rises with sales.
- How much you've outsourced to apps — every job handled by an app (vs a built-in feature or your theme) adds a line.
- Category mix — fulfilment, subscriptions, and helpdesk apps tend to cost more than a single-purpose utility.
- Legacy installs — apps kept past their usefulness quietly inflate the total.
How to work out your own number
Add up every recurring app charge — subscription and usage — and normalise to a monthly figure. Then, roughly, describe it to yourself: a small store running a handful of core apps sits at the low end; a larger store leaning heavily on apps for fulfilment, marketing, and support sits much higher. The point of the exercise isn't to hit a target — it's to see the real total, which most operators have never actually added up.
Is your number too high?
The better test than any benchmark: go app by app and ask whether each one returns more than it costs, and whether two apps overlap. An app spend that's high but every line is pulling its weight is fine. A modest total riddled with forgotten installs is not. Judge the spend by the value, not by someone else's average.
Frequently asked questions
What's the average Shopify store's app spend?
There isn't a reliable one, and we won't invent it. App spend depends heavily on store size and how many jobs you run through apps, so an average across all stores isn't meaningful for judging yours. Work out your own total and assess each app by the value it returns.
How do I know if I'm overspending on apps?
Compare each app to its value, not to a benchmark. Overspending usually looks like forgotten installs still billing, two apps doing one job, or a plan tier bigger than you use — not a total above some arbitrary number.