Best Free Shopify Apps in 2026, Ranked by Store Count
The free Shopify apps most stores run, grouped by job (ad channels, reviews, email, analytics, affiliates, upsells, tracking). Free plans checked October 2026.
Roasan Team14 min readTürkçe
The free Shopify apps that the most stores run are the sales-channel apps (Facebook & Instagram, Google & YouTube, TikTok, Pinterest), Judge.me for reviews, Klaviyo and Mailchimp for email, and Microsoft Clarity for analytics. Every one of them can be installed for $0. Below is the list by job, with the number of stores we saw each app on and what the free plan actually gives you as of October 2026.
The counts come from Roasan's crawl of roughly 1.6 million active Shopify stores in October 2026. They are rounded, and they come with one important limit, explained in the next section.
Roasan reads public storefronts. When an app is installed, it usually leaves a trace on the store's pages: a script, an app embed block, or a tracking pixel. We match those traces to apps from the Shopify App Store and count each store once per app.
That means two things:
Popularity is still a useful filter. An app running on hundreds of thousands of stores has been tested against a lot of themes and edge cases.
Facebook & Instagram is on about half of all active Shopify stores. Google & YouTube is close behind at roughly 46%. Judge.me is the first non-channel app, on about one store in four. After Klaviyo the numbers drop quickly: the 12th app on the list is on fewer than 40,000 stores.
One of these twelve is not actually free for a live store. Kaching Bundles' free plan is limited to development stores, so it sits in the chart because so many stores run it, not because it costs nothing. More on that below.
Prices and plan limits were read from each app's Shopify App Store listing in October 2026. They change often, so check the listing before you install.
| App | Job | Stores (approx.) | Free plan? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Facebook & Instagram | Ad channel, shop sync | 827,000 | Free to install; you pay for ads |
| Google & YouTube | Ad channel, Merchant Center | 738,000 | Free to install; you pay for ads |
| Judge.me Reviews | Product reviews | 403,000 | Yes, "Forever Free" |
| TikTok | Ad channel, TikTok Shop | 244,000 | Free to install; you pay for ads |
Two apps you might expect here are left out on purpose. Simprosys Google Shopping Feed (about 24,000 stores) has no permanent free plan, only a 21-day trial. Selleasy (about 23,000 stores) is still running on many storefronts, but its App Store page currently says it is not available for new installs.
What they do. Each of these is the official app from the platform itself. It installs the platform's pixel, sends your product catalog to its shopping surfaces, and lets you create ads from inside Shopify. Facebook & Instagram also connects your catalog to Instagram and Facebook shops. Google & YouTube connects to Merchant Center, which you need for free product listings and Shopping ads.
Free plan. All four listings say "Free to install. Additional charges may apply." The extra charge is your ad spend, billed by the platform, not by Shopify. Snapchat Ads works the same way.
Who should install them. Almost everyone should install Google & YouTube, because free product listings in Google Shopping cost nothing and only need a clean catalog. Install Facebook & Instagram before you plan to run Meta ads, so the pixel is already collecting events when the first campaign starts. Add TikTok and Pinterest when your products suit those feeds: visual, giftable, or trend-driven goods. If you are dropshipping and testing products with paid traffic, the Meta and TikTok pixels are the minimum.
What it does. Collects product and store reviews by email after delivery, shows star ratings on product pages and collection grids, and adds review markup for Google.
Free plan. Yes. The "Forever Free" plan includes unlimited product and store reviews, photo and video reviews, the review widget, star badges, carousels, Google rich snippets and a reviews importer, including AliExpress import. The Awesome plan is $15/month and adds AI replies, Q&A, more widgets and integrations such as Klaviyo.
Who should install it. Any store without reviews yet. It is on about 400,000 storefronts, roughly a quarter of all active stores, and the free plan covers what a new store needs. Upgrade only when you want review requests synced into Klaviyo flows or Q&A on product pages.
For dropshippers, the AliExpress import is the reason many start here. Be careful with it: reviews written for a supplier's listing are not reviews of your store, and showing them as if they were can mislead buyers.
Email is still the cheapest repeat traffic a Shopify store gets, and all the common tools let you start free.
Klaviyo (about 174,000 stores). Free for email up to 250 contacts and 150 SMS/MMS credits. The free tier includes Shopify data sync, forms, segmentation and A/B tests. Paid email starts at $20/month for 251 to 500 contacts. It is the default choice for stores that expect to grow a list and want flows (welcome, abandoned cart, post-purchase) built on Shopify order data.
Mailchimp (about 90,000 stores). Has a free plan with email, sign-up forms, landing pages and reports. The Shopify listing does not state the free plan's contact or send limits, so check Mailchimp's own pricing page. Paid plans start at $13/month. A fit if you already use Mailchimp for other things.
Omnisend (about 36,000 stores). Free for 250 contacts and 500 emails a month, with pop-ups and basic automations. Standard starts at $16/month. Often picked by stores that want email and SMS in one place at a lower starting price than Klaviyo.
Brevo PushOwl (about 22,000 stores). Free plan with 500 web push notifications a month and email from 500 a month. Useful for back-in-stock and price-drop alerts.
CWILL Popup (formerly SendWILL, about 34,000 stores). Free for 30 new subscribers a month and 2,000 marketing emails. Mostly used for the spin-the-wheel and exit-intent pop-ups that feed a list into another email tool.
Who should install what. Pick one email platform, not three. If you are unsure, Klaviyo's free tier is enough to set up the three flows that matter on day one. Add a pop-up app only if your email platform's own forms are not doing the job.
Microsoft Clarity (about 83,000 stores). Free, with no paid tier on the listing. It records sessions and draws heatmaps, so you can watch where shoppers stop scrolling, what they tap that is not a link, and where the cart page loses them. On a new store with little traffic, a handful of recordings says more than the dashboard.
Triple Whale (about 32,000 stores). Has a free plan with up to 10 users, ad, email and SMS integrations, a 12-month lookback and basic attribution. Paid plans start at $219/month, so it is mainly a tool for stores already spending real money on ads across several channels. The free tier is a fair way to see whether its attribution view is worth paying for.
Who should install them. Clarity: every store, especially if you are trying to figure out why traffic is not converting. Triple Whale: once you run ads on two or more platforms and their own reports disagree.
See which apps any store runs
Try it freeShopify Collabs (about 70,000 stores). Shopify's own app for working with creators. You get an application page, affiliate links and codes, gifting, and commission payouts. It is free to install; the listing notes a 2.9% processing fee on automatic commission payments.
UpPromote Affiliate (about 45,000 stores). Free plan covers up to $3,000 in referral sales a month, with tracking, fraud protection and manual payouts. Growth is $29.99/month plus a 2% fee on referral sales.
GoAffPro (about 34,000 stores). The most generous free plan of the three on paper: unlimited affiliates and unlimited revenue, a branded portal and analytics. Premium is $49/month and adds multi-level commissions and a custom portal domain.
Who should install what. If you mostly work with Instagram and YouTube creators, start with Collabs. If you want a classic affiliate program where customers and bloggers sign up and earn per sale, UpPromote or GoAffPro. GoAffPro is the safer bet if you expect affiliate sales above $3,000 a month and do not want to pay yet.
Kaching Bundles (about 38,000 stores) is the most common bundle and quantity-break app on storefronts, popular with single-product and dropshipping stores that show "buy 2, save 10%" tiers. It is not free on a live store: the free plan is for development stores only, and paid plans start at $14.99/month for up to $1,000 of additional revenue.
If you need something free right now, there are two options in this list:
Loyalty. Smile.io (about 14,000 stores) is free up to 200 orders a month with points, rewards and referrals. Worth adding once you have repeat buyers, not before.
"Where is my order" is one of the most common support questions a store gets, especially with long shipping times. A branded tracking page answers it before the email is sent.
CWILL Order Tracking (formerly Parcel Panel, about 33,000 stores). Free for 20 orders a month with a branded tracking page and basic analytics. Essential is $11/month for 200 orders. The listing also mentions an option to hide the Chinese origin of shipments, which tells you who it is built for: dropshippers.
AfterShip Tracking (about 10,000 stores). Free for 50 shipments a month, with 1,100+ carriers and a branded tracking page. Essentials is $11/month for 100 shipments.
Who should install what. Under 50 orders a month, AfterShip's free plan goes further. Above that, compare the paid tiers on your actual order volume, because both charge per extra order.
If you are starting a dropshipping store this month and want to spend nothing on apps, this stack is built only from free plans in the table above:
Printful (about 51,000 stores) belongs here if your model is print on demand rather than classic dropshipping. Its free plan has no monthly fee; you pay for each order when it sells.
For a store with steady traffic that wants more orders from the visitors it already has, work in this order: Judge.me star ratings on product and collection pages, a welcome and abandoned-cart flow in Klaviyo or Omnisend, Clarity recordings of shoppers who reached the cart and left, Google free listings through Google & YouTube, and an affiliate program through Collabs or GoAffPro once customers start talking about you.
Each install adds a script to your storefront. Two review apps or two pop-up apps on one store slow pages down and split your data.
Store counts tell you what is common. They do not tell you what your direct competitors use. For that, run a competitor's URL through the Shopify App Detector, or use the Store Analyzer for the full profile with theme, apps and a traffic estimate. If you browse a lot of stores, the Roasan Chrome extension shows the same detail on any Shopify store you open.
To be told when a competitor adds or removes an app, BrandTracker watches stores for app, theme and product changes.
By store count, Facebook & Instagram, on about half of active Shopify stores. Among apps that are not ad channels, Judge.me Reviews is the most common, on roughly a quarter of stores, and its free plan has no review limit.
Some are fully free, like Microsoft Clarity and Judge.me's Forever Free plan. Others are free up to a limit: 250 contacts on Klaviyo, 20 orders a month on CWILL Order Tracking, $3,000 of referral sales on UpPromote. The ad-channel apps are free to install, but you pay the platform for any ads you run.
The Meta and TikTok apps for pixels, Judge.me for reviews, Klaviyo or Omnisend for email, Clarity for session recordings, and a tracking app such as CWILL Order Tracking or AfterShip. Add Releasit COD Form if you sell with cash on delivery.
Data11 min read
Guide11 min read
| Ad channel, catalog pins | 230,000 | Free to install; you pay for ads |
| Klaviyo | Email and SMS | 174,000 | Yes, email up to 250 contacts |
| Mailchimp | 90,000 | Yes |
| Microsoft Clarity | Heatmaps, session recordings | 83,000 | Free |
| Shopify Collabs | Creator affiliates | 70,000 | Free to install; 2.9% fee on automatic payouts |
| Printful | Print on demand | 51,000 | Yes; you pay per order |
| UpPromote Affiliate | Affiliate program | 45,000 | Yes, up to $3,000 referral sales/month |
| Kaching Bundles | Bundles, quantity breaks | 38,000 | Development stores only; paid from $14.99/month |
| Omnisend | Email and SMS | 36,000 | Yes, 250 contacts and 500 emails/month |
| CWILL Popup (formerly SendWILL) | Email pop-ups | 34,000 | Yes, 30 new subscribers/month |
| GoAffPro | Affiliate program | 34,000 | Yes, no stated sales cap |
| CWILL Order Tracking (formerly Parcel Panel) | Shipping tracking | 33,000 | Yes, 20 orders/month |
| Triple Whale | Attribution, analytics | 32,000 | Yes |
| Snapchat Ads | Ad channel | 24,000 | Free to install; you pay for ads |
| Brevo PushOwl | Web push, email | 22,000 | Yes, 500 pushes/month |
| Releasit COD Form | Cash-on-delivery form | 22,000 | Yes, up to 60 orders/month |
| Smile.io | Loyalty and referrals | 14,000 | Yes, up to 200 orders/month |
| AfterShip Tracking | Shipping tracking | 10,000 | Yes, 50 shipments/month |
Reviews, email flows and Google's free product listings tend to have the most effect for no cost. Clarity does not raise sales by itself, but it shows you where shoppers drop off so you know what to fix.
As few as cover the jobs you need. A channel app, a review app and an email app is a sensible first set, and those are also the three most common jobs in the counts above. Each storefront app adds code to your pages, so remove apps you no longer use, including their leftover theme blocks.
Enter the store's URL in the free Shopify App Detector. It lists the apps that leave a trace on the storefront. Admin-only apps will not appear, for the same reason they are missing from the counts above.
