The competition to acquire customers is becoming increasingly difficult – making the ecommerce world unforgiving. That’s why staying ahead of the curve is crucial.
This is where Shopify spy tools come in. These tools offer a strategic advantage by allowing you to spy on Shopify stores of your competitors and gain valuable insights into their marketing tactics, product offerings, and pricing strategies.
By understanding your competitors' moves, you can identify opportunities to optimize your own store, refine your target audience, and ultimately boost your sales.
These powerful tools provide a wealth of informationLet's dive into 23 essential spy tools for Shopify that can help you level up your e-commerce game.
What Is A Shopify Spy Tool?
A Shopify spy tool is a specialized software that allows merchants to gather valuable insights about their competitors and the overall industry landscape. These tools track key data points such as best-selling products, pricing strategies, traffic sources, promotions, and customer engagement tactics.
By using these insights, merchants can improve their own product offerings, adjust pricing models, fine-tune marketing efforts, and enhance the brand experience to meet or exceed industry standards.
Merchants who spy on Shopify stores of competitors gain an edge by identifying trends and successful tactics.
Why Should You Spy On Shopify Stores Of Your Competitors?
Spying on your competitors provides crucial advantages if you want to succeed in the fast-moving ecommerce space. Here are five benefits when you spy on Shopify stores:
- Identify Market Trends Early - Stay ahead of the curve by monitoring new product launches and trending collections in competitor stores.
- Optimize Pricing Strategies - Compare your pricing with competitors to ensure you remain competitive without compromising profitability.
- Refine Marketing Campaigns - Study competitors’ ad campaigns to understand what resonates with your shared audience and implement similar tactics.
- Improve Product Offerings - Spot products that perform well in competitor stores and consider adding similar items to your catalog.
- Enhance Customer Experience - Use spy tools for Shopify to assess competitors' customer experience, including site design, checkout process, and shipping policies, to refine your own store’s experience.
Using Shopify spy tools isn’t just about copying ideas—it’s about learning from your competitors’ successes and failures to grow your own business strategically.
How To Use Shopify Spy Tools?
Spy tools for Shopify come in a variety of forms, each with distinct functionalities.
Some are lightweight Shopify spy extensions that offer quick insights, such as the theme a store is using, product listings, pricing data, and even features of popular Shopify checkout apps used by competitors.
Others provide deeper analysis, including detailed traffic data, sales trends, and marketing campaigns, through a full-featured dashboard.
How you spy on Shopify stores depends on the tool’s design. Browser extensions are great for on-the-go research, while more comprehensive tools require time to explore their features. These often offer analytics dashboards to track your competitors over time, helping you uncover trends and adjust your strategy accordingly.
Top 16 Spy Tools For Shopify To Track The Competition
Here’s our top 16 picks for the best spy tools for Shopify to improve your ecommerce game.
Shopify Theme Detector By PageFly
Price: Free
The first one in our list of spy tools for Shopify is our very own Shopify Theme Detector. This handy Shopify spy extention will help you identify the theme that any Shopify store is using.
If you’re currently building your online store and you want to know what your competitors used to create a mesmerizing online store, all you have to do is click the browser extension (after installing it) and it will automatically detect the theme that it’s using.
As simple as that.
This Shopify store spy, simple as it may seem, can significantly cut down your working hours on designing a Shopify store by knowing what theme you should start with.
Koala Inspector
www.koala-apps.io/koala-inspector/
Price: Starts at $17 per month. Free plan available.
Our next tool is Koala - a feature-packed Shopify spy extension.Simply add it to your browser for free, then go to any store, either your competitors or your inspiration stores, click the Koala icon on your browser, and Koala Inspector whispers insightful intel, such as the Shopify apps they use, including their go-to Shopify shipping app, product statistics, and traffic data. Koala app allows you to:
- The apps your competitors are using
- Their product statistics
- Their traffic statistics
- The retailers they're working with
- Details about ads campaigns your competitors are running
The free plan gives you enough room to fiddle around and spy on several competitors. However, if you want to continuously keep a tab on your competitors or dig out more information about the retailers they are using, you'd need to upgrade to paid plans.
SimilarWeb
www.similarweb.com
Price: Starts at $125 per month. Free trial available.
SimilarWeb is another excellent Shopify spy tool to understand more about your competitors’ stores. This tool provides a traffic overview of any website, and then breaks it into smaller sections. In this way, SimilarWeb helps you understand where your competitor’s store drives the most traction. Pay close attention to the traffic sources section.
Moreover, SimilarWeb is not just a simple Shopify store spy tool. Instead, it’s a full-blown analytics website that you can use to gain insightful information about all kinds of websites – not just Shopify stores.
Ali Hunter Chrome Extension
Price: Starts at $17.44
Ali Hunter is a Shopify spy extension and one of the best spy tools for Shopify that you can use if you’re in the dropshipping industry. It can help you easily find dropshipping product sources from any Shopify store. It is the #1 app used for store spying, with over 250,000 users and many positive reviews on the Chrome Store.
To use Ali Hunter, simply install the extension and go to any Shopify store you want to track. Ali Hunter will then reveal important information about the store, such as the themes and apps they use, their live revenue and sales record, their best-selling items and last items sold, and their product sources (including whether they dropship from AliExpress). The extension can also show you other stores that sell the same items.
SellerCenter
www.sellercenter.io
Price: Free
Amongst all the Shopify spy tools in this list, SellerCenter is our favorite. And it is arguably the most feature-packed Shopify store spy tool – considering that it’s FREE. But honestly, even if it’s a paid tool, it still has a massive value proposition that we’d be willing to pay for.
Seller Center provides insights on Shopify stores in terms of:
- Monthly visits
- Monthly sales
- Products
- Revenue
Additionally, it also gives a peek into your competitors’ ads strategies on several social apps such as Facebook, IG, TikTok, and YouTube. It even shows the exact ads the Shopify stores are running.
Curious what apps your competitors are using, SellerCenter got that as well.
SellerCentral has big data on more than 2.3 million Shopify stores and millions of other merchants on Amazon, AliExpress, Wish, and other multi-vendor ecommerce markets such as Shopee and Lazada.
The list goes of features goes on. But before we tire you with the details, we highly suggest giving it a shot.
Shine
www.shinecommerce.com/commerce-inspector
Price: Starts at $99 per month. Free Shopify spy extension available.
Shine is yet another analytics-first Shopify store spy. This solution contains in-depth data from 300,000+ Shopify stores with more than 500+ million new pieces of data uploaded to their database daily (according to their website).
With this tool, you can track specific Shopify stores so you can access their:
- Shop-level sales data
- SKU-level sales data
- Social follower count
- Visitor and traffic analytics
- Ad library, and more.
Depending on your subscription plan, the number of competitors that you can track increases. But if you just want to give it a try for now, we suggest checking out their Chrome extension.
BuiltWith
www.builtwith.com
Price: Starts at $295. Free plan available.
The next one in our list of Spy tools for Shopify is BuiltWith. As the name suggests, it shows you what websites are... built with. This tool reveals every bit of technology your competitors are using. Your competitors might use different types of apps for many purposes to run an online store effectively. For example, some apps are added to a Shopify store to execute retargeting marketing, customer journey reports, and email campaigns.
This Shopify store spy has a free plan if you’re simply looking for general Shopify usage statistics. But if you want more specific insights, you would have to opt for the paid plan – which can be expensive.
Feedly Market Intelligence
www.feedly.com/market-intelligence
Price: Starts at $1200 per month. Free trial available.
Feedly Market Intelligence is a powerful platform designed to help businesses track competitors, market trends, and innovations by leveraging AI. It provides Shopify merchants with a competitive edge by gathering real-time insights from various sources, such as industry reports, news articles, and social media.
With AI-powered feeds, merchants can monitor their competitors’ strategic moves, including product launches and marketing tactics, to refine their own business strategies.
This Shopify spy tool enables users to cut through data noise and focus on relevant insights, allowing better product positioning, pricing strategies, and customer experience improvements.
It offers both automated newsletters and dashboards for easy collaboration across teams, ensuring merchants can act on emerging trends swiftly. With Feedly, Shopify users gain valuable data to spy on Shopify stores and remain competitive in the dynamic ecommerce market.
Google Keyword Planner
ads.google.com/intl/en/home/tools/keyword-planner/
Price: Free
Google Keyword Planner is a free tool that helps marketers discover relevant keywords, track search volumes, and assess competition for advertising campaigns. It provides essential data to improve SEO and paid ads by identifying popular search terms that align with user intent.
For Shopify merchants, this tool serves as an effective Shopify spy tool by uncovering keywords competitors target, shedding light on trending products, and revealing gaps in the market. With these insights, merchants can enhance their product listings, develop data-driven marketing strategies, and optimize their store for better visibility and conversion rates in search engines.
SpySales
www.spysales.com
Price: Starts at $25 per month. Free trial available.
SpySales is a Shopify spy tool designed to help merchants track competitors' sales performance in real time. By monitoring top-performing stores, trending products, and key business activities, SpySales provides actionable insights into your competitors' strategies.
This tool simplifies market research, allowing Shopify merchants to quickly analyze product trends, pricing models, and promotional efforts across other stores.
The platform offers features like AI-powered product research, historical sales data, and a user-friendly interface, enabling merchants to make data-driven decisions and adjust their strategies effectively.
With these insights, businesses can fine-tune product offerings, optimize pricing, and improve overall store performance to stay ahead in the competitive e-commerce landscape.
Ahrefs
www.ahrefs.com
Price: Starts at $129 per month. Free plan available.
Ahrefs is a powerful SEO tool primarily designed for digital marketers to improve their search rankings and monitor online visibility.
However, it also serves as a Shopify spy tool by offering in-depth insights into competitors' web pages, including traffic sources, backlink profiles, and top-performing content. Shopify merchants can leverage Ahrefs to understand their competitors’ strategies, discover popular products, and analyze marketing campaigns, helping them refine their own business processes.
With Ahrefs, merchants gain actionable insights to optimize product offerings, improve SEO performance, and stay ahead in the competitive e-commerce landscape.
Moreover, Ahrefs has a handy Google Chrome extension, Ahrefs SEO Toolbar, that allows you to analyze page structures. This tool can be very useful when creating your web pages by knowing the structure of your competitors’ pages, what keywords they use on headings, and more.
SEMrush
www.semrush.com
Price: Starts at $139.95
Similar to Ahrefs, SEMrush is primarily an SEO tool for digital marketers, offering a wide range of features for keyword research, site audits, and rank tracking.
However, it also serves as a tool to spy on Shopify on Shopify stores by allowing users to gain in-depth insights into competitors' strategies.
With the ability to analyze entire websites or specific pages, Shopify merchants can leverage SEMrush to uncover valuable data on competitor products, traffic sources, pricing strategies, and marketing campaigns.
This information helps merchants refine their own strategies, improve product offerings, and optimize business processes, giving them a competitive edge in the fast-paced e-commerce market.
Spyfu
www.spyfu.com
Price: Starts at $39 per month.
SpyFu is a powerful competitor analysis tool focused on SEO and PPC research. It helps businesses uncover valuable insights by tracking competitors' keywords, ad strategies, backlinks, and organic rankings over time.
With its comprehensive features, merchants can use SpyFu as a Shopify store spy to monitor rival stores’ traffic, product trends, and marketing tactics.
This data enables merchants to refine their own strategies—whether optimizing ads, identifying new keyword opportunities, or fine-tuning SEO practices for better visibility.
SpyFu's intuitive reports and historical data make it an essential tool for merchants seeking to stay ahead of the competition and adapt quickly to market changes
Sprout Social
www.sproutsocial.com
Price: Starts at $199 per month. Free trial available.
Sprout Social is a comprehensive social media management platform designed to help businesses streamline their social media efforts. It offers powerful tools for social listening, analytics, publishing, and customer engagement, enabling brands to monitor conversations, analyze competitor activities, and optimize social strategies efficiently.
For merchants, Sprout Social serves as one of the more effective spy tools for Shopify, helping them gain insights into competitors' strategies, marketing campaigns, and customer engagement.
By using Sprout Social, merchants can spy on Shopify stores indirectly by monitoring competitors’ social media presence, tracking trends, and identifying what content or products resonate with the audience.
With actionable data and advanced reporting features, Shopify merchants can refine their business processes, enhance product offerings, and stay ahead of market trends, making it a valuable asset in their competitive toolkit.
MetaAds Library
www.facebook.com/ads/library
Price: Free
The Meta Ads Library is a public database that provides comprehensive visibility into the advertisements running across Meta's platforms, including Facebook and Instagram. It allows users to search for active ads by advertiser name, location, or keywords, offering transparency into what campaigns are currently live, what creative elements are being used, and how long specific ads have been running.
This library empowers marketers to monitor trends, identify competitor strategies, and draw inspiration from successful campaigns.
For Shopify merchants, the Meta Ads Library serves as a highly effective shopify store spy tool.
By browsing competitor ads, merchants can discover which products competitors are promoting, the messaging strategies employed, and the formats (video, carousel, etc.) that resonate most with their shared audience.
This insight helps Shopify merchants refine their own ad campaigns, develop creative that aligns with market trends, and gain a clearer perspective on what type of content engages potential customers.
BigSpy
www.bigspy.com
Price: Starts at $9 per month.
Topping off our list of Shopify spy tools is BigSpy. BigSpy is a powerful ad intelligence platform designed to help businesses analyze competitors’ ads across multiple platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and more.
Its primary focus is tracking ad performance and uncovering creative strategies by providing access to a massive database of over 500,000 new ads daily. BigSpy enables users to filter data by platform, region, product category, and engagement metrics, offering deep insights into trends and successful marketing tactics.
For Shopify merchants, BigSpy offers significant benefits. By using its advanced search features, merchants can identify the most effective ad strategies, analyze competitors' product launches, and adjust their own pricing and promotional campaigns.
As one of the most comprehensive spy tools for Shopify, it simplifies tracking competitors and refining ad efforts to enhance product visibility and sales growth.
More Shopify Spy Extensions To Consider
There’s more Shopify spy extensions and tools to find on the internet. But we’ll save you the research.
Here’s an additional list of spy tools that you should consider using.
AdSpy
AdSpy allows users to explore a vast database of ads from multiple platforms, making it a valuable tool for discovering competitor ad strategies and high-performing ad creatives. This helps Shopify merchants gain insights into successful ad campaigns and trending products within their niche.
PricingBot
PricingBot offers Shopify store owners a way to track and adjust product prices by monitoring competitor pricing in real-time. It aids in competitive pricing strategies, ensuring merchants stay competitive and boost conversions.
ProfitWell Metrics by Paddle
ProfitWell provides in-depth revenue and subscription analytics, helping Shopify merchants track key performance metrics and optimize for growth. It enables store owners to identify trends in customer acquisition, retention, and churn, improving revenue strategies.
Ubersuggest by Neil Patel
Ubersuggest is a powerful SEO and keyword research tool that lets Shopify merchants analyze competitors’ website traffic, keyword rankings, and backlink profiles. With these insights, merchants can create optimized content and target keywords to increase organic reach.
PowerAdSpy
PowerAdSpy offers extensive insights into competitor ad campaigns across social media platforms, allowing Shopify merchants to analyze ad creatives, targeting, and engagement. It’s beneficial for understanding which ads perform best, supporting strategic ad planning.
Fera.ai
Fera.ai provides social proof and product review tools, enabling Shopify store owners to observe how competitors use reviews, ratings, and user-generated content to build trust. Merchants can leverage similar techniques to enhance credibility and boost conversions.
PPSpy
PPSpy specializes in helping Shopify store owners analyze competitor pricing data and product listings, providing a transparent look into competitors' best-selling products and pricing strategies. This tool aids merchants in optimizing their product offerings and pricing to align with market trends.
Conclusion
Staying ahead in e-commerce requires a deep understanding of market trends and competitor strategies. Using some of the best Shopify apps available, including spy tools, merchants can gather invaluable insights to track competitors' pricing strategies, product trends, traffic sources, and customer engagement tactics.
By analyzing competitors' moves, you can replicate effective strategies and fine-tune you business practices to increase sales and optimize customer experiences.
These tools not only help your business adapt to industry shifts but also empower you to craft better offerings. We highly recommend starting with Seller Center for a broad range of insights and Shopify Theme Editor to explore design inspirations. Give these tools a try and take your e-commerce strategy to the next level!
