--- title: "What Is Shopify Markets?" url: https://www.uncap.com/glossary/shopify-markets author: "Denis Dyli" published: 2026-10-14 updated: 2026-10-14 summary: "Shopify Markets is the Shopify admin feature for managing how different groups of buyers experience one store. Each market is defined by conditions, such as a country or region, a B2B company location, a retail location or a sales channel, and can carry its own customizations, such as currency, language, catalogs and pricing." --- # What Is Shopify Markets? > Shopify Markets is the Shopify admin feature for managing how different groups of buyers experience one store. Each market is defined by conditions, such as a country or region, a B2B company location, a retail location or a sales channel, and can carry its own customizations, such as currency, language, catalogs and pricing. **Shopify Markets**: Shopify Markets is the Shopify admin feature for managing how different groups of buyers experience one store. Each market is defined by conditions, such as a country or region, a B2B company location, a retail location or a sales channel, and can carry its own customizations, such as currency, language, catalogs and pricing. ## How it works Every market has two parts: conditions define who it applies to, and customizations define the experience, such as available products, pricing and theme customizations. A catalog is a set of products with optional custom pricing that you assign to a market. Shopify offers four market types, and you can use all of them in one store: - Country or region markets: buyers are matched by geographic location, for cross-border and international selling. One market can hold one country or several. - B2B markets: experiences for the wholesale company locations you sell to, grouped instead of managed one by one. - Retail markets: POS locations, for different products or pricing by store. - Channel markets: sales channels, with their own product availability, pricing and currency. A submarket inherits its parent market's customizations, so you only set what is different. **How Shopify decides which market a buyer gets** ### 1. Match, Conditions are checked Conditions match a buyer on where they are, the company location they buy for, the retail location or the sales channel. ### 2. Rank, Most specific wins A buyer can match several markets. Shopify ranks them from most to least specific and applies the most specific match. ### 3. Combine, Catalogs add up Catalogs from all applicable markets are combined, so the buyer can access products from every relevant catalog. ### 4. Fallback, Backup region A buyer browsing the online store who matches no active market gets the backup region experience instead. B2B markets are more specific than retail markets, and retail markets are more specific than country or region markets. A B2B buyer in Canada gets the Canada market combined with the B2B market, and B2B customizations win where they conflict. ## B2B markets You can add company locations to a B2B market in three ways: all company locations in all regions, all company locations within a region, or specific company locations you pick. Region-based B2B markets follow the shipping address. In Shopify's own example, a Canadian company location that drop ships an order to Japan still matches its all-locations and location-specific markets, but for that order it matches the Japan markets instead of the Canadian ones. ## Example A US distributor sells in the United States and Canada and wholesales to dealers and contractors. It sets up regional markets for the United States in USD and Canada in CAD, plus B2B markets for trade accounts. On the Advanced plan it can assign up to 3 active catalogs across all B2B markets. It uses them for Dealer, Contractor and Canada Dealer. A shovel listed at $100 shows $70 in the Dealer catalog. That is 3 of 3 catalogs, the full limit, so a fourth tier means removing or drafting an existing assignment, or moving to Plus, where B2B market catalogs are unlimited. ## On Shopify Shopify's plan comparison for Markets: - All Shopify plans: country or region markets, with no limit on how many you create. Retail markets are available on all plans too, but customizing catalogs for retail markets requires POS Pro or Plus. - Basic, Grow and Advanced: B2B markets with up to 3 active catalogs across all B2B markets. - Advanced and higher: different theme customizations for each market, plus checkout and accounts page customization by market. On other plans, all markets share the same theme customization. - Plus only: unlimited B2B market catalogs, catalogs assigned directly to company locations, checkout block customization by market, and business entities in different global regions. Two requirements apply. To accept payments in multiple currencies you need Shopify Payments or Adyen, and a market can only be activated for countries and regions that have shipping rates. ## How Uncap helps Uncap's [guide to ecommerce for distributors](/post/ecommerce-for-distributors) calls the catalog rules often the deciding line for a distributor: on Basic, Grow and Advanced, catalogs are assigned to B2B markets, and on Plus you can also assign them directly to companies and locations. Because contract pricing means a price per account or group of accounts, the guide notes that only Plus assigns a catalog directly to a company. ## Related terms - Shopify B2B - Shopify Plus - Price list - Contract pricing - B2B portal - Unified commerce ## Sources - Shopify Help Center: Requirements and considerations for using markets - Shopify Help Center: Understanding market types - Shopify Help Center: Overview of markets features and concepts ## Frequently asked questions ### Is Shopify Markets free? Mostly. Shopify says creating regional markets to sell internationally is free for all Shopify plans, but some customization features, such as per-market themes, are available only on certain plans. ### Do I need Shopify Plus to use Shopify Markets? No. Country or region markets work on all plans, and B2B markets run on Basic, Grow and Advanced with up to 3 active catalogs. Plus adds unlimited B2B catalogs, direct catalog assignment to company locations and business entities. ### What is Shopify Managed Markets? It is Shopify's merchant-of-record service for cross-border selling. International customers check out on your store, the merchant of record collects the payment and remits to local tax authorities, and you receive a payout in your local currency.