Shipping rates not showing at checkout › Options hidden by an app

Shopify checkout diagnostics

Shipping method hidden at checkout by an app or a delivery customization

Last updated 21 October 2026.

Your rate is set up in Shipping and delivery, its zone covers the buyer, and yet the option never shows at checkout. Or it shows under another name, or in another place in the list. Since Shopify Functions, an app can change the delivery options after Shopify has calculated them. This guide explains what such an app can do, where to see it in your admin, and how to tell whether it is the cause.

What is a delivery customization?

A delivery customization is a rule, run by an app, that changes the list of delivery options a buyer sees at checkout. Shopify's developer documentation says a delivery customization “enables you to rename, sort, and hide the delivery options available to customers during checkout”. Those options include shipping rates, local delivery and pickup options. According to the same page, the Delivery Customization Function API is the only way to customize delivery options in checkout.

The app does not create rates. Your rates still come from your shipping profiles, your carrier accounts or your shipping apps. The customization only acts on the list that comes back.

What a delivery customization can do to your options

Shopify's API gives an app three operations on delivery options, and nothing else.

• Hide. The option is removed from the list offered to the buyer at checkout.
• Rename. The option's title changes. Shopify always keeps the carrier name in front of the title: per its docs, “UPS Standard” can become “UPS Standard Shipping”, but not “Standard Shipping”.
• Move. The option changes position in the list. Shopify's docs add a rule for apps: “The cheapest shipping delivery option must always be the first option selected.”

Shopify's documented use cases include hiding options for certain products or customers, hiding options for PO Box addresses, reordering options, and adding messages to option titles.

A customization identifies an option by its handle, and Shopify builds each option's handle from its title (“Standard Shipping” gives standard-shipping). So if you rename a rate in your shipping settings, recheck any app rule that targets it by name.

Which apps can hide shipping methods, and on which plans?

• According to Shopify's developer documentation, stores on any plan can use public apps from the Shopify App Store that contain functions.
• According to the same documentation, only stores on Shopify Plus can use custom apps that contain Shopify Function APIs.
• According to the Shopify Help Center, a store must be on at least the Basic plan to customize delivery options at checkout, and needs a delivery customization app from the Shopify App Store.
• According to its Shopify App Store listing, Shopify's free Checkout Blocks app can “Hide, rename, & reorder delivery and payment methods” on Shopify Plus only.
• According to Shopify's developer documentation, a store can have at most 25 delivery customization functions active at the same time.

So a hidden option can come from an app you installed on purpose to hide rates, from a broader checkout app that includes delivery rules, from Checkout Blocks on Plus, or from a custom app built by a developer on Plus.

Where to see active delivery customizations in your admin

Shopify's Help Center and developer guidelines put them in the same place: from your Shopify admin, go to Settings → Shipping and delivery, and look at the Delivery customizations section. The customizations your apps have added are listed there. Shopify's design guidelines ask these apps to offer activate and deactivate actions, so you can turn one off without uninstalling anything.

Do not confuse it with two neighbours:

• Payment customizations live under Settings → Payments. They hide or rename payment methods, not delivery options.
• Checkout rules (cart and checkout validation) live under Settings → Checkout. They validate the cart, for example by limiting quantities; they are not where delivery options are hidden.

Where delivery customizations apply, and where they don't

Shopify's documentation includes a compatibility table for the Delivery Customization Function API. It matters, because a test on one surface can disagree with a buyer on another.

The Help Center says the same about draft orders: delivery customizations apply to the draft order checkout, but “won't display or apply in the admin while you're creating your draft order.”

How an app can make shipping options disappear

A rule hides more than intended

A hide rule removes every option it matches. When a rule matches all of them, the buyer is left with nothing. In a December 2023 Shopify Community thread, a Shopify staff member reproduced a function that hides every option for “po box” addresses: the options disappear and “Shipping not available” appears, which is the expected result for that rule.

Options stay hidden after the buyer fixes the address

In that same December 2023 thread, the Shopify staff member also confirmed a second problem. After a function hid all options, correcting the address did not bring them back: the error stayed “until you hard refresh the page”. He called address changes not re-triggering functions “a known issue”. A January 2024 thread reports the same behaviour, and notes that it only happened when every option was hidden. We found no later statement from Shopify that it was fixed, so treat it as a past report, not a current fact.

Subscription products lose their only option

Seal Subscriptions, a subscription app, explains a case in its own help pages. When a buyer purchases subscription products, Shopify shows only the cheapest shipping option for them. If a delivery customization app also filters options, it can remove that only option, and the buyer sees no shipping at all. Seal's test is to disable the delivery customization in your admin and check that a rate comes back. A 2025 thread on Shopify's developer forum describes the same pattern: Shopify picks the cheapest option for recurring shipments, and a function can hide exactly that option.

PO Box rules and Shopify's own rates

Shopify's documentation warns that hiding options for PO Box addresses is only supported for options provided by carrier services or third-party shipping apps. With Shopify's built-in shipping rates, the address data needed to detect a PO Box “might not be available” to the function. A PO Box rule can therefore behave differently depending on where your rates come from.

The option is renamed or moved, not gone

Before concluding that an option is missing, read the whole list. A rename changes the title buyers see, and a move changes its position. The option is still there, under another name or lower down.

How to find out if a customization is the cause

1. Go to Settings → Shipping and delivery and open the Delivery customizations section. If it lists nothing, this guide is not your cause: look at who is affected instead.
2. Note which customizations are active and which app owns each one.
3. Deactivate one, then start a new checkout with the same product and address as the buyer.
4. If the option comes back, reactivate the customization and fix its rule in the app. If not, reactivate it and try the next one.
5. If the rule looks right and still hides too much, contact the app developer. The Help Center's advice for third-party app issues is the same.

Test on checkout itself. Per Shopify's compatibility table, the theme cart page is not a surface where delivery customizations apply, so it is not a reliable place to see them.

Shopify facts about delivery customizations, with sources

• According to Shopify's developer documentation (2026), a store can activate at most 25 delivery customization functions.
• According to Shopify's developer documentation (2026), a delivery customization can rename, sort and hide delivery options at checkout.
• According to Shopify's developer documentation (2026), stores on any plan can use public App Store apps containing functions, and only Shopify Plus stores can use custom apps containing Shopify Function APIs.
• According to Shopify's developer documentation (2026), a function may run at most 11 million instructions for carts of up to 200 line items.
• According to Shopify's developer documentation (2026), functions can fail by raising an exception, exceeding memory or time limits, or returning output that does not match the API's schema.
• According to the Shopify Help Center (2026), custom apps built with Shopify Functions are available only on Shopify Plus, while public apps built with Shopify Functions are available from the Basic plan.

Shopify's documentation describes how developers can inspect failed function runs, but we did not find a page that says what the buyer sees when a delivery customization fails. We leave that out rather than guess.

What our store check covers, honestly

The free store check builds one cart per country through Shopify's Storefront API, as an anonymous buyer, with one large-city address, and lists the delivery options returned to that cart. Shopify's compatibility table marks the Storefront API as “Not supported” for delivery customizations. So we cannot guarantee that our check sees an option hidden, renamed or moved only at checkout: it may list an option your buyers never get.

That still makes it useful here. If our check lists options for a country and your buyers there see none at checkout, the rates themselves exist, and a delivery customization is one of the first things to look at.

Other limits: we never see your admin or your apps' settings. We test one product, so mixed carts, discount codes, subscriptions, and logged-in or B2B buyers are not covered. Monitoring re-checks every 6 hours and emails you when a country loses its delivery options or a known option disappears.

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Related

• “Shipping not available” at checkout Find the cause from who is affected.
• ShipStation, Shippo, Easyship or Printful rates not showing Plan, the app's own switch, zones, weights and app rules.
• Free shipping not showing at checkout Mixed profiles, discounts, and the gap below your threshold.
• Shopify checkout shipping error messages What each wording means, and where to look.
• Shipping not available for some products only Shipping profiles, app profiles, locations and weights.
• Shopify shipping and checkout statistics (2026) Sourced numbers on abandonment, shipping costs and Shopify's limits.

Sources, all read 21 October 2026: Shopify developer documentation, “Delivery Customization Function API”, “Shopify Function APIs”, “About Shopify Functions”, “Monitoring and handling errors in production”, “UX for delivery options” and “Build a delivery options function”. Shopify Help Center, “Customizing payment methods and delivery options at checkout”. Shopify App Store listing for Shopify Checkout Blocks. Seal Subscriptions FAQ on delivery customization apps and subscription products. Threads from the Shopify Community (December 2023 and January 2024) and the Shopify developer forum (2025) linked above.