Shipping rates not showing at checkout › Checkout shipping study (2026)

Original data

Shopify checkout shipping study (2026): 241 stores tested

Last updated 23 October 2026. Data collected 20 to 22 October 2026.

We put one in-stock product in a cart, as an anonymous buyer, on 241 public Shopify stores, and asked each store's checkout for delivery options in up to eight of the countries it says it ships to. In 49 of the 241 stores (20.3%), at least one of those countries got no delivery option at all, confirmed with live carrier rates. That is a lower bound; the upper bound from the same tests is 115 of 241 stores (47.7%).

Key findings

• In 49 of 241 Shopify stores tested (20.3%), a cart for an in-stock product got no delivery option at all in at least one country the store ships to, confirmed with live carrier rates.
• The 20.3% figure is a lower bound, because we read live carrier rates for at most 2 countries per store, so a store whose failing country was not among them is not counted.
• The upper bound is 115 of 241 stores (47.7%): these stores had at least one country where checkout offered no fixed delivery option, which means that country either relies only on live rates or has no delivery option at all.
• Of the 199 countries we read with live carrier rates after finding no fixed rate, 76 (38.2%) still got no delivery option, and 123 (61.8%) got live rates.
• Home countries rarely failed: when a store's home country had no fixed rate and we read it live, 1 of 44 (2.3%) got no delivery option, against 76 of 199 (38.2%) across all live reads.
• In 72 of 241 stores (29.9%), checkout offered fixed rates in some tested countries and none in others.
• In 9 of 241 stores (3.7%), the product was not for sale in at least one country the store ships to.
• The stores we tested declare a median of 60 ship-to countries, and 111 of 241 (46.1%) declare more than 100.
• 52 of 194 stores (26.8%) offered a free delivery option for this product in their home country.
• When checkout offered delivery options, the median was 1 option (n = 877 country tests).

How many stores lose a country at checkout

A store “loses” a country when a buyer there can add the product to the cart but gets no way to have it delivered, so the order cannot be completed. We measured it two ways.

• Lower bound, 20.3% (49 of 241 stores): stores where at least one country had no fixed rate and our live carrier-rate read also returned no delivery option.
• Upper bound, 47.7% (115 of 241 stores): stores where at least one country had no fixed delivery option, whether or not live rates would have filled the gap.

The lower bound counts only what we confirmed: live rates were read for at most 2 countries per store, and 388 country tests with no fixed rate were not read live. The upper bound counts every country that would be empty if live rates failed or did not exist. Within what our test can see, the real share of stores with a country that cannot check out lies between the two.

Which countries fail most

Each row is one country, counted over the stores that ship there and for which the test was conclusive. “No fixed rate” means the cart got no delivery option before any live carrier rates were read; the country either relies on live rates or has no option at all. Only countries with at least 20 conclusive tests are shown.

8 other countries had fewer than 20 conclusive tests and are not shown.

• Canada had the highest share of carts with no fixed rate among the countries shown: 50.3% of 153 stores.
• Australia followed, with no fixed rate in 49.3% of 142 stores.
• The United States had the lowest share of the eight most-tested countries, with no fixed rate in 31.2% of 176 stores.
• Spain had the highest share of stores where the product was not for sale: 6.8% of 44.

Live carrier rates were read in 199 country tests. Their number per country follows the order in which we picked countries (home country first, then by priority), not how often each country fails:

We publish the outcome of live reads for all countries together (next section), not per country.

Fixed rates vs live carrier rates

Fixed rates (flat, weight-based or price-based) are returned with the cart. Live rates come from a carrier account or a shipping app and are read separately. A country with no fixed rate is fine only if live rates answer.

• In 42 of 241 stores (17.4%), no tested country had a fixed rate, which very likely means the store relies on live rates only.
• In 72 of 241 stores (29.9%), some tested countries had fixed rates and others had none.
• We read live carrier rates in 115 stores, for 199 country tests that had no fixed rate.
• Of those 199 live reads, 76 (38.2%) returned no delivery option at all.
• Of those 199 live reads, 123 (61.8%) returned at least one live rate, so the country could check out.
• All 199 live reads were conclusive: none timed out or failed (0 of 199).
• In 72 of 241 stores (29.9%), at least one country with no fixed rate was served by live rates.

Home country vs abroad

• When a store's home country had no fixed rate and we read it live, 1 of 44 (2.3%) got no delivery option.
• Across all 199 live reads, home and abroad together, 76 (38.2%) got no delivery option.

How many countries stores sell to

“Declared” countries are the ones each store lists as ship-to countries in its public Storefront API. The median is 60 (n = 241).

• 111 of 241 stores (46.1%) declare more than 100 ship-to countries.
• 34 of 241 stores (14.1%) declare a single ship-to country.

Delivery options per country

• When checkout offered delivery options for a country, the median number of options was 1 (n = 877 country tests).

Free shipping at home

• 52 of 194 stores (26.8%) offered a free delivery option for the tested product to their home country, among stores whose home country was tested and got delivery options.
• The test cart held one unit of one product, so a free-shipping threshold above that product's price does not show here.

Method

Sample and sources

We took the stores from 17 public lists of example Shopify stores, read on 20 October 2026: Shopify's own example and case-study pages, Shopify's French and German blogs, and “best Shopify stores” articles by agencies, app makers, a print-on-demand service and web-design review sites, some of them focused on the UK, Germany or Australia.

This sample is biased: these are well-known stores, chosen as examples, and they are likely better maintained than the average Shopify store. Our results probably understate the problem.

308 stores were attempted. 67 could not be tested and were excluded:

• 38 were not Shopify stores (no Storefront API answer).
• 15 had no in-stock, shippable product among the first products we read.
• 4 were unreachable.
• 3 refused the Storefront API request.
• 3 stopped at a redirect we do not follow.
• 2 failed for other reasons, such as an unexpected answer.
• 1 was password-protected.
• 1 declared no ship-to country.

That leaves 241 reachable Shopify stores with an in-stock, shippable product, and all 241 had at least one country tested conclusively. In addition, 3 large stores answered HTTP 429 (too many requests) and were excluded rather than retried.

What one test is

• An anonymous buyer: no account, no cookies, no discount code.
• One product per store: the first in-stock variant that requires shipping, among the first products of the store's public catalogue.
• A cart created through Shopify's Storefront API, with a quantity of 1.
• One address per country, in a large city (for example New York, Toronto, London, Berlin, Paris or Sydney).
• Up to 8 countries per store, chosen among the countries the store declares it ships to, in this priority order: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Australia, Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Switzerland, Ireland, Austria, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Portugal, Poland, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, Mexico, Brazil, Czechia.
• For each country we first ask whether the product is for sale there, then read the delivery options the cart returns.
• To answer the free-shipping question only, the store's home country was also tested when it was not already among the 8; those extra tests are left out of every other figure.

Two passes

• Pass 1, 20 to 22 October 2026: all stores, without reading live carrier rates. A country with no delivery option in the cart was recorded as “no fixed rate”.
• Pass 2, 22 October 2026: the 115 stores with at least one “no fixed rate” country. For at most 2 of those countries per store (the home country first, then the next by priority), we read the same kind of cart again with live carrier and app rates. A country was counted as “no delivery option (confirmed)” only when that complete live read returned no option.

Pacing

• One store at a time, never in parallel.
• At least 10 seconds between two requests, plus a pause between stores.
• At least 60 seconds between two live carrier-rate reads on the same store.
• Pass 1 read no live carrier rates at all; pass 2 was not throttled by Shopify.
• Every request identified itself with the ShipRateGuard User-Agent.

In pass 1, 0 of 1,491 country tests could not be completed. In pass 2, 0 of 199 live reads were inconclusive.

Limits

• One product per store. Another product, in another shipping profile, could ship to more or fewer countries.
• One address per country. A large-city address; remote regions, islands or postcodes excluded by a zone are not covered.
• Anonymous buyer. No logged-in customer, no B2B catalogue, no discount code.
• Live rates for at most 2 countries per store. 388 country tests with no fixed rate were not read live, which is why 20.3% is a lower bound.
• Intent. A store may list a country on purpose, for example so that buyers there can browse in their own currency, without planning to ship there. We cannot tell intent; either way, a buyer in that country cannot complete a purchase.
• Delivery customizations. Shopify's Delivery Customization Function API compatibility table marks the Storefront API as “Not supported”, so options that an app hides only at checkout are not hidden in our carts. This can only make the real share of countries with no option higher, not lower.
• A snapshot. The data reflects stores as they were between 20 and 22 October 2026; settings change.

What this means for your store

If a store with a well-known name can have a country that cannot check out, yours can too, and nothing in the admin warns you. Our guides cover checkout not shipping to one country and carrier-calculated shipping not showing. The free store check runs the same test on your store.

How to cite this study

Data

Only aggregate figures are published. Store-level data is not shared, so that no store is named.

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