Exemption for the 1,000 variants/day limit: what are the exact conditions?

New GraphQL Product APIs
1

Hi everyone,

I am currently building a store dedicated to offering city-themed product collections. My goal is to feature collections for 10,000 different cities. With all the available items, there are about 50 variants per city, which brings my total need to 500,000 variants on my Shopify store.

I recently crossed the 50,000 variant threshold and discovered the throttle that limits the creation of new variants to 1,000 per day. Unfortunately, upgrading to Shopify Plus is not a financially viable option for my business at this stage.

I have read online that Shopify sometimes grants exceptions to lift this daily limit. I reached out to Shopify Support regarding this, but the agent I spoke with told me they couldn’t do anything for my specific case.

My questions for the community are:

  • Under what specific conditions can Shopify Support lift this 1,000 variants/day limit?

  • What requirements do I need to fulfill, or what information do I need to provide, to actually qualify for an exception?

Any insights, past experiences, or advice on how to successfully request this exemption would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance for your help!

2

Hey @Elisabeth, thanks for reaching out! I can only answer things from the Shopify side, but I did want to reach out to see if I can provide some answers here. Right now, you’re correct that the only current exemption is generally for Shopify Plus merchants.

We have made some other exceptions in the past for non-Plus merchants, but these are usually reviewed case by case through Shopify Support, and they aren’t guaranteed.

I can’t guarantee anything, but if you do request another review, here’s what I’d include for our Support team to take a look at:

  • why 1,000/day blocks your launch or business timeline
  • why 50,000+ variants are required for your actual catalog
  • total expected variant count
  • product category/niche
  • whether this is a one-time import or ongoing creation
  • confirmation this isn’t primarily dropshipping or print-on-demand

Hope this helps a little bit