Need Guidance on Shopify Platform Limitations & Scalability Best Practices for Large App Architecture

Hi everyone,

We are currently expanding a Shopify app that heavily works with:

  • Shopify Functions
  • Variant-level tier pricing
  • Currency-based pricing
  • Variant metafields
  • Theme app extensions
  • Liquid rendering
  • Admin GraphQL APIs
  • Import/export systems
  • Webhooks and background jobs

Before introducing more advanced features, we want to better understand Shopify platform limitations, scalability concerns, and architectural best practices for large production stores.

We are specifically looking for guidance around:

Shopify Functions

  • Payload/input limits
  • Runtime and memory limitations
  • Performance with large carts or large variant counts
  • Recommended complexity limits

Metafields & Variant Data

  • Recommended JSON metafield sizes
  • Performance concerns for large metafield datasets
  • Best approaches for storing pricing rules at scale

APIs & Bulk Operations

  • Practical GraphQL scaling limits
  • Bulk operation limitations
  • Best practices for syncing large catalogs

Liquid & Theme App Extensions

  • JS asset size recommendations
  • Liquid rendering performance concerns
  • App embed limitations

Checkout & Cart Scalability

  • Cart line limitations
  • Checkout extensibility constraints
  • Performance concerns for dynamic pricing/cart transformations

Large Store Concerns

We especially want to prepare for stores with:

  • 50k–100k+ variants
  • Large B2B catalogs
  • Multi-currency pricing
  • Heavy API usage
  • Enterprise-scale pricing logic

We would appreciate:

  • Official Shopify recommendations
  • Real-world experiences
  • Scalability lessons learned
  • Known undocumented limitations
  • Suggested architectural approaches

Our goal is to proactively design the app correctly before adding more advanced features.

Thanks in advance!

A lot of this is all available in the documentation. Have you looked?