What Is a Price Rule? Shopify Discount Logic

What Goes Into a Price Rule

The code is just the word a shopper types in. The rule is the recipe behind it. On Shopify, a price rule answers five questions:

How much? A percentage or a fixed amount off.
Off what? Some products or collections, the whole order, or shipping.
Who can use it? Every customer, or only the ones you pick.
What must the cart have? A minimum spend or number of items, if you want one.
When, and how often? Start and end dates, a cap on total uses, and a once-per-customer limit.

You'll mostly run into the term in developer docs. Shopify's older Admin API (that's how apps talk to your store) builds discounts as price rules, with codes attached. The newer GraphQL API handles discounts another way, so recent apps may not use the name.

One Rule, 500 Codes: A Candle Store Example

A candle store sets up one price rule for its email list: 15% off orders of $50 or more, once per customer, ending Sunday night. It attaches 500 unique codes to it, one per subscriber.

Every code follows the same rule. A shopper with a $60 cart saves $9 and pays $51. A $45 cart gets nothing, because it's under the $50 minimum.

Later, the owner decides to end the offer a day early. She changes the end date once, on the rule, and all 500 codes follow.

Why the Rule Matters More Than the Code

A code is only as safe as the rule behind it. If the rule has no end date and no usage cap, a code that leaks to a coupon site just keeps working. That's one way discount code abuse starts.

The rule also decides who still pays full price. Set no conditions and the saving also goes to shoppers who were going to buy anyway.

When more than one discount fits the same cart, Shopify has to work out which ones apply and in what order. Our guide to discount priority when price rules overlap explains how that works.

Myth: A Price Rule Changes Your Prices

It doesn't. Your product's price stays the same. The rule only takes money off in the cart or at checkout, once its conditions are met. To change the price itself, you edit the product.

Growth Suite, our app, keeps the two jobs separate. Offers run on single-use codes: the app applies them to the cart and deletes them on the server when the timer ends. Its Product Price Editor changes the real Shopify price, with one-click rollback.