Shopify benchmarks are being removed from Analytics on May 19, 2026. If you've been using the "Compare to Benchmarks" toggle to see how your conversion rate, AOV, or session data stacks up against similar stores, you need alternatives now — before the comparison disappears.
The Shopify Changelog confirmed the deprecation quietly — no banner in your dashboard, no email heads-up. One day the toggle is there, the next it's gone. And without benchmark context, your analytics become a spreadsheet of numbers that don't tell you whether 2.3% conversion is good, bad, or average for your category.
Benchmarks matter because raw metrics are meaningless in isolation. A 1.8% conversion rate is terrible for a food and beverage store (where the median sits around 3.2%) but perfectly normal for luxury electronics. Without that reference point, you're optimizing blind — chasing improvements on metrics that might already be above average while ignoring the ones dragging you down.
Five free tools can fill the gap Shopify is leaving. Each works differently, and some are better fits depending on your store size and what you actually need to compare.
1. Google Analytics 4 Benchmarking — The Most Complete Free Option
GA4 added benchmarking back after years of requests, and it's now the most feature-rich free option available. It compares your store against businesses in your industry using aggregated, anonymized data from millions of properties.
What makes it useful: GA4 offers over 30 benchmark metrics across ecommerce, events, and page performance categories. The comparison range shows you where you fall between the 25th and 75th percentile of your peer group — so you're not just seeing an average, you're seeing the full spread.
Benchmarks update every 24 hours, and since October 2025, Google expanded the data to include raw metrics like total revenue and new users alongside the ratios and percentages that were already there.
Setup: If you already have GA4 connected to your Shopify store, go to Reports → select any report → click the benchmark icon in the top right. Choose your industry, country, and business size. The comparison overlay appears immediately.
Limitation: GA4 benchmarks depend on enough businesses in your peer group opting in. If you pick a very narrow industry category in a small country, the data may be too thin to be useful. Stick to broader categories for more reliable comparisons.
2. Polar Analytics Ecommerce Benchmarks — Built Specifically for Shopify
Polar Analytics publishes a free benchmarks page that pulls anonymized data from over 4,000 Shopify brands across 16 industries. Unlike GA4, this data comes exclusively from Shopify stores, which makes the comparisons more relevant if Shopify is your only platform.
The benchmarks cover conversion rate, AOV, ROAS, CAC, add-to-cart rate, and cart-to-purchase rate. All figures are medians, not averages — a smarter approach that prevents one $500 AOV outlier from skewing the "average" for everyone else.
Some numbers worth noting from their current data: the cross-industry median cart-to-purchase rate is 24.12%, meaning roughly 76% of carts are abandoned. Brands doing over $100M in revenue post a 6.29% conversion rate and 31.9% cart-to-purchase rate — the highest of any revenue tier.
Setup: No account needed. Visit the Polar Analytics benchmarks page, filter by industry and revenue tier, and you get instant comparisons. If you want personalized benchmarks against your own data, you'll need to connect your store to the Polar app (free tier available on the Shopify App Store).
3. Triple Whale's Free Trends Tool — Real-Time Data From 20,000+ Brands
Triple Whale offers a free dashboard that includes their Trends benchmarking tool, built on aggregated data from over 20,000 ecommerce customers. It's the largest Shopify-centric benchmark dataset available.
The free tier gives you blended metrics including MER (marketing efficiency ratio), total ad spend benchmarks, and new customer cost per acquisition. Their annual benchmark reports break down conversion rate, AOV, add-to-cart rate, and abandonment by industry and channel — including separate Amazon benchmarks across 9 categories.
Setup: Install the Triple Whale app from the Shopify App Store. The free plan includes website analytics and access to the Trends comparison tool. You'll see how your metrics compare against stores of similar size and category in real time.
Limitation: Triple Whale's strength is paid media attribution. If you don't run ads, a chunk of the benchmark data (ROAS, CPA comparisons) won't be relevant to you. But the core ecommerce metrics — CVR, AOV, cart abandonment — are useful for any store.
4. Littledata Benchmarks — 14,000 Stores Across 30 Metrics
Littledata is primarily a tracking accuracy tool — it fixes the data gap between Shopify and Google Analytics so your revenue numbers actually match. But it also benchmarks every connected store across 30 key ecommerce metrics using aggregated data from 14,000 customers.
The benchmarking works differently here. Instead of browsing a public page, Littledata analyzes your store's data and shows you where you rank percentile-wise against their full dataset. You see whether your conversion rate is in the top 20%, bottom 40%, or somewhere in between — not just an industry average you're eyeballing against.
Setup: Connect Littledata to your Shopify store and GA4 account. The benchmark data populates automatically once enough data is collected (usually a few days). Littledata offers a free GA4 audit and benchmarking starter — paid plans start if you want the full tracking suite.
Best for: Merchants who also have GA4 tracking issues. Littledata solves two problems at once — accurate data and benchmark context.
5. Public Benchmark Reports — Free Data You Can Reference Anytime
Several companies publish detailed, free benchmark reports annually that you can bookmark and reference whenever you need a comparison point. These aren't real-time, but they're thoroughly researched and segmented by industry, device, and region.
The most useful ones for Shopify merchants:
- Polar Analytics Benchmarks Report — Updated weekly, covers CVR, AOV, ROAS, and CAC across 16 industries with Shopify-specific data
- Triple Whale Annual Ecommerce Benchmarks — Deep analysis across 20,000+ brands covering every major ecommerce KPI, broken down by revenue tier
- IRP Commerce Monthly Market Data — Tracks ecommerce performance monthly across multiple industries with historical trend data
These reports give you reference numbers you can compare against your own Shopify analytics. They won't update in your dashboard automatically, but they're peer-reviewed and based on large sample sizes — often more reliable than the small comparison groups Shopify's built-in benchmarks used.
Tip: Save 2-3 of these reports and check them quarterly. Industry benchmarks don't shift dramatically month to month, so quarterly comparison is plenty.
What Should You Do With Shopify Benchmark Alternatives Once You Have Them?
Having benchmark access is only useful if you know what to do with it. Most merchants check their conversion rate against an industry average, feel good or bad about it, and change nothing. That's a waste of the data.
A better approach: pick the three metrics that directly impact your revenue — typically conversion rate, AOV, and cart abandonment rate. Compare each against your industry benchmark. The metric where you're furthest below the median is your highest-leverage improvement opportunity.
For example, if your conversion rate is at the 60th percentile but your AOV is at the 25th, you'll get more revenue from improving AOV than squeezing another 0.2% out of conversion. That might mean adding quantity discounts, testing higher free shipping thresholds, or introducing add-on offers at checkout. EasySell lets you set up quantity discount tiers and one-click add-ons directly on the product page — useful if AOV is the metric your benchmarks flag.
Check benchmarks quarterly, not daily. Industry medians don't move fast. Your job is to identify the gap, run experiments to close it, and recheck after enough time has passed to measure the impact.
Shopify removing built-in benchmarks is inconvenient, but the alternatives are actually better. GA4 covers more metrics. Polar and Triple Whale use larger, Shopify-specific datasets. And public reports give you numbers you can share with your team without needing dashboard access. If you want to go deeper on what your analytics dashboard is actually telling you, check out our guide on Shopify analytics attribution. Pick one tool that matches your setup, connect it this week, and you won't miss the old toggle at all.