Shopify B2B Catalog Limits by Plan, Explained

On Shopify's Basic, Grow and Advanced plans, a store can run up to 3 active B2B catalogs across all of its B2B markets, and those catalogs attach to markets rather than to individual companies. Shopify Plus removes the cap and adds direct catalogs, assigned to a specific company or company location. Both facts come from Shopify's B2B features by plan page in the Help Center, fetched 2026-10-03.

That one number and one missing feature decide how far a distributor's pricing structure can go before Plus becomes the question. This post maps a real pricing ladder onto the limit, shows exactly where it breaks, and covers what you can do about it on each plan.

What changed in April 2026?#

Until this spring, Shopify B2B was a Plus conversation. On April 2, 2026, Shopify's changelog announced that Basic, Grow and Advanced now get "up to 3 active B2B catalogs (assigned via Markets), company profiles, payment terms, volume pricing, ACH payments (U.S. only), and vaulted credit cards," at no additional cost. The same post kept four things on Plus: unlimited catalogs for customer-specific pricing, direct catalog assignment to companies and locations, partial payments, and deposits.

So a distributor on a $299-a-month Advanced plan (billed yearly, per shopify.com/pricing, fetched 2026-10-03) can now run real B2B accounts with companies, net terms and quantity breaks. The open question is pricing depth. If you want a full picture of the baseline beyond catalogs, see what native Shopify B2B covers.

What does a catalog actually control in Shopify B2B?#

A catalog decides which products a B2B buyer can see and what they pay for them. In Shopify's own words, catalogs let you "include or exclude specific products and set prices" for B2B customers, and volume pricing adds price breaks when a buyer orders a certain quantity (Shopify Help Center, B2B catalogs, fetched 2026-10-03).

Two things sit outside the catalog limit and are on every plan, per the same Help Center page:

• Quantity rules: minimum, maximum and increment per item.
• Quantity price breaks: "buy 25, pay less" pricing inside a catalog.

The catch below Plus is the attachment point. A catalog on Basic, Grow or Advanced attaches to a B2B market, and every company in that market sees it. There is no catalog that belongs to one company. Shopify also notes that B2B catalog features on these plans require the store to be on new Shopify Markets, so if your store has not moved over, that comes first.

On Plus, a catalog can be assigned directly to a company or to one of its locations. That is the feature people mean when they say "customer-specific pricing."

How many pricing tiers can a distributor run below Plus?#

Here is a worked example. Picture a bearing and power-transmission distributor selling on Shopify. Its pricing ladder looks like most in the trade:

1. List price for walk-in and occasional accounts
2. MRO dealer price for resellers and maintenance shops
3. OEM contract price for manufacturers buying production volume
4. Negotiated accounts: a handful of large plants that each agreed their own price on core lines, for example a 6205-2RS deep groove ball bearing at a fixed net price per unit

Below Plus, tiers 1 through 3 fit, barely. Three catalogs, three markets, done. But the limit is 3 active catalogs across all B2B markets combined, not per market. Spend all three on one market and every other market gets none. Add a Canadian dealer market with its own currency pricing and you are already choosing which tier to give up.

Tier 4 is where it breaks outright. The plant that negotiated its own price on the 6205-2RS has nowhere to live in a catalog. Putting it in its own market would burn a catalog slot on one customer, and you only have three. The way a market catalog works, every company in that market sees the same price list, so there is no clean way to show one buyer a price nobody else gets.

The same is true when a single account negotiates a one-off: a pallet of 6206-ZZ bearings for a line rebuild, at a price below their usual contract. That deal is real, but it is not a tier.

How do distributors handle negotiated prices on Basic, Grow or Advanced?#

The honest answer is draft orders. Shopify's help page on creating draft orders says you can "set a custom price on any line item in a draft order to charge more or less than the product's listed price." Draft order to invoice is available on every plan, so a rep can build the order at the negotiated price and send it to the buyer.

That works, and plenty of distributors run on it. The limits are practical rather than technical:

• The negotiated price lives on that one order, so the next reorder starts from scratch.
• The back and forth that produced the price sits in an inbox, not next to the order.
• Nobody checks the agreed price against your cost unless a rep does it by hand.
• The buyer cannot see that price when browsing the store, only on the invoice.

If your negotiated accounts are few and their orders are infrequent, that may be fine. If they are your biggest accounts and they reorder weekly, the rep becomes the pricing system. For the bigger picture of how negotiated agreements should resolve and be recorded, see our piece on contract pricing for distributors.

What else is Plus-only in Shopify B2B?#

Catalogs are the headline, but not the only line. This table covers the B2B rows on Shopify's plan-features page (fetched 2026-10-03) that differ by plan:

Everything else in core B2B is on every paid plan, per the same page: companies and company locations, location-level permissions (location admin and ordering only), quantity rules and quantity price breaks, net terms and payment reminders, ACH (US only), vaulted credit cards, draft order to invoice, checkout to draft, easy reorders, PO numbers, the quick order list, and Shopify Flow with B2B objects.

When is it worth moving to Shopify Plus for B2B?#

Plus is listed from $2,300 a month on shopify.com/pricing (fetched 2026-10-03). That is a real step up from Advanced, so the decision should come from your price structure, not from a feature checklist. A simple rule:

Plus is likely worth it if any of these are true:

• You run more than three distinct price structures across all your B2B markets.
• Any account has its own negotiated price list that must show on the store when its buyers browse.
• You need deposits or partial payments, common on large project orders or custom-cut stock.

You may not need it if:

• Your pricing really is three tiers or fewer.
• Negotiated deals are occasional and a rep is happy to build them as draft orders.
• Your volume discounts are quantity breaks, which every plan has. Our guide on how volume pricing tiers work covers keeping those tables honest.

Do the arithmetic on your own accounts before you decide. List every price structure you actually honor today, including the ones that only exist in a rep's spreadsheet, and count them.

What does native Shopify B2B still not do on any plan?#

Plus solves the catalog problem. It does not change three gaps that exist on every plan:

• No RFQ object or versioned quote record. A draft order can carry a negotiated price, but there is no record that keeps the buyer's request, each negotiation round and a margin check together. If you want to see how that history matters, read about versioned quotes.
• No buyer-side approval chain. Location-level permissions let you say who can order. They do not route an order over a spend limit to a manager at the buying company before it is placed.
• No credit limit on top of net terms. Shopify can put a company on Net 30. It does not hold a credit limit per company and weigh open exposure before an order goes through.

Copiara is a Shopify app in early access, not yet on the Shopify App Store and not yet installable. It is being built for those three gaps: a quoting desk that takes a request through negotiation to an accepted quote with a margin floor the server enforces, then a Shopify draft order with the agreed prices locked; buyer approvals with spend limits and approval chains inside the buying company; and credit limits per company with live exposure, on top of the payment terms you set in Shopify. It does not change Shopify's catalog limits. Shopify stays the system of record. More on what Copiara adds to Shopify.

Shopify B2B catalog limits FAQ#

Can I have customer-specific pricing on Shopify Basic? Not as a catalog assigned to one company. Below Plus, catalogs attach to B2B markets. You can give a market its own catalog, within the store-wide limit of three, or build a negotiated price into a draft order.

How many catalogs can one market have below Plus? Up to the store-wide total of 3 active B2B catalogs, which is shared across all of your B2B markets.

Do I need new Shopify Markets for B2B catalogs? On Basic, Grow and Advanced, yes. Shopify's plan-features page says the store must be using new Shopify Markets to use B2B catalog features.

Is B2B an extra cost on non-Plus plans? No. Shopify's April 2, 2026 changelog says the features are available at no additional cost.

Does Plus give me quote negotiation? Plus gives you unlimited and per-company catalogs. Negotiated prices on individual orders work through draft orders on every plan; a versioned quote record is not part of any plan.

If your pricing ladder has outgrown three catalogs and your negotiations still live in an inbox, ask for early access.