Shopify Smart Pricing: What Australian Merchants Need to Know About AI-Driven Dynamic Pricing

Pricing is one of the highest-leverage decisions a Shopify store owner makes — and getting it wrong can mean leaving significant margin on the table. Too high and you slow sales; too low and you erode profit. Shopify has now entered the pricing optimisation space directly with Smart Pricing, a native app that uses AI to recommend when to mark products up or down, and lets you run live A/B price experiments with real customers.

For Australian eCommerce merchants, this is a development worth watching closely — but it comes with important caveats around availability, regulatory compliance, and customer expectations. Here's everything you need to know.

What is Shopify Smart Pricing?

Shopify Smart Pricing is a free, native app built and maintained by Shopify itself, launched in June 2025. Unlike third-party pricing tools, it integrates directly into Shopify Admin and works natively with your checkout — no code required and no third-party integrations to manage.

The app has two core functions:

• AI-generated price tips — personalised recommendations on which products to mark down (slow movers at risk of becoming dead stock) and which to mark up (fast sellers where demand supports a higher price). These tips are based on your store's own sales history, current inventory levels, and seasonal patterns.
• Live A/B price testing — displaying different prices to different shoppers and measuring which price point drives better revenue outcomes. Results update daily, and you can apply the winning price with a single click.

"AI-assisted pricing is moving from enterprise software into native Shopify tools that any merchant can access. The opportunity is real — smarter markdown decisions, reduced dead stock, and data-backed confidence in your pricing strategy."

Is it available to Australian merchants — and what plans do you need?

This is the key question, and the honest answer is: it depends. As of mid-2026, Shopify Smart Pricing is in early access, available only to select stores. Shopify has not published a public list of eligible countries or plan tiers, which means Australian merchants may or may not have access depending on whether their store has been invited into the early access programme.

The app is listed as free on the Shopify App Store, with no plan tier specified as a requirement — suggesting it is intended to work across paid Shopify plans. However, because it accesses sensitive customer and store analytics data, it is unlikely to function on legacy or trial accounts.

Regulatory considerations for Australian merchants

Dynamic pricing is legal in Australia under the Australian Consumer Law (ACL), but there are meaningful obligations that online retailers must meet — and the ACCC is paying close attention to pricing practices in digital commerce in 2026–27. Its enforcement priorities specifically call out tactics that manipulate consumer behaviour and unfairly impact consumer choice.

While Smart Pricing's A/B testing approach is a legitimate practice used widely in eCommerce globally, Australian merchants should be careful to ensure:

• Prices are clear at every point in the buying journey — the checkout price must always match what was displayed on the product page.
• No misleading price change framing — you cannot misrepresent the reason for a price change or engage in drip pricing.
• A/B test prices stay within a reasonable range of your published pricing.
• No individual customer is shown a higher price based on personal data in a way that could be deemed discriminatory.

"If a customer notices they paid a different price to a friend, frame it honestly: you run pricing tests to find the best value for customers. That framing will serve you better than any other response in a complaint situation."

Managing customer enquiry is worth thinking through proactively. Having a clear and honest policy ready — framing A/B testing as finding the best value for customers, rather than maximising extraction — will serve you well in any complaint situation.

At beCommerce, we help Australian Shopify merchants evaluate and implement new Shopify features as they roll out — including early access apps like Smart Pricing. If you'd like guidance on whether this app is right for your store, or help setting up a pricing strategy that balances margin protection with customer trust, get in touch with our team.