Guide
How to find a Shopify store's best-selling products
7 min read
Knowing which products a competitor actually sells the most of is gold for product research - it's how dropshippers and brand owners find winners without guessing. Shopify doesn't publish sales numbers, but there are several free signals you can read from any public store, plus honest limits on what's really knowable. Here's how to do it the right way.
Method 1: The best-selling sort (fastest)
Every Shopify store has an automatic 'all products' collection, and you can sort it by best-selling right in the URL. This uses Shopify's own sales-based ordering:
https://examplestore.com/collections/all?sort_by=best-selling # as JSON: https://examplestore.com/collections/all/products.json?sort_by=best-selling
Method 2: Sold-out and low-availability signals
Products or variants that are out of stock are often the ones selling fastest - especially if they sell out repeatedly. From the public catalog you can see each variant's 'available' flag (in products.json), so you can spot which items keep going out of stock.
A product that sells out, restocks, and sells out again is almost always a winner. Tracking that pattern over time is far more telling than a single snapshot.
Method 3: Catalog changes over time
The most reliable free signal isn't a single page - it's movement. When a store keeps a product front-and-center, launches variants of it, restocks it quickly, or raises its price, those are votes of confidence. When they quietly remove a product, it probably didn't work.
You can approximate this by saving the catalog (via products.json) on a schedule and comparing snapshots - watching which products get promoted, restocked, or expanded, and which disappear.
Method 4: Homepage and collection placement
Stores put their money-makers where buyers see them: the homepage, 'featured' or 'bestsellers' collections, and the top of category pages. Browse those, and cross-reference with the best-selling sort. If a product is both featured and sorted near the top of best-selling, that's a strong signal.
Shortcut: a best-seller browser extension
If you'd rather not read URLs and JSON, a free Chrome extension like Koala Inspector surfaces a Shopify store's likely best sellers in one click, alongside its theme and installed apps. It's a genuine time-saver for quick checks.
Just keep the limits in mind: it's reading the same public signals you can read yourself and estimating from them - it cannot see real sales figures either, so treat its rankings as a directional guide, not confirmed units sold.
Finding your OWN store's best sellers
If it's your own store you want to analyze, ignore all the public-data tricks - you have the real numbers. In your Shopify admin, open Analytics > Reports and run the 'Sales by product' report to rank your catalog by actual units sold and revenue over any date range. The Analytics overview also lists your current top products at a glance.
This is the one case where exact figures exist, because they're yours. For every other store, you're inferring from the public signals above.
The honest limits (free vs paid)
Be realistic about what's knowable. Public Shopify data gives you an ordering and availability - it does NOT give you exact units sold, revenue, or conversion rates. Paid 'sales estimator' tools try to estimate those numbers, but they're estimates, often inaccurate, and usually expensive.
For most product research, the free signals above - best-selling sort + sold-out patterns + catalog movement over time - are enough to spot winners. You rarely need a dollar figure; you need to know what's moving.
Turn snapshots into a winner-finder
The catch with all of this is that a single look tells you little - the signal is in the change. A product climbing the best-seller order, selling out and restocking, or getting new variants is what flags a winner, and you only see that by checking repeatedly.
Shop Sentry watches competitor stores for exactly these movements - new products, restocks, sell-outs, and price changes - and alerts you by email or Telegram the moment they happen. Instead of manually re-checking the best-selling page, you get pinged when a competitor's catalog actually moves.
Frequently asked questions
Can I see a Shopify store's exact sales numbers?
No - Shopify never exposes units sold or revenue publicly. The best-selling sort gives you an ordering, and the available flag shows what's in or out of stock, but exact figures are private to the owner. Paid estimator tools only guess at them.
What does sort_by=best-selling actually rank by?
Shopify's own sales-based ranking for that store. It's relative - it tells you the order of best sellers, not how many of each sold.
Are sold-out products a good signal?
Often yes. Items that repeatedly sell out are usually top sellers. Tracking which products keep going out of stock (and restocking) is one of the most reliable free winner signals.
How do I track best sellers over time?
Save the best-selling collection and the catalog periodically and compare, or use a tool like Shop Sentry that watches for restocks, new products and price moves automatically.
How do I find MY OWN store's best sellers?
In your Shopify admin go to Analytics > Reports and run 'Sales by product' to rank your catalog by real units sold and revenue over any period. Exact sales numbers are only available for your own store, never a competitor's.
Is there a tool that just shows a store's best sellers?
Yes - a free extension like Koala Inspector surfaces a store's likely best sellers in one click. It estimates from the same public signals, so use it as a directional guide rather than a source of exact sales figures.