Controlling how many units of a product customers can purchase is an important strategy when running an online shop. There are various reasons you may want to limit purchase quantities, such as inventory management, ensuring fair purchasing opportunities for customers, and preventing fraudulent bulk buying.
In this article, we explain a specific method for limiting the quantity per cart using Shopify's standard features. As of the update on April 3, 2025, Shopify made simple quantity limits possible. However, there are certain constraints on this limitation, so we'll explain the details and how to work around them step by step.
Features of the Quantity Limit (Add-to-Cart Limit) Available with Standard Features
Source: Shopify Changelog
On April 3, 2025, it became possible to implement quantity limits (add-to-cart limits) using Shopify's standard features.
Since this is a standard feature, it's available for free, but the primary purpose of the feature is "preventing inventory levels from being revealed to customers," so it only allows simple quantity limits and cannot achieve advanced quantity restrictions.
For details, please check "What the Standard Feature Can Do" and "What the Standard Feature Cannot Do" below.
Reference: New Add-to-cart Limit｜Shopify Changelog
What the Standard Feature Can Do
⭕️ Quantity limits of "up to 50 units across all variants" (for example, if products A, B, and C exist, a restriction where each of products A through C can be added to the cart up to 50 units)
⭕️ Changing the alert message
What the Standard Feature Cannot Do
❌ Per-product quantity limits, such as "only certain variants up to 50 units"
❌ Quantity limits with a specified minimum, such as "starting from 10 units across all variants"
❌ Quantity limits with a specified increment, such as "in increments of 3"
❌ Quantity limits such as a total of up to 5 units
❌ Displaying a message indicating that a quantity limit is in effect
❌ Control of the quantity picker
❌ Quantity limits for products (or variants) that don't have inventory tracking enabled
❌ Quantity limits for products (or variants) that have "Continue selling when out of stock" enabled
How to Implement Quantity Limits (Add-to-Cart Limits) Using Standard Features
In this section, we'll introduce how to implement a limit of up to 10 units across all variants.
With this setting, if variants A through Z exist in your store, you can implement a quantity limit where each of variants A through Z can be purchased up to a maximum of 10 units.
Steps to Set Up a Quantity Limit (Add-to-Cart Limit)
(1) From the Shopify admin, navigate to "Settings > Checkout"
(2) Click "Add-to-cart limit"
(3) Enable "Set the maximum quantity per item that can be added to a cart"
(4) Enter 10 in the limit input field
(5) Click "Done"
(6) Click "Save"
That completes the setup.
How to Verify Operation
(1) Add 11 or more units of a variant product to the cart
(2) Confirm that an alert message is displayed and only 10 units are added
That completes the operation verification.
How to Change the Alert Message for the Quantity Limit (Add-to-Cart Limit)
In this section, we introduce how to change the alert message for Shopify's standard quantity limit feature.
With the standard quantity limit feature, the following alert messages are displayed.
If you try to add more than the maximum quantity you've set to the cart, the alert message "Due to availability, only XX of this item were added to your cart." will be displayed.
If you try to add to the cart when the maximum quantity is already in the cart, the alert message "You already have the maximum quantity of this item in your cart." will be displayed.
Steps to Change the Alert Message
(1) From the Shopify admin, navigate to "Online Store > Themes"
(2) Click "⋯ (ellipsis)"
(3) Click "Edit default theme content"
(4) Enter "Due to availability..." in the search field
(5) Edit the text at "Checkout & system > Notices cart > Only n added to cart"
(6) Enter "You already have the maximum..." in the search field
(7) Edit the text at "Checkout & system > Notices cart > Maximum available quantity reached"
(8) Click "Save"
That completes changing the alert message.
How to Turn Off the Standard Quantity Limit (Add-to-Cart Limit) Feature
Since the April 3, 2025 update, Shopify enables a quantity limit by default. In this section, we introduce how to disable the quantity limit feature.
(1) From the Shopify admin, navigate to "Settings > Checkout"
(2) Click "Add-to-cart limit"
(3) Disable "Set the maximum quantity per item that can be added to a cart"
(4) Click "Done"
(5) Click "Save"
That completes disabling the quantity limit.
Recommended Shopify Apps for Advanced Quantity Limits
RuffRuff Order Limits
RuffRuff Order Limits is a Shopify app that lets you easily set purchase limits based on product quantity, amount, and customer tags. Quantity limits, amount limits, bundling restrictions, customer restrictions, payment restrictions, and access restrictions can all be achieved with a single app.
What RuffRuff Order Limits Can Do
- Quantity limits of "up to 50 units across all variants"
- Per-product quantity limits, such as "only certain variants up to 50 units"
- Quantity limits with a specified minimum, such as "starting from 10 units across all variants"
- Quantity limits with a specified increment, such as "in increments of 3"
- Quantity limits such as a total of up to 5 units within a collection
- Displaying a message indicating that a quantity limit is in effect
- Control of the quantity picker
- Changing the alert message
- Changing the message design
- Message translation
Please refer to the blog article below for various ways to set quantity limits using RuffRuff Order Limits.
In Conclusion
In this article, we explained how to set up quantity limits using Shopify's standard features and how to disable them. Setting quantity limits appropriately can make store operations smoother and improve the customer experience.
Additionally, if you need conditional quantity limits that are difficult to achieve with the standard feature alone, we recommend using a Shopify app such as RuffRuff Order Limits. Please refer to the blog article below for how to choose a quantity limit app.
Finally, the blog article below introduces purchase limits other than quantity limits that can be achieved in Shopify. If you're considering implementing purchase limits, please use it as a reference.
