More and more shoppers are discovering products through AI services, using conversation or images. Product discovery via AI requires a mechanism that can retrieve information such as price, inventory, and variants, and guide the shopper all the way to a place to buy.
Shopify provides this mechanism for developers as the "Shopify Catalog API." With the Shopify Catalog API, you can build comparison-shopping agents that span multiple Shopify stores, or AI assistants that guide shoppers to products from a specific store only.
This article is written for developers building Shopify apps and AI agents. It explains how the Shopify Catalog API works, the difference between Global Catalog and Storefront Catalog, and the three MCP tools available for use.
For Shopify store operators who want to review how to prepare product data and how to support AI sales channels, see the article below.
*This article is based on information as of July 2026.
What Is the Shopify Catalog API?
The Shopify Catalog API is a product-data foundation that lets AI agents search Shopify products, retrieve up-to-date product information, and guide shoppers to a place to buy. The Shopify Spring '26 Edition, released on June 18, 2026, introduced new ways to use it, including image-based search and Bulk Lookup, which retrieves up to 50 products' worth of information at once.
Reference video: Shopify official channel: "Building with the Catalog API and UCP"
Shopify Catalog organizes product information on Shopify into a structured, searchable format. Through the Catalog API, an AI agent can retrieve not just the product name and price, but also the description, images, variants, inventory status, seller, purchase link, and more.
Because product information is handled in a common format, AI agents can more easily search for products that match a shopper's requirements and guide them toward comparison and purchase.
The Shopify Catalog API Is Provided as a UCP-Compliant MCP Server
Two connection points are provided for the Catalog API: "Global Catalog MCP" and "Storefront Catalog MCP." Both implement the Catalog capability of the Universal Commerce Protocol (hereafter "UCP"). UCP is a protocol for handling commerce operations — product search, cart, checkout, orders, and so on — in a common format. The Shopify Catalog API is responsible for the product search and information-retrieval portion of that.
At present, the Catalog connection points Shopify publishes are MCP servers. When implementing, you'll use either the Global Catalog MCP or the Storefront Catalog MCP. When checking the implementation details, refer to the Global Catalog MCP and Storefront Catalog MCP references.
Difference From the Admin API and Storefront API
Shopify also has the Admin API and Storefront API as mechanisms for handling product information. The main differences from the Shopify Catalog API are the intended purpose and the scope of what's searched.
| API | Main purpose | Scope | Typical use cases |
|---|---|---|---|
| Admin API | Store operations and building admin features | The store(s) the app is authorized for | Product registration, inventory updates, order management |
| Storefront API | Building a custom storefront | A single specific store you connect to | Product listings, product details, search, cart |
| Shopify Catalog API | AI-driven product discovery and comparison | Multiple Shopify merchants, or a single specific store | AI shopping, comparison search, product guidance |
Whereas the Admin API and Storefront API are APIs for managing a specific Shopify store's product information or displaying it on a storefront, the Shopify Catalog API is a mechanism designed for natural-language search and comparison shopping by AI agents.
The Relationship Between the Shopify Catalog API and AI Channels
Through Agentic Storefronts, Shopify surfaces products to AI channels such as ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google AI Mode, and Gemini. On the other hand, when you use the Catalog API from your own service, it's up to you as the developer to design how the retrieved products are selected, ordered, and described.
Even if a product is included in the Shopify Catalog, that doesn't guarantee it will always be shown on a given AI channel. The final display order, response text, product selection, and purchase experience are determined by the connected AI channel or the service you build.
When designing a product search mechanism, you need to work out the following points:
- Which of the shopper's criteria to use for the search
- In what order to present products
- How to explain the reasoning behind recommendations
- How to distinguish promoted products
- What information the shopper should confirm before purchasing
The order of search results and how recommendation reasons are explained are designed on the AI agent's side.
The Difference Between Global Catalog and Storefront Catalog
There are two ways to use the Shopify Catalog API: Global Catalog and Storefront Catalog. Both use a common set of MCP tools, but they differ in search scope, retrieval limits, and some search methods. You need to choose based on what you're building.
| Item | Global Catalog | Storefront Catalog |
|---|---|---|
| Search scope | Participating merchants on Shopify | A single specific store |
| Main purpose | Cross-store search, comparison shopping | Product guidance within a single brand |
| Search methods | Text, image, and similarity search by product reference | Text search (image search is not documented in the official reference) |
| How products are grouped | Products and offers from multiple sellers are organized around a UPID | Per-product, within the target store |
| lookup_catalog limit | Up to 50 items per request | Up to 10 items per request |
| Well-suited for | Comparison-search AI, product-discovery services | Brand-dedicated AI, product-search chat |
Global Catalog Searches Across Multiple Shopify Stores
Global Catalog can search for products matching a shopper's requirements across multiple Shopify merchants.
You can build AI agents that handle requests like the following. Product category, color, size, price range, delivery destination, shipping origin, and rating can all be used as search criteria.
- Find black sneakers for ¥20,000 or less that can also be worn on rainy days
- Compare organic cotton sweaters that can be shipped to Japan
- Find in-stock bags with a rating of 4.5 or higher
- Compare the price and inventory of the same product sold by multiple retailers
Global Catalog search results are organized around a Universal Product ID, or UPID. When the same product is sold by multiple merchants, search results with differing prices or availability can be grouped and handled together.
Global Catalog is well suited for shopping agents that compare multiple sellers, or services that search across a particular product category spanning many stores.
Storefront Catalog Searches Only a Specific Store's Products
Storefront Catalog lets you restrict the search scope to a single specific store. It can be used for a brand-dedicated AI customer-service chat, or a shopping assistant that compares products within a store.
It's well suited to brand-dedicated experiences such as the following:
- An AI customer-service chat that answers questions about your own products
- Diagnostic content that suggests products based on the shopper's purpose or budget
- Product guidance that checks size and color availability
- A shopping assistant that compares products within the store
- A feature that guides shoppers from candidate products to a purchase link
Storefront Catalog is a good candidate when you don't need to compare multiple sellers and want to guide shoppers to products from a specific brand only.
The Three MCP Tools Available With the Shopify Catalog API
Global Catalog and Storefront Catalog both provide the following three tools, which an AI agent calls via MCP.
-
search_catalog: searches for products matching given criteria -
lookup_catalog: retrieves up-to-date product information from a product ID or similar reference -
get_product: retrieves the details and variants of a single product
The AI agent chooses which tool to call depending on what information it already has.
search_catalog: Searches for Products Matching Given Criteria
search_catalog is a tool that searches for products based on the requirements a shopper has entered.
If a shopper enters "Find me black sneakers for ¥20,000 or less that I can also wear on rainy days," the AI agent converts that request into a search query and filters, and retrieves products that closely match the criteria.
With Global Catalog, in addition to free text, you can specify availability, delivery destination, shipping origin, price range, category, color, size, target gender, rating, and more. You can also specify an image as a search criterion to find products with a similar look. Combining a search query with an image is also supported.
lookup_catalog: Retrieves Up-to-Date Information From a Product ID or URL
lookup_catalog is a tool for retrieving current product information when the product ID or product URL is already known. It doesn't perform a new keyword search — it resolves an already-known reference against the latest Catalog data.
The main use cases are as follows:
- Re-checking the price or inventory of a product from a past search result
- Retrieving product information from a Shopify product URL a shopper has shared
- Batch-updating the availability status of multiple products in a saved list
- Verifying the state of a product or variant before adding it to the cart
With Global Catalog, you can specify anywhere from 1 to 50 items in a single request. The inputs explicitly documented as supported in the public reference are UPID, Shopify product variant ID, and Shopify product URL. Storefront Catalog processes up to 10 product or variant identifiers at a time.
get_product: Retrieves Product Details and Purchasable Variants
get_product is a tool for retrieving detailed information about a single product. It's typically used after search_catalog or lookup_catalog has found candidates and the shopper has selected a product.
The information you can retrieve includes the product name, description, media, price, options, variants, availability, seller, and purchase link. Option values also include information indicating whether a given combination exists and whether it can currently be purchased.
By specifying selected, you can narrow down variants based on conditions the shopper has chosen, such as "color: black" or "size: M." selected is available in both Global Catalog and Storefront Catalog.
Global Catalog also supports preferences, a parameter that specifies, in priority order, which options to relax first when there's no exact matching combination.
The Shopify Catalog API, Enhanced in the Spring '26 Edition
The Shopify Spring '26 Edition introduced new Shopify Catalog API features: image-based product search, a feature for retrieving multiple products' information at once, and an expanded set of retrievable product information.
Image Search Lets You Find Similar Products From an Image
Image Search is a feature that searches for products with a similar look based on an image.
It enables experiences such as the following:
- Finding a similar item from a photo of clothing you saw on the street
- Suggesting similar furniture or interior items from a photo of a room
- Combining a product image with text such as "a bit more casual"
- Finding a product that resembles a reference image, is within a given budget, and can be shipped to Japan
Because this handles designs and moods as search criteria that are hard to describe in text alone, it pairs well with fashion, furniture, miscellaneous goods, and accessories.
Bulk Lookup Lets You Retrieve Product Information From Arbitrary URLs at Once
Bulk Lookup is a feature that resolves multiple product references or URLs against the latest Catalog data all at once. In Shopify's announcement, it's introduced as an endpoint that, when given an arbitrary URL — from a forum, a review site, a YouTube video, and so on — analyzes the page content and returns real-time data for products identified within the Shopify Catalog.
For example, it can be used for services such as the following:
- Displaying the current price and inventory of products that appear in a review article or introduction video
- Resolving URLs a shopper has pasted into Catalog product data all at once
- Checking, in bulk, whether products introduced in an article are available for purchase
Because there's no need to query products one at a time, this is well suited to services that connect external content with product information.
Five Demo Apps Built With the Catalog API
To coincide with the Spring '26 Edition, Shopify has introduced five shopping apps built using the Catalog API and UCP.
These aren't case studies of publicly available stores — they're demo apps built by Shopify's own designers and developers. By combining product search via the Catalog API with purchase processing via UCP, they demonstrate how shopping features can be built into a wide range of scenarios: travel, video, fortune-telling, room design, and more.
Showroom: Find Products That Appear in Videos
Showroom is an app that searches for similar products starting from furniture or clothing seen in film or TV footage.
Image source: Demo app: Showroom
For example, if you select a desk lamp that appeared in a video, it searches multiple merchants for products with a similar shape, material, and design, and displays them as purchasable candidates.
AI-based image recognition alone can't confirm whether a product is actually for sale or check current inventory. In Showroom, the AI recognizes the product in the footage, and the Catalog API searches for similar products from structured product data — connecting the footage all the way to a place to buy.
Image source: Demo app Showroom
All Set: Suggests What to Pack for a Trip
All Set is a shopping app that suggests clothing and travel items suited to your destination and the season.
Image source: Demo app: All Set
When a shopper picks a destination such as "Kyoto in spring" or "Paris in summer," it displays a curated set of products suited to the climate and mood of the trip. Rather than simply searching by product category, its distinguishing feature is suggesting products based on the purpose and setting of the trip.
Using the Catalog API, candidates are narrowed down from multiple Shopify merchants' products based on size, color, target gender, images, video, and other information. This is an example that combines AI's contextual understanding with currently-purchasable product information.
Starred: Suggests Products Based on a Horoscope Reading
Starred is an app that combines a daily horoscope reading with product suggestions.
Image source: Demo app: Starred
When you select your zodiac sign, it displays your horoscope reading along with products suited to that day's theme — gemstones, bath products, candles, and so on. For example, it searches based on a product's use or characteristics, such as "helps you feel calm" or "supports better sleep," and finds products matching the reading's content from multiple Shopify merchants. This is an example showing that suggestions can be based not just on product category, but on a product's use and the situation it's used in.
Image source: Demo app Starred
Sourced: Find Furniture and Goods From a Photo of a Room
Sourced is an app that, when you upload a photo of a room, searches for products similar to the furniture and goods in the image.
Image source: Demo app: Sourced
For example, from a photo of a child's room, it recognizes items such as the bed, posters, stuffed animals, lighting, and storage furniture, and displays similar products for each one. You can also select a displayed product to search for even closer candidates.
This is an example that uses the Catalog API's image search to connect multiple items within a single image to product search. Even if you don't know a product's name, you can find it from a photo of a room or a styled setup.
Image source: Demo app Sourced
Pippin: Suggests Board Games Through Conversation
Pippin is an app that, through voice conversation with a shopper, suggests board games matching their criteria.
Image source: Demo app: Pippin
It asks about the number of players, the amount of time available, the mood of the game, and so on, then searches Shopify merchants for products matching the answers.
This demonstrates that the Catalog API can be used from a variety of touchpoints beyond a website search screen — voice assistants, chatbots, even the screen on a home appliance.
Image source: Demo app Pippin
The Catalog API Lets You Build Product Search Into a Wide Range of Scenarios
What all five apps Shopify introduced have in common is that the shopper doesn't start by typing in a product name. Starting from a video, a travel destination, a horoscope reading, a photo of a room, or a conversation, they read the shopper's intent and search the Catalog API for matching products. Because the Catalog API handles product discovery and UCP handles purchase processing such as cart and checkout, you can build shopping services that look quite different from a conventional product-search screen.
Summary
The Shopify Catalog API is a mechanism that lets AI agents search Shopify products, retrieve up-to-date product information, and guide shoppers to a place to buy.
The Shopify Spring '26 Edition introduced image search, Bulk Lookup for identifying products from a URL, and more — expanding the range of what can be built into a single flow from product search to purchase guidance.
That said, what's available to stores targeting the Japanese market, and the path to purchase, will vary depending on your Shopify Markets selling-region settings and the support status of the AI channel you connect to. When implementing, be sure to check Shopify's developer documentation and each channel's latest terms of use.
