How to export products from any Shopify store to CSV

If it’s your own store, Shopify exports it for you: in the admin, go to Products, click Export, choose All products and the CSV for Excel, Numbers or other spreadsheet programs. Up to 50 products download straight away; more arrive by email. That file is the complete one, with cost per item and, for a store with one location, stock quantities.

For a store you don’t run, such as a competitor, a supplier or a store you’re researching, there’s no admin to ask. There is something almost as good: every standard Shopify store publishes its product list at /products.json, for anyone. Here are three ways to turn it into a file.

What the product list has, and what it doesn’t

Each product comes with its title, description, vendor, type, tags, the dates it was created and published, its options (size, colour and so on), and every variant with its price, compare-at price (the crossed-out price, when it’s on sale), SKU, weight, whether it’s in stock, and every image.

It has no stock quantities, barcodes, costs or sales figures, and only products the store has published. A few stores don’t serve it: a password-protected store, and big brands on a custom (“headless”) storefront, which answer with an error page.

1. Crate, in the store’s own tab

Crate is the Chrome extension I make for this. Install it from the Chrome Web Store and pin it (the puzzle-piece icon, then the pin next to Crate). Then:

1. Open the store, or one of its collections, and click the Crate button in the toolbar.
2. Choose Whole store or This collection, and click Load products.
3. Pick a format and click Download:
   • Spreadsheet CSV: one row per variant, with price, compare-at price, in stock, SKU, vendor, type, tags, weight, image, a link to the variant and the dates. Opens in Excel and Google Sheets.
   • Shopify import CSV: every product with its variants, options and images, in the columns of Shopify’s own product import (Products > Import in your admin).
   • JSON: the store’s product data as it publishes it.
   • Product links: one URL per line.

Up to 100 products from any store or collection is free; Crate Pro ($12.99, paid once) exports whole stores of any size. Crate only runs on the tab you click it on, and only reads the list the store publishes. It also remembers the store, and next time tells you what changed: new products, price changes, restocks. That part is in How to track a competitor’s Shopify store.

2. By hand, for a small store

Add /products.json?limit=250 to the store’s address, for example https://example-store.com/products.json?limit=250, and your browser shows the first 250 products as JSON. For the next 250, add &page=2, and so on until a page comes back with fewer. Paste the JSON into any “JSON to CSV” converter, and flatten the variants yourself: each product holds its variants as a list, which converters handle in different ways. This works for a quick look at a small store; for anything bigger, use Crate or the script below.

3. A Python script

This saves a spreadsheet with one row per variant. Save it as shopify_export.py, then run python shopify_export.py https://example-store.com:

import csv, json, sys, urllib.request

store = sys.argv[1].rstrip("/")  # e.g. https://example-store.com
rows, page = [], 1
while True:
    url = f"{store}/products.json?limit=250&page={page}"
    req = urllib.request.Request(url, headers={"User-Agent": "Mozilla/5.0"})
    products = json.load(urllib.request.urlopen(req))["products"]
    for p in products:
        for v in p["variants"]:
            rows.append({
                "title": p["title"], "variant": v["title"], "sku": v["sku"],
                "price": v["price"], "compare_at_price": v["compare_at_price"],
                "available": v["available"], "vendor": p["vendor"],
                "type": p["product_type"], "published_at": p["published_at"],
                "url": f"{store}/products/{p['handle']}?variant={v['id']}",
            })
    if len(products) < 250:
        break
    page += 1

with open("products.csv", "w", newline="", encoding="utf-8-sig") as f:
    w = csv.DictWriter(f, fieldnames=list(rows[0]))
    w.writeheader()
    w.writerows(rows)
print(f"{len(rows)} variants saved to products.csv")

A store with 1,000 products takes a few seconds. Products without options show the variant as “Default Title”, which is Shopify’s name for it. Some stores refuse requests that don’t come from a browser (the script then stops with “HTTP Error 403”); for those, use Crate, which runs in the store’s own tab.

Copying products into your own store

To move products into your own Shopify store, Crate’s Shopify import CSV goes straight into Products > Import in your admin, with every variant, option, price, compare-at price, image, tag, type and vendor; the images are links, which Shopify downloads during the import. Sold-out variants come in sold out, and the rest untracked, since a store doesn’t publish how many it has. Descriptions and photos belong to whoever made them, though: copy them from a store only if it’s yours or the owner has said yes, as a supplier or wholesaler often will. Between two stores you own, Shopify’s own export and import is the better route, since it carries stock levels and SEO fields too.