Someone in the Shopify Plus Community group asked a simple question this week: how do you guys feel about the Shop app listing how many sales your products make? The replies ran from "outrageous if true" to "this is everywhere now." A few people could not even find the thing they were arguing about.
Here is what set it off. Shopify's Shop app has quietly started putting a "bought in past month" count on product pages. If a product has enough recent sales, shoppers now see a small badge that says something like "500+ bought in past month" sitting right under the star rating. I went and looked at our own BattlBox listings on the Shop app, and sure enough, our Pro Plus box shows "500+ bought in past month."
So is this Shopify leaking your business to the public, or is it free social proof you would have paid an app for? I have a take, but let me walk through what the feature actually does first, because most of the panic in that thread was about a version of it that does not exist.
Key takeaways
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The Shop app now shows a "bought in past month" count on product detail pages.
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The number is bucketed (25+, 75+, 300+, 500+), not exact, and only appears once a product crosses a minimum for the month.
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Below that floor, nothing shows, so a slow product does not broadcast a sad number.
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Amazon and TikTok Shop already do versions of this. It is becoming standard.
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For brands with sales velocity, it is free social proof. For everyone else, it shows nothing.
What is the "bought in past month" badge on the Shop app?
It is a sales-count label that Shopify displays on a product's page inside the Shop app. Once a product has sold enough in the trailing month, the Shop app adds a line like "300+ bought in past month" under the rating and above the price.
The number is not exact. It rounds down into tiers. Merchants in that Plus Community thread reported seeing 25+, 75+, and 300+, and on our end I saw 500+ on the BattlBox Pro Plus box. So nobody is publishing your precise unit count. They are publishing a rounded floor that says "a lot of people bought this recently."
If that phrasing sounds familiar, it should. It is almost word for word what Amazon has shown since 2023.
Where does the Shop app sold count show up, and when?
It shows up on the product page inside the Shop app, not on your own storefront, and only once a product clears a threshold. One merchant in the thread put it plainly: he could not see any numbers on his products at first, then realized the count only appears once a product has 25 or more sales in the month.
That detail matters more than anything else in this whole conversation. There is a floor. If a product has not sold much this month, the badge simply does not appear. One reader worried it might show "low figures" and make a product look bad. It will not. There is no "3 bought in past month" badge waiting to embarrass you. It is either a healthy number or nothing at all.
One thing that is still fuzzy: whether the count reflects only Shop app purchases or all of your sales for that product. The merchant who started the thread said he thinks it is more than just Shop app orders but was not sure if it includes everything or only Shop Pay. Shopify has not spelled that out, so I would not state it as fact either way.
Is Shopify leaking my business data to the public?
Short answer: not in the way people fear. The loudest replies were some version of "so Shopify is just leaking business information to the public now?" I get the gut reaction. But look at what is actually exposed. It is a rounded, past-month, per-product purchase count that only appears above a floor. It is not revenue. It is not margin. It is not your total store sales. It is not even an exact unit number.
Compare that to what a competitor could already estimate from your public reviews, your rank on other marketplaces, or your live drops. The "bought in past month" badge is less precise than a lot of signals you are already giving off. One commenter joked that Shopify might as well "tell the customer our margins while you're at it." Funny, but that is nowhere near what this is.
Don't Amazon and TikTok Shop already do this?
Yes, and that is the part worth sitting with. Amazon has shown a "bought in past month" line under the star rating since 2023, and it is all over categories like Home & Kitchen and Sports & Outdoors. TikTok Shop surfaces units-sold counts on listings too. A commenter in the Plus thread summed it up: "TikTok shop does the same thing. And Amazon now has approximately how many sold per month on their listings. It's becoming more and more common."
So Shopify is not inventing anything here. It is matching what the two biggest competing storefronts already do. When the places most of your customers shop all show a recent-sales count, a Shopify product page that stays blank starts to look like the odd one out, not the safe one.
Does showing units sold actually help conversions?
Most of the time, yes. Social proof is one of the most tested ideas in ecommerce, and aggregate signals like "units sold" tend to help. They give a shopper a fast read that other real people bought this and it worked out, without making them dig through reviews. There is a whole category of paid Shopify apps that exist only to bolt a sold-count onto your product pages. Shopify just made a version of that free and automatic.
The honest catch: it helps you if you have the velocity to clear the floor. If you do, you now get a trust signal you used to pay for. If you do not, you get nothing shown, which is neutral, not negative. The brands most annoyed by this feature tend to be the ones whose products will not trigger it anyway.
Can you turn off "bought in past month" on the Shop app?
As of now there is no clean merchant toggle I have found for the badge by itself. You can manage how your products appear on the Shop channel, and you can deactivate selling on Shop entirely, but shutting off the whole Shop channel to hide one badge is using a sledgehammer to swat a fly. If you have the sales to show a number, you almost certainly do not want to.
My take as an operator
We lean into this one. For a brand with velocity, "500+ bought in past month" on the Pro Plus box is free credibility I would happily have run an app for. At BattlBox, our repeat purchase rate sits around 83 percent, and the hardest thing to manufacture is the sense that a real, active community stands behind the product. A recent-sales badge is a tiny, automatic version of exactly that.
If you are sweating this feature, the useful question is not "how do I hide it." It is "why doesn't my product clear the floor." That is the real signal. The badge is just reporting it.
Frequently asked questions
What does "bought in past month" mean on the Shop app?
It is a rounded count of how many times a product was purchased in the trailing month, shown on the product page once the product clears a minimum number of sales.
Is the "bought in past month" number exact?
No. It rounds down into tiers like 25+, 75+, 300+, and 500+, so it signals volume without revealing your precise unit count.
Why don't I see a sold count on my Shopify products?
The badge only appears once a product has enough recent sales, which merchants peg at around 25 in the month. Below that, nothing shows.
Does the Shop app sold count include all my sales or just Shop app orders?
Shopify has not confirmed this. Merchants believe it reflects more than just Shop app orders, but whether it includes every channel or only Shop Pay is still unclear.
Do Amazon and TikTok Shop show sold counts too?
Yes. Amazon has shown a "bought in past month" figure since 2023, and TikTok Shop displays units-sold counts on listings. The Shop app is following an established pattern.
Can I turn off the "bought in past month" badge?
There is no clean toggle for the badge alone right now. You can change Shop channel settings or stop selling on Shop entirely, but that is a heavy move to hide a single label.
Final thoughts
The reaction to the Shop app showing a "bought in past month" count tells you more about a brand's confidence than about Shopify. The feature is bucketed, capped by a floor, and already standard on Amazon and TikTok Shop. It does not expose your revenue or your margins. For a brand moving real volume, it is free social proof. For a brand that is not, it quietly shows nothing and points at the thing actually worth fixing. I would spend zero minutes trying to hide it and a lot more making sure my products earn the badge.
Interested in learning more? If you want more operator-level breakdowns like this, check out our piece on Sales Teardowns, Rejection, and the Letter That Proved the Point and our series on how we built a seven-figure live-selling channel.
