Shopify App Bloat Index

The Detector audits one store at a time and surfaces every app it can find. The Index ranks multiple stores side by side so you can benchmark a client against competitors or a portfolio against itself. Same signature library powers both. Use the Index for board decks, RFPs, and the conversation that starts with 'our site is fast, theirs is bloated.' Use the Detector for the forensic audit.

Two to ten. Above ten the CORS proxy budget starts hitting rate limits and the leaderboard becomes hard to read at once. For larger competitive sets, run two batches and stitch the CSV exports.

The tool tries five public CORS proxies in sequence. Many production Shopify stores block shared proxies via Cloudflare rules or origin firewalls. When that happens, click 'Paste HTML' on the row, open the store in another tab, View Source, copy, and paste. Detection runs in your browser regardless of source.

Directional, not measured. Each app's TBT contribution is a typical figure from real Shopify CRO audits and Lighthouse passes; the sum gives you a comparable ranking across stores in the same batch. Actual TBT in field depends on theme, app configuration, device, network. Use the Index to know which stores are heavier than which. For the absolute number on your own store, run Lighthouse or pull CrUX field data.

The library tracks every public plan per app. When you enter monthly revenue, the tool picks a default plan that matches your revenue tier (Klaviyo Email 10K at $150 for a $50K to $200K store; Email 25K at $400 for a $200K to $1M store, etc.). After the scan, every detected app shows a dropdown of all plans so you can override the default to your actual plan; monthly spend and yearly spend recalculate live. The plan range is shown under each dropdown so you see the spread (Klaviyo: $0 to $1,380 a month depending on contact tier).

Plan data comes from each app's public pricing page, reconciled to typical mid-DTC usage. The full library lives in static/data/shopify-apps.json and a weekly GitHub Action bumps the lastRefreshed timestamp and opens an issue listing any app whose pricingVerified date is older than 90 days. Maintainers update those entries manually because app pricing pages do not offer a structured API.

Yes. Plan does not affect the signature detection. A Basic store with PageFly plus Privy plus Yotpo will score heavier than a Plus store running native Liquid sections, even though Plus has 'better infrastructure.' App weight is plan-agnostic. The plan only matters when you cross 25 active Shopify Functions or hit Checkout Extensibility limits.

No. Everything runs in your browser. The CORS proxies see the request URL because that is how a proxy works, but the result HTML never leaves your machine after the proxy returns it. There is no analytics ping for the URL list and no server-side log. Open DevTools to confirm.

A: under 100ms aggregate app TBT (top 10 percent of stores I audit). B: 100 to 200ms (typical lean DTC stack). C: 200 to 400ms (mid-size, some bloat). D: 400 to 700ms (heavy, will fail Core Web Vitals on mobile). F: 700ms or more (app sprawl is the primary CRO blocker, rebuild candidate). The Index sorts the leaderboard by aggregate TBT, so the top of the table is the store doing the most damage to its own Core Web Vitals.