2k variants now generally available to all merchants

Shopify Discussion
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2,048 variants to be exact :slight_smile:

Shopify Blog More To Sell, Less To Manage: Introducing 2,048 Product Variants on Shopify (2025) - Shopify

Go ahead and share how you’re going to use this, or insights on this new systems features.

For over a decade merchants have been restricted to 100 variants PER product
Which caused a lot of friction for many businesses would hit that old ceiling with their merchandise’s information architecture.
Be it because of shear SKU count for a simple product, or the options that make the number of variants grow very fast; ~set-combinatorics.
e.g. 5 sizes & 2 materials & 10 colors * = 100 variants, VS 5 sizes & 3 materials & 10 colors = 150 variants; just 1 more material adds 50 variants

Demo store

:key: password is 2kvariants , Horizonv3.0 Theme and bogus gateway

Notice the UX problem of longer and longer options to scroll around for using buttons, and the delay experience when selecting some variants

Merchants are getting VASTLY increased flexibility but as in all things there are caveats

  • Still only 3 options max.
  • 50,000 total variant threshold before the 1k variant upload per day kicks in; Plus plans aren’t limited this way.
  • 250 media item limit on the product, with variant images having to be from that pool
  • :bomb:Loop limit and ajax response of 250 variants applies in themes, trying to render 250+ variants in a forloop will NOT work properly
  • with lots of variants after the product admin loads there may then be yet another progress bar as variants load; and saving edits even to just the product description seems to take longer at least from what i’ve seen so far.

Below are a few category highlights I think merchants, partners, and developers should be aware of.
To make the most of this if you need consulting or customization services reach to any of us service partners here on the forums.
(click profile pics for cards)

Themes

Performance

Remember the data of 2,048 variants is a LOT you don’t want themes to just flood the customer’s browser & bandwidth.
And there are still gotchas for the 250 object limit to be found in different areas.

Vintage themes

Older themes likely will not automagically work with the new variant limit.
So they will need advanced theme customizations, you can reach out to me or other partners here on the forums for services.
:man_technologist: Advanced - Support high-variant products

2025 modern themes

Horizon themes should support the variant limit.
Other Newer themes have been, and may still be, working out different ways to deliver that much data to customers on the frontend.
Mainly using the section rendering api.
Though if you’ve heavily modified your theme in the past you may not be able to get automatic theme updates.
So may need theme customizations to bring things up to date.

Themes sold on third-party marketplaces are likely to not have great 2k variant support.

App ecosystem

So this will obsolete a LOT of apps that tried to fill this specific gap and nothing else :winking_face_with_tongue:
E.g. stuff in the product options category or variant options vertical

Yet this is not a complete replacement as there is STILL only 3 options, for now maybe who knows /shrug
And it doesn’t replace every business requirement or end user need.
For example for a customer’s monogram using line item properties to get that info by providing a text input or other product personalizations.
https://community.shopify.com/c/Shopify-Design/Product-pages-Get-customization-information-for-products/m-p/616525

Information Architecture

Any limitation you had with variants interacting with other systems doesn’t really change.
Examples are, variants are NOT individually assignable to collections, only the product and ALL that’s products variants go in a collection.
And after 50k productVariants a throttle of 1k variants per day happens for non-Plus plans.
etc etc etc

For similar products make use of category metafields to generate options and manage them.
https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/custom-data/metafields/category-metafields
Or migrate existing options https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/products/variants/add-variants#migrate-variant-options-to-category-metafields
This also can enable native swatches for storefronts :clap: .

If using an ERP/WMS etc just because shopify is updated doesn’t mean other software is updated or ever will.
In those cases you will need to create automations, or build middleware to convert upstream product data into variants.
Or continue to use flat separate products.
Plus customers can take advantage of the combined listings app to present separate products as a single product in the online sales channel.

Development Notes

For dev stores the initial test theme may not support 2k variants
For dev stores the generated test data doesn’t look it has a 2k variant snowboard in the dataset
i’ve added a CSV file link on the demo store product page description of it’s sizes, colors and materials making 2046 variants

Did I miss anything about the new limit that would not be obvious to merchants?

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Thank you for an amazing post, all details are there and well explained :clap:

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  • Still only 3 options max.

    This is the only part that is bothering me, i had to create multiple times workarounds and apps to let my customers have multiple options and also variants, and by extending only the variants number it feels like only half of the problem was solved.

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I think it’s more than a feeling, a higher ceiling is a waaaay more flexible.
Yet the house is still only 3 feet wide ya know.
Even for shirts ,a thing that was mind when the platform was created, there’s 4 needed options:
gender, size, color, material

I suspect if more than 3 options happens, higher amounts(4+) might be gated behind a Plus plan.
Because of how strong that would be, and the extra server resources.
the 2k already took years of engineering to scale.

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Yeah the 2048 number doesn’t really make much sense with 3 options. That’s 682 variant possibilities for each option. I can’t think of any industry that has this need. I mean maybe a map company that has every city on the planet and every size and parchment type known to mankind….

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The quirk is not even easy to hit the exact 2048 number when making a product with unequal options in the admin.
See the demo store above for a contrived t-shirt example.

Survivor bias, most ecomms store don’t have the capability for it so it’s not common.
Yet in shopify high count product families can exist through systems like combined-listings.

Phone cases easily blow through possibilities so expect that vertical to change how it does it’s PDP UX.
As can anything sold by-the-measure that uses variants as a diliniated quantity; so now they can create more linear/granular productVariants.
i.e. before var#1 is 1/2lb beef var#100 is 50lb beef , or var#1 is 5 grams of chocolate var#100 is 500 grams.
after var#1 is an ounce of beef, or var#1 is 1 milligram of chocolate