A merchant set up a “Buy X Get Y” discount in Shopify expecting a free gift to automatically appear in customers’ carts when they purchase products over a certain price threshold. However, the gift never displays during checkout or in the cart.
Root cause: Shopify’s native “Buy X Get Y” discount only applies price reductions when qualifying products are already in the cart—it cannot automatically add items. Customers must manually find and add the free gift themselves for the discount to apply.
Resolution: The original poster resolved the issue by installing “AOV Free Gift & BXGY,” a third-party app that handles automatic gift addition. The app is reportedly working well and stable.
Alternative solutions suggested:
BOGOS (formerly Free Gifts by Secomapp) - auto-adds gifts and re-adds them if removed
Discount Depot App - offers auto-add functionality with customizable conditions
Monk - integrates with native cart/theme, supports cart drawer, popups, and gift selection widgets
Multiple respondents confirmed this is a common limitation requiring third-party apps to achieve true “auto-add” free gift functionality.
Summarized with AI on October 27.
AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
Hi Shopifiers, I am experiencing a problem trying to get one of my offers displaying, and I was hoping that someone might be able to help me.
I am using the “Buy X Get Y” discount option. This is a FREE gift that should be automatically offered to anyone buying any of the other products priced over a certain amount.
However, despite saving this new discount / offer, it does not display at any time during the purchase process, and doesn’t even display in the Cart.
This is a common confusion about how Shopify’s built-in Buy X, Get Y discounts work.
The “Y” product will not be automatically added in the cart. Shopify discounts can only perform price reductions. They can’t affect the cart in other ways, such as adding new items.
Setting up a “Buy X, Get Y” discount is like telling Shopify, “if this quantity of X product is in the cart, offer a discount on this quantity of Y product.” The discount will also not appear on product pages automatically; it is purely a “backend” type of affair.
I suggest looking for an “auto add to cart” or “free gift with purchase” app in the Shopify App Store.
This is Ellie from BOGOS (formally Free Gifts by Secomapp), # 1 Promotion App on Shopify featuring Free Gift, Discounts & Bundles.
As Tobebuilds said, with Shopify native discount, customers have to manually find and add gifts to their cart, no automatic option.
To streamline this process, consider using a free gift app like our BOGOS app.The system will automatically add the free gift to the customer’s cart. Take a quick look at how it works in our demo store here:
If they accidentally remove the gift from their carts, it’ll be auto-added again. No manual adding or notifications, banners are needed because we have features to promote gift offers without annoying shoppers, like Gift icon and Today offer widget.
As such we donot have the auto-add the product to the cart functionality available on the default Shopify Buy X Get Y discount, You will have to look for a third-party app for the same. You can try using the Discount Depot App, which offers you the functionality to auto-add the free gift to the cart whensome one buys the X product or reaches the condition set for the free product.
This is a common limitation with Shopify’s native “Buy X Get Y" Discount feature, it won’t automatically display the free gift in the cart or during checkout, and often requires manual addition by the customer.
Monk, a Shopify app built specifically for free gifting, is a much more reliable option. FYI, I’m part of the team.
Monk integrates seamlessly with your native cart and existing theme, so it doesn’t override your setup or cause conflicts. You can fully customize how and where the free gift appears, whether that’s directly in the cart or cart drawer, as a popup right after “Add to Cart,” or even at checkout.
You can also add a selection widget that lets customers choose their free gift directly in the cart or popup.
