[Feature Request] Add Partner-friendly app support to Shopify App Pricing - auto-waive billing for Partner development stores

Technical Q&A
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Background

According to the official documentation, test subscriptions for Partner development stores were deprecated as of April 28, 2026:

“After April 28, 2026, use the $0 private test plan to test your billing integration instead.”
Shopify App Pricing

However, in our case, the behavioral change was not observed until May 13, 2026 — when Partner dev stores suddenly began hitting “No payment method” errors that were not present the day before.

We have screenshot evidence confirming:

  • May 12, 2026: A Partner development store successfully activated a paid plan, clearly labeled “Test”
  • May 13, 2026: A different Partner development store attempted the same action — the “Test” label was gone, and billing appeared to be treated as a live charge

It’s unclear whether this reflects a phased rollout or a delayed enforcement, but the impact was immediate and affected multiple Partner development stores simultaneously. This has been confirmed with Shopify Support (escalated May 13, 2026) as an intentional platform change, not a bug.

The problem

Shopify App Pricing currently offers only one supported workaround for testing with Partner dev stores: create a $0 Private Test Plan and manually add each store’s domain.

This approach has strict domain limits that make it impractical for uncontrolled installs. For app developers where Partners install the app into their development stores to evaluate or demo it, you cannot anticipate which domains will need to be whitelisted in advance — and the allowlist fills up quickly.

Reference: Shopify App Pricing

The contradiction

Shopify has been positioning App Pricing as the modern billing solution for new apps. The app affected by this issue was built with Shopify App Pricing from the start — it has never used the legacy Billing API.

Yet, the legacy Billing API supported a pattern commonly known as “Partner-friendly app”: by detecting partnerDevelopment: true in the shop’s plan, apps could automatically apply free access to any Partner development store — no domain allowlisting required.

Reference: Offer free trials

Shopify App Pricing has no equivalent mechanism today.

This creates a direct contradiction:

An app built on Shopify’s recommended billing solution lacks a core testing capability that the legacy Billing API provided — and there is currently no supported path to replicate it.

Feature request

Please add Partner development store detection to Shopify App Pricing, equivalent to the partnerDevelopment flag available via the shop object.

Specifically:

  • When a store with plan.partnerDevelopment = true activates a paid plan via Shopify App Pricing, the billing requirement should be automatically waived (i.e., treated as $0 / no billing contract required)
  • This should work without requiring the app developer to pre-register individual store domains

This would restore the testing workflow that existed before the April 28 deprecation and align Shopify App Pricing with the capabilities developers relied on in the Billing API.

Impact

Apps with active Partner installs are currently in a broken state for their Partner evaluators. Every new Partner dev store that tries to activate a paid plan hits a “No payment method” error — blocking evaluation, onboarding, and partner-led demos entirely.

I’ve confirmed this behavior with Shopify Support and verified it is an intentional platform change. The support team agreed this is a valid gap and recommended raising it here.

Would appreciate any votes or comments from others affected by this change.

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