Shopify calculates free shipping thresholds based on the order total after discounts are applied, rather than the pre-discount subtotal. This creates issues when customers use gift cards, store credits, or discount codes that reduce their total below the free shipping threshold, even though their subtotal qualifies.
Impact & Frustration:
One merchant reports losing tens of thousands of dollars over two years due to this limitation
The issue affects stores with existing discount codes, particularly those with thousands of active coupons
Shopify has not provided a native solution or configuration option
Proposed Workarounds:
Puco Shipping Discount app (recommended by one user): Creates a separate shipping discount rule based on subtotal that applies globally, working independently of existing discount codes. Users set a 100% shipping discount when subtotal exceeds a threshold, regardless of post-discount total
Advanced Free Shipping app: Mentioned but criticized for requiring all discount codes to be recreated within the app, making it impractical for stores with large existing coupon inventories
Current Status:
The discussion remains unresolved as a platform-level issue, with merchants seeking third-party apps as the only available solution.
Summarized with AI on October 31.
AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
Unfortunately, Shopify calculates the shipping fee after a discount is applied (The shipping rate should be based on the subtotal and not the total (after the discount is applied)).
For example: Let’s say you offer your customers free shipping on all $50+ orders.
Now, assume your customer’s subtotal is 60$ and has a 20$ gift card/store credit/discount, bringing his total to $40. Shouldn’t this customer still get free shipping? (common sense, no?). Shopify, instead, applies the shipping fee based on the total and not the subtotal.
Has anyone figured out a way to solve this? I saw others complain about this, yet no solution has been offered by the Shopify team.
No, they will never fix this. I spoke with a lot of people with the same
problem and they just never bothered to fix or let us choose in which way
it should be calculated. It’s so frustrating, made me lose tens of
thousands of dollars in the past 2 years.
Hello, I am also looking for a solution here. Customers get shipping cost on orders of +3000,- after they apply a discount code of 3000,-
Not what we want.
Hey everybody,
Yep this is a common issue, but there is now a solution.
You can set up free shipping based on Checkout Total AFTER discounts using Advanced Free Shipping
Simply choose ‘Cart Total’ rather than ‘Cart Subtotal’ in the app/discount conditions.
Advanced Free Shipping is a shipping discount app with over 20 possible checkout conditions, for merchants who have more complex shipping discount scenarios.
Hi. This is NOT the solution.
I don’t need a discount app. I need an app that applies this rule to EVERY discount code already present in the store.
Your app forces you to create all the coupons within your app to work, and that doesn’t make any sense.
What do you mean ? I installed it and it doesn’t make any sense. Is a discount app, this means every coupon needs to be created inside the app to work that way. What we want is something for the over 10.000 coupons we already have in our account and that applies this rule globally on every single coupon in the store.
Hello @Agolab , I created a discount for all customers that order above 500 eur subtotal, have 100% discount on the shipping.
If order is under 500 subtotal, shipping is calculated.
If order is above 500 subtotal, but total after discount is under 500, shipping is free. This also works with productdiscount.
So if my customer buys 550,- and also has a discount code of 200 (total = 350), the normal Shopify shipping is than given a 100% discount.
So what I’m doing is putting an extra rule in Puco app, above the shipping rules of shopify.
This rule has nothing to do with the discount coupons you allready have.
