Short answer: Shopify raised the variant ceiling to 2,048 in October 2025 but left the limit at three option types per product, and that is the wall most catalogues actually hit. Two ways past it. Split into separate products and group them into one listing with swatches, which is what Rubik Combined Listings, built by Craftshift, does (5.0 stars, 63 reviews, free for 5 groups), or add a product options app and accept that the extra values are not variants.
The October 2025 change got a lot of attention and solved a problem most stores did not have. Going from 100 variants to 2,048 matters if you were multiplying yourself into the ceiling. But look at what did not change. Three option types. Still three.
So a lamp with a finish, a shade fabric, a cord colour and a bulb fitting is four axes and Shopify has room for three. A shirt with colour, size, fit and sleeve length is four. A rug with colour, size, pile and backing is four. None of those is exotic and none of them fits, and 2,048 variants of a three-option product does not help you add a fourth.
Disclosure up front: we build Shopify apps. Craftshift makes Rubik Combined Listings, which appears below at the position the App Store’s own review count puts it, eighth of nine, flagged as ours every time. Seven apps here have a bigger review sample than we do and several have years on us. Where one of them is the better answer for your catalogue, it says so in that app’s section.
In this guide
- How this list is ordered
- The two routes, and what each one costs you
- The comparison table
- Globo Product Options, Variant
- Easify Custom Product Options
- Infinite Product Options
- OPTIS Product Options, Variant
- SA Variants: Combined Listings
- G: Combined Listings and Variant
- LinkedOption Combined Listings
- Rubik Combined Listings Swatch (ours)
- Shopify Combined Listings
- How to choose
- FAQ
How this list is ordered
By Shopify App Store review count, highest first, across both routes. We sell into one of them, so a ranking we authored would be worth nothing to you, and review volume is at least a number you can check yourself. Ratings, counts, launch dates and prices were read off each live listing on 29 July 2026. They move.
The two routes, and what each one costs you
Route one: product options apps. These render extra option fields on the product page that Shopify’s variant system never sees. The shopper picks a cord colour, the app records it as a line item property or a price add-on, and the order arrives with that choice attached. Powerful, fast to set up, and it handles genuinely unlimited combinations including free text and file uploads.
What it costs: those values are not variants, so they carry no SKU, no barcode and no inventory count of their own. Shopify will not decrement stock on a cord colour it does not know exists. Reporting will not break sales down by it. Collection filters will not filter on it. If the fourth axis is decorative, that is a fine trade. If the fourth axis is a thing you hold stock of, it is a slow-motion inventory disaster.
Route two: split and group. Take the fourth axis out and make it products. Lamp in Brass, Lamp in Black, each a real Shopify product with its own three options underneath, its own inventory, its own URL, its own images. Then a combined listings app links them so the storefront shows one listing with swatches across the group.
What it costs: more products in the admin, and a collection page that will show the same lamp four times until the app hides the duplicates. In exchange every option value is a real stocked thing with real reporting. Work out which shape your catalogue wants in the free grouping planner, and read separate products versus variants before you restructure anything.
Blunt version: options apps are for choices you do not stock, grouping is for choices you do. Most merchants who get this wrong picked the options app because setup took an afternoon, and discovered the inventory problem a quarter later.
The apps compared
Ratings, review counts, launch dates and prices read off each App Store listing on 29 July 2026.
| App | Route | Rating | Reviews | Live since | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Globo Product Options, Variant | Options | 4.9 | 4,691 | 2020 | Free, $9.90, $19.90 (higher on Plus) |
| Easify Custom Product Options | Options | 4.9 | 2,832 | 2023 | Free, $9.99, $19.99, $99.99 flat |
| Infinite Product Options (ShopPad) | Options | 4.7 | 2,408 | 2015 | $12.99, one plan |
| OPTIS Product Options, Variant (BSS) | Options | 4.9 | 2,230 | 2021 | Free, $9.99, $19.99, $49.99 |
| SA Variants: Combined Listings (StarApps) | Grouping | 5.0 | 376 | 2025 | $5 to $199.90 by Shopify plan |
| G: Combined Listings & Variant (Grouptify) | Grouping | 5.0 | 370 | 2024 | Free (3 groups), then $5 to $99.90 by plan |
| LinkedOption Combined Listings | Grouping | 5.0 | 131 | 2022 | Free (1 group), $9.99, $19.99, $39.99 |
| Rubik Combined Listings Swatch (ours) | Grouping | 5.0 | 63 | 2026 | Free (5 groups), $10, $30, $50 flat |
| Shopify Combined Listings | Grouping | 3.6 | 33 | 2024 | Free, Plus and enterprise only |
Globo Product Options, Variant: the biggest options app
4.9 across 4,691 reviews, live since December 2020, Built for Shopify, and the largest review sample on this page by a distance. The free plan is serious: unlimited option sets, products and orders, 15 option types including text boxes, colour and image swatches, radio, button and select, conditional logic between its own options, and options carried through to orders, packing slips and emails, with no watermark. Premium at $9.90 adds 20 types, price add-ons, conditional logic against real Shopify variants and file upload. Advanced at $19.90 brings 30 or more types, a live personalizer preview, cart-page editing and POS.
Honest limitation: pricing rises on Shopify Plus, $39.90 and $59.90 rather than $9.90 and $19.90, for the same features. And the structural caveat applies in full: none of these option values are variants, so stock, SKUs and reporting stay blind to them.
Easify Custom Product Options: flat pricing, deepest free tier
4.9 across 2,832 reviews, live since April 2023, Built for Shopify. Free Forever gives 15 option types, over 100 templates, unlimited option sets, products and orders, conditional logic, option performance tracking and no watermark. Pro at $9.99 adds 28 option types, price formulas including per-character pricing, multi-file upload, conditional logic against Shopify variants, per-option quantity selectors and in-cart option editing. Premium at $19.99 adds live preview personalisation, image and colour swatch sliders and background removal.
The listing states the same price on every Shopify plan, which puts it ahead of Globo for a Plus store: $9.99 against $39.90 for broadly comparable ground.
Honest limitation: 2,832 reviews against Globo’s 4,691, and three years on the App Store against Globo’s five. Same structural caveat about inventory.
Infinite Product Options: one plan, no tier maths
4.7 across 2,408 reviews, live since June 2015, which makes it the oldest listing on this page, Built for Shopify. It has exactly one plan: Essential at $12.99, with all input types, add-on products, native bundles and conditional logic included. No free tier, no upgrade path, no reading the fine print at the bottom of a pricing card.
There is something to be said for that. Half the effort in this category goes on finding which tier hides the feature you need.
Honest limitation: 4.7 is the lowest rating among the options apps here, there is no free plan to test on, and add-on products create real Shopify products behind the scenes, which is worth understanding before it fills your catalogue.
OPTIS Product Options, Variant: variant option sets on the free tier
4.9 across 2,230 reviews, live since December 2021, Built for Shopify, from BSS Commerce. Free covers 10 variant option sets, 10 or more option types, analytics and no watermark. Advanced at $9.99 makes option sets unlimited and adds price add-ons, conditional logic, import and export and style customisation. Platinum at $19.99 unlocks unlimited option types, 20 file uploads, per-option quantity and cart-page editing. Unlimited at $49.99 is the Plus tier.
Honest limitation: 10 option sets on free is tighter than Globo’s and Easify’s unlimited sets, and the Plus tier at $49.99 is the most expensive options plan here other than Easify’s $99.99 Enterprise.
SA Variants: Combined Listings: the most automation on the grouping side
5.0 across 376 reviews, live since January 2025, Built for Shopify, from StarApps. Standard starts at $5 a month and covers up to 5,000 product groups, splitting variants out into individual products, bulk group creation via CSV, AI-generated groups and swatches, a prebuilt swatch design library, and Shopify Markets translation and currency support. Pro raises that to 25,000 groups and adds swatch PowerUps for price, badge and rating, group categories, tag-based groups and separate mobile and desktop swatches.
Markets support is a genuine gap on our side and we are not going to talk around it. If you run market-specific catalogues with translated option names, this app lists that and we do not support it.
Honest limitation: pricing scales with your Shopify plan, so Standard is $5 on Pause and Build but $99.90 on Plus and Pro reaches $199.90, which is the highest ceiling on this page. There is no free tier outside partner stores.
G: Combined Listings and Variant: the simplest starting point
5.0 across 370 reviews, live since October 2024, Built for Shopify. Starter is free for 3 product groups with manual single-option and multi-option grouping, six variant selector styles, manual product information sync and multi-language support. Unlimited opens everything from $5 a month on development stores, rising by Shopify plan to $99.90 on Plus, and adds custom colour swatch selectors and support for Shopify’s own combined listings feature on Plus.
Honest limitation: syncing product information is listed as manual on the free tier, which is exactly the chore that makes grouping feel like work. Three groups is enough to test the idea and not enough to run a catalogue on. And the plan-based pricing means the app costs a Plus store twenty times what it costs a small one.
LinkedOption Combined Listings: multi-option groups at a fixed price
5.0 across 131 reviews, live since December 2022, Built for Shopify. Free covers one single-option group with translations. Basic at $9.99 covers 100 groups with import and export, automatic product information sync, automation by product title pattern, and the option shown on product cards. Advanced at $19.99 covers 500 groups and unlocks multi-option groups, subcategory groups and bulk option updates. Premium at $39.99 covers 3,000 groups with conditional swatch images and API access.
Flat pricing rather than plan-based, which we think is the right model, and multi-option grouping is the feature that matters if your fourth axis crosses a fifth.
Honest limitation: multi-option grouping, arguably the reason you are reading this page, sits on the $19.99 tier, and one group on free is barely a demo.
Rubik Combined Listings Swatch (ours): grouping with bulk and AI on the free tier
5.0 across 63 reviews, live since February 2026, Built for Shopify. This one is ours, so read it as a spec sheet. It links separate Shopify products into one listing and renders swatches for the group on the product page and across collection, search and home page product cards. Free covers 5 product groups with 100 monthly AI credits and MCP server access, automatic product information sync, automatic exclusion of draft and archived products, translations, subcategory groups and bulk grouping by title, tag or metafield. Starter is $10 for 100 groups, Advanced $30 for 500, Premium $50 for 5,000, flat, with 17 percent off annually.
The design decision worth flagging: bulk grouping by title, tag or metafield is on the free plan rather than behind a tier. A store arriving here has usually already split its catalogue and has 300 products that need grouping today, and making them do that by hand to evaluate the app would be a strange way to ask for money.
“Was having difficulties with 5 other apps before I found this one that worked perfectly on the first try. Great for grouping products together, very easy to use. Thank you developers, and thank you Zulf for your assistance.”
BELSKI, Australia, March 2026, Rubik Combined Listings on the Shopify App Store
Where it is the wrong pick, plainly. 63 reviews is the smallest sample of any grouping app on this page, against SA Variants at 376 and Grouptify at 370, and February 2026 makes it the youngest listing here. If review volume is how you de-risk a purchase, that is a fair reason to pick someone else. We do not support Shopify Markets and SA Variants lists that it does. And if your options belong to one product rather than several, grouping is the wrong tool entirely: filtering images per variant inside a single product is a different job with a different app.
See it running on a real storefront in the demo store, or read the setup steps in the getting started guide.
Shopify Combined Listings: free, if you are on Plus
3.6 across 33 reviews, live since June 2024, and free. Shopify’s own app creates combined listings from the admin, giving each variation its own title, description, media gallery and descriptive URL, and letting you unpublish and republish variations individually. The listing states it is available on Plus and enterprise commerce plans.
Honest limitation: 3.6 is the lowest rating on this page by some way, and the plan gate rules it out for most stores reading this. If you are on Plus, try it first anyway, because free and native beats paid and bolted on when it does the job. If it does not, the apps above exist for a reason. More on that comparison in getting past Shopify’s limits with combined listings.
How to choose in about a minute
One question decides the route, then price decides the app.
- Do you hold stock of the fourth option? Yes means grouping. No means an options app. Engraving text, gift wrap, a monogram: options app, obviously. A cord colour you keep 40 metres of in a warehouse: grouping, or you will oversell it.
- Options route, and are you on Plus? Easify at $9.99 flat, because Globo becomes $39.90 there. Not on Plus, Globo’s free plan is the deepest free tier in the category.
- Grouping route, and how many groups? Under 5, our free plan does it including bulk grouping. Up to 100, ours at $10 or LinkedOption at $9.99. Thousands with heavy automation and Markets, SA Variants, and price it against your Shopify plan first.
- Already on Plus? Try Shopify’s own free app before paying anyone, ours included.
And an opinion, because pretending not to have one would be dishonest. Charging by the customer’s Shopify plan for identical software is the worst convention in this corner of the App Store, and four apps on this page do it. The work an app does to group 100 products does not change because the merchant upgraded to Plus. It persists because it is profitable and because merchants do not notice until the bill arrives. Check that line before the feature list, every time. Then map what your collection page will actually look like afterwards in the free collection analyzer.
FAQ
Which app should I use when I run out of Shopify product options?
It depends on whether you stock the extra option. If you do, split it into separate products and group them: Rubik Combined Listings (5.0 stars, 63 reviews, free for 5 groups with bulk grouping included) links them into one listing with swatches, and SA Variants (5.0, 376 reviews) is the bigger name with Shopify Markets support. If you do not stock it, a product options app such as Globo (4.9, 4,691 reviews) or Easify (4.9, 2,832) is faster to set up.
Did Shopify remove the three option limit in 2025?
No. October 2025 raised the number of variants per product from 100 to 2,048. The number of option types per product stayed at three. So you can now have far more combinations of colour, size and material, but you still cannot add a fourth axis such as sleeve length or cord colour.
Can a product options app track inventory per option?
Not natively, because the values are not Shopify variants. They have no SKU, no barcode and no stock count, so Shopify cannot decrement anything when one is selected. Some apps work around it by creating hidden add-on products, which does give you a stock count but also puts extra products in your catalogue. If inventory accuracy matters, grouping separate products is the cleaner structure.
Is there a free way past the three option limit?
Several. Globo and Easify both have free plans with 15 option types and unlimited option sets. On the grouping side, Rubik Combined Listings is free for 5 groups including bulk grouping, Grouptify free for 3, LinkedOption free for 1. Shopify’s own combined listings app is free but gated to Plus and enterprise plans.
Does splitting into separate products hurt SEO?
It usually helps, which surprises people. Each colour or finish gets its own indexable URL, its own title and its own images, so a search for a specific finish can land on the exact page rather than a generic one. The risk is thin duplicate content when the descriptions are identical, and collection pages showing the same item repeatedly. Both are fixable. Detail in separate products versus variants and SEO.
What happens to my collection page after I split products?
By default the same item appears once per colour, which looks like a padded catalogue. Every grouping app here handles it differently: some show one card per group with swatches underneath, some let you pick the representative product. Check that behaviour before you commit, because it is the most visible change your customers will notice.
Related reading
- Getting past the variant limit with combined listings
- Grouping size and colour that live as separate products
- Making separate products behave like variants
- Best Shopify variant grouping apps
- What the 2,048 variant limit actually changed
- Showing the right image for colour and size
The test that settles it
Take your fourth option and ask one question about it: if a customer orders it, does something physical leave a shelf that you counted? If yes, it needs to be a product, and no amount of option-field cleverness will fix the inventory later. If no, an options app will do it this afternoon for ten dollars. That is the whole decision, and everything above is just working out which app to pay.
