How to Set Up Wholesale Pricing on Shopify (2026 Step-by-Step Guide)

Selling wholesale from your existing Shopify store used to mean one of three bad options: a separate password-protected storefront, messy discount codes, or upgrading to Shopify Plus for native B2B. In 2026 there's a simpler path: customer-tier pricing applied automatically at checkout using Shopify Functions — and it works on every Shopify plan, including Basic.

This guide walks through the full setup in about 15 minutes.

What you'll build

• Wholesale tiers like Bronze, Silver, Gold, each with its own discount level
• Customers assigned to tiers, so B2B buyers see their price and retail buyers see yours
• Per-product, per-variant, or collection-level price overrides where a flat percentage isn't enough
• Quantity-based volume discounts that stack on top of tier pricing
• Discounts applied automatically at checkout — no codes to share, nothing customers can bypass

Step 1: Install a wholesale pricing app

Shopify's native B2B features are limited to Shopify Plus (roughly $2,300/month). For everyone else, an app is the practical route. We'll use Tradeleap, which is free on all plans — but the concepts below apply to any tier-based wholesale app.

After installing, you'll land on a dashboard inside your Shopify admin. The first thing to do is open Discount Setup and enable wholesale pricing — this creates the automatic discount that does the actual price adjustment at checkout.

Step 2: Create your wholesale tiers

Tiers are the backbone of wholesale pricing. A typical starting structure:

• Bronze — 10% off, for new wholesale accounts
• Silver — 15% off, for regular buyers
• Gold — 20% off, for high-volume partners

Each tier has a default discount percentage that applies storewide. Start simple: you can always add per-product exceptions later. If you're unsure where to set percentages, work backwards from your margins — our guide on calculating wholesale margins and markups covers the formulas.

Step 3: Assign customers to tiers

Open the Customers screen, find your wholesale buyers, and assign each one a tier. Behind the scenes this writes a metafield on the Shopify customer record — meaning the pricing follows the customer's login, not a code or a link.

Two practical tips:

• Require accounts for wholesale buyers. Tier pricing activates when the customer is logged in at checkout.
• Use a wholesale application form to vet new B2B customers before assigning a tier, rather than approving everyone by hand over email.

Step 4: Add product-level overrides (optional)

Flat tier discounts don't fit every catalog. Maybe Gold buyers get 20% off most things but only 8% off low-margin items. Per-product and per-variant overrides handle this: set a specific percentage for a product and it wins over the tier default. Collection-level pricing sits in between — useful for giving a whole category its own wholesale rate.

The priority order is: variant override → product override → collection pricing → tier default.

Step 5: Add volume discounts (optional)

Volume (quantity-break) discounts reward bigger orders: for example, an extra 5% at 50+ units and 10% at 100+. These stack on top of tier pricing, so a Gold customer ordering 100 units gets both their tier rate and the volume bonus. It's the single most effective lever for raising average order value on B2B orders.

Step 6: Test the flow end-to-end

1. Create a test customer and assign them a tier
2. Log in as that customer in an incognito window
3. Add products to the cart and go to checkout
4. Confirm the wholesale discount appears automatically on the order summary

Because the discount is applied by a Shopify Function at checkout, it works with every payment method and can't be removed by editing the cart.

Why checkout-native discounts matter

Older wholesale apps worked by duplicating products, hiding prices with themes, or generating discount codes. All three approaches break easily — duplicated products wreck inventory and SEO, theme hacks fail on checkout, and codes leak. Shopify Functions run inside checkout itself, so the wholesale price is enforced at the exact moment money changes hands.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need Shopify Plus?

No. Shopify Functions-based discounts work on Basic, Grow, and Advanced plans. See our full guide on selling wholesale without Shopify Plus.

Can retail and wholesale customers shop the same store?

Yes — that's the point of tier-based pricing. Retail visitors see normal prices; logged-in wholesale customers see their discount at checkout.

How much does this cost?

Tradeleap is free on every plan, with unlimited tiers and customers. Create an account or read the getting started guide.