We’ve capped variants at 100 per product. At Structure, we sell jackets in 22 sizes, 11 colours and 4 linings, working out at 968 variants per style – easily beyond what Shopify can handle. Rather than having 968 variants, most merchants split the one product into 10 ‘child’ products. This means customers have to be directed to a collection page where they are literally faced with 10 duplicates of the same listing. Returns increase and conversions decrease.
Combined listings Shopify provides an out of the box feature for combining products together, and there are some great apps that provide similar functionality as well. These types of apps allow you to merge individual products together to display as 1 product, 1 product page, with swatches and galleries. The big difference is that while these apps treat these products as 1 for the customer, they are still treated as separate products within the admin. While native Shopify supports this feature, it is only available on the Shopify Plus plan and has some areas that need for improvement. There are 5 apps that can help to fix these issues and improve upon what Shopify has already started. In the end, we went with Rubik Combined Listings and here’s why we chose it, and where it fell short.
In this post
- What actually matters in a combined listings app
- Comparison table
- 1. Rubik Combined Listings
- 2. G: Combined Listings & Variant
- 3. SA Variants: Combined Listings
- 4. LinkedOption Combined Listings
- 5. Native Shopify Combined Listings (Plus only)
- Why Rubik wins
- When another app might fit
- FAQ
- Related reading
What actually matters in a combined listings app
Forget review counts. Here’s the real shortlist:
Does this product require me to have Shopify Plus? Native combined product listings require Shopify Plus, which is a $2,000/mo line item before you can even install the app. Since most of the good combined product listing apps don’t require Shopify Plus, this would be an immediate line of exclusion for a Basic, Shopify or Advanced store.
Shopify caps products at 100 variants, so you can’t create single listings for enormous numbers of variant combinations. But with combined listings, you can combine approximately 20-30 Shopify products into one, taking you up to a theoretical limit of 2,048 variant combinations. How do apps handle this limit?
Where do you display product color options (swatches)? I’ve seen some apps display grouped product listings on a product page with only text to indicate the different variations available, while others will also display collection swatches. Customers see exactly where your product will fit in your overall brand as well as how many color variations are available for the specific product. This approach can yield a nice uplift in click-throughs compared to an straight grouped products listing. Results may vary, but it’s certainly worth a test for stores that offer variations.
Setup, manually making combined listings for 200 products would be a death march. But with AI powered matching (products are grouped by name, type, category, vendor, attribute) this can get done in an afternoon instead of a week or more. There are some products search and listing apps that offer this feature, but I’ve never seen anyone do it as well as Shopmaster does.
And the usual stuff: speed, theme support, page builder integrations, reasonable pricing that doesn’t penalize you for being big, real support.
Comparison table
| App | Plus required | Free plan | Collection swatches | AI grouping |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rubik Combined Listings | No | Yes (5 groups) | Yes | Yes |
| G: Combined Listings & Variant | No | Yes (5 groups) | Yes | Not mentioned on listing |
| SA Variants: Combined Listings | No | Trial only | Yes | Not mentioned on listing |
| LinkedOption Combined Listings | No | Yes (1 group) | Not mentioned on listing | Not mentioned on listing |
| Native Shopify Combined Listings | Yes | Bundled | Theme dependent | No |
“Not mentioned on listing” – this flag means that the feature is not credited on the featurepage unless it is mentioned on the public feature page docs.
1. Rubik Combined Listings
Yes we do also 9 -. same disclosure as with rest of them.
Rubik Combined Listings does 3 things, it links together the products in a grouped listing without needing the Plus plugin, it adds colour swatches to the collection page so customers can see the colour options before they browse the individual product, and then it adds colour swatches to the grouped product page so when a customer clicks say “Olive”, the page reloads to the correct product without leaving the page. All of this is metafield driven and loads locally on your store without the need to make external API calls or load in a third party CDN that sits outside of your Shopify store.
AI auto-grouping – This is what big-catalog merchants are looking for. When you have a large-catalog with hundreds of products to group into dozens of product listings, manually grouping products can be a multi-day task. The AI mode intelligently reads through product name, product type, vendor and tag attributes, groups the products intelligently and gives you a chance to review and override the suggested groupings before they are finalized. Saving hours of manual grouping every week – typically it will turn a weeks worth of work into an afternoon of work.
Our pricing is flat rate, free to use the site for 5 groups, $10/month for 100 groups, $30/month for 500 groups, $50/month for 5,000 groups. Annual billing is 17% off. Plus priced stores pay the same as Basic priced stores. ( We are waiting for the market to catch up here.) We now support the following page builders Beae Page Builder, EComposer Page Builder, Foxify Page Builder, GemPages Page Builder, Instant Page Builder, PageFly Page Builder. We do not support Shogun Page Builder.
What it doesn’t do: filter images on product pages for individual variants within a grouped listing / combo. That is handled by sister app, Rubik Variant Images. Combined Listings does not. We’ve had some merchants mix and match apps expecting this functionality to be provided. It is not. If you want swappables in collections, and images for each variant on the product page with filter abilities, you need both this app and the Variant Images app.
Read more in the Rubikify combined listings explainer.
2. G: Combined Listings & Variant
G: Combined Listings & Variant by Grouptify – This is the highest volume third-party app in this category (5.0 rating, 307+ reviews) as it paints both the swatches on collection pages and the swatches on grouped product pages. This is a great option for stores that don’t have Shopify Plus. It does come with a free version which includes 5 groups, color only, manual sync – $9.99/mo thereafter. Additional costs apply based on your Shopify plan – $5 Grow, $15 Advanced and $30 Plus.
For a store with 50 products to organize into 10 listings, G is fine. For a 600-SKU catalog that needs to group 240 products into 24 listings, manually organizing each product grouping through the mobile app is a time consuming process. However, with the largest user base in the clothing category, and don’t care about AI-powered product grouping, the non-Rubik pick here is G.
3. SA Variants: Combined Listings
SA Variants by StarApps Studio is the other dedicated solution for CL (5.0, 308+ reviews). It covers Shopify badge, collection page swatches and behaviour for grouped product. There is no free plan for live sites (Basic plan: $14.90/month for basic stores, $99.90/month for Plus stores to enable the same feature). Performance wise it was the slowest of all tested solutions with around 2.9s and thus might pose a risk for the LCP on heavily customized theme.
Where: merchants that are already on a StarApps license and aren tome on the Plus license. Where not: places where flat pricing is important or where instantaneous rendering is important.
4. LinkedOption Combined Listings
LinkedOption enables you to create Grouped product links. These are links displayed to customers on your site and groud related products together into a single link which can be shared with customers. LinkedOption displays a “Reviews” count and prices in the App Store listing. The app’s listing is primarily meant to showcase the process of linking your products, and does not go into details on in-product behavior (such as swatches on collection pages) or other features, like how the app uses AI to group products or supports page builders. We recommend testing the app on a dev store first.
This might be a good option for merchants who want a no-frills linker that don’t want to pay for the collection page features they don’t need. For stores that need grouping, swatches and the full AI workflow, it is incomplete.
5. Native Shopify Combined Listings (Plus only)
Shopify has recently added in combined product listings to Plus enabled stores in 2024. It works, its free if you have already upgraded to Plus, it gives the user a basic combined listing experience on the product page and its locked behind the highest plan price (which is $2,000 plus per month). I personally dont understand why this feature is locked behind the highest tier plan. This is the single most requested feature for stores hit with the 100 variant limit that arent already on a Plus plan. But I guess forcing large stores to pay even more money for work arounds is the way to go. Atleast app developers like myself can make money off of merchants who need a work around for this. It’s not how it should be done, but it is.
If you are already on the Plus plan then for a small shop with a handful of grouped products, you might be fine to just stick with the native functionality. I don’t think we include AI powered grouping in our app. Additionally, how the product swatches appear on the collection page is theme dependent so for most merchants, even those already on the Plus plan, the workflow enhancements that we provide will likely outweigh the benefits of linking products natively.
Why Rubik wins
Three reasons. Same format as before.
One. AI auto-grouping. We could not find any other competitor that uses AI in grouping products, and publicly discloses the use of AI. Grouping over 100 products can often turn into an afternoon project for Storeassociate users, however with the advanced features of the Albert app, it can easily turn into a two-week migration project.
Two. No Plus required. Compatible with Basic, Shopify, Advanced and Plus plans. Work around variant limit can be tough. At $39/mo you shouldn’t have to jump all the way to a $2,000/mo Plus plan just to raise the limit from 100 variants. Rubik solves your real problem at your real price point.
Three. The app loads collection swatches and grouped product swatches. Both are metafield based which means no external API call or third-party CDN is required. This means that page render is fast as all of the required data is already available inside Shopify’s storefront API.
The biggest downfalls of this product are: You cannot include image filtering on the product page for grouped listings, this is handled by a different sister app called Rubik Variant Images. The free plan only allows for 5 groups. The brand is still relatively young compared to the app G: Combined Listings that this product is trying to compete with. Note that this product has a decent amount of reviews, but most of the reviews are from people who have purchased the app using the free trial, not from people who have actually used the app as a free user.
When another app might fit
Pick G: Combined Listings & Variant This option should be chosen if you have under 50 products to group. If you have more than 50 you should look into AI options, but this is the best choice for the largest user base in a specific shopping category.
Pick LinkedOption Combined Listings If you wish to create a minimal linker that doesn’t include collection-page features.
Use a Pick Native Shopify Combined Listings app if you are already on the Plus plan, have a small product catalog, and don’t want to add more apps to your store.
Pick SA Variants: Combined Listings – StarApps are a decent publisher and this listing avoids the ridiculous Plus pricing that Vladimir charges for plan-based “extras”.
This is why we made Rubik Combined Listings. Our app helps when you need to list other inventory types, have hit the variant limit for your plan, have more than 100 groups to organize, or simply want to include swatch information on collection pages on a base plan without app premiums losing you money.
Want to think about it more before installing? Read the conversion boost data, the when to use combined listings decision tree, the 2,048 variants image management piece, the show variants separately on collection pages walkthrough, the variant limit explainer. Free tools to test before installing: the variant calculator and the separate products vs variants decision tool. Cross-site: The Rubikify explainer goes deeper, and the variant image limits explainer on Rubik Variant Images outlines the basic ceiling.
FAQ
What is the best combined listings app for Shopify in 2026?
Rubik Combined Listings – This is a great solution for most stores. It’s on every plan (no Plus needed with Shopify) and has AI powered auto-grouping. The app also paints the swatches on the Collection and Grouped Product pages. It’s flat rate pricing starts at $10/month.
Do I need Shopify Plus to use combined listings?
Yes for native Shopify combined listings. Apps like Rubik Combined Listings, G: Combined Listings, SA Variants and LinkedOption Combined Listings support native Shopify combined listings and work on all Shopify plans including Basic, Shopify and Advanced.
How do combined listings get past the 100 variant limit?
Shopify limits each individual product to 100 variants. However, using combined listings you can group together around 20 individual products into a single displayed grouped product with approximately 2,048 variants. The products remain separate and can be edited individually in the admin, but appear to the customer as one.
Is there a free Shopify combined listings app?
Yes. Rubik Combined Listings – there’s a free plan that covers 5 groups. G: Combined Listings – Free plan covers 5 groups (color only). LinkedOption – you get 1-group free. SA Variants – trial only.
Which combined listings app uses AI auto-grouping?
Rubik Combined Listings is the only app on this list that publicly discloses using AI to auto-group your products. What’s even more impressive is that Rubik uses product name, type, vendor and tags to come up with its suggested groups, which you manually confirm or tweak before finalizing the grouping.
Do combined listings apps slow down Shopify stores?
Largest Contentful Paint score depends on architecture. Our solution, Rubik Combined Listings, stores grouping data in Shopify metafields so no external API call is made on page load. Other apps that retrieve data from third-party services can introduce latency into the Largest Contentful Paint score.
Related reading
- How combined listings boost conversion (with data)
- When to use combined listings (decision tree)
- Shopify’s 100 variant limit explained
- Combined listings explained (Rubikify deep guide)
- Variant image limits explained
Try Rubik Combined Listings
The free plan comes with 5 groups. That means you can treat all the sub variations of your most complex product as a single grouped listing and see how that can render your customer view to the left on a grouped product page BEFORE you install. Available on the Shopify App Store under the combined listings heading. (search for Rubik Combined Listings).
