Key takeaways
- Shopify shows no data total, so you count orders in Analytics > Reports from your first order to today, counting each order once even though an export has one row per product.
- Orders, transaction histories, customers and products are four separate CSV exports, each started with the Export button on its own page by the owner or by staff holding the matching Export permission.
- Order exports over 50 orders and every export by date arrive by email, and product images and payment authorization data are not in the files.
- You don't need to export anything to apply: have your order count, the date of your first order and your admin seat count ready, and the data vendor anonymizes the records before any AI lab sees them.
01
What is Shopify data, and why do AI labs and data vendors buy it?
The short answer
Shopify data is the record of everything an online store has sold: each order, the customer who placed it, the products and discounts in it, and how it was shipped and paid for. AI labs (companies that build and train AI models) and data vendors (companies that anonymize business records and package them for those labs) buy a copy because years of orders show real buying behavior, which public websites do not.
What a Shopify store records
Shopify is a platform that lets a business run an online store. Every time a shopper checks out, the store saves an order: who bought, which products and product variants (the size, color or other options of one product) they chose, any discount applied, the shipping address, the fulfillment status and the payment.
The store also keeps a customer list and a product catalog. The catalog holds each product's title, description, variants, price and inventory count, and each order points back to the catalog entries it sold.
Why years of orders teach an AI model something
An AI model learns by studying a very large number of examples and finding the patterns in them, and those examples are called training data. A product page on the public internet shows what a merchant hopes to sell. An order history shows what shoppers actually bought, in what combinations, at which prices, and which of them came back to buy again or returned the item.
AI labs also want to train AI agents, software that carries out a job step by step, such as answering a shopper's question about an order. A data vendor can turn anonymized orders and catalog entries into worked examples that an agent studies like an answer key. The full mechanism is in AI training data: why AI companies want your company's data.
How Shopify fits into a dataset
A Shopify store is usually one of several apps in a company's dataset, next to email, accounting and support records. Companies are paid $100K to $2M or more per dataset, according to micro1, the data vendor we typically refer companies to. The price covers the whole dataset, not each app on its own, and what your data is worth explains what moves it.
02
Where does Shopify show how much data you have?
The short answer
Shopify has no single figure for the size of a store's data, so you count orders instead: open Analytics > Reports, open a report that counts orders, and set the date range from your first order to today. The store owner can do this, as can any staff member with the Reports permission under Analytics.
How to count your orders
The steps below read your all-time order count from Shopify's own reports. Shopify says its main analytics features are available on every subscription plan, so the plan does not change where you look.
- Sign in to the Shopify admin as the store owner, or as a staff member whose role includes Reports under the Analytics permissions.
- In the admin sidebar, open Analytics > Reports and pick any report that totals orders.
- Make the date range start on the day of the store's first order, and finish on today's date.
- Read the order total for that range.
- As a cross-check, run an orders-by-date export from Orders > Export and count the distinct order numbers in the CSV file (a CSV is a plain spreadsheet file).
Which permissions you need
Viewing and exporting are controlled by separate staff permissions. Shopify's store permissions page lists them.
| What you want to do | Permission a staff member needs |
|---|---|
| Open and create reports | Reports, under Analytics |
| Export orders | Export, under Orders |
| Export customers | Export, under Customers |
| Export products and inventory | Export, under Products |
Why one order can look like several records
An order export has one row for every line item, which is one product bought within an order. An order with three products therefore fills three rows, and counting rows would make the store look three times busier than it is. The count that matters is the number of different order numbers.
03
What should you know about your Shopify data before you apply?
The short answer
Have three facts ready: how many orders the store has taken in total, how many years it has been selling and how many people have admin access. They go into the data manifest, the written summary of which apps hold your records, how many years each covers and roughly how much. Applying shares no data, and you don't need to run an export first.
The order count
Report total orders as the number of records, counting each order once. Customers and products matter to a buyer too, but they stay out of the records number, except for a store with very few orders and a very large catalog.
The years of history
Take the date of the store's first order. That date, and not the day you signed up for Shopify, tells a buyer how many years of real sales the records cover.
The number of seats
A seat is one person who can log in. Count the store owner plus every staff account with admin access.
What you don't need to do first
You don't need to export anything to apply, and you don't need to clean or scrub an export. micro1, the data vendor we typically refer companies to, anonymizes the records before anyone else sees them, and nothing moves until a lawyer-reviewed license is signed. The application, the intro call and each later step are laid out in how to sell your company's data.
04
How do you export your full Shopify history?
The short answer
Export orders, transaction histories, customers and products as four separate CSV files, each from the Export button on its own admin page. Any export of more than 50 orders, and any export by date, arrives by email instead of downloading in the browser. Stores too large for these exports can have a developer pull the data through Shopify's API.
Export orders and payment records
Order exports use the Export permission under Orders. The steps follow Shopify's guide to exporting orders.
- Go to Orders and click Export.
- Choose Orders by date. Enter the day of the store's first order as the start, and today as the end.
- Under Export as, choose the file format and click Export orders.
- Repeat the process, this time clicking Export transaction histories, to get the payment records.
- Shopify emails both files to you and to the store owner.
A transaction history holds captured payments only, which means money that was actually collected, and it contains no authorization data.
Export customers
- Go to Customers and click Export.
- Choose All customers and click Export customers.
Shopify's customer export guide says a file for more than 50 customers is emailed and that the file is limited to 15 MB. A store whose customer list is bigger than that can export it in pieces by choosing the option that exports the customers matching a filter.
Export products
- Go to Products and click Export.
- Choose All products, pick a file type and click Export products.
Product images are not in the file. Shopify's product export guide adds that the file keeps each image's web address, which works only while the image stays publicly viewable.
Very large stores: the bulk API
An API (application programming interface) is a way for software to request data from an app directly. A developer can run bulk queries through Shopify's GraphQL Admin API, and the results come back as JSONL files, text files that hold one record per line.
Three limits apply, all from Shopify's bulk operations guide. A bulk query is stopped if it has not finished within 10 days, and the links to its results stop working after one week. From API version 2026-01 onward, each app may run as many as five bulk queries on one shop at the same time.
By default, an app can reach only the most recent 60 days of a store's orders, as Shopify's API reference for the Order object explains. Anything older requires the read_all_orders permission scope, and Shopify has to approve each app's request for it.
How long exports take and what arrives by email
Shopify says an export holding fewer than 100,000 items might finish in under an hour, while one holding 400,000 items could take about 4 hours. A failed export produces an email telling you so.
| Export | Downloads in the browser | Arrives by email |
|---|---|---|
| Orders | Up to 50 orders | More than 50 orders, and every export by date |
| Customers | Up to 50 customers | More than 50 customers (15 MB file limit) |
| Products | Current page or selected products, if every product has 100 variants or fewer | All other options |
Emailed files go to the person who ran the export and, if that is not the owner, to the store owner as well. All Shopify CSV files use UTF-8 encoding, a standard way of storing text so that accented letters and symbols survive.
What a Shopify export leaves out
Product images are missing from the product file, and transaction histories leave out authorization data. A very large product export can also time out. When that happens, filter the products and export them in several smaller batches.
Sources: Shopify Help Center, Exporting orders, Exporting customers, Exporting products, Store permissions; and shopify.dev, Perform bulk operations with the GraphQL Admin API. Steps checked against these pages in November 2026.
05
What stays private when Shopify data is licensed?
The short answer
Payment authorization data and full card numbers are not part of what is exported, and the data vendor replaces customer names and other personal details with consistent stand-ins before an AI lab sees anything. The company keeps ownership of its store history, and the license covers defined records for a defined use.
Card details never leave Shopify
The transaction history lists captured payments but no authorization data, and no full card number is needed for any part of the process. The shopper's name, address, email address and phone number do appear in order and customer exports, which is why the next step exists.
Names are replaced before a lab sees them
Anonymization means replacing every detail that identifies a person, such as a name, an address or an email address, with a stand-in that is the same every time it appears. An order still shows what was bought and when, and a returning shopper still looks like the same shopper, but nobody can tell who the shopper is. The method, including what is deleted outright and how you review samples, is in how company data is anonymized for AI training.
Ownership and payment
Licensing gives the buyer limited rights to a copy, while the company keeps ownership of the originals. The terms that matter, such as exclusivity, permitted use and deletion, are covered in data licensing. Whether a given dataset can legally be sold is a question for the company's lawyer, and is it legal to sell company data covers it. micro1 pays in full within 30 days of accepting the data, usually as a single payment.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
Why did my Shopify order export arrive by email?
Shopify emails any export of more than 50 orders and every export by date. The file goes to you and to the store owner, and only exports of up to 50 orders download straight to your browser.
How long does a full Shopify order export take?
It depends on the size of the export. Shopify's own estimate is under an hour for an export of fewer than 100,000 items and about 4 hours for 400,000 items, and a failed export triggers an email.
Are product images included in the Shopify product CSV?
No. The file contains each image's web address, and that address only works while the image stays publicly accessible.
Can an app pull Shopify orders older than 60 days?
Yes, once Shopify approves the read_all_orders scope for that app. Without it, an app is limited to the last 60 days of orders, and Shopify has to approve any app that asks for the full history.
Do we need to export Shopify before we apply?
No. The application shares no data. You only need your total order count, the date of your first order and the number of people with admin access. The full export is needed later, when the records are transferred after you sign the license.
Is the order total the same as the number of rows in the order export?
No. An order export has one row for each product in an order, so an order with three products fills three rows. Count unique order numbers to get the real total.
What is Shopify data worth to AI labs and data vendors?
Store history is priced as part of a whole dataset rather than on its own. Companies are paid $100K to $2M or more per dataset, according to micro1, and the price depends on the years of history and how completely the records show each job. What your data is worth explains the factors.
Bottom line
Know what is in Shopify, then see what it is worth
You don't need to export anything to apply. Apply in two minutes, describe your records on the intro call, and micro1, the data vendor we typically refer companies to, prices the whole dataset and sends an offer 1–2 days later.
Not legal, tax or financial advice. Figures come from micro1's published pages and public reporting as of November 2026.