Shopify spy tool: find the stores that are growing now

A Shopify spy tool shows you how other Shopify stores are doing from the outside: their traffic, their estimated sales, their best sellers, the apps and theme they run, and the ads they have live. In SellWinners you search the stores we track by name, domain, product or storefront words, then filter and sort the list by those numbers.

You may already know a store and want to see how it is doing. Or you may want to find stores you have never heard of that are growing in your niche right now. Both jobs start on the same search.

Spy on Shopify stores: what each store record shows

Every store in a result list comes with its key numbers. Open one and you get the full record:

Sales figures are estimates made for comparing stores, not audited numbers. The FAQ explains how the estimates work. For one store in depth, with every chart and tab, see Shopify store analytics.

Find growing Shopify stores in Explore

Explore is the web app. On paid plans, an empty search box lists the stores that are trending, so you can start browsing before you type anything. On Free you search a store by its name, a keyword or its domain; searching by product name, the filters and the sorts below are on paid plans (compare the plans).

1. Open Shops and pick what the search box matches: Name, Domain, Product name, Shop contains (words on the storefront) or All fields.
2. Type a niche word such as "camping", or leave it empty.
3. Sort by Growth 30d to put the stores that gained the most traffic first. Monthly visits, Est. sales, Units sold and Active ads are other sorts.
4. Open Advanced filters. They come in groups: Traffic, Sales, Advertising, Catalog, Markets, Store and Technology.
5. Read the table: monthly visits with growth, estimated sales, units, active ads, products, category and creation date. Switch to Cards to see each store's first best sellers as pictures.
6. From any row, save the store to a board or start tracking it.

Find growing stores in Explore

Filters worth knowing

Shops take 52 filters. These are the ones you will use most:

• Growth. Traffic growth, in percent over 30 days, and Ads growth for the change in active ads.
• Size. Monthly visits, Est. monthly sales and Units sold, each with a minimum and a maximum.
• Markets. Main market countries, Market countries, Languages and Currencies.
• Store type. Shopify Plus, the creation date, Products, Categories and Trustpilot rating.

Spy on a store's tech stack

The Technology filters find stores by what they run. Pick a Shopify theme, a Shopify app or a tracking pixel, and the list keeps the stores that use it. Exclude pixels and Exclude Shopify apps do the opposite. In the API these filters take ids, which the facet routes give you by name:

# Shopify apps (ids for the app filters)
curl "https://api.sellwinners.com/v1/facets/shopify-apps?search=reviews&limit=20" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"

GET /v1/facets/shopify-apps Parameters and fields in the docs

Then pass the id you picked, here with a traffic floor and sorted by visits:

# Search or browse shops (trending when empty)
curl "https://api.sellwinners.com/v1/shops?shopifyAppIds=APP_ID&minMonthlyVisits=20000&sortBy=monthlyVisits&limit=20" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"

GET /v1/shops Parameters and fields in the docs

For one store, the header of its record names its theme. Our page on Shopify theme spy covers what a store's theme tells you and how to find the stores that share it.

Run a Shopify spy search through the API

Every search in Explore is one request. Filters go in the query string by name, and growth is a percentage:

# Search or browse shops (trending when empty)
curl "https://api.sellwinners.com/v1/shops?search=camping&minMonthlyVisits=50000&minTrafficGrowth=20&mainMarketCountries=US&sortBy=growth30d&limit=10" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"

GET /v1/shops Parameters and fields in the docs

The domain works in place of a shop id on every shop route, so one request returns a store's full record:

# One shop by id or domain
curl "https://api.sellwinners.com/v1/shops/gymshark.com" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"

GET /v1/shops/{shopId} Parameters and fields in the docs

From an AI agent, search_shops takes the same query, match mode, sort and filters. A prompt such as "Find US Shopify stores about camping with at least 50,000 monthly visits, sorted by 30-day growth" is enough. The MCP server page shows how to connect Claude, Cursor or VS Code.

Shopify spy tools: what to compare

Shopify spy tools come in two kinds. A browser extension reads the store you are on: its theme, its apps and sometimes its best sellers. A searchable database lets you find stores you have never visited, filter them by their numbers and follow them over time. SellWinners is the second kind, and it has no browser extension.

Whichever you try, test it on a store you know well and check four things:

• Finding stores. Can you search by product, niche or words on the storefront, or only look up a domain you already have?
• Sales and traffic. Does it show estimated sales and the traffic history, and does it say they are estimates?
• Theme and apps. Can you filter stores by the theme and the apps they run, or only read them one store at a time?
• Ads. Does a store come with the ads it runs now, and on which networks?

Our guide to the best dropshipping product research tools compares nine tools on these points, a Shopify spy extension among them.

Where to go from a store

• List the shops most like it to find a store's competitors, each with a similarity score.
• Start from a product instead of a store with the product research tool.
• Compare the ads a store runs with the ads of every other brand in its niche.
• Add the brand to the Brand Tracker to track a brand's ads over time.
• Read how much a Shopify store makes and what a sales estimate can tell you.