Shopify now sends a merchant’s compare-at price to AI shopping agents through Shopify Catalog, in a field called list_price. It published the change twice on October 9, once for developers and once for merchants. Of the two, only the developer changelog says how the setting starts: on by default for most stores.
What is list_price in Shopify Catalog?
list_price is an optional field in the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) catalog specification, version 2026-08-25, which the Catalog API now fills with a merchant’s compare-at price on each product variant. An app or agent can use it to tell when a product is marked down and by how much, while the price field stays as it was. The spec describes it as the “List price before discounts (for strikethrough display),” and Shopify’s Help Center says AI agents “might use it to advertise strikethrough pricing.”
Products also return list_price_range, the lowest and highest list_price across their variants. Amounts are in minor units with a currency, in the same Price object as price. Our explainer on Shopify’s Universal Commerce Protocol for AI agents covers the standard itself.
Two Changelog Entries, Two Audiences
The developer entry speaks to builders: its first paragraph is about what “Your app or agent” can do with the field, and that paragraph ends with “No action is required,” which is addressed to developers, not to store owners. The entry also states the default: Shopify “turns this on by default for most stores and turns it off for stores that use compare-at for MSRP or another reference price.”
The merchant-facing entry in the Shopify Changelog says that “AI agents reading Catalog only saw the current price” before, and that markdown prices displayed in the storefront were not shown. It points merchants to a toggle in the “Compare-at” section of admin. It does not say whether that toggle starts on or off.
The Help Center page on Catalog mapping gives a third wording: “Your store starts with a default selection. Changes to how your store uses compare-at prices don’t automatically change that selection.” Neither changelog entry says how Shopify decides that a store uses compare-at for MSRP or another reference price, how many stores are on the default, or whether the default was applied on October 9 or earlier. None of the pages names which AI agents receive the field.
When a Variant Carries the Field
The developer changelog lists three conditions. A variant includes list_price when all of them are true:
- The merchant shares compare-at prices through Catalog Mapping in the Shopify admin.
- The compare-at price is higher than
pricefor the buyer’s context. - The merchant shows compare-at prices in the buyer’s region. Stores that hide them from EEA buyers don’t return
list_priceto those buyers.
When the field is missing, the variant has no compare-at price to show for that buyer and configuration. How an app or agent presents that is, the changelog tells developers, “up to you.” Hiding compare-at prices from EEA shoppers is not new on Shopify: a Shopify Changelog entry dated September 29, 2022 says compare-at prices set for a country outside the EEA are no longer shown to EEA markets, to “protect merchants from unknowingly violating the EU Price Indication Directive.”
Where to Check the Switch
The Help Center page gives the path: Sales channels > Agentic, then the Shopify Catalog icon in the Sources section, then Review product data mapping. The switch sits in the Compare-at section. With it on, Shopify Catalog sends a compare-at price only if it is higher than the current price. With it off, it sends only the current price.
The Preview tab shows a product with a strikethrough price and a percentage-discount badge when the switch is on. The same page’s general considerations say the preview “isn’t an exact indicator of how AI channels might view or display your product data.” Changes are processed with a delay, so they might not take effect at once.
Agent-facing changes are arriving on Shopify stores in more than one place: we covered Google’s AI Mode checkout, switched on by default for eligible Shopify stores, where Google Analytics and custom pixels don’t fire. For this one, the check is short: open the Compare-at section, read what the switch says for your store, and compare it with what your own compare-at values mean.
