A cumulative quantity rule limits purchases by the total quantity a customer has purchased so far, rather than per order. It lets you apply a limit such as "up to 3 per customer" across multiple orders.
Prerequisite: Cumulative quantity rules are a Full plan feature. To use them, grant the additional permissions that let the app read order and customer information, and enable cumulative purchase limits. If you already enabled them for cumulative price rules, you can create cumulative quantity rules right away.
You want to limit the quantity per customer even when they split their purchase into several orders
You want a limited-edition item restricted to one per customer over the whole period
You want an upper bound on the total quantity purchased of the same item
The difference is whether the limit is evaluated within a single order or against the total purchased across orders.
Comparison item | Product quantity rules / limits by product | Cumulative quantity rules |
|---|---|---|
What is evaluated | A single order (the cart) | The total purchased across orders |
When it is evaluated | When the cart is updated or at checkout | The total is evaluated at checkout |
Identifying the customer | Not required | Required |
Plans | Light plan and Full plan | Full plan |
Only orders placed after you create the rule and tracking starts are counted. Purchases made before that are not counted retroactively.
Choose whether each eligible item keeps its own separate total.
Counted per | How the total is kept |
|---|---|
Whole rule | One total for all eligible items combined. |
Product | A separate total for each eligible product. |
Variant | A separate total for each eligible variant. |
The eligible items and what the total is counted per cannot be changed once tracking has started. To change them, stop the rule and create a new one. If you select "All products" as the eligible items, the total can only be counted per "Whole rule".
When "Require customers to log in" is enabled, a customer who is not logged in and has an eligible product in the cart is stopped at checkout and asked to log in.
When it is disabled, the behavior is as follows.
Purchases are counted toward the total when the email entered at checkout matches the customer record.
An order placed with a different email address is not counted toward the total. To reliably prevent purchases over the limit, enable "Require customers to log in".
The purchased count cannot be shown to a customer who is not logged in.
Screen | What is evaluated or shown |
|---|---|
Product page | A message with the remaining allowance, and the maximum quantity reflected in the quantity picker |
Cart | Whether the cart alone holds more than the rule allows |
Checkout | Whether the total, including past purchases, exceeds the limit |
Only checkout counts what the customer has purchased before. The product page display requires the app embed to be enabled in your main theme.
The following are counted.
Test orders
Cancelled orders (they are subtracted from the total)
The following are not counted.
Recurring subscription orders (only the initial order is counted)
Orders with no customer record attached
Custom items that have no product ID or variant ID
In the following cases, the total does not match the actual purchases.
Returns and refunds are not reflected in the total.
A cancellation that happens after the rule is stopped is not subtracted from the total.
If a customer is deleted or merged, their purchases disappear from the totals. They are not carried over to the customer they were merged into.
Item | Limit |
|---|---|
Breakdown entries per customer | 250 |
Rules tracking at a time | 20 (counted together with cumulative price rules) |
Rules you can create | 50 (including stopped rules, counted together with cumulative price rules) |
The breakdown limit applies when counting per product or per variant. Products purchased after that are not limited.
Each enabled rule uses one of Shopify's checkout rules. A store can have up to 25 checkout rules enabled, including those of your other rules and other apps.
Totals can take a few minutes to update. Purchases made before an update lands, and checkouts completed at the same time, can go over the limit undetected.
There is no way to adjust a customer's total by hand. To start the numbers over, stop the rule and create a new one.
Uninstalling the app also removes the tracking setup.
Note: Once cumulative purchase limits are enabled, they cannot be turned back off. To stop limiting, disable or stop an individual rule instead.
All three lift the limit. They differ in what happens to the tracking and to each customer's total.
Action | Tracking | Each customer's total |
|---|---|---|
Disable | Continues | Kept |
Stop | Ends | Kept |
Delete | Ends | Deleted |
Enabling a disabled rule again resumes limiting from the latest totals.
Note: Stopping and deleting cannot be undone. A stopped rule can never resume.
You can set the messages shown on the product page, in the cart, and at checkout separately for signed-in customers and customers who are not logged in.
Messages can use the variables limit (maximum quantity), purchased (purchased count), remaining (remaining allowance), and productTitle (product title). Which variables are available differs by field.
Messages can be translated.
Start from the example closest to what you need.