Shopify theme detector
Most Shopify storefronts built with the theme system name their theme in the page source. Type a store URL and the detector reads it for you, or view the page source and search for Shopify.theme yourself.
Verified August 20, 2026
What comes back
- The theme the store is running, and a Theme Store link when the theme is one of the free Shopify themes.
- The base theme behind a renamed one, with the store's own label shown separately.
- The apps visible on the homepage, each one next to the script that named it.
- A separate answer for a store that could not be read, so it never lands as a verdict.
The answer comes from the store's live homepage. Check the same store twice in a day and you get the same answer back.
Result
Enter a store URL
The answer lands here, in one of six forms.
- Theme Store theme. This store runs a theme published in the Shopify Theme Store.
- Recognized theme. The theme wrote its own name into the page, so this is the theme it was built from.
- Custom or unrecognized theme. This is a Shopify store with theme files on the page, and no name we recognize. That means a custom build, a private theme, or one we have not confirmed a handle for.
- Shopify store, theme not readable. This is a Shopify store, and the page carries no theme record. Headless storefronts and some edge-cached setups look like this from outside.
- Not a Shopify store. Nothing on this domain looks like a Shopify storefront, so there is no Shopify theme to report.
- We could not check this store. The store did not answer or blocked the check. That tells you nothing about the theme.
Every answer comes with the signals behind it, and the apps the homepage loads.
How to find what theme a Shopify store is using
Most Shopify storefronts tell you, in their own page source. Open the store, press Ctrl+U on Windows or Command+Option+U on a Mac to view the source, then search the page for Shopify.theme. You land on a short block that the storefront writes about itself, and it usually carries four things worth reading.
The first is name, which is whatever the merchant typed in their admin. The second is schema_name, written by the theme itself. The third is schema_version, the version of that theme. The fourth is theme_store_id, a number Shopify applies to Shopify-built themes installed from the Theme Store, which is often empty. The detector above reads the same block, plus the paths the store serves its theme files from, and reports what it found.
The order those fields get read in is the whole trick. The store id comes first when it is there, because it is the only one Shopify assigns. The theme's own name comes second. The merchant's label comes last, and only ever as a note.
name
The merchant types this one. Often a working title.
schema_name
Written by the theme. Survives a rename.
theme_store_id
Only on some stores. Missing on 10 of the 12 stores we sampled.
One caveat on the store id: it is empty on most real stores. In a sample of twelve direct-to-consumer brands read on August 20, 2026, ten had no store id at all, including stores plainly running Theme Store themes. Duplicating a theme or re-uploading it clears the number. So an empty store id means nothing on its own, and any tool that reads it as "custom theme" is guessing.
Renamed themes still give themselves away
Merchants rename themes constantly, and the names they pick are working notes. Reading live storefronts we found labels like Main New Theme, and copy names left behind by a build pipeline, both sitting on top of well-known Theme Store themes. A detector that reports that label as the answer is reporting somebody's filing system.
The theme's own name survives all of it, because the merchant admin does not edit it. That is why the result card leads with the base theme and shows the store's label underneath, as what the store calls it. Both are worth knowing. The base theme is the answer.
There is one family where even the theme's own name needs a caveat. Several free Shopify themes are built on Dawn and report Dawn as their name, so a store running Craft, Sense or Refresh reads the same way a Dawn store does. Rather than pick one and be wrong, the result says "Dawn or a Dawn-based theme" and leaves the last step to you. Compare the section layouts and the typography against the Theme Store demos and the difference shows up in a minute.
Free themes, paid themes, and custom themes
Shopify processes 10% of U.S. ecommerce sales, by the count on its own company page, so a lot of storefronts are picking from one catalogue. The Shopify Theme Store listed 1,238 themes on August 20, 2026. Twenty-four of them are free, and every free theme is built by Shopify. The other 1,214 are paid, most of them from third-party theme shops.
24 free themes, all built by Shopify
1214 paid themes, most running roughly $100 to $500 once
Paid themes are a one-time purchase. Sampling 144 of the 1,214 paid listings on the same day put most of them roughly between $100 and $500. Treat that as a range read off a sample, not a floor and a ceiling, and check the listing before you buy: discount badges are common and a price on a listing can move.
The free set is worth knowing by name: Ride, Craft, Ritual, Studio, Publisher, Colorblock, Savor, Rise, Horizon, Pitch, Refresh, Dwell, Atelier, Crave, Taste, Spotlight, Origin, Heritage, Fabric, Sense, Tinker, Dawn, Trade and Vessel. Shopify released ten free themes at once in May 2025 under the Horizon announcement. Dawn is still free and still listed. Shopify's own getting-started documentation now points developers at Skeleton. That changes what Shopify recommends building on. It leaves what stores are running today exactly where it was.
Custom is the third category and the hardest to talk about, because it covers two different things. One is a theme built from scratch or bought privately, which never had a Theme Store listing. The other is a Theme Store theme rebuilt far enough that the original is buried. The detector reports both the same way, as a Shopify store whose theme it cannot name, and lists what it did find so you can judge.
Shopify app detector
The same lookup reports the apps a store loads on its homepage, and names the script behind each one. Apps that put something on the storefront have to load it from somewhere, and the address it loads from belongs to the vendor. Every row in the result names the script that named the app, so you can check it yourself.
The set it looks for is Klaviyo, Judge.me, Gorgias, Rebuy, Recharge, Yotpo, Okendo and Postscript, each one matched by the address its scripts load from.
Read the empty result carefully. It says no common apps are visible on the homepage, and that is all it says. Plenty of apps touch checkout, shipping or the admin and never put a line on a product page. A store can run a dozen of them and show none here, so the list is a floor rather than an inventory.
When the detector cannot answer
A theme lookup has six possible outcomes. Four of them name a theme or rule one out. The two below are the ones where there is nothing to read, and each gets its own answer.
Theme Store theme
Recognized base theme
Custom or unrecognized
Shopify, theme not readable
Not a Shopify store
We could not check
A store that blocked the check is not a custom theme and is not a store on another platform. It gets its own answer.
The first is a Shopify store with no theme record at all. Of nineteen stores we successfully read on August 20, 2026, seven served the Shopify platform scripts and nothing about a theme. That is what a headless storefront looks like from outside: the store runs on Shopify, the pages are built somewhere else, and there is no theme to name. Reporting that as "custom theme" would be a guess.
The second is a store that did not answer. Roughly three in ten of the stores we tried on August 20, 2026 did not answer at all. A store that refused the request has told you nothing. The result says we could not check, and the fix is to look at the page source yourself.
A password page is served by the store's own theme, so a password-protected store often still reports its theme. A store that region-locks the address it answers from lands in the could-not-check answer instead. None of that reflects on the store. It just means the answer has to come from somewhere else.
If the theme matches yours
Most people who run this lookup on a store that is not theirs are checking one thing: whether the site that looks like theirs was built from the same theme. Often it was. That on its own proves very little. Anyone can buy and run the same theme you do. The free themes are free to everybody. A matching theme is a starting point for a conversation, and no more than that. To see whether anything else lines up, check the two stores against each other.
What does carry weight is your own material on their pages. Your product photography, your written descriptions, your brand name in their titles. You own the copyright in your photos from the moment you take them, and you do not need a registration or a lawyer to send a takedown notice. That is the claim with teeth, and it is the one worth spending an afternoon on. Our guide on what to do when someone copies your website walks the order of operations, and lookalike stores trading on your name covers the version where they use your brand as well as your pictures.
Knockoff watches for stores built to look like yours. If a store is running your theme and your product photos, see what else it took. The wider version of the same job, across marketplaces as well as storefronts, is brand protection for an ecommerce store.
Common questions about Shopify themes
Is the Shopify theme detector free? +
Yes. Type a store URL and the answer comes back on the same page, with the evidence it rests on.
What if the store uses a custom theme? +
The result says so. A custom or heavily rebuilt theme has theme files on the page and no name we recognize, so the result reports that and lists what it did find.
What if the store renamed its theme? +
The detector still reports the base theme. A merchant can call a theme anything, and that name usually says more about their workflow than about the theme. The theme writes its own name into the page separately, and that is the one the result leads with.
Why does it fail on some stores? +
Some stores block automated visitors, and some serve a storefront built outside the theme system. Each of those gets its own answer. A password page is served by the store's own theme, so a password-protected store often still reports its theme. A store that did not answer tells you nothing about its theme, and the result says exactly that.
Can it detect a headless Shopify store? +
It can tell you the store is on Shopify and that the theme is not readable. Seven of nineteen stores we read on August 20, 2026 served the Shopify platform scripts and no theme record at all, which is what a headless build looks like from outside.
Can a competitor legally use the same theme as me? +
Usually yes. Anyone can buy and run the same theme you do. The free themes are free to everybody. What they cannot take is your product photography, your written copy and your brand name. Those belong to you, and that is where a real claim starts.
Sources
- Shopify Admin API theme resource, for the definition of the store id and the theme roles: shopify.dev theme resource
- Shopify Liquid theme object, for the fields a theme exposes to a storefront: shopify.dev Liquid theme object
- Shopify Theme Store, for the count of 1,238 listings and the free and paid split on August 20, 2026: themes.shopify.com
- Shopify changelog, for the Horizon release of ten free Shopify themes on May 21, 2025: changelog.shopify.com Horizon
- Shopify theme getting-started documentation, for the theme Shopify now points developers at: shopify.dev create a theme
- Shopify company page, for the share of US ecommerce sales processed through Shopify: shopify.com/about
Every figure on this page was verified August 20, 2026. The counts of stores come from storefronts read on that date and are a sample, not a survey.
