Short answer
Shopify SEO apps have converged on the same feature list — meta tags,
schema, image alt text, broken links, sitemaps, AI content. What has not converged is the meter. Nearly
all of them charge by how many products you optimise, and the price per product varies by more
than 25× between them.
On a 1,000-product catalogue that is the difference between
$20 and $150 a month for near-identical work. SEOKart is the value pick,
StoreSEO the best free tier, and Tapita the safest on track record —
though Tapita quietly charges more depending on which Shopify plan you are on.
Best value
SEOKart — 1,000 products for $20/mo, 5,000 for $30. 5.0 from 69 reviews with the Built
for Shopify badge.
Best free tier
StoreSEO — free forever for 25 products, and it is the only free plan here that
includes an LLMs.txt generator and Agents.md editor.
Safest bet
Tapita — 5.0 from 2,630 reviews, by far the deepest record. Watch the plan-based
surcharge below.
What you actually pay per product
Every app here gates on product count. Put the tiers side by side and the spread is startling — this is
the table that should decide your choice.
| App | Entry paid tier | Products | Cost per product | Next tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SEOKart |
$20/mo | 1,000 | $0.020 | $30 for 5,000 → $0.006 |
 SEOmatic |
$15/mo | 500 | $0.030 | $25 for 2,000 → $0.013 |
| Tapita |
$9.99/mo | Not gated on products — gated on audit pages and AI credits, plus a surcharge by Shopify plan | $39.99 Pro | |
| StoreSEO |
$14.99/mo | 100 | $0.150 | $39.99 for 250 → $0.160 |
Read the fourth column twice. SEOKart gives you ten times the products StoreSEO does for $5 more,
and at the 5,000-product tier it costs less than a cent per product against StoreSEO’s sixteen. If you have
a catalogue of any size, that single fact outweighs every feature difference on this page.
The flip side is equally clear: if you have under 25 products, StoreSEO is free forever and
you should not be paying anyone. Small catalogue, take the free tier. Large catalogue, take SEOKart.
SEOKart in detail, since it is our pick
SEOKart is not the best-known app in this category and that is precisely why it is worth looking at. It does
the standard work — one-click AI optimisation, meta tags in bulk, image optimisation, schema and rich
snippets, rank tracking, a 404 fixer — and it prices the product allowance far more generously than
anything else here.
Pros ✓
- $20/month covers 1,000 products; $30 covers 5,000. Between 2× and 8× better value per product than the alternatives
- 5.0 from 69 reviews with the Built for Shopify badge
- Rank tracking for 100 keywords included from the first paid tier, which several rivals charge extra for
- Unlimited image optimisation and unlimited bulk meta-tag work on every paid plan — no second meter
- Flat pricing that does not change with your Shopify plan
- 10% saving on annual billing
Cons ✕
- 69 reviews is a modest base next to Tapita’s 2,630 — less proven, even at 5.0
- 3% one-star, slightly higher than StoreSEO’s and Tapita’s 1%
- Its free plan is a trial (50 pages, 10 keywords), not a free-forever tier
- No LLMs.txt or AI-search tooling, which StoreSEO and Tapita both include
- We have not installed and run it; this is from the listing, pricing and rating distribution
See SEOKart → Partner link · $20/mo for 1,000 products
StoreSEO, and when free is the right answer
StoreSEO earns its place for the opposite reason. Its paid tiers are the most expensive per product on this
page — $14.99 for 100 products, $39.99 for 250 — and we would not recommend them on cost. But its
free-forever plan is the most generous free offering in the category: 25 products, 200 AI
credits, 25 images, keyword tracking, image alt text, an SEO migrator, and the LLMs.txt generator and Agents.md
editor that nobody else gives away.
For a store with a small catalogue that is the whole answer. You get schema, alt text, AI-generated metadata
and AI-search files without paying anyone. It holds 5.0 from 739 reviews with the Built for Shopify badge, so it
is not a compromise on quality — only on catalogue size.
The moment you pass roughly 100 products, the maths flips hard and SEOKart becomes two to eight times cheaper
for the same work. Use StoreSEO free until you outgrow it, then move. Get StoreSEO free → Partner link · free forever to 25 products
What none of these apps can do
Worth saying plainly, because the category markets itself as if it were the whole job:
- They cannot create demand. Optimising a page for a phrase nobody searches produces a
well-formatted page nobody visits. The keyword decision sits upstream of every app here. - They cannot fix thin content. AI-generated meta descriptions on a page with two sentences of
copy will not outrank a page with a real answer on it. - They cannot earn links. No app on this page affects the single strongest ranking factor
outside your own site. - They cannot make you distinctive. If every store in your category runs the same one-click
optimiser, the optimisation stops being an advantage and becomes the baseline.
What they genuinely do is remove the mechanical work — alt text on 3,000 images, schema on every product,
metadata that does not repeat itself, redirects that do not rot. That is real and worth $20 a month. It is just
not a strategy.
The surcharge Tapita does not put in the headline
Tapita’s advertised $9.99 is not what many stores pay. The listing adds, under the
price: “+$5/mo Grow plan, +$30/mo Advanced plan, +$60/mo Shopify Plus”. So the same app on
the same tier costs $9.99 on Basic and $69.99 on Plus — a sevenfold difference driven
purely by which Shopify plan you are on, not by how much of the app you use. More SEO audit pages and AI credits
are also charged extra on top.
That is not a reason to avoid Tapita — 5.0 from 2,630 reviews is the strongest record in this category
by a wide margin, and its free tier is genuinely useful (unlimited on-page audit, 900 image compressions a month).
But if you are on Advanced or Plus, price it properly before you compare it to anything else. See Tapita → Partner link · free plan · from $9.99
Ratings: one of these is not like the others
Averages hide things. Here are the full distributions:
| App | Rating | Reviews | 5★ | 4★ | 3★ | 2★ | 1★ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tapita |
5.0 | 2,630 | 97% | 2% | 0% | 0% | 1% |
| StoreSEO |
5.0 | 739 | 98% | 1% | 0% | 0% | 1% |
| SEOKart |
5.0 | 69 | 97% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 3% |
| SEOmatic |
4.4 | 151 | 81% | 5% | 4% | 3% | 7% |
SEOmatic has 14% of its reviews at three stars or below — roughly one merchant in seven.
Every other app here is at 1–3%. Its per-product pricing is competitive and its feature list is complete, so
it is not a bad app, but that distribution is the one thing on this page we would want to read the detail of
before installing. See SEOmatic → Partner link · free plan · from $15
The new bit: getting found by AI, not just Google
The genuinely new development in this category is that a search-engine result is no longer the only thing you
are optimising for. Assistants increasingly answer product questions directly, and they read your store through
files like llms.txt and agents.md rather than through your meta tags.
StoreSEO
Bundles an LLMs.txt generator and Agents.md editor into the free plan. The cheapest way to
cover this at all — it costs nothing.
Tapita
Generates LLMs.txt for basic pages on free, main pages on paid, alongside the conventional SEO work.
Visibility Mesh
Specialises: measures how AI search reads your store, gives fixes from your own catalogue and rescans to prove
the change. No free tier — $29/$79/$179.
Our honest read: if you want to cover AI search cheaply, StoreSEO’s free plan already does it, and there
is no reason to pay separately yet. Visibility Mesh is a more serious instrument — rescans, competitor
benchmarking, AI traffic tracking — but it holds only 6 reviews and starts at $29 with nothing free, so it
suits a store already convinced this matters. See Visibility Mesh → Partner link · from $29/mo, no free tier
The narrow specialist
Ablestar Link Manager does one job: finding and fixing broken links and managing
redirects. It is not an SEO suite and does not pretend to be. $10/mo for 10 site scans limited to 1,000 pages,
$20/mo for 50 scans up to 10,000 pages. If your problem is a migration that left hundreds of dead URLs, this is
the right tool and the suites are not. If you want meta tags and schema, it is the wrong one. See Ablestar → Partner link · from $10/mo
Which to install
| If you… | Install | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Have under 25 products | StoreSEO free |
Free forever at that size, and includes the AI-search files. Pay nobody. |
| Have 500–5,000 products | SEOKart |
$20 for 1,000 products or $30 for 5,000 — nothing else is close on cost per product. |
| Are on Shopify Basic and want the safest option | Tapita |
2,630 reviews at 5.0, and the plan surcharge does not apply to you at $9.99. |
| Are on Advanced or Plus | SEOKart |
Flat pricing. Tapita adds $30–$60/mo on those plans for the same features. |
| Just migrated and have broken links | Ablestar |
A dedicated redirect and 404 tool beats a suite for that specific job. |
| Want to be cited by AI assistants | StoreSEO free, then Visibility Mesh |
Start with the free LLMs.txt generator; only pay when you want measurement and rescans. |
Bottom line
For most stores with a real catalogue, SEOKart. 1,000
products for $20 a month is between two and eight times better value than anything else here, it holds 5.0 from
69 reviews with the Built for Shopify badge, and its pricing does not change based on your Shopify plan.
If you are tiny, use StoreSEO’s free
plan and spend nothing. If you want the deepest track record and you are on Basic,
Tapita at $9.99 is hard to argue with. See SEOKart → Partner link · $20/mo for 1,000 products
FAQs
What is the best Shopify SEO app in 2026?
SEOKart for most stores with a catalogue — $20 a month covers 1,000 products and $30 covers 5,000, which
is far better value per product than the alternatives, and it holds 5.0 from 69 reviews with the Built for
Shopify badge. Tapita is the safest choice on track record at 5.0 from 2,630 reviews. StoreSEO is the best free
option.
Is there a free Shopify SEO app?
StoreSEO has a free-forever plan covering 25 products, 200 AI credits, 25 images and, unusually, an LLMs.txt
generator and Agents.md editor. Tapita’s free plan includes unlimited on-page SEO audit and 900 image
compressions a month. SEOmatic’s free plan covers 10 products.
Why do SEO apps charge by product count?
Because the work scales with the catalogue — generating meta tags, alt text and schema for 5,000
products costs the vendor far more than doing it for 50. The catch is that the tiers are drawn very differently:
$20 buys you 1,000 products on SEOKart and roughly 130 on StoreSEO. Always divide the price by the product
allowance before comparing.
Does Tapita really cost more on Shopify Plus?
Yes. Its listing states a surcharge of +$5/month on Grow, +$30/month on Advanced and +$60/month on Shopify
Plus, on top of the tier price. The $9.99 headline becomes $69.99 on Plus for the same features, so factor your
plan in before comparing it with flat-priced alternatives.
What is LLMs.txt and do I need it?
It is a file that tells AI assistants how to read your store, in the way robots.txt tells search crawlers what
to crawl. It matters as more product research happens inside AI assistants rather than a search box. StoreSEO
generates one on its free plan and Tapita generates one too, so there is no need to pay separately for it yet.
Why is SEOmatic rated lower than the others?
Its 4.4 average comes with 7% one-star, 3% two-star and 4% three-star reviews — about one in seven
merchants at three stars or below, where every other app here sits at 1–3%. The pricing and feature list are
competitive, so read the recent negative reviews and judge whether the complaints apply to your setup.
Do I need a separate app for broken links?
Only if that is your actual problem. Most suites here include broken-link detection and auto-redirects.
Ablestar Link Manager is worth it when you have just migrated and have hundreds of dead URLs to map, because
scheduled site scans and wildcard redirects are things the suites do not do well.
Ratings, review distributions and pricing verified against the Shopify App Store on 7
September 2026. Cost-per-product figures are calculated from the published tier allowances and are there to make
the tiers comparable, not to represent a vendor claim. We have not installed and run every app here; this
comparison is built from the live listings and published pricing. Contains partner links, which never cost you
more and do not affect ranking — note that our recommendation for small catalogues is a free plan that pays
us nothing. App pricing changes often; confirm on the live listing before installing.