Do Shopify apps slow down my store? How many is too many?

Most apps inject JavaScript and CSS into your storefront, and that's where the cost comes from — not the number of apps, but how heavy each one is and whether it loads on every page. A single badly-built reviews or popup app can cost more than five lightweight ones.

To find the culprits: run your store through PageSpeed Insights or WebPageTest and look at the third-party script breakdown — the slow apps show up by name. Then ask, for each: does this load on pages where it isn't needed, and is it earning its keep? Disable it on a duplicate theme and re-test to measure the real impact.

There's no magic number, but a practical rule: keep what drives revenue, remove what's 'nice to have', and prefer apps that use Shopify's app blocks (which load more efficiently) over ones that inject global scripts.