How to Bulk Edit Compare-At Price in Shopify (Run Sales the Right Way) | AssetScope

If you’ve ever tried to run a sitewide sale in Shopify, you already know the problem: to bulk edit compare-at price, you have no good native option. The strikethrough price that signals a discount — the one that turns browsers into buyers — has to be set on every variant, one at a time, through a product editor that wasn’t built for speed. For a store with 200 products and multiple variants each, that’s hundreds of individual edits before your sale even starts. There is a better way, and this guide walks through it in full.

What is compare-at price in Shopify?

Compare-at price is a field on every Shopify product variant that represents the original or ‘before sale’ price. When a compare-at price is set and is higher than the current selling price, Shopify displays it as a strikethrough alongside the sale price — visually communicating to the customer that they’re getting a discount.

The compare-at price is separate from the actual selling price and has no effect on what the customer is charged — it is purely a display field. Shopify also uses it to calculate and display discount percentages in themes that support this.

Importantly, compare-at price is set at the variant level, not the product level. A product with five variants has five separate compare-at price fields, each of which must be set individually in Shopify’s native admin.

Why setting compare-at prices matters for conversions

Sale framing — showing a higher ‘was’ price alongside a lower current price — triggers loss aversion: customers perceive the discount as a gain they’d be foolish to miss. Research consistently shows that products displaying a strikethrough price convert at significantly higher rates than the same products at the same price without the visual discount indicator.

Beyond individual product conversion, compare-at prices are essential for running credible sitewide sales. Without them, a “20% off everything” banner is just a claim. With strikethrough prices on every product, the discount is visible and verifiable.

The Psychology of Compare-At Pricing

Strikethrough pricing is one of the most effective conversion tactics in ecommerce. The ‘anchoring effect’ — a well-documented cognitive bias — causes customers to use the first price they see as a reference point. When the compare-at price is displayed as a crossed-out figure alongside the lower sale price, the customer perceives the sale price as a bargain relative to the anchor, regardless of whether they would have considered the sale price reasonable on its own.

Research from the Journal of Consumer Psychology found that displaying a higher reference price alongside a discounted price increased purchase intent by over 30%. Shopify themes that support sale badges (“Save 20%” or “Sale”) amplify this effect further — the combination of a strikethrough price and a visible percentage discount creates both urgency and perceived value.

In practical ecommerce terms, products with visible compare-at pricing consistently outperform identical products without it. The effect is strongest for products in the £20–£100 range, where the absolute discount amount is large enough to feel meaningful but the purchase is not so considered that additional research overrides the anchoring effect.

Edge Cases and Gotchas With Compare-At Pricing

Compare-at lower than sale price: If the compare-at price is set lower than or equal to the current price, Shopify silently ignores it — no strikethrough is displayed, no error is shown. This can happen when prices are increased after a sale without clearing the compare-at field. Audit for this regularly.

Sale badge display: Shopify only shows the sale badge and strikethrough when compare-at price is strictly greater than the current price. The display is handled by your theme — not all themes display the percentage saved, and some only show the strikethrough on collection pages but not on the product page (or vice versa). Check your theme’s behaviour before running a sitewide sale.

Google Shopping feeds: Compare-at prices are included in Shopify’s native Google Shopping feed as the sale_price and price attributes. This means your strikethrough pricing appears in Google Shopping results, which can significantly improve click-through rates for price-sensitive queries. However, Google has strict policies about sale pricing — the compare-at price must represent a genuine prior selling price, not an inflated reference price.

Rounding after percentage discounts: A 15% discount on £49.99 produces £42.4915, which rounds to £42.49. Some merchants prefer .99 pricing (£42.99) or whole-pound pricing (£42.00). Without a rounding step, percentage discounts produce awkward prices that look unintentional.

How to set compare-at price manually in Shopify

The native process: open a product, scroll to Pricing, enter the compare-at price. For products with variants, click into each variant individually and set the compare-at price there. Save. Repeat for every product.

For a store with 50 products averaging 3 variants each, this is 150 individual edits. For 500 products, it is 1,500 edits. And when the sale ends, you do it all again in reverse to clear the compare-at prices.

Why Shopify’s native bulk editor doesn’t support compare-at prices well

Shopify does have a bulk editor that includes a compare-at price column. However, you can only type exact values — there is no “set compare-at to current price” or “reduce price by 20%” option. Each value must be calculated and typed manually.

There is no rounding, no percentage mode, and no way to coordinate a “copy price to compare-at, then discount” workflow. For running a real sale at scale, the native tool falls short.

How to bulk edit compare-at price across all Shopify products

AssetScope’s Bulk Price Editor closes this gap. The workflow: filter your catalogue, set compare-at price to current price (one click), then apply a percentage reduction to the selling price. Preview every change before confirming.

A 500-product update that would take a full day manually completes in a few minutes. Both price and compare-at price are updated simultaneously via Shopify’s GraphQL API.

How to run a percentage-off sale with compare-at prices in Shopify

Step 1: Copy current prices to compare-at. Step 2: Reduce selling prices by your desired percentage. Step 3: Review a sample on your storefront. This two-step approach is important — if you reduce prices first and then try to set compare-at, you risk setting compare-at to the already-discounted price.

AssetScope handles rounding automatically — round to the nearest pound, or to .99 pricing — so your storefront prices look clean after the percentage reduction.

How to remove compare-at prices in bulk after a sale ends

To end a sale cleanly: restore original prices from compare-at (“Set price = compare-at price”), then clear compare-at prices entirely. Both operations run on the same product selection in sequence.

Leaving compare-at prices set after a promotion is misleading and potentially a trading standards concern. The full post-sale cleanup for a 500-product catalogue takes under five minutes in AssetScope.

Before Running a Shopify Compare-At Price Sale: Checklist

Before you launch a sitewide or collection-wide sale using compare-at prices, run through this checklist to avoid common mistakes:

1. Verify your current prices are correct. These will become the compare-at (reference) prices. If any products are already mispriced, the error will be locked in as the ‘original’ price.

2. Check your theme’s sale display. View a product with an existing compare-at price to confirm your theme shows the strikethrough and sale badge as expected. Check both the collection page and the product detail page.

3. Plan your rounding. Decide in advance whether you want .99 endings, whole numbers, or raw calculated values. Apply this consistently.

4. Test with a small batch first. Apply the compare-at and discount to 5–10 products, check the storefront, then proceed with the full catalogue.

5. Schedule the end of the sale. Set a calendar reminder to revert prices and clear compare-at values. Leaving stale compare-at prices after a sale ends is misleading and may violate consumer protection regulations in some jurisdictions.

6. Check Google Shopping. If you use Google Shopping, the sale prices will appear in your feed within 24 hours. Verify they display correctly in Google Merchant Center.

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