How to Print Shipping Labels on Shopify: Format & Printer

Shopify sells shipping labels inside the admin: you buy one while fulfilling an order and print it on a thermal label printer or an ordinary desktop printer. The steps are spread across several Help Center pages, on buying, printing, printers and voiding, and this guide puts them in the order you meet them.

The step that can cost money when it goes wrong is the print page. The paper format you pick there decides whether the label fits your printer; the format section below covers what changes once you leave that page.

Can You Buy Labels in Shopify Where You Ship From?

Whether the button works depends on where the order ships from. Shopify's setup page lists, for each fulfillment location, the carriers it sells through its own carrier accounts: 10 countries when we read it on November 5, 2026.

Two conditions sit on top of the country. For some carriers, your store itself must be based in the same country as the fulfillment location; Shopify gives Evri and DPD as examples. And labels can't be bought at all for products stocked in or fulfilled from an app location.

What those labels cost, country by country, is covered in where Shopify sells labels and at what discount.

If your location isn't on the list, the label has to come from somewhere else, and when a shipping app earns its place covers that route.

Can You Print a Label Without an Order?

Merchants shipping a sample or a replacement outside the order flow often look for a standalone label tool. The Help Center answers that in one line:

Outside the admin, the same page points to two routes: the carrier's own website, where depending on the carrier you might be able to print labels, and a shipping label app when your fulfillment location isn't eligible for Shopify labels.

How to Buy and Print a Label From an Order

Shopify sells the label as part of fulfilling the order, so the path starts on the order page. These are the main desktop steps from the Help Center; that page's full list also has you confirm the items, the package and total weight, and a shipping date before the Summary.

1. From Orders, open the order you're shipping.
2. In the Unfulfilled section, click Create shipping label.

In Shopify adminOpen in your store

1. Orders
2. #1001

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3. In the Shipping service section, select a shipping method. The list starts from your preferred carriers.
4. Review your shipping details in the Summary section, then click Buy shipping label. You might be asked to verify your identity with your card's issuer at this point.
5. On the print page, select the paper format that matches what's loaded in your printer (Thermal 4 × 6 in, Letter or A4), print, and check the label is whole before you leave the page. You can also print later from Orders › Shipping labels.

You can print during the purchase flow or from the Shipping labels page at any time after you buy. The next section shows how to match the format to your paper.

Which carriers show up first is a setting of its own: how preferred carriers work for Shopify labels.

Shopify Academy's walkthrough below was published in June 2023, so some screens may differ from today's admin. Printing starts at 2:21, and the steps above follow the current Help Center.

Once the label is on the box, getting it to the carrier is a separate step: whether you can book a carrier pickup from Shopify Shipping has its own answer.

Shipping Abroad: Customs and Insurance

An international label adds customs information to the same screen. Under Shopify's buying considerations, the declared value of an international shipment can't exceed $2,500 USD, and HS codes are required. If you edit item weights on the customs form, increase the Total weight (with package) so it covers them plus your packaging: a label can't be bought when the items weigh more than the package.

Insurance depends on where you ship from. Shopify's shipping insurance requires the shipment to be shipped from the United States; from a US location, the Shipping insurance section of the label flow lets you add insurance before you buy.

Match the Label Format to Your Printer

Two settings decide whether a label comes out whole: the paper format you pick in Shopify and the paper actually loaded in the printer. They have to agree, and the Shopify half is the one the Help Center ties to the print page.

The Three Paper Formats

The printing-documents page offers exactly three formats:

Your format selection is saved and used as the default for future label purchases, so the first label effectively sets up the rest. Staff members without Settings permissions can't change the label format, which matters if someone else does your packing.

If a label comes out cut off or cropped, the Help Center's first fix is the label format setting. Reprinting in the right format works while you're still on the print page. After that, Shopify's troubleshooting page says:

Shopify's page on printing shipping documents, though, has you select a page size when you reprint a bought label from Orders › Shipping labels or from the order's page, so try a reprint in the right size there before you void.

When the format is right and the label still prints wrong, why a Shopify label prints at the wrong size goes through the format and the printer's own paper setting one at a time.

Can You Print a Test Label First?

None of the Help Center pages we read describes a test or sample shipping label printed without a purchase (the pages are listed under When a Label Won't Buy or Print). The printer pages do describe printer checks that use no Shopify label: a self-test on DYMO LabelWriter models and a configuration report on the Zebra ZD220 and ZD421. What protects your first label is the print page and the reprint rule: if the first print comes out wrong, switch the format before you leave the page and print again, and until the package ships, printing the same label again needs no new purchase.

Label Printer or Desktop Printer

A label printer uses labels with an adhesive backing that you attach to your shipments directly. Shopify-supported printers have been tested for compatibility with labels bought in Shopify and include popular models from DYMO, Zebra, Brother, Rollo and Bixolon; Bixolon is for merchants based in the United Kingdom or Ireland.

A standard desktop printer is a full route, not a fallback. Shopify's supported-printers page tells you to select the 8.5 × 11 inch paper option for it, and the printing-documents page adds A4 as the second desktop format.

The Help Center lets you choose the printer each time you print and collate labels, during the label purchase or on the Shipping and delivery settings page in your admin. Which models pair with which devices is covered in which label printers work with Shopify Shipping labels.

In Shopify adminOpen in your store

1. Settings
2. Shipping and delivery

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What You Can and Can't Change on the Label

Paper format and label layout are easy to confuse, and Shopify treats them differently:

• Layout is fixed. You can't edit the label format itself, because each carrier has specific requirements for its labels.
• Sender name is editable. The Help Center's steps are Settings › Shipping and delivery, then Sender name on shipping labels in the Documents section, then Custom name. Custom names must be 3 to 25 characters long and appear on supported carriers' labels. If the option isn't where the steps say, see the note above.
• The origin address comes from the location. It is the address of your fulfillment location in Settings › Locations, and labels purchased before you change it aren't updated.

Printing From Your Phone, POS, or a Home Printer

The admin on a computer is the main route, but not the only one. What works depends on where you print from:

Printing at home needs no special hardware. Shopify says that printing shipping documents takes a desktop printer or a Shopify-supported label printer, so an ordinary home printer loaded with Letter or A4 paper does the job once you pick the matching format. The preview window that opens from Orders › Shipping labels offers to save or print the documents.

None of the Help Center pages we read calls that saved label a PDF file; the only other file behaviour Shopify documents is the Chrome download on Android. The search boundary is in the note under When a Label Won't Buy or Print.

At the counter, the printer matters more than the app. Ship from store is only for locations on POS Pro; the Brother QL page also requires an active POS Pro subscription to print shipping labels from Shopify POS on iOS or Android and rules out pairing with POS Go, while the Zebra ZD421 page says that printer can't print labels from an iOS or Android tablet.

Printing Many Labels at Once

The numbers quoted for bulk labels belong to three different actions:

You can print a maximum of 100 shipping labels at the same time from the Shipping labels page. Buying in bulk is the bigger job. It can time out with a message that buying labels is temporarily unavailable; Shopify's fix is smaller batches of about 30 orders.

Three kinds of orders drop out of a bulk purchase:

• orders that contain only items that don't require shipping;
• orders that don't have a valid shipping address;
• orders that are already fulfilled.

Two things catch out a first bulk print. If your browser blocks pop-ups, none of your documents are printed, so allow them before you start. Each label also carries a Printed or Not printed status, which shows which ones still need to go through the printer.

Several labels for one order is a different question, about splitting the items across packages, and printing multiple labels for one Shopify order answers it.

Reprint or Void a Wrong Label

A wrong label has two exits, and which one you take depends on what is wrong with it.

Reprinting Costs Nothing Until It Ships

If the package hasn't shipped yet, you don't need to purchase a new label: print the same one again from Orders › Shipping labels. The limit is the carrier's scan, because after a label has been scanned, it can't be reprinted for use on other shipments.

How to reprint a Shopify shipping label walks through the reprint step by step.

Voiding: Four Conditions, Credit Not Cash

Voiding cancels a label you won't use. Shopify allows it only when the label meets four requirements:

• it's no older than 30 days;
• it has no tracking events;
• it isn't a USPS First Class Mail label;
• it wasn't added to a USPS manifest in the last 15 minutes.

After you void a label, the cost is credited to your account, and credits are applied to future shipping label purchases. You can void up to 250 labels at once from the Shipping labels page. A label that doesn't meet the requirements can't be voided in the admin, and the Help Center's replacement-labels section covers that case.

The details of that credit are in what happens when you void a Shopify shipping label.

Return labels are the exception: they can't be voided, but most of them expire. Creating a return label in Shopify explains how they work.

The cheapest void is the one you never need, and Shopify's guidance on timing is direct:

Shopify ties each label to the shipping date you pick when you buy it: if the package won't reach the carrier for a few days, select that future shipping date at purchase, and don't ship before it.

When a Label Won't Buy or Print

When a purchase is blocked, the messages appear on the label screen itself, on the card they concern:

In Shopify adminOpen in your store

1. Orders
2. Shipping labels
3. Create shipping label

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The table covers the messages and symptoms the Help Center documents. A prompt on the form itself, like the one to add an item weight, links to the field it needs.

One message people search for, labels were not purchased, doesn't appear on any of the Help Center pages we read; the closest documented ones are the phone-number message and Carrier temporarily unavailable.

If the Buy shipping label button stays out of reach for another reason, the further causes Shopify documents, an unpaid label bill among them, are in why you can't buy a shipping label on Shopify.

Your First-Label Checklist

Tick these off on your first order. Progress is saved in this browser, so you can stop between steps.

The Bottom Line

Shopify's label flow is short, and most of its pitfalls sit in two places: whether your location can buy labels at all, and the print page.

Frequently Asked Questions