Does Shopify Digital Downloads have a bandwidth or download limit?

Does the Digital Products app limit bandwidth or file size?

Not bandwidth: the app's Help Center page says “There is no bandwidth limit for downloads.” Shopify's digital products overview adds that “There are no additional fees for selling digital products on your online store,” and the app's App Store listing gives its pricing as Free. For the store itself, see whether any Shopify plan has a bandwidth cap.

Files do have ceilings: one for each variant, and per-file ones for a file added from the product page or picked in a chat.

Source: Shopify Help Center, both pages read October 31, 2026.

A variant can hold several files or a .zip archive, but not folders. A file over 500 MB is past the product-page ceiling, so add it in the app instead. If it won't fit there either, the same help page documents a second route: sell a link to content on a supported provider — Google Drive, Dropbox and Vimeo are on its list — and “nothing is uploaded.” Shopify warns that “The destination URL isn't monitored,” and each attempt to open it “still counts toward the variant's access limit.”

Neither the app's Help Center page nor Shopify's file-storage page, both read October 31, 2026, says whether these files use your plan's storage. For the plan quota itself, see how much file storage a Shopify store gets.

These are the limits of Shopify's own app. Its page on selling services or digital products says “Other third-party apps are also available” and tells you to “Check your specific app's docs” — for a different delivery app, see how the delivery apps compare.

How does the access limit, formerly the download limit, work?

Shopify's Digital Products help page now calls this setting the access limit: it “controls the number of times that a customer can download a file or open a link.” The same help page called it the download limit when we read it on September 24, 2026.

“By default, all variants are set to unlimited,” so nothing runs out until you set a number, and with several variants “you need to set an access limit for each variant individually.”

The number is not a per-customer total: “The access limit is counted for each link that a customer receives, not for the customer overall.” All the files in a variant share one count, and each link you sell has its own. Resending the download email keeps the existing count; an update email or a share link starts a new one, so each one “gives the customer a full new allowance.”

Where do you set the access limit?

In your Shopify admin, open Apps > Digital Products and click the product. In the variant's assets section, change Access limit from Unlimited to Limited, enter a number in Times per customer and save — then repeat for each variant you want capped. Despite the field's name, the count runs per link, not per customer.

In Shopify adminOpen in your store

1. Apps
2. Digital Products

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Timing differs by setting. A change to the access limit “applies to all past and future sales for that variant,” so it reaches buyers who already hold a link, whereas a change to the delivery method “applies only to orders that are paid after you save the change.”

A product created from a chat in an AI tool such as Claude or ChatGPT still gets its access limit in the app: Shopify's page on selling digital products from an AI tool says access limits “are configured in the Digital Products app rather than from your chat.”

What can you do when a buyer runs out of downloads?

Shopify's help page gives three things you can do for a buyer from the app, and they differ in who else they affect.

• Resend download email, on the order in the app, won't help: “The resent email contains the same links, so earlier uses still count toward the access limit.” It is for a lost email.
• Copy download link on the product gives you new share links that “start at 0 uses.” Send one to that buyer — of the three, this is the one aimed at a single person. Share links aren't tied to a customer or order, “anyone with a share link can download the file or open the link, up to the access limit,” and they don't expire.
• Raising the variant's access limit reaches every past and future sale of that variant.

Neither the app's Help Center page nor its App Store listing, both read October 31, 2026, shows a button that resets the count on a link a buyer already holds, or describes what a buyer sees once the limit is used up. For a product sold as a link, the download page shows “The number of downloads remaining, if you set an access limit.”

To cut access instead, Deactivate on the order blocks that buyer's link until you click Activate. Shopify's notes on products sold as links add that “Deactivating doesn't affect share links,” so a share link you already sent keeps working.

To limit file sharing, see how to protect your digital files.

What does the app record about each download?

Every order in the app's Orders section carries “a history of completed downloads and link opens,” and for each one it lists “the date, the customer's IP address, the referrer, and the user agent.” The Orders list shows the number of downloads per order, and Export all orders emails a link to a .zip holding a CSV with that count; the link expires after 7 days.

That history matters in a dispute. For a digital product disputed as not received, Shopify's Responding to chargebacks and inquiries page asks for “Access logs: Records showing the customer logged in, downloaded, or used the product.” With Shopify Payments, the evidence added automatically “comes only from your Shopify admin”; that list names no download log, and the page puts “Access or usage logs for digital products and services” among the evidence you add yourself.

For a PayPal dispute, see what counts as proof of delivery for a download.