- Short answer
- Not as a current offer — as of September 2026, AI-built stores get 4 months free; old "120-day" guides meant 1MBB, now Basic at $1/mo × 6 (US/CA).
- When the trial starts for a store you claim
- When you claim the store, not when it is created
- Selling during that trial
- Choose a paid plan first; that removes the storefront password
- On Lovable's route
- Claim within 30 days, or Shopify removes the unclaimed development store, Lovable says
- Extending a trial
- Not possible, according to Shopify's free-trial page
- As of
- Shopify's Help Center, 1MBB and pricing pages and Lovable's docs, read September 13–14, 2026
Does Shopify still offer a 120-day free trial?
Not as a current offer. No Shopify page we read on September 13–14, 2026 — Shopify's pricing, free-trial and 1MBB pages, and the Help Center's free-trial, offers, vibe-code partners and AI-store setup pages — offers a 120-day free trial to the public or uses that name for a current trial.
The number still appears in Lovable's documentation, for the trial of stores built with AI, and in older guides, for 1MBB, whose page now describes a different offer. Find your row below: the next section explains the trial for stores built with AI, the one after it 1MBB, and the last one the standard signup.
Three offers behind the 120-day question, as of September 2026
| Offer | Who it covers | Terms on Shopify's page |
|---|---|---|
| Free trial for stores built with AI | New stores you claim from an AI tool or vibe-code partner, including ChatGPT and Claude previews | A free trial, currently 4 months |
| 1MBB | Merchants in the US and Canada only | The Basic plan at $1/month for the first 6 months |
| Standard signup | Stores started through Shopify's own signup | 3 days free, then $1/month for the first 3 months on most plans |
Shopify Help Center free-trial and AI-store setup pages, shopify.com/1mbb and shopify.com/pricing, read September 13–14, 2026.
Which Shopify stores get a 4-month free trial?
New stores that an AI tool or a vibe-code partner creates for you. The same Help Center page covers a store created from a preview in an AI tool, such as the Shopify plugin for ChatGPT or the Shopify connector for Claude.
A new store created with an AI tool or vibe code partner starts on a free trial, currently 4 months.
Lovable's documentation words it differently: claiming a store "starts a separate 120-day free trial on a Shopify subscription". Both sources tie the start to the claim, and Shopify's setup page says so directly: "Your free trial begins when you claim the store, not when the store is created."
Two limits follow. On Lovable's route, its documentation says to claim the store within 30 days, because Shopify removes development stores that stay unclaimed for 30 days — the 30 days count from creation, the trial from the claim. And selling needs more than the trial: Shopify's setup page says that to remove the storefront password and start selling, you choose a paid plan in your Shopify admin.
Whether the tool you have in mind counts is covered in who gets the 4-month trial.
Where did the Shopify 120-day free trial come from?
From Shopify's own 1MBB page. An archived copy from February 7, 2024 still asked how long "the 120-day extended trial for Black entrepreneurs" would be offered. The copy archived on February 9, 2024 no longer carries the phrase.
Older third-party guides still describe it. Several we read on September 13, 2026 present a 120-day free trial for Black-owned businesses or Black entrepreneurs, and some extend it to the United Kingdom.
Shopify's live 1MBB page describes a different offer: the Basic plan at $1/month for the first 6 months, for merchants in the US and Canada only. Read on September 14, 2026, the page no longer uses the number 120.
That is a paid rate on one plan, not a free trial. What 1MBB includes today is in our guide to the $1-for-6-months deal.
Can you extend a Shopify free trial to 120 days?
No — Shopify's free-trial page says extending isn't possible:
It's not possible to extend the duration of your free trial period.
A standard signup gets 3 days free, then $1/month for the first 3 months on most plans, as Shopify's pricing page showed in September 2026, before standard monthly pricing applies. The four-month trial above is tied to how the store is created, not to extending this one.
If the standard offer is yours, our 3-month guide works out when the first full-price bill arrives.
This article was written entirely by AI under human editorial direction. The editor sets the topic and structure, runs multi-stage validation on facts, links, and interactive elements, and verifies the output is useful from a business perspective. All claims are checked against official Shopify sources. Details may change — always confirm critical data at shopify.com.
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