Shopify Glossary Terms

Storefront API

The Storefront API is Shopify's public-facing GraphQL API that gives developers access to product, collection, cart, and checkout data. Unlike the Admin API (which manages the backend), the Storefront API is designed to power customer-facing experiences - custom storefronts, mobile apps, and any frontend that needs to display and sell products.

It's the API that makes headless commerce on Shopify possible. When you build a custom frontend with Hydrogen or Next.js, the Storefront API is what your frontend calls to get product data, manage cart state, and initiate checkout.

Key capabilities include product and collection queries, cart management, customer authentication, and checkout creation. It's rate-limited by complexity (not just call volume), so well-designed queries matter for performance.

Think: the API that turns Shopify's backend into the engine for any frontend.

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