7 best Fast Simon alternatives for Shopify (2026)

The short answer

What is the best Fast Simon alternative for Shopify?

Pick by the job and by what the bill counts.

Fast Simon sits in the last row.

The bill you have now

What does Fast Simon count on your bill?

Fast Simon is an AI search, filter and merchandising app for Shopify, once called InstantSearch+. Its help center says usage is "based primarily on sessions (aligned with Google Analytics)", plus the requests your store sends it and your active products. Large crawls and bots can push that count up, it adds.

Its four App Store plans stop at 100, 2,000, 10,000 and 30,000 sessions a month.

Fast Simon's help center says that if usage keeps running over your plan, it may block your dashboard first, then the search your shoppers use. Catalog updates follow the plan: daily on Free, hourly or on demand on Starter, and as changes happen from Essential.

A separate help article says rules that lift or push down products by stock or sales need its Enterprise Merchandising add-on. Fast Simon's own pricing page puts its shopping agent, hybrid search and visual discovery on Enterprise.

When traffic grows

What happens to each bill when your traffic grows?

Say your store sells 3,000 products in four sizes and grows from 8,000 to 20,000 visits a month, with the catalog unchanged. A third of those visits type a five-letter word into search, and each Fast Simon session counts as one visit.

Algolia's figures count six searches for each typed word: five letters and the results page. With collections, each visit adds two collection pages and two filter taps. The 12,000 stored items, one per size, stay under Grow's 100,000.

Sledge's bill stays at $29.99 at both traffic levels. Besides 10,000 products, Pro caps two counts a month. The Monthly Revenue Boost, the sales Sledge counts as added, stops at $8,000. Conversational search, which reads a typed sentence as filters, stops at 2,000 searches. Past either cap the price holds, and search answers every query but stops reading sentences as filters until the month resets. Past the Monthly Revenue Boost, Growth Intelligence also pauses new suggestions.

Past 25,000 visits on its $39 plan, Rapid Search hands shoppers Shopify's own search until the count resets, unless you upgrade.

The switch

How do you leave Fast Simon without breaking search?

1. Set up the new app on a copy of your theme, during its free trial where it has one, so shoppers see nothing until you publish.
2. Copy your synonym lines into it, and set up pinned, boosted and hidden products again.
3. Publish the copy, then remove Fast Simon, which should take its results page with it. If that page stays, Fast Simon's help center says to install the app again, open its Search Results page tab and switch off "Main Search powered by Fast Simon".
4. Check search and every collection page on the live theme, since Fast Simon can run your collection pages too.

If a developer added Fast Simon to your theme by hand, have them remove it. Anything they built on Fast Simon stays behind, so price the rebuild before you leave.

1 · Searchanise

Searchanise: can your bill follow products, not visitors?

Your traffic doubles in a good month, and you want the search bill to stay put. Searchanise prices search by how many active products you sell, with no count of searches or visits.

At 3,000 products that bill is $39 a month on Essential, at 8,000 visits or at 20,000. Basic, at $19, covers 1,500 products and adds voice search, and Essential covers 7,500 and adds banners. Its own site lists plans up to $349 a month.

Filters, merchandising and AI personalization come on every plan, the free one included, and every plan card lists real-time catalog updates. Paid plans start with 14 days free.

Its free plan covers a development store or a store under 25 products, with Searchanise branding. Any active product on your online store counts unless a tag leaves it out, so the bill climbs as your catalog grows. It also appears in the wider list of Shopify search apps.

Best for: a bill set by product count, not traffic.

2 · Sledge

Sledge: can rules and A/B tests come on the first paid plan?

You want to boost products by stock or sales, and test the change, without a bigger plan first. Sledge is a Shopify search and filter app whose merchandising rules and A/B tests come with every paid plan, at a flat monthly price that doesn't count visits.

A Boost rule can lift up to five products you pick, or follow conditions under "By Attributes and Metrics", the tab for rules by product detail or sales. The conditions run from product type, vendor, tag and price to inventory, new arrivals, on sale, best sellers, most viewed, most clicked, highest conversion rate and highest add-to-cart ratio.

The same merchandising rules, the core of searchandising, can pin products or add one from another collection. They run on collection pages, the results page and the drop-down, and in search a rule can cover every query or only the keywords you pick. You can A/B test a rule, and every paid plan lists "Unlimited A/B tests". Search and collection personalization start on Pro, with an advanced version from Scale.

On a paid plan, "Search Mode" matches by keyword, by meaning or both, with keyword as the default. Synonyms run one way or two way, typed in or uploaded as a CSV file. Sledge pricing runs from $29.99 a month on Pro to $399 on Ultimate. Start the 14-day free trial.

Sledge brings nothing over from Fast Simon. The trial runs without AI search, personalization or Growth Intelligence, and A/B testing is limited until a paid plan starts. A live store gets no free plan. Sledge has no image search and no chat assistant for shoppers, and Pro covers 10,000 products.

Best for: search, filters and merchandising rules on one flat plan.

3 · Rapid Search

Rapid Search: how far do 25,000 visits go for $39?

You are fine paying by visits, just not $299.99 for 30,000 of them. Rapid Search sells 25,000 visits for $39 a month.

For the store in the bill table, that is $27 at 8,000 visits and $39 at 20,000. Its paid App Store plans of $14, $27 and $39 cover 5,000, 12,000 and 25,000 sessions and 100,000 products, after a 14-day free trial. A session, by its pricing page, is "basically a visit".

Every plan includes pinning and custom result ranking, and the listing promises "an always-visible AI search bar" with no theme edits.

A strong ad month still moves you up a plan. The 30% off on its pricing page is a Black Friday offer for the first three months.

Best for: visit-priced search on a small budget.

4 · Doofinder

Doofinder: who answers when shoppers type a whole question?

You want shoppers to ask for help in their own words and get products back. Doofinder adds an assistant they can chat with, from its Pro plan at $186.

The store in the bill table pays $61 on Basic at 8,000 visits and $186 on Pro at 20,000. Doofinder counts a request each time it answers your search box, and results start at the third letter by default, so one five-letter word costs three requests. Catalog updates count too, 10 requests for each 1,000 items it reads. Each month Basic covers 10,000 of them for search, Pro 150,000 and Advanced 400,000.

Basic includes AI guided search, product recommendations and a quiz maker. Advanced, at $436, adds visual search and results personalized to each shopper.

No plan is free, though there is a 15-day trial. Past an allowance, Doofinder recommends a bigger plan instead of selling extra requests.

Best for: an assistant that answers shoppers.

5 · Algolia

Algolia: what does paying per search look like?

You have a developer and would rather pay for searches than for visits. Algolia charges by the search, and its help center counts each letter typed as one.

The free plan allows 10,000 searches a month. Past that, Grow charges $0.50 per 1,000, and Grow Plus charges $1.75, raises the rule limit from 10 to 10,000 and adds AI synonyms and ranking. On the search box alone, the store in the bill table pays $3 a month on Grow at 8,000 visits and $15 at 20,000.

Empty searches and filter taps count too, and so does each collection page when Algolia runs your collections. Its charges can arrive apart from your Shopify invoice, and support is self-service unless you talk to Sales. Its counting rules and setup are on the Algolia alternatives page.

Best for: per-search pricing with a developer on hand.

6 · Klevu

Klevu: when does a team buy search by quote?

You have a merchandising team and a budget set once a year. Klevu, now part of Athos Commerce, sells search, filters and recommendations as plans priced by quote.

Installing the app costs nothing. Athos sells Onsite, Offsite and Complete Discovery on request, so ask what the quote counts before your traffic grows. Klevu may bill you outside Shopify, and by its listing it runs with Shopify Markets and on custom-built storefronts.

Athos has promised Klevu customers a migration path to its new platform, so ask which platform you would join before you sign. If you leave Klevu later, see five Klevu alternatives.

Best for: a merchandising team buying by quote.

7 · Shopify Search & Discovery

Shopify Search & Discovery: what can a free app replace?

Your catalog is small, and the search bill is the line you want gone. Shopify's own app brings filters, boosted products in search and search analytics, and stays at $0 however far your traffic climbs.

Filters stop at 25 for the whole store, and a collection holding more than 5,000 products loses them. Shopify sets the order of search results itself, and your product data and the app's boosts can only nudge it. Shopify has retired synonyms in Search & Discovery, though its listing still names them. How to use the Shopify Search & Discovery app covers what it still does.

Best for: nothing to pay and a small catalog.

Once search is live

Which filter combinations never end in a sale?

Shoppers tick the same two filters, scroll, and leave with nothing. On any paid plan, Growth Intelligence lists the filter combinations shoppers keep applying that never end in a purchase. It counts a combination applied at least 3 times in 7 days without a sale, and reports once 10 of them show up.

Its fixes add up to one "Est. potential" total. Each finding links to the screen in Sledge that fixes it, with the change filled in, and nothing goes live until you save.

Say "black" and "size 10" get picked together 25 times a week and nothing sells. If one shopper in eight would have bought at $80, that comes to $250 a week, about $1,080 a month. Start the 14-day free trial, then pick a paid plan to see your own total.