Shopify B2B subscriptions: what combines and what breaks.

Selling plans never reach a B2B checkout or a draft order. This chapter maps the exact incompatibilities and the supported patterns for recurring B2B orders on Shopify.

Do subscriptions work with Shopify B2B?

No. Shopify states the incompatibility directly, in both its developer and merchant documentation. The developer docs say: "B2B doesn't support purchase options, such as subscriptions, pre-orders, and try before you buy." The Help Center lists subscriptions among the features that cannot be used with B2B checkout, alongside accelerated checkouts (Shop Pay, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Amazon Pay), local delivery, pickup points, and tipping.

The block covers every subscription app built on selling plans, including Shopify's own Subscriptions app. Selling plans are the platform primitive underneath all of them, and a selling plan cannot enter a B2B purchase path. A logged-in B2B customer always receives a B2B checkout, so no theme change, app setting, or checkout customization lets a company buyer complete a purchase with a subscription in the cart.

That is the headline. The useful detail sits in the edges: what still combines, which specific pairings break, and what the supported patterns for recurring B2B orders look like.

What combines: where each system works

Subscriptions and B2B are both mature Shopify surfaces. They simply never overlap on the same order.

Where subscriptions work

• Sales channels. Subscription products are supported only on the online store, Shopify POS, the Shop app, and custom storefront channels. All of these are D2C surfaces.
• Two models. Shopify selling plans support pay-per-delivery ("subscribe and save") and pre-paid subscriptions, with pricing, billing, and delivery policies carried on the plan.
• Gateways. Subscription billing runs on Shopify Payments, PayPal Express, Authorize.net, Adyen, and Stripe, with availability varying by region.

Where B2B works

• All plans. B2B is available on Basic, Grow, Advanced, and Plus as of the 2026 rollout. Companies and company locations, quantity rules and price breaks, net payment terms, vaulted credit cards, checkout to draft, easy reorders, PO numbers, quick order lists, the Trade theme, and Shopify Flow automations are on every plan.
• Plus additions. Shopify Plus keeps unlimited B2B market catalogs (other plans cap at 3 active), direct company and company-location catalogs, deposits, partial payments, and payment requests per fulfillment.

The same store can run both programs for different buyers. D2C customers purchase subscriptions through the standard checkout; company buyers get B2B checkout with catalog pricing and terms. The two paths coexist in one store and never intersect on one order.

Which subscription and B2B combinations break?

Every pairing below is documented by Shopify. Check this ledger before planning any b2b subscription or recurring-billing program on a B2B store.

The last row is not a subscription rule; it is a reminder that B2B checkout carries constraints of its own. The full inventory lives in the Constraints Ledger.

Why is the incompatibility structural?

Three mechanics collide, which is why no app setting works around the block.

1. The billing model. A subscription renews when an app raises a billing attempt against a billing cycle; success charges a vaulted payment method and creates an order. B2B revenue usually defers payment instead: the order ships on Net 30 or Net 60 and settles later against an invoice. Shopify's Functions documentation states the conflict plainly: payment terms are incompatible with subscriptions. One model charges a stored card every cycle, the other invoices on terms, and one order cannot do both.
2. Draft orders. B2B leans on draft orders. Checkout-to-draft review flows and rep-created orders both produce drafts, and subscriptions cannot be used on draft orders. That closes the second B2B purchase path to selling plans.
3. Pricing context. B2B prices resolve through catalogs and price lists attached to a company location. Selling-plan pricing lives on the plan itself. Shopify documents no path where a subscription bills at a company's contract price.

For teams evaluating b2b subscription billing or b2b subscription management on Shopify, the practical conclusion: model the recurring relationship as recurring orders, not as subscription contracts.

How do B2B customers place recurring orders without subscriptions?

Shopify's supported answer is reorder tooling plus the Admin API. Here is the full menu.

Line-item ceilings apply to whichever pattern you pick: B2B orders have a maximum of 500 line items, and draft orders a maximum of 200.

The app pattern: scheduled draft orders

The documented way to automate a recurring B2B order is draftOrderCreate with a purchasingEntity, so the order carries the company, location, and contact. Catalog pricing and payment terms then apply on their own, and the app sends the invoice with draftOrderInvoiceSend or completes the draft with draftOrderComplete.

mutation CreateRecurringB2BDraft($input: DraftOrderInput!) {
  draftOrderCreate(input: $input) {
    draftOrder { id invoiceUrl }
    userErrors { field message }
  }
}

With variables scoping the purchasing entity:

{
  "input": {
    "purchasingEntity": {
      "purchasingCompany": {
        "companyId": "gid://shopify/Company/1",
        "companyLocationId": "gid://shopify/CompanyLocation/1",
        "companyContactId": "gid://shopify/CompanyContact/1"
      }
    },
    "lineItems": [
      { "variantId": "gid://shopify/ProductVariant/349", "quantity": 24 }
    ]
  }
}

An app running this on a schedule reproduces the useful half of a subscription, the order arriving on time, without the incompatible half, card billing per cycle. The invoice settles on the company's terms like any other B2B order.

Can subscriptions and B2B run in one store?

Yes, for different buyer types. A store can sell selling-plan subscriptions to D2C customers and run a full B2B program for company buyers at the same time. Three details keep the setup clean:

• Hide subscription widgets from B2B buyers. Selling plans cannot be purchased through B2B checkout, so showing the widget to a logged-in company buyer creates a dead end. Liquid exposes customer.b2b? for exactly this:

{% unless customer.b2b? %}
  {% if product.selling_plan_groups.size > 0 %}
    {% render 'subscription-widget', product: product %}
  {% endif %}
{% endunless %}

• Watch subscription-only products. A product sold only on a selling plan, with no one-time purchase option, can be sold only on the Online Store channel.
• Confirm app compatibility per app. Shopify's B2B considerations page lists some third-party apps as incompatible and tells merchants to contact the developer directly; B2B support is never guaranteed. Note the uninstall behavior too: selling plans and their associated records are deleted 48 hours after the app that created them is uninstalled, while subscription contracts and customer payment information persist.

Where B2B Supercharge fits

B2B Supercharge does not attach subscriptions to B2B checkout; nothing can. Its Buying Tools module makes the supported pattern, repeat ordering, fast:

• Saved carts and lists. Carts organized by job, site, or season, shared across the buyer's team, reordered in one click.
• Quick order pad. SKU-and-quantity entry with recents and favorites one tap away, for buyers who already know what they need.
• CSV upload. Buyers drop the spreadsheet they already keep; rows validate on the way in and errors fix inline.

Alongside it, the Account Tools module lets buyers search their entire order history by status, PO, SKU, or location, so finding the order to repeat takes seconds. See the limitations-to-fixes index for how each module maps to a native gap, or return to the full Shopify B2B Deep Dive for the rest of the platform.

Frequently asked questions