How we rank

Where the data comes from

Every rating, count, pricing label and — where the marketplace publishes one — vendor name in this index comes from a public marketplace listing. Nothing is estimated and nothing is supplied by a vendor.

• Shopify figures come from App Store listings, which publish a star rating and a review count.
• WooCommerce figures come from the WordPress.org plugin API, which publishes a rating, a review count, the number of active installs, and the date of the last release.
• BigCommerce figures come from App Marketplace listings, which publish a star rating, a review count and a pricing type — but no vendor name, which is why BigCommerce cards name the app and stop there.

Where a platform gives us a better signal, we rank on it. Active installs say more than a review count — a plugin running on 300,000 sites has met more themes and more edge cases than any number of ratings conveys. And a plugin that has not shipped in two years is a liability whatever its score, which is why the last-updated date appears on WooCommerce entries.

The numbers are only comparable inside a marketplace, never across them. BigCommerce's whole catalogue is a fraction of Shopify's, so its leading apps carry review counts that would place them mid-table on Shopify. We never rank apps from different platforms against each other, and neither should you.

The whole index was last checked on 2026-10-26. That date appears on every page that shows numbers, because App Store ratings move constantly — an app gaining a thousand reviews in a quarter is normal. Always click through to the live listing before you install. We link to every one of them.

What we judge, and how

Ratings and review counts are facts. Everything else — the ranking order, the "best for" line, the pros and the trade-offs — is editorial judgement, and here is the basis for it.

Review weight over raw rating. A 5.0 from 40 merchants tells you much less than a 4.9 from 9,000. On Shopify, where nearly everything sits between 4.7 and 5.0, rating alone is close to meaningless and the size of the evidence base does all the work. On the smaller marketplaces the spread is wider and the average is worth reading — but the counts are smaller too, so we say on the page how much evidence is actually behind a number.

An honest empty space beats a padded list. Some categories on the smaller marketplaces have one app worth ranking, not five. Where that happens we publish the one and say why, rather than filling the page with listings that have four reviews between them.

Scope honesty. An app doing one job well is ranked on that job. A suite covering eight jobs is judged on whether the consolidation is worth the depth you give up — not credited for feature count.

Pricing model, not just price. "Free to install" usually means usage-based billing that scales with your orders. We say so every time, because it is the single most common unpleasant surprise in this category.

Install model. Apps built as theme app extensions install and uninstall cleanly. Apps that inject script tags or edit your theme files leave residue behind. Where we know the difference, it counts.

Page weight — and what we do not claim about it. Third-party JavaScript is the leading cause of poor Core Web Vitals on an ecommerce storefront, and it is the thing we would most like to put a number on. We do not, because we cannot do it honestly from public data: what an app costs your storefront depends on your theme, which of its features you switch on, and whether it loads on every page or one. Measuring that properly means installing each app on a real store and profiling it, and until we have done that for an app we will not print a figure for it.

So where page weight enters our judgement, it enters as architecture rather than arithmetic: whether an app is built as a theme app extension or injects script tags, whether one app genuinely replaces three, and whether a vendor's suite shares a runtime or ships four copies of it. Those are things a listing and a plugin's own source tell you. When we publish measured numbers, they will carry the store, the theme and the date they were taken, like every other number here. Until then, measure your own stack in ten minutes — a DevTools network trace of your own product page is the only figure that describes your storefront anyway.

What the picks mean

A Top pick is the app we would install first in that category without more information about the store. The other labels — Best free, Best value, Best at scale, Best all-in-one and so on — mark apps that win on a specific axis rather than overall. An app with no label is a legitimate option that did not win a category; it is not a warning.

When an app is removed

Marketplaces delist apps, and it happens more often than you would think — a vendor shuts down, an acquisition retires a product, or a listing is pulled. An index that keeps recommending software nobody can install is worse than no index at all, so a delisted app is dropped from every ranking, category count and comparison table on the day we confirm it.

We keep its review page. Old listicles go on recommending apps that have been gone for years, and someone arriving from one deserves a straight answer rather than a dead end. That page says what happened, carries the date we confirmed it, keeps the last figures we recorded while the listing was live — clearly marked as historical — and points at what we would install instead.

When the app was the top pick in its category, another app takes the pick on the merits. We do not promote whatever is next by review count, because the second-most-reviewed app in a category is frequently not doing the same job as the first.

What we do not do

No affiliate links. Every link out of this site — to the Shopify App Store, the WordPress.org directory or the BigCommerce App Marketplace — is a plain link. We earn nothing if you install anything.

No sponsored placements. No vendor can pay to appear here, to rank higher, or to have a trade-off removed. Nobody has been offered the option.

No vendor-supplied copy. We do not publish press releases, and we do not send drafts to vendors for approval before publishing.

Our own apps

We publish our own widget apps, and the first one shipped in September 2026. It competes directly with apps ranked on this site, so here is exactly how that is handled.

Our apps are never ranked in the index. They do not appear in a category ranking, a comparison table, or any count of apps we index — the rankings are built as though they did not exist. They live on the Our widgets page, and the category page they compete in carries a note saying we make one and left it out.

That note is deliberate. Keeping quiet would satisfy the promise and miss the point of it: if you are choosing between bundle apps, the fact that the person doing the ranking sells one is something you are entitled to know before you read the order, not after.

That separation is the whole basis on which this index is worth reading. If we ever break it, tell us — the address is below.

Corrections

If a number here is wrong or out of date, or an assessment is unfair, tell us at hello@bestwidgetapps.com and we will fix it and note the change. Facts are correctable by definition; opinions we will defend or revise on the argument.