AI-powered comparisons
CompareKit uses AI to analyze your product information and generate structured, side-by-side comparison tables. When a customer selects products to compare, CompareKit pulls the relevant product data from your store and sends it to the AI, which identifies the key differences and similarities and organizes them into a clear table.
The AI looks at everything available for each product:
- Product descriptions — The main description text on your product pages
- Specifications and metafields — Structured data like weight, dimensions, materials, and compatibility
- Pricing — Current prices and variant-specific pricing
- Variants — Available options like size, color, and style
- Product type and tags — Used to understand what category the product belongs to
The more detailed and consistent your product information is, the better the comparison tables will be. For tips on improving your product data, see the "Tips for better comparisons" section in Getting Started with CompareKit.
Choosing your AI provider
By default, CompareKit uses its own built-in AI to generate comparisons, included with every plan.
Merchants on the Pro plan (and Development stores) can optionally connect their own AI API key to use a provider of their choice. This is called Bring Your Own Key (BYOK), and it unlocks unlimited comparisons — your usage no longer counts against your plan's monthly limit.
CompareKit supports the following AI providers:
- Google Gemini
- OpenAI (GPT)
- Anthropic Claude
- Mistral
- DeepSeek
- Grok (xAI)
- Alibaba Qwen
For detailed setup instructions, links to get your API key from each provider, and information about available models and pricing, see Using Your Own AI API Key (BYOK).
Data sources
CompareKit offers two ways to pull product information:
- Storefront API — Fetches structured data directly from Shopify. This is the fastest and most reliable option and works with all stores, including password-protected ones.
- Product page content — Scrapes the actual rendered content from your product pages. This is useful if you use page builders like Shogun or GemPages that add content not available through the API.
You can switch between data sources on the Settings page. See Customizing Your Compare Widget for details.
Caching
To keep things fast and efficient, CompareKit caches comparison results for 24 hours. This means:
- Repeat comparisons are instant — If another customer compares the same set of products within 24 hours, they get the cached result immediately
- No extra quota used — Cached results still count as one comparison for usage tracking, but the generation is skipped so results appear faster
- Fresh data daily — After 24 hours, the cache expires and a new comparison is generated with the latest product data
If you update your product information and want comparisons to reflect the changes immediately, the cache will naturally refresh within 24 hours.