I still remember the night I almost quit dropshipping. It was 3:00 AM on a Tuesday in 2021. I was staring at a competitor's Shopify store that looked like it was built in five minutes, yet their Facebook ads had 20,000 likes. I was burning cash on my own ads for a similar product and getting zero sales. I felt like I was playing poker against someone who could see my cards while I was blindfolded. I desperately wanted to know: Are they actually making money, or is it all fake engagement?
That desperation led me down a rabbit hole of source code inspection and eventually to PPSPY. The moment I installed it and saw the "Live Sales" ticker populate on their site, the fog lifted. They weren't selling the main product I thought they were; they were making a killing on a random upsell I had completely ignored. That insight saved my Q4. Whether you are a dropshipper trying to validate a niche or a brand trying to benchmark against competitors, you need visibility. Accessing data through tools like ppspy is the difference between guessing and knowing.
What Is PPSPY? (More Than Just a Tracker)
If you navigate to ppspy.com, you will see it marketed as a "dropshipping spy tool." But that undersells it. PPSPY is essentially an X-Ray machine for any Shopify store. It works by reading the public data that Shopify stores emit (often unintentionally) and aggregating it into a readable dashboard.
The Core Function: It is primarily a ppspy chrome extension. You install it, pin it to your browser, and whenever you visit a Shopify URL, the icon lights up. Clicking it reveals:
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Sales Estimates: How much revenue they generated recently.
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Product Launch Schedule: When they uploaded their last item (crucial for seeing if a store is active).
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Theme Detector: Which Shopify theme they are using.
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App Detector: What plugins they are paying for (e.g., Loox Reviews, Klaviyo).
Opinion Statement: I honestly believe that the "App Detector" feature is more valuable than the sales tracker. If I see a store paying for expensive enterprise apps, I know they are generating serious cash. Sales numbers can be faked or estimated poorly, but nobody pays $200/month for a plugin unless they have the revenue to support it.
Setting Up the PPSPY Chrome Extension
Getting started is straightforward, but there are a few nuances to the ppspy login process in 2026. You don't need a paid account to get basic data, but the free version has limits.
How to Install:
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Go to the Chrome Web Store and search for ppspy extension.
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Click "Add to Chrome."
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Crucial Step: You must pin the extension to your toolbar. It doesn't auto-open.
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Visit any Shopify store (e.g., Gymshark, ColourPop, or a random dropshipping site).
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Click the icon.
The Overlay: In the past, you had to click the icon to open a sidebar. Here’s where it gets interesting... The 2026 update often places a "floating bar" on the screen. Some users hate this. If it annoys you, go to the extension settings and toggle off "Show Floating Bar." I keep it on because it gives me a quick "Live Sales" pulse without clicking anything.
How to Use PPSPY to Spy on Shopify Stores
Knowing how to use ppspy effectively requires looking beyond the big numbers. Most rookies look at "Total Products" and leave. You need to dig into the "Live Sales" and "Best Selling" tabs.
The "Live Sales" Ticker: This feature attempts to show you sales as they happen.
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How it works: It monitors the store's inventory levels. If stock drops from 100 to 99, PPSPY records a sale.
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The limitation: If the store has "infinity stock" set (common in dropshipping), this feature breaks.
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My Strategy: I leave the tab open for 20 minutes while I eat lunch. If I see consistent sales popping up, I know the store is healthy. If it’s dead silent, their ads are likely turned off.
Honest Failure: In 2023, I was tracking a competitor selling "Galaxy Projectors." PPSPY showed zero sales for three days. I assumed the trend was dead and didn't launch my store. Turns out, they had simply blocked the crawler that PPSPY uses. Two weeks later, another competitor launched and made six figures. Lesson: A lack of data does not always mean a lack of sales. It might just mean good security.
Is PPSPY Accurate? The Million Dollar Question
The most frequent question I get is: is ppspy accurate? Or more specifically, how accurate is ppspy compared to actual backend data? I have run tests on my own stores to verify this.
The Verdict: It is roughly 80-90% accurate on stores that manage inventory correctly. It is 0% accurate on stores that hide their inventory data.
Factors Affecting Accuracy:
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Bundles: If a customer buys a "3-Pack," PPSPY might count it as 1 unit or 3 units depending on how the variant is set up.
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Returns: It sees the sale, not the refund. Revenue estimates are always "Gross," never "Net."
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Time Zomes: The shopify sales tracker extension resets its "Daily Sales" counter based on the store's time zone, which might differ from yours, causing confusion.
Parenthetical Aside: (I once panicked because PPSPY showed my own store had $0 sales for the day. I checked my Shopify dashboard, and I had $500. It turned out the extension just hadn't synced with the server yet. Never treat spy tools as your accounting software.)
Sourcing Smarter with Closo Demand Signals
PPSPY is reactive. It tells you what has sold. But by the time you see a competitor making money on a product, the market is often already saturated. You want to be the store everyone else is spying on. To do that, I use Closo Demand Signals.
How Closo helps me predict demand across categories 6 weeks ahead is by analyzing search intent velocity across the web, not just sales on one platform.
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The Scenario: In early 2025, PPSPY showed everyone selling "generic massage guns." The market was crowded.
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The Signal: Closo showed a massive spike in search interest for "Red Light Therapy Belts" for back pain.
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The Action: While my competitors were fighting over massage gun crumbs, I sourced Red Light Belts.
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The Result: I launched the store and had a 4.0 ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) because I was the only one there. PPSPY users didn't see my store until I had already scaled.
I use Closo to automate my market research – saves me about 3 hours weekly of chasing yesterday's trends.
Shopify Spy Tools: Analyzing the Apps
One of the most underrated features of ppspy is the "Apps" tab. Why does it matter what apps a store uses? Because apps reveal strategy.
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Klaviyo: They are serious about Email Marketing.
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Postscript: They are aggressive with SMS.
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ReCharge: They are a subscription-based business (High Lifetime Value).
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Loox / Yotpo: They prioritize social proof.
My Workflow: When I find a successful store, I don't just copy their product. I copy their infrastructure. If a store doing $100k/month uses "Frequently Bought Together," I install that immediately. They have already done the A/B testing for me.
Best Shopify Sales Spy Alternatives
While ppspy is great, it isn't the only shopify spy tool on the block. Sometimes you need a second opinion.
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Koala Inspector:
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Pros: Better at revealing the "Theme" and "Find Suppliers" (linking to AliExpress).
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Cons: The free version is very limited on sales data.
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Commerce Inspector:
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Pros: Deep historical data. Shows "Top Products" over time.
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Cons: Very expensive for the premium tiers.
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AliHunter:
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Pros: specifically designed to find the AliExpress supplier for the product.
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Cons: The UI is cluttered.
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Comparison Table: PPSPY vs. The Rest
Managing Inventory with Closo 100% Free Crosslister
Once you use ppspy to identify a winning product and launch it on your Shopify store, you shouldn't stop there. If the product is a winner, it will sell on eBay and TikTok Shop too. But managing three inventories is a nightmare.
I use the Closo 100% Free Crosslister to expand my reach.
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The Workflow: I import my winning product from Shopify into Closo.
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The Push: Closo pushes the listing to eBay, Poshmark, and Depop instantly.
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The Sync: If I sell out on Shopify, Closo pulls the listing from the other sites so I don't oversell.
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The Benefit: I capture the "marketplace" traffic without doing any extra work.
Spy on Shopify Stores: The Ethical Grey Area
Is it ethical to spy on shopify stores? This is a debate I see constantly on Reddit. My stance: It is market research. Brick-and-mortar stores have done this for centuries. Walmart executives walk into Target to see what is on the end-caps. Burger King watches McDonald's pricing. PPSPY just digitizes this process.
However, there is a line. Do not rip off their images. Do not copy their copywriting word-for-word. Use the data to find the opportunity, then build a better offer. If you just clone a store, you will fail because you don't understand why it works.
Analyzing Traffic Sources with PPSPY
Sales data is the "What." Traffic data is the "How." PPSPY recently integrated traffic analysis (similar to SimilarWeb). It shows you if the store's traffic is coming from:
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Search (SEO): Long-term, stable business.
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Social (Facebook/TikTok): Ad-driven, volatile business.
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Direct: Strong brand loyalty (or email marketing).
Now the tricky part... If you find a store with 90% "Search" traffic, do not try to dropship that product with Facebook Ads. They are winning because they rank on Google. You cannot replicate their success with paid interruptions. Only copy stores that have high "Social" traffic if your strategy is paid ads.
Common Questions I See
People always ask me... Is PPSPY safe to use?
Yes, it is safe. It is a Chrome extension that reads public data. It does not hack the store or access private admin data. It simply scrapes the frontend HTML and JSON files that the store sends to every visitor's browser. It won't get your Shopify account banned.
Common question I see... Why does PPSPY show "No Sales" on a big store?
Shopify allows store owners to turn off the public inventory data. If a store owner goes into their settings and disables the visibility of stock levels, PPSPY cannot calculate sales via the "inventory drop" method. It effectively blinds the tool. This is common with 7-figure brands who know about these spy tools.
People always ask me... Can I use PPSPY on mobile?
Generally, no. Chrome extensions do not work on the mobile Chrome app (iOS or Android). You need to be on a desktop or laptop to use the full features of the extension. There are some workarounds using browsers like Kiwi (Android), but the user experience is clunky.
Conclusion
PPSPY is a tool that belongs in every e-commerce seller's toolkit. It demystifies the competition. It turns "I think they are doing well" into "I know they sold 45 units yesterday." But remember, it is just a compass, not a map. It tells you where North is, but it doesn't tell you how to navigate the terrain. Don't rely on it blindly. Verify the data, test small, and focus on building your own brand value.
My honest assessment is that you should install the free version today. Go to five of your favorite brands and just look at their "App List." That insight alone is worth the install.
If you are ready to move from reacting to competitors to predicting the market yourself, use the Closo Seller Hub to access predictive demand data.
For more on building a robust selling machine, read our Listing Management Guide
And if you want to know which products will be trending before PPSPY even picks them up, check out Trending Products Forecast 2026
