MBA vs Also Bought CBB
The trusted, decade-old Amazon-style "Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought" widget for Shopify, and that's exactly what it is.
When MBA wins
You want to see the actual co-purchase math (support/confidence/lift), rank recommendations by margin, turn them into real bundles and substitutions, run on more than just Shopify, or be callable by AI shopping agents.
When Also Bought CBB wins
You run a single Shopify store and want a proven, set-and-forget "also bought" widget with near-instant human support and the lowest entry price, with zero interest in bundles, B2B, or agent access.
Feature comparison
Color-striped rows favor MBA, Also Bought CBB, or are even. We mark each so you can scan for the trade-offs that matter to you.
| Feature | MBA | Also Bought CBB |
|---|---|---|
| Maturity and social proof | Newer entrant. Shopify listing still pending; several of the five platforms not yet installed on real production stores at scale. | Live since 2016, ~357 reviews at 4.8 stars (94% five-star), from Code Black Belt, a developer with 50,000+ merchants across its portfolio. |
| Time to value / simplicity | Heavier surface: configurable engines, thresholds, mining jobs, AI provider/model dropdowns, bundle draft-to-live. More to learn before it pays off. | One-click install, ~2 minute setup, zero config. A non-technical merchant gets the canonical Amazon widget immediately. |
| Recommendation transparency | Every rule exposes support, confidence, and lift across six inspectable engines: sql_pairs, fp_growth (default), seasonal_cohort, return_aware, profit-aware hui, and ai_catalog cold-start, plus a co_occurrence fallback. | Undisclosed 'smart/intelligent AI' co-purchase mining. No published support/confidence/lift, no explainability, no per-rule audit. |
| Profit-aware ranking | The hui engine ranks by margin/contribution, not just frequency, so the widget can favor what actually makes you money. | Optimizes raw co-purchase frequency only. No margin or contribution weighting. |
| Output: widget vs merchandising | Produces real catalog bundles/kits (SKU, pricing strategy, AI copy, draft-to-live, attribution) plus substitutions/out-of-stock fallbacks with reason codes. | Renders a recommendation widget only. No bundle objects, no discounts, no substitutions. Discounted bundles require their separate FBT CBB app. |
| Agent / MCP / API access | Agent-native across three surfaces: public REST API, a 19-tool MCP server (18 off Shopify) callable from any MCP host (Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, OpenAI Agent SDK), and ACP discovery/endpoints. | No public recommendations API, no MCP server, no agentic-commerce endpoints. Invisible to AI shopping agents. |
| Platform coverage | Five storefronts on one API contract: Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Magento, OroCommerce. Mining runs locally on Magento and WooCommerce; Shopify and BigCommerce run on MBA's hosted backend; Oro is a thin hosted client proxying to the hosted backend. | Shopify only. No BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Magento, or OroCommerce; not for multi-platform or headless setups. |
| Support and uptime reputation | Real product, but no decade-long track record yet; support reputation not proven at the same scale. | Elite, near-instant human support is the #1 review theme (resolutions cited in minutes); Built for Shopify certified with a strong BFCM-traffic uptime history. |
| Cold-start for new stores | ai_catalog LLM engine bootstraps recommendations from catalog metadata using your own provider key (claude-haiku-4-5 / gpt-4o-mini by default), so new stores aren't empty. | Data-mined recs need sales history; new or low-order stores get a sparse widget with no LLM cold-start fallback. |
Pricing snapshot
MarketBasketAnalysis
Flat, transparent plan pricing: Free ($0) and Plus $99/mo flat (or ~$79/mo on annual). One paid plan, everything in it. These are product plans, not per-platform prices, and the same plans apply across every platform. Metered on capability and compute, never on GMV. No revenue share, no add-ons.
See plansAlso Bought CBB
Single flat plan: $19.99/mo (or $199.90/yr, ~2 months off) with a 14-day trial. No free tier, no order/traffic/product limits, no GMV or revenue share. (A stale $9.99 figure floats on third-party listings; the live App Store price is $19.99/mo.)
Visit Also Bought CBBThe honest verdict
If you run one Shopify store and just want the canonical 'also bought' widget with great support for $19.99/mo, Also Bought CBB is a battle-tested, set-and-forget pick, and we'll say so plainly.
It's Shopify-only and a widget, not a merchandising engine: no bundles (without their separate FBT app), no substitutions, no SKUs, and a black-box algorithm with no exposed support/confidence/lift.
MBA's edge is depth, not simplicity: inspectable math across six engines, a profit-aware HUI ranker, real catalog bundles and substitutions, and five platforms on one API contract.
The agentic-commerce gap is the sharpest divide: MBA exposes a 19-tool MCP server (18 off Shopify) (any MCP host) plus REST and ACP endpoints, while Also Bought has no agent surface at all.
Honest tradeoff: they win on maturity, frictionless setup, support, and entry price today; you outgrow them the moment you need to merchandise on margin, sell B2B, run beyond Shopify, or be discoverable by AI agents.
Want the full buyer's deep-dive?
This page is the per-vendor short version. For the long version, read “MBA vs Bloomreach” (8 pages on the enterprise-vs-mid-market trade-off) or “MBA vs the widget cluster” (4 pages of pricing math vs Glood, Rebuy, and PickyStory).
Try MBA on your own store
14-day money-back guarantee on all paid platforms. WP.org free tier on WooCommerce. No credit card required for the free path.