MBA vs Fast Simon
An AI search and merchandising suite where upsell and cross-sell are billed by traffic and the recommendation math is a black box.
When MBA wins
You want explainable co-purchase math from your own data, real catalog bundles, flat pricing that does not spike when bots crawl your catalog, and recommendation intelligence that external shopping agents can actually call.
When Fast Simon wins
Your real gap is on-site discovery: multimodal and visual search, autocomplete, and "no results" elimination at enterprise traffic scale, with a polished no-code merchandiser UI and marquee reference logos.
Feature comparison
Color-striped rows favor MBA, Fast Simon, or are even. We mark each so you can scan for the trade-offs that matter to you.
| Feature | MBA | Fast Simon |
|---|---|---|
| Search and on-site discovery | Not our category. MBA does recommendation intelligence and bundles, not autocomplete, visual search, or 'no results' handling. | Best-in-class. Multimodal/visual search, typo correction, synonyms, SKU search, and 'no results' elimination, refined since 2014. |
| Recommendation transparency | Six inspectable mining engines (sql_pairs, fp_growth default, seasonal_cohort, return_aware, profit-aware hui, ai_catalog cold-start), plus a co_occurrence fallback emit support, confidence, and lift on every rule, visible in your admin. | Black-box 'smart algorithm.' No support/confidence/lift surfaced; the methodology (collaborative filtering vs embeddings) is not disclosed. |
| Profit-aware ranking | The hui engine ranks by margin contribution, and Opportunities sort into Top / High-Margin / Emerging / Underperforming Attach. | AI merchandising can rank collections by margin, but upsell/cross-sell widgets optimize for relevance/frequency, not bundle margin. |
| Real catalog bundles vs widgets | Creates actual bundle SKUs with pricing strategy, AI-generated copy, and a draft-to-live lifecycle with attribution tracking. | Upsell/cross-sell render as impression widgets ('Complete the Look', cart FBT). No real bundle SKU is created. |
| Pricing model | Flat and traffic-independent: free $0 tier, Plus $99/mo (or ~$79/mo on annual). No GMV or revenue share, no session meter. | Session-based. Bot traffic and large-catalog crawling inflate session counts, and merchants report surprise jumps (e.g. $99 to $249/mo). |
| Platforms supported | Five storefronts on one API contract: Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Magento, OroCommerce (B2B-native). No Wix. | Shopify/Plus, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Magento, Wix, plus headless. No OroCommerce. |
| Agent / MCP / API access | Agent-native: public REST API, 19 agent-callable MCP tools (18 off Shopify) usable from any MCP host (Claude, Cursor, OpenAI Agent SDK), plus ACP discovery/endpoints external agents can consume. | 'Agentic AI' is three internal Super Agents inside their own dashboard. No public MCP server, no ACP endpoints; the documented API is search/merchandising-admin, not agent-callable recommendations. |
| Where data lives | On Magento/WooCommerce, mining runs locally inside your install. AI is bring-your-own-key. (OroCommerce is a thin hosted client that proxies mining to the hosted backend.) | Vendor SaaS. Behavioral and order data flows to Fast Simon's cloud; no local-only or BYO-LLM-key option. |
| B2B / wholesale | B2B-aware mining on OroCommerce (per-organization context, cross-store insights), reorder-prediction data through the REST API, and a recommendation API for building custom B2B flows. | Consumer/DTC-centric. No quote bundles, contract pricing, company hierarchy, or reorder prediction. |
| Brand scale and social proof | Early footprint; smaller review history. | 600M+ shoppers/month, marquee logos (Steve Madden, Champion, Authentic Brands Group), 4.8 stars / ~345 Shopify reviews. |
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 plansFast Simon
Session-based SaaS billed on monthly visitor sessions, not orders or products. Free at $0 (100 sessions/mo), Starter $39.99/mo (2,000 sessions), Essential $99.99/mo (10,000 sessions), Top Pro $299.99/mo (40,000 sessions), then quote-based Enterprise. Upsell/cross-sell, merchandising rules, and landing pages are gated to the higher tiers.
Visit Fast SimonThe honest verdict
These products solve different problems. Fast Simon is a search and discovery suite; MBA is recommendation intelligence and bundling. If your gap is on-site search, Fast Simon is the stronger, more proven buy and we say so.
Fast Simon's upsell/cross-sell is a black-box impression widget, and the recommendation math (support, confidence, lift) is not exposed. MBA's six engines show the math on every rule, including a profit-aware engine that ranks by margin.
Session-based billing is Fast Simon's most-cited friction: bot traffic and large catalogs inflate session counts and trigger surprise overages. MBA's flat $0/$99 (free tier plus $99 Plus) does not move with traffic.
On agents, the gap is real: Fast Simon's 'agentic AI' lives inside its own dashboard. MBA exposes 19 agent-callable MCP tools (18 off Shopify) plus REST and ACP endpoints so external agents like ChatGPT and Claude can be told what to suggest.
Honest recommendation: pair them. Keep Fast Simon for search and visual discovery; add MBA for explainable, profit-aware bundles, B2B, and the agent-callable layer. You rarely need to rip one out for the other.
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.