MBA vs Frequently Bought Together CBB
The original 2017 Shopify Frequently Bought Together widget: a cheap, proven, well-localized product-page upsell box, but a single-touchpoint black box next to a multi-engine, multi-platform recommendation layer.
When MBA wins
Pick MarketBasketAnalysis when you want explainable, margin-aware co-purchase math across the full journey (not just the PDP), real catalog bundle SKUs you own, first-party on-store mining, and recommendations any AI agent can call via REST or MCP, across five platforms instead of Shopify only.
When Frequently Bought Together CBB wins
Pick CBB if you run one Shopify store, want a cheap ($9.99/mo), instantly recognizable, well-localized Amazon-style FBT widget live on your product page today, and you do not care how the pairings are computed.
Feature comparison
Color-striped rows favor MBA, Frequently Bought Together CBB, or are even. We mark each so you can scan for the trade-offs that matter to you.
| Feature | MBA | Frequently Bought Together CBB |
|---|---|---|
| Price floor and time-to-value | Free $0 tier, then Plus $99/mo flat (or ~$79/mo on annual). Configure an engine and thresholds, run a mining job, read rules. | Free Starter (3 manual bundles) and $9.99/mo entry; no-code install, auto recs sync in under an hour, no engine concepts to learn. |
| Market validation and Shopify polish | Shopify App Store listing still pending; live on private install. Built for Shopify certification not yet earned. | 4.8 stars across ~1,106 reviews (95% five-star), ~39K active installs, listed since 2017, Built for Shopify certified, 9 languages. |
| 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 emitting support/confidence/lift on every rule, with name+SKU shown in the grids. | Vendor-described co-purchase 'memory graph' marketed as AI trained on 1B+ orders; no exposed support/confidence/lift and no per-pair rationale. |
| Profit and margin awareness | Profit-aware HUI engine plus Opportunities ranking (Top, High-Margin, Emerging, Underperforming Attach) optimize for margin contribution, not just frequency. | Ranks by co-purchase frequency only; no margin or profit-aware ranking. |
| Product-page FBT widget itself | Ships PDP FBT across all five platforms, plus cart, checkout, post-purchase and homepage surfaces; widget styling is functional rather than a 9-year-polished, multi-currency, review-app-integrated showcase. | Best-in-class single PDP widget: one-click add-all, variant selector, 4 discount types, deep theme customization, Judge.me/Loox/Yotpo and Meta Pixel integrations. |
| Journey coverage | Full journey: PDP FBT, cart kit-completion, checkout-extension bundles, post-purchase recs, homepage recs and search re-rank. | Product page only; no cart, checkout, or post-purchase upsell surface. |
| Real catalog bundle SKUs | Creates real catalog bundle/kit SKUs with pricing strategy, AI-generated copy, draft-to-live lifecycle, and conversion/attribution tracking. | Renders an impression widget with add-all-to-cart and stackable discounts; no real bundle SKU or merchandising lifecycle. |
| Agent-native surface | Public REST API, a 19-tool MCP server (18 off Shopify) callable from any MCP host, and ACP discovery/endpoints, so AI shopping agents can call the recommendations. | No public recommendations API, no MCP server, no agentic-commerce endpoints. |
| Platform reach and data privacy | Five platforms on one API contract; mining runs locally inside the merchant install on Magento/WooCommerce (OroCommerce proxies to the hosted backend), with bring-your-own-LLM-key (claude-haiku-4-5 / gpt-4o-mini default, selectable up to claude-opus-4-8 / claude-sonnet-4-6 / gpt-4.1). | Shopify only; order data is processed by the vendor's hosted service, with no on-store or bring-your-own-key option. |
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 plansFrequently Bought Together CBB
Order-volume-tiered SaaS, Shopify-billed monthly. Free Starter (max 3 manual bundles, no auto recs); Professional I $9.99/mo (up to 50 orders/mo), Professional II $19.99/mo (up to 500), Professional III $39.99/mo (500+, priority support). All paid tiers add unlimited bundles, auto recommendations, and a 14-day trial. Scales by monthly order count, not GMV.
Visit Frequently Bought Together CBBThe honest verdict
CBB earns its category-defining reputation: it is cheap ($9.99/mo, real free tier), proven (4.8 stars, ~39K installs since 2017), Built for Shopify certified, and beautifully localized. If all you need is one polished Amazon-style FBT box on a single Shopify product page, it is hard to beat on price and time-to-value, and we say so.
It is a single-touchpoint widget, not a recommendation system: product-page only, Shopify only, and consumer only. The pairings come from an unexposed co-purchase 'memory graph' with no support/confidence/lift, no per-pair rationale, and no margin awareness, and your order data is processed by the vendor's hosted service.
MarketBasketAnalysis is the intelligence layer underneath an FBT widget. Six inspectable engines (including profit-aware HUI) emit support/confidence/lift on every rule, you get real catalog bundle SKUs with attribution across the full journey, and the same intelligence runs across five platforms with first-party on-store mining and bring-your-own-LLM-key.
We are the obvious choice the moment agentic commerce matters: our recommendations are callable over a public REST API and a 19-tool MCP server (18 off Shopify) from any MCP host (plus ACP endpoints), which CBB simply does not offer.
Honest tradeoff: our Plus plan costs more than entry rivals ($99 vs $9.99) and our Shopify App Store listing is still pending, so we lack CBB's review scale and one-click certified-widget simplicity. Choose CBB for a cheap proven single widget; choose us for explainable, margin-aware, multi-touchpoint, multi-platform, agent-ready recommendations you actually own.
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.