MBA vs Recomaze AI
A vendor-hosted storefront concierge plus AI-search (AEO/GEO) optimizer that works to get your products mentioned inside ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity answers.
When MBA wins
You want explainable, profit-aware recommendations and real bundles you own, that run first-party inside your store, work for B2B, and that AI agents can directly call.
When Recomaze AI wins
You want to show up inside AI-search answers (ChatGPT/Gemini/Perplexity) and ship a polished shopper-facing chat concierge fast, with near-zero setup.
Feature comparison
Color-striped rows favor MBA, Recomaze AI, or are even. We mark each so you can scan for the trade-offs that matter to you.
| Feature | MBA | Recomaze AI |
|---|---|---|
| AI-search optimization (AEO/GEO) | Not offered. MBA has catalog enrichment but does not track product share-of-voice across ChatGPT/Gemini/Perplexity or rewrite content to win AI-answer placement. | Core, shipped capability: tracks product-level share-of-voice across three AI engines, flags queries lost to competitors, and bulk-rewrites titles/descriptions/Q&A/schema/FAQs to win them back. |
| Shopper-facing experience | Merchant-side and agent-side surfaces (rules grids, Opportunities, bundles, REST/MCP). No consumer storefront chat concierge. | Polished conversational sales agent embedded on the storefront that compares variants and answers shipping/returns/policy questions live from a knowledge base. |
| Why a product was recommended | Inspectable math: six mining engines (sql_pairs, FP-Growth default, seasonal_cohort, return_aware, profit-aware HUI, ai_catalog), plus a co_occurrence fallback return support/confidence/lift on every rule, with synthetic-vs-observed badging. | Black-box AI engine (proprietary 'Unified Commerce Memory Layer'). No published support/confidence/lift and no inspectable co-purchase logic. |
| Cold-start (no order history) | ai_catalog engine generates plausible recommendations from catalog metadata using your own LLM key, but MBA's strongest engines rely on co-purchase history. | Cold-start is the headline: cookieless, no-PII real-time intent inference marketed as needing no historical data. |
| Agent-callable surface (API / MCP / ACP) | Genuinely agent-native: public REST recommendations/substitutions API, a 19-tool MCP server (18 off Shopify) callable from any MCP host, and ACP discovery endpoints external agents can invoke. | Despite 'AI Commerce OS / MCP' marketing, no public recommendations API, no MCP server, and no ACP endpoints. The 'agentic' story is AEO (optimizing content so third-party LLMs find products), not serving recs as agent tools. |
| Where catalog and behavioral data live | First-party option: mining runs locally inside your Magento/WooCommerce install; AI is BYO-key direct to your LLM account. (OroCommerce is a thin hosted client that proxies mining to MBA's backend.) | Vendor-hosted SaaS: catalog and visitor behavior are ingested into Recomaze's cloud. No on-store/local mining option. |
| Real bundles / kits | Creates merchandisable bundle products: SKU, pricing strategy, AI copy, draft-to-live lifecycle, and conversion/attribution tracking. | Suggests items and optimizes content rather than building real bundle products with their own SKU and pricing. |
| 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 (B2C) focused. No RFQ, reorder-cadence, contract pricing, or company hierarchy. |
| Pricing model | Flat and predictable: free $0 tier, Plus $99/mo (or ~$79/mo on annual). No GMV or revenue share. | Free entry tier and a low $39/mo plan are approachable, but metering by 'product optimizations' with per-product overage can scale unpredictably on large catalogs. |
| Track record / install base | Early-install across five platforms; transparent about being newer. | Also early (Shopify ~4-5 reviews, Woo plugin <10 installs), but has a marquee enterprise reference (Newpharma, 45k+ SKUs) and VC backing. |
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 plansRecomaze AI
Tiered SaaS metered by "product optimizations" with per-product overage. Free $0 (50 optimizations/mo, $0.50/extra), Fast Growing $39/mo (100 + AI sales agent), Scaling $109/mo (1,000), Hyper Scaling $399/mo (10,000), Enterprise custom (adds SOC 2, SSO/SAML). The BigCommerce listing also still advertises an older performance-based "pay only for measurable sales" model. Not priced per recommendation call or GMV.
Visit Recomaze AIThe honest verdict
These tools aim at different jobs. Recomaze is about getting your products mentioned by AI search and selling them via an on-site chat concierge; MBA is about explainable, profit-aware recommendations and bundles that AI agents can actually call.
If your priority is AEO/GEO, showing up inside ChatGPT/Gemini/Perplexity answers, Recomaze does a real job MBA does not do at all. We won't pretend otherwise; pairing the two is reasonable.
If you need to audit why a product was suggested (support/confidence/lift), rank by margin, build real bundles you own, or serve B2B, that's MBA. Recomaze's engine is a black box with no B2B story.
If your buyer or legal team cares about data staying first-party, MBA can mine locally inside your store; Recomaze is vendor-hosted and ingests catalog plus behavior into its cloud.
If you're building agent workflows, MBA exposes a public REST API, a 19-tool MCP server (18 off Shopify) for any MCP host, and ACP endpoints. Recomaze markets 'AI Commerce OS / MCP' but exposes no agent-callable surface today.
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.