Before you start
You need a Shopify Partner account with at least one app. Partner Metrics reads your apps, subscription events and transactions from the Shopify Partner API (read-only, nothing in your Partner account is ever modified) and stores the raw events append-only so every report can be reconstructed as of any date.
Step-by-step
Create your account
Sign up with email and password or with Google. Verify your email address, then create your organization, the workspace that holds your apps, analytics and team. You can rename it any time in Organization → General.
Create a Partner API client in Shopify
In the Shopify Partner Dashboard, open Settings → Partner API clients and create a new API client (only Partner organization owners can do this). Give it a name like “AppVitals” and enable these permissions:
- View financials: grants access to transaction data (charges, refunds, payouts)
- Manage apps: grants access to app events (installs, uninstalls, subscriptions, plan changes)
Save, then reveal and copy the access token. It starts with
prtapi_. Also note your Partner organization ID: the number in your Partner Dashboard URL,partners.shopify.com/<organization-id>/....Connect the Partner API
In AppVitals open Organization → Partner API and fill in:
- Partner organization ID: the number from your dashboard URL
- API key: the
prtapi_token you just created - GraphQL API version: a Partner API version such as
2026-07(the latest stable version is a safe default)
Credentials are stored server-side and are never returned to the browser after saving.
Pick your apps
Open Settings and use Refresh from Partner API to discover your apps, then choose which ones appear on the dashboard. You can also add an app manually by its numeric ID or gid (for example
gid://partners/App/123).Run the first sync
Still in Settings, run a sync. AppVitals fetches your app events and transactions with cursor-based pagination and rebuilds the subscriptions index. The first import covers your full history, so it can take a few minutes for large apps; after that, syncs run automatically on a schedule and only fetch what is new.
What you get after the first sync
- A dashboard with MRR, active subscriptions, installs and growth for the selected apps
- The full report suite: MRR & ARR movement, churn, retention & cohorts, ARPU, LTV, trials, payouts and more (see the metrics glossary for exact definitions)
- A browsable event feed and per-store subscription timelines
- Optional next steps: Slack notifications, GA4 + BigQuery traffic insights and App Store rank tracking