A free Shopify countdown timer: the cheapest conversion tool you own

Oxify Countdown Timer Bar is a free Shopify app from Oxify (developer “Oxify App”) that adds a countdown timer bar, an announcement bar and urgency popups to product, cart, drawer, landing and collection pages. It runs fixed-date, evergreen, daily and session timers, targets by country, language, customer tag, collection, vendor and device, and supports 30 languages. It is rated 5.0 from 4 reviews, has been listed since April 2023, does not carry the Built for Shopify badge, and lists a single price: Free (listing checked 13 October 2026).

Both have far more reviews: Essential Countdown Timer Bar is rated 5.0 from 1,729 and GSC Countdown Timer Bar 4.9 from 699, against 5.0 from 4 for Oxify. GSC is free and Built for Shopify. Essential is not Built for Shopify; its free plan covers up to 1,000 timer views a month, with scheduled and recurring timers from $6.99 a month and cart timers and geo-targeting from $9.99. Oxify Countdown Timer Bar lists all of those on its free price but has no Built for Shopify badge. Figures from the live listings, 13 October 2026.

A Shopify countdown timer app displays a live countdown to a deadline — a sale end, a product launch, a courier cut-off — on a bar, a product page, the cart or in a popup. Its job is to give a hesitating shopper a dated reason to decide now, so the deadline has to be real.

A fixed-date timer counts down to one real moment and ends for every visitor at once — use it for genuine sales. An evergreen timer starts when each visitor arrives and resets on rules you set, such as per visit — use it for offers that are always available, like a first-order discount. Most stores want both, in different places.

They can be, so be deliberate. A timer that restarts every time the same person reloads is transparently fake and costs you credibility. Set a per-visit reset rule that is long enough to be meaningful, and never use an evergreen timer to imply a store-wide sale deadline that doesn’t exist. Our guide to FOMO countdown timers in the cart covers the FTC rules.

Product page and cart, where decisions are actually made. In the cart, a session-based timer works like a cart reservation timer — a soft deadline on the order itself. A site-wide bar works well for a genuine sale deadline. A timer on the home page alone is decoration.

Pop-ups differ in what the clock does and where they appear. By clock: fixed-date (a sale or launch that ends for everyone), evergreen (resets per visitor), daily recurring (a dispatch cut-off) and session-based (a cart deadline). By place: product page or cart. Oxify’s pop-up shows on product and cart pages, carries the same live countdown as the bar, and can be frequency-capped.

Install the app from the Shopify App Store, turn on its app embed in the theme editor, pick a timer type — fixed-date, evergreen, daily or session-based — choose where it appears, set a date range if the campaign should start and stop on its own, and publish. There is no code to paste and no developer needed; most stores are live in about two minutes.

Yes. The site-wide bar sits above every page — an announcement bar countdown carrying your sale deadline — and you can make it sticky so it stays in view as shoppers scroll. It runs alongside product page and cart timers, all free.

Yes on Online Store 2.0 themes: the App Store listing (checked 13 October 2026) says it is compatible with Dawn, Horizon and all OS 2.0 themes. Check that your own theme is Online Store 2.0 before installing.

We have not published a speed test, so check on your own store: switch the app embed off in the theme editor and compare two PageSpeed Insights runs. What we can verify (11 October 2026): Shopify requires every App Store app to cost a store no more than 10 Lighthouse performance points, this app does not carry the Built for Shopify badge, and on its demo store it loads as one app embed with files from Shopify’s CDN.

The listing’s Data access panel (11 October 2026) shows the app can view store-owner contact details, products and collections, the Online Store theme, and locale and Markets settings, and can edit metaobjects and Shopify admin files. We do not sell data, and everything is deleted on uninstall in line with Shopify’s data-retention requirements. As an app embed, it leaves no pasted Liquid to clean up.

Free. The App Store listing shows a single price, Free (checked 13 October 2026): every feature described on this page is included at no cost, with no usage cap, no app branding on the timer and no paid tier hiding behind it. We also build paid apps — Oxify Cart Drawer & Upsells and Oxify Quantity Breaks — and free apps are how most merchants find us, but you are never required to install them.

We don’t publish a conversion figure for this app. To find out for your store, use a real deadline, place the timer on the product page or cart, and compare it against a similar period or product without one for a few weeks. A fake, endlessly resetting timer is the version that backfires: it trains shoppers to ignore you.

A countdown sales timer is a visible clock counting down to a real deadline, such as the end of a sale or a same-day dispatch cut-off, shown as a bar across the store, a block on the product page or a popup. It works because it turns “later” into a decision; it only stays credible if the deadline is real, which is why fixed-date timers suit sales and evergreen timers suit per-visitor offers.