Checkout Blocks vs. Shopify Scripts: What Changed and What to Use Now

For years, Shopify Plus merchants used Shopify Scripts — Ruby-based code running in a sandboxed environment — to customise checkout. Scripts allowed complex discount logic, shipping customisation, and payment method filtering. But they were slow to deploy, hard to debug, and impossible to test without going live.

Why Shopify deprecated Scripts

Scripts ran at request time in a Ruby sandbox, which added latency to every checkout load. They were not version-controlled through the standard Shopify development flow, had no preview capability, and required a developer for every change. Shopify's checkout extensibility model was built to replace all of this.

What replaced Scripts

Shopify Functions replaced Scripts for business logic: discount logic, shipping customisation, and payment filtering are all now handled through Shopify Functions, written in languages like Rust or AssemblyScript. Checkout Extensions — what this app provides — replaced checkout UI customisation: adding, removing, and rearranging visual blocks without touching code.

What this means for your store

If you're still running Shopify Scripts, they were deprecated in August 2025. Migrating to Shopify Functions for discount and shipping logic is a developer task. Migrating checkout UI customisations — trust badges, upsells, banners — to checkout extension blocks is a no-code task you can do today.

The advantage of the new model

Checkout extension blocks can be previewed before publishing, configured without deploying code, and changed by a non-technical team member in minutes. The old Scripts model required a developer to write, test, and deploy a code change every time you wanted to adjust a discount rule. The new model separates business logic from UI in a way that makes both easier to manage.

Migration path

Start by auditing what your current Scripts actually do. Most do one of three things: apply a discount, filter shipping methods, or filter payment methods. These map directly to Shopify Functions equivalents. UI customisations — anything that changes what a customer sees rather than the business logic of the checkout — should move to extension blocks.