If you're searching for a Better Reports alternative on Shopify, it's usually for one of two reasons: you want profit and margin answers without building the reports yourself, or you've outgrown spreadsheets and want a dashboard that's opinionated out of the box. This is an honest look at where a custom-report builder fits, where a ready-made profit dashboard fits, and how to choose between them.
What Better Reports is good at
Better Reports is a long-standing Shopify app for building custom reports. Its strength is flexibility: you can assemble reports across orders, products, customers and inventory, schedule them, and export the exact columns you want. If your finance or ops team has specific, non-standard reporting requirements and someone willing to configure and maintain them, a flexible report builder is the right category of tool.
The trade-off is the flip side of that flexibility: you have to build and maintain the reports. A report builder hands you a blank canvas and powerful controls. It doesn't, by design, tell you "your best-selling SKU is your third-worst on margin" unless you construct the report that surfaces it — and keep it current as your catalogue changes.
Where a profit dashboard fits instead
The alternative is an opinionated, ready-made dashboard that decides up front what matters and computes it automatically. That's the lane FirstBridge Analytics sits in — a Shopify analytics dashboard built around profit:
- Gross profit, margin and profit per order out of the box, using your per-SKU cost of goods — no report to build.
- Returns analytics, customer cohorts and LTV as standard views, not custom queries.
- A geographic sales map (country → state → city), reported on profit, not just revenue.
- A free plan, so you can see your real profit before paying for anything.
You give up the build-anything flexibility of a report builder. In exchange, the profit questions most merchants actually ask are answered the moment you install it.
How to choose
Choose a custom report builder (like Better Reports) if:
- You have specific, unusual reporting requirements that standard dashboards won't cover.
- Someone on your team will own configuring and maintaining reports.
- Flexibility matters more than out-of-the-box answers.
Choose a profit dashboard (like FirstBridge Analytics) if:
- Your core question is "which products and channels actually make money?"
- You'd rather not build or maintain reports.
- You want profit, margin, returns and cohorts ready on day one — and a free tier to start.
Plenty of stores end up running a report builder for finance edge-cases and a profit dashboard for day-to-day decisions. They solve different problems.
Try the maths first
Before installing anything, our free Shopify profit margin calculator shows the per-order profit and margin picture in a few seconds. If that makes you want the same view across your whole store automatically, the profit dashboard is the next step. And if your reporting need is genuinely bespoke, you can always have a custom app built.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a free alternative to Better Reports? FirstBridge Analytics offers a free plan covering profit, margin, returns, cohorts and LTV. It's a different category — a ready-made profit dashboard rather than a custom report builder — so compare on whether you want answers out of the box or full report-building control.
What's the difference between a report builder and an analytics dashboard? A report builder gives you a blank canvas to construct any report you can specify; an analytics dashboard decides what matters and computes it automatically. The first is more flexible; the second is faster to value.
Can I use both? Yes — many stores keep a flexible report builder for finance edge-cases and a profit dashboard for daily decisions. They're not mutually exclusive.
Does FirstBridge Analytics calculate profit automatically? Yes. It applies your per-SKU cost of goods to orders and reports gross profit, margin and profit per order after refunds and fees — without you building a report.
Will an analytics app slow my store down? A well-built, admin-embedded analytics app reads data through Shopify's API and doesn't inject storefront scripts, so it has no impact on storefront load speed or Core Web Vitals.