Spree Commerce 5.3: New Pricing Engine and Price Lists
Pricing has always been one of the most complex — and most critical — parts of running an eCommerce business: B2B, Wholesale or Regional. Whether you’re a B2B distributor with negotiated contracts, a multi-region brand with localized pricing, or a wholesale operation with volume tiers, the ability to offer the right price to the right customer at the right time directly impacts your revenue and competitiveness.
Until now, handling these pricing scenarios in open-source eCommerce typically required custom development, third-party plugins, or bolting on external pricing services. With Spree 5.3, that changes entirely.
This post is part of a series exploring the major features in Spree Commerce 5.3 open-source eCommerce release. Read the full announcement to learn more.
Introducing Price Lists
The new Pricing Engine in Spree 5.3 is designed to natively support complex pricing models used across B2C, B2B, and global commerce — without modifying Spree core.
At its heart is the concept of Price Lists — configurable sets of pricing rules that can be assigned to customer segments, geographic regions, specific organizations, or individual customer accounts. Price Lists layer on top of your default product prices and are automatically resolved at checkout based on who the customer is, where they are, and when they’re buying.
This means you can run a single Spree instance that serves retail customers at one price, wholesale buyers at another, and VIP accounts at yet another — all from the same admin dashboard, the same product catalog, and the same checkout flow.
What You Can Do with Price Lists
The Pricing Engine supports a rich set of pricing strategies, all configurable from the admin without any code:
Customer Group Pricing — Assign different prices to defined customer segments. VIP customers, wholesale accounts, B2B buyers, or loyalty members can each see prices tailored to their group. This integrates directly with the new Customer Groups feature in Spree 5.3.
Volume Pricing — Define quantity-based pricing tiers with min-max ranges. The more a customer buys, the better the price they get — automatically applied at checkout. This is essential for wholesale eCommerce and bulk purchasing workflows.
Zone-Based Pricing — Set prices based on the customer’s geographic location. This is critical for multi-region eCommerce operations where market conditions, taxes, and purchasing power vary significantly across countries or regions.
User-Specific Pricing — Offer individually negotiated prices for key accounts. In B2B eCommerce, this is a common requirement — enterprise buyers expect contract pricing that reflects their purchasing agreements.
Time-Based Activation — Schedule price lists with start and end dates. Run flash sales, seasonal pricing, or promotional campaigns without manual intervention.
Bulk Editor — Manage prices for hundreds or thousands of products across multiple currencies using a spreadsheet-like UI with keyboard shortcuts. This dramatically reduces the time it takes to update pricing across your catalog.
Why This Matters for Your Business
The Pricing Engine isn’t just a feature — it’s a fundamental shift in what’s possible with open-source eCommerce.
Massive increase in revenue sophistication. Support B2B negotiated pricing, contract pricing, and enterprise procurement workflows out of the box. No more custom code to handle what should be a core commerce capability.
Full multi-region support. Localized taxes, FX adjustments, or market-specific positioning from one unified backend. Whether you’re selling in the US, EU, or Asia, you can manage it all from a single Spree instance.
Lower cost of implementation. Complex pricing scenarios that previously required weeks of custom development are now available as configuration. This translates directly to faster time-to-market and lower total cost of ownership.
Marketplace empowerment. If you’re running a multi-vendor marketplace, vendors can manage their own pricing strategies within rules you define — giving them flexibility while you maintain control.
This is a game changer for multi-region brands, B2B distributors, white-label SaaS eCommerce platforms, and subscription-first businesses.
How It Works with Other Spree 5.3 Features
The Pricing Engine doesn’t exist in isolation. It’s deeply integrated with other Spree 5.3 capabilities:
- Customer Groups determine which price list a customer sees, enabling segment-specific pricing without manual assignment.
- The Events & Subscribers Engine can react to pricing changes — for example, notifying your ERP when a price list is updated or triggering a webhook to sync pricing with an external system.
- Order Adjustments work alongside price lists, so admins can apply additional manual adjustments on top of automated pricing rules.
Together, these features create a powerful, flexible pricing infrastructure that scales from simple retail to complex enterprise scenarios.
Get Started
Explore the full Price Lists documentation to learn how to set up and manage your pricing strategies in Spree 5.3.
What’s Next — Spree 5.4 Preview
Spree 5.4 is already in development and will expand the platform’s reach to JavaScript developers with a new REST API (~10x faster than API v2), a TypeScript SDK with full type safety, and a Next.js Starter Kit for building production-ready headless storefronts.
Spree Enterprise Edition — Support, Scale & Security
Spree Enterprise Edition extends the open-source platform with advanced modules for B2B eCommerce, multi-vendor marketplaces, multi-tenant SaaS, enhanced security, premium support, and managed hosting. If your project demands enterprise-grade reliability and scale, get in touch with the Spree team.
Why Spree 5.3
Spree 5.3 continues the momentum of Spree 5 — the biggest open-source eCommerce release in the platform’s history. With the new Pricing Engine, Events & Subscribers, Customer Groups, Webhooks 2.0, and a modernized Tailwind CSS admin, Spree 5.3 empowers teams to build exactly the commerce experience they need — whether B2C, B2B, marketplace, or composable. Read the full Spree 5.3 announcement for the complete overview.
