Medusa vs BigCommerce
Both are alternatives to Shopify. Here's how they stack up — verified facts, no spin.
Also searched as BigCommerce vs Medusa — same comparison, one verdict.
Medusa
TOP PICKA headless commerce engine in TypeScript, MIT, no revenue share.
Medusa is a modular commerce backend built in Node and TypeScript: cart, orders, fulfilment, payments and inventory exposed as APIs, with the storefront entirely your own. There is no transaction fee and no seat count — you pay for hosting. MIT, around 35.6k stars and actively developed. It suits teams that already build in JavaScript and want commerce to be a service inside their own application rather than a platform their application lives inside. The cost is real: you are assembling a stack Shopify hands you complete.
BigCommerce
Shopify's closest hosted rival, with no platform transaction fee.
BigCommerce is a hosted platform in the same shape as Shopify with one meaningful difference: it charges no additional platform fee for using your own payment provider, which for a store negotiating its own card rates is real money. It also allows deeper API access and headless use on lower tiers than Shopify does. It is proprietary and hosted, so the sovereignty position is no better — but if the driver is the payment levy specifically rather than ownership, it addresses exactly that.
Side by side
| Medusa | BigCommerce | |
|---|---|---|
| Sovereignty Score | 93 | 32 |
| Open source | Yes | No |
| Self-hostable | Yes | No |
| Local-first | Yes | No |
| License | MIT | Proprietary (hosted service) |
| Pricing | Free and open source. You pay for hosting and the developers who build the storefront. | Plans from roughly $39/month with no additional platform transaction fee on your chosen gateway. Annual revenue thresholds move you up tiers. |
Medusa is Macrostack's recommended Shopify alternative, so it's our pick here.
Medusa
Strengths
- +MIT with no revenue share — growth does not raise the software bill
- +TypeScript throughout, which is where most web teams already are
- +Modular by design: use the commerce parts you need, ignore the rest
- +Headless, so the storefront is yours entirely
Trade-offs
- −You build the storefront — Shopify gives you one on day one
- −No app store; integrations are code you write and maintain
- −Needs a developer permanently, not just at launch
- −Checkout conversion is your problem to solve and optimise
BigCommerce
Strengths
- +No platform fee for using your own payment provider
- +Strong API and headless support on standard tiers
- +More built in before you reach for paid apps
- +Migration from Shopify is comparatively straightforward
Trade-offs
- −Proprietary and hosted — the ownership problem is unchanged
- −Revenue thresholds force tier upgrades whether you want them or not
- −Smaller app ecosystem and theme market than Shopify
- −Still a platform whose roadmap is not yours
Related alternative guides
Facts verified 2026-08-07. Licenses and pricing change — spotted something out of date? That's a correction we want.