Medusa vs Vendure
Both are alternatives to Shopify. Here's how they stack up — verified facts, no spin.
Also searched as Vendure 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.
Vendure
TypeScript commerce with an admin UI you do not have to build.
Vendure sits between Medusa and Saleor: a headless commerce framework in TypeScript and GraphQL that ships with a genuinely usable admin interface, so you are not building order management from nothing. MIT-licensed core with a plugin architecture for extending it. Smaller community than the others here, which is the honest caveat — but the developer experience is well regarded and the admin UI removes a chunk of work that Medusa leaves to you.
Side by side
| Medusa | Vendure | |
|---|---|---|
| Sovereignty Score | 93 | 89 |
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hostable | Yes | Yes |
| Local-first | Yes | Yes |
| License | MIT | MIT (core; some enterprise plugins are commercial) |
| Pricing | Free and open source. You pay for hosting and the developers who build the storefront. | Free and open source core. Vendure Cloud and certain plugins are paid. |
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
Vendure
Strengths
- +Ships with a real admin UI — significant work you do not repeat
- +TypeScript and GraphQL, cleanly architected
- +Plugin system makes extension straightforward
- +MIT core with no revenue share
Trade-offs
- −Smallest community of the four open options here
- −Some enterprise plugins are commercial
- −Still headless — the storefront is yours to build
- −Fewer worked examples when you get stuck
Related alternative guides
Facts verified 2026-08-07. Licenses and pricing change — spotted something out of date? That's a correction we want.