head to head · open source
Medusa vs reaction
Medusa has 37,059 GitHub stars, 5,487 forks, 194 open issues and last shipped yesterday. reaction has 12,400 stars, 2,169 forks, 96 open issues and last shipped 8 months ago. Medusa leads on adoption by 199% (37,059 vs 12,400 stars). Medusa is written in TypeScript under a custom or non-standard licence; reaction is written in JavaScript under GPL-3.0. Medusa has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, reaction 17%. Medusa was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 4 topic tags (commerce, e-commerce, ecommerce, javascript), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| Medusa | reaction | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 37K | ★ 12K |
| License | Custom / other | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-03-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.5K | ⑂ 2.2K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Medusa if
- You weight community size — 37K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick reaction if
- You want the reaction feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and reaction fits your workflow better
About Medusa
Medusa Documentation Website Building blocks for digital commerce Getting Started The fastest way to get started is with Medusa Cloud. It provides a managed environment optimized for Medusa applications, with automated deployments, scaling, and maintenance. Get started on Medusa Cloud To set up a Medusa application locally, visit the Documentation. About Medusa Medusa is a commerce platform with a built in framework for customization that allows you to build custom commerce applications without reinventing core commerce logic. The framework and modules can be used to support advanced B2B or DTC commerce stores…
read the full Medusa overview →
About reaction
Mailchimp Open Commerce (formerly Reaction Commerce) Open Commerce Website Twitter Documentation Discord Discussions Mailchimp Open Commerce is an API first, headless commerce platform built using Node.js, MongoDB, and GraphQL. It plays nicely with npm, Docker and Kubernetes. Features Fast Returns data in split seconds, and faster queries mean faster web pages Proven Open Commerce fuels sites doing 10's of thousands of orders per day with 100's of thousands of products Composable A flexible plugin system allows you to pick and choose which integrations work best for you Multi tenant Host multiple shops in the…
read the full reaction overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Medusa or reaction more popular?
Medusa has 37,059 GitHub stars and reaction has 12,400. Medusa has the larger community by that measure.
Are Medusa and reaction free?
Both are open source. Medusa has no licence declared in this registry, and reaction is licensed under GPL-3.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Medusa and reaction?
Medusa is written in TypeScript and reaction in JavaScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Medusa or reaction?
Choose Medusa if you want the larger community (37,059 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose reaction if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.