head to head · open source
Medusa vs Shopware
Medusa has 37,059 GitHub stars, 5,487 forks, 194 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Shopware has 3,465 stars, 1,217 forks, 1,356 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Medusa leads on adoption by 970% (37,059 vs 3,465 stars). Medusa is written in TypeScript under a custom or non-standard licence; Shopware is written in PHP under MIT. Medusa has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, Shopware 35%. Medusa was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (ecommerce), 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 | Shopware | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 37K | ★ 3.5K |
| License | Custom / other | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.5K | ⑂ 1.2K |
| 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 Shopware if
- You want the Shopware feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and Shopware 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 Shopware
Shopware Modern open source e Commerce Shopware 6 is an open headless commerce platform powered by Symfony 7 and Vue.js 3 that is used by thousands of shops and supported by a huge, worldwide community of developers, agencies, and merchants. If you like Shopware 6, give us a ⭐️ on GitHub! 🙋♂️ Be part of shopware! We are hiring! 🙋 🌎 Discover our website 🧩 Browse more than 3,100 extensions in our community store 📖 Learn how to develop extensions and everything else about the tech behind Shopware via our developer docs. 🉐 Translate Shopware or help by contributing to existing languages 🛠 Report bugs in…
read the full Shopware overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Medusa or Shopware more popular?
Medusa has 37,059 GitHub stars and Shopware has 3,465. Medusa has the larger community by that measure.
Are Medusa and Shopware free?
Both are open source. Medusa has no licence declared in this registry, and Shopware is licensed under MIT. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Medusa and Shopware?
Medusa is written in TypeScript and Shopware in PHP. 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 Shopware?
Choose Medusa if you want the larger community (37,059 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose Shopware if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.