head to head · open source
Medusa vs thelia
Medusa has 37,059 GitHub stars, 5,487 forks, 194 open issues and last shipped yesterday. thelia has 882 stars, 319 forks, 19 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Medusa leads on adoption by 4,102% (37,059 vs 882 stars). Medusa is written in TypeScript under a custom or non-standard licence; thelia is written in PHP under GPL-3.0. Medusa has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, thelia 36%. Medusa was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (e-commerce, 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 | thelia | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 37K | ★ 882 |
| License | Custom / other | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.5K | ⑂ 319 |
| 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 thelia if
- You want the thelia feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and thelia 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 thelia
Thelia This is the development repository of Thelia, the open source e commerce framework. Work on Thelia itself here. To create a shop, use the project skeleton instead: thelia/thelia project. About Thelia is an open source framework for building online stores and managing web content. Version 3 runs on: PHP 8.3, 8.4 or 8.5 Symfony 7.4 LTS API Platform 4.3 (standalone) Propel ORM A Twig front office (the Flexy theme) and a Twig back office (the default twig theme) Lexik JWT for API authentication The back office and front office are built with Twig, Symfony UX (Stimulus, Twig Components and Live Components) and…
read the full thelia overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Medusa or thelia more popular?
Medusa has 37,059 GitHub stars and thelia has 882. Medusa has the larger community by that measure.
Are Medusa and thelia free?
Both are open source. Medusa has no licence declared in this registry, and thelia is licensed under GPL-3.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Medusa and thelia?
Medusa is written in TypeScript and thelia 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 thelia?
Choose Medusa if you want the larger community (37,059 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose thelia if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.