head to head · open source
Medusa vs WooCommerce
Medusa has 37,059 GitHub stars, 5,487 forks, 194 open issues and last shipped yesterday. WooCommerce has 10,574 stars, 10,657 forks, 1,638 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Medusa leads on adoption by 250% (37,059 vs 10,574 stars). Medusa is written in TypeScript under a custom or non-standard licence; WooCommerce is written in PHP under GPL-2.0. Medusa has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, WooCommerce 101%. WooCommerce 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 | WooCommerce | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 37K | ★ 11K |
| License | Custom / other | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.5K | ⑂ 11K |
| 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 WooCommerce if
- You want the WooCommerce feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and WooCommerce 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 WooCommerce
WooCommerce Monorepo Welcome to the WooCommerce monorepo on GitHub. Here you can find all of the plugins, packages, and tools used in the development of the core WooCommerce plugin as well as WooCommerce extensions. You can browse the source, look at open issues, contribute code, and keep track of ongoing development. We recommend all developers follow the WooCommerce development blog to stay up to date with everything happening in the project. You can also follow @DevelopWoo on X (formerly Twitter) for the latest development updates. Getting Started To get up and running within the WooCommerce Monorepo, you…
read the full WooCommerce overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Medusa or WooCommerce more popular?
Medusa has 37,059 GitHub stars and WooCommerce has 10,574. Medusa has the larger community by that measure.
Are Medusa and WooCommerce free?
Both are open source. Medusa has no licence declared in this registry, and WooCommerce is licensed under GPL-2.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Medusa and WooCommerce?
Medusa is written in TypeScript and WooCommerce 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 WooCommerce?
Choose Medusa if you want the larger community (37,059 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose WooCommerce if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.