head to head · open source
Medusa vs yas
Medusa has 36,356 GitHub stars, 5,260 forks, 194 open issues and last shipped yesterday. yas has 1,987 stars, 730 forks, 156 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. Medusa leads on adoption by 1,730% (36,356 vs 1,987 stars). Medusa is written in TypeScript under a custom or non-standard licence; yas is written in Java under MIT. Medusa has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, yas 37%. 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 | yas | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 36K | ★ 2.0K |
| License | Custom / other | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Java |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-06-12 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.3K | ⑂ 730 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Medusa if
- You weight community size — 36K 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 yas if
- You want the yas feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and yas fits your workflow better
About Medusa
Medusa is an open source e commerce framework built with Node.js and TypeScript that enables developers to construct custom commerce applications without rebuilding core commerce logic. It provides modular, pluggable backend services for products, orders, inventory, payments, and customer management, all exposed via REST and GraphQL APIs. Medusa lives in the JavaScript/Node.js ecosystem and targets developers who need full control over their storefronts and business logic while relying on battle tested, open source primitives.
read the full Medusa overview →
About yas
YAS (Yet Another Shop) is a sample microservices e commerce application written in Java, built to practise how a typical microservice system is assembled, and it is aimed at Java and Spring Boot developers who want a realistic multi service codebase to study, run locally, or extend.
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Frequently asked questions
Is Medusa or yas more popular?
Medusa has 36,356 GitHub stars and yas has 1,987. Medusa has the larger community by that measure.
Are Medusa and yas free?
Both are open source. Medusa has no licence declared in this registry, and yas is licensed under MIT. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Medusa and yas?
Medusa is written in TypeScript and yas in Java. 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 yas?
Choose Medusa if you want the larger community (36,356 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose yas if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.