head to head · open source
Medusa vs Spree Commerce
Medusa has 37,059 GitHub stars, 5,487 forks, 194 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Spree Commerce has 15,806 stars, 5,319 forks, 143 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Medusa leads on adoption by 134% (37,059 vs 15,806 stars). Medusa is written in TypeScript under a custom or non-standard licence; Spree Commerce is written in Ruby under BSD-3-Clause. Medusa has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, Spree Commerce 34%. 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 | Spree Commerce | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 37K | ★ 16K |
| License | Custom / other | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | TypeScript | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.5K | ⑂ 5.3K |
| 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 Spree Commerce if
- You want the Spree Commerce feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You evaluated both and Spree Commerce 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 Spree Commerce
Website · Free Sandbox · Next.js Storefront · Documentation · API · Roadmap · Discord Open source headless eCommerce platform with a complete REST API, TypeScript SDK, and a production ready Next.js storefront. BSD 3 Clause licensed — keep full ownership of your code, data, and infrastructure. Everything you need to launch cross border storefronts, B2B wholesale, or a custom commerce backend. Getting Started The fastest way to try Spree is to create a free sandbox — a hosted Spree store with the Admin Dashboard and storefront, nothing to install. To run Spree locally instead, copy and paste the following command…
read the full Spree Commerce overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Medusa or Spree Commerce more popular?
Medusa has 37,059 GitHub stars and Spree Commerce has 15,806. Medusa has the larger community by that measure.
Are Medusa and Spree Commerce free?
Both are open source. Medusa has no licence declared in this registry, and Spree Commerce is licensed under BSD-3-Clause. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Medusa and Spree Commerce?
Medusa is written in TypeScript and Spree Commerce in Ruby. 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 Spree Commerce?
Choose Medusa if you want the larger community (37,059 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose Spree Commerce if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.