[opensourcedex]

Saleor is a free, open source e-commerce platforms project written in Python and released under BSD-3-Clause. It has 23,339 GitHub stars, 6,122 forks and 263 open issues, and was last pushed 10 hours ago. On this registry it ranks #3 of 30 tracked projects in E-commerce Platforms, and is listed as an open source replacement for 1 paid product, with 5 head-to-head comparisons available. It gained 16 stars over the last 6 tracked days.

Saleor — Flexible e-commerce platform for modern businesses

What is Saleor?

What it is

Saleor is an open-source e-commerce platform written in Python and released under the BSD-3-Clause license. It positions itself as an open alternative to Shopify and describes itself as a high-performance, composable, headless commerce API. The project lives in the e-commerce ecosystem, where teams separate the backend order and catalog logic from the storefront, CMS, and dashboards.

The concrete problem Saleor solves is the need for a commerce core that can be extended through APIs without a monolithic plugin architecture or vendor lock-in. Instead of shipping a fixed storefront, Saleor exposes cart, checkout, order management, product, customer, payment, and promotion functionality through GraphQL. Teams can then build their own storefronts, integrate their own tools, and deploy custom apps independently. This makes it useful for businesses that operate multiple channels, sell across currencies and languages, or need complex fulfillment and payment workflows.

Key capabilities

  • Saleor provides a GraphQL-only commerce API for headless and composable implementations.
  • Saleor supports native-multichannel control over pricing, currencies, stock, and products per channel.
  • Saleor includes flexible order management with split payments, multi-warehouse fulfillment, and returns.
  • Saleor includes a promotion engine for sales, vouchers, cart rules, and gift cards.
  • Saleor supports extensible payment orchestration with multi-gateway support and flexible payment flows.
  • Saleor supports app and webhook extensibility through metadata, attributes, subscription queries, API extensions, and dashboard iframes.
  • Saleor includes catalog, content, and customer features such as translations, CMS content, SEO control, and order history.

Who uses it and how

  • Teams building headless storefronts use the GraphQL API as the only backend interaction path.
  • Merchants running multiple sales channels use per-channel pricing, currency, stock, and product controls.
  • Operations teams manage large catalogs, returns, split payments, and multi-warehouse orders through the dashboard and API.
  • Developers extend the platform with independent apps, webhooks, and dashboard iframes instead of modifying a monolithic core.
  • Organizations that deploy frequently and need high availability use the API-first architecture to separate custom logic from the core.

Getting started

The README excerpt references an installation section, documentation, and separate Saleor Platform, Storefront, and Dashboard projects, but it does not list Docker images, package managers, or a hosted option.

When to use it — and when not to

Saleor is strongest when a business needs an open, API-only commerce core that can be extended independently across channels and technology stacks. It is a good fit for teams with non-trivial requirements, frequent deployments, or a need for high availability, especially when compared with the paid Shopify position it references. It may be a poor fit for a single developer or small business with low traffic and no critical uptime need, because the service-oriented model can feel more complex than a traditional WordPress or Magento setup. The open-source model places the operation of the service-oriented architecture on the team.

project readme (upstream, from github) — read inline
saleor-commerce-logo

Commerce that works with your language and stack

GraphQL native, API-only platform for scalable composable commerce.


Get to know Saleor:
Talk to a human | Talk to the API


Join our community:
Website | Twitter | Discord

Blog | Subscribe to newsletter


Coverage Documentation Linted by Ruff Discord

Table of Contents

What makes Saleor special?

  • Technology-agnostic - no monolithic plugin architecture or technology lock-in.

  • GraphQL only - Not afterthought API design or fragmentation across different styles of API.

  • Headless and API only - APIs are the only way to interact, configure, or extend the backend.

  • Open source - a single version of Saleor without feature fragmentation or commercial limitations.

  • Cloud native - battle tested on global brands.

  • Native-multichannel - Per channel control of pricing, currencies, stock, product, and more.

Why API-only Architecture?

Saleor's API-first extensibility provides powerful tools for developers to extend backend using webhooks, attributes, metadata, apps, subscription queries, API extensions, dashboard iframes.

Compared to traditional plugin architectures (monoliths) it provides the following benefits:

  • There is less downtime as apps are deployed independently.
  • Reliability and performance - custom logic is separated from the core.
  • Simplified upgrade paths - eliminates incompatibility conflicts between extensions.
  • Technology-agnostic - works with any technology, stack, or language.
  • Parallel development - easier to collaborate than with a monolithic core.
  • Simplified debugging - easier to narrow down bugs in independent services.
  • Scalability - extensions and apps can be scaled independently.

What are the tradeoffs?

If you are a single developer working with a small business that doesn't have high traffic or a critical need for 24/7 availability, using a service-oriented approach might feel more complex compared to the traditional WordPress or Magento approach that provides a language-specific framework, runtime, database schema, aspect-oriented programming, and other tools to a quick start.

However, if you deploy on a daily basis, reliability and uptime is critical, you need to collaborate with other developers, or you have non-trivial requirements you might be in the right place.

Features

  • Enterprise ready: Secure, scalable, and stable. Battle-tested by big brands
  • Dashboard: User-friendly, fast, and productive. (Decoupled project repo )
  • Global by design Multi-currency, multi-language, multi-warehouse, tutti multi!
  • CMS: Manage product or marketing content.
  • Product management: A rich content model for large and complex catalogs.
  • Orders: Flexible order model, split payments, multi-warehouse, returns, and more.
  • Customers: Order history and preferences.
  • Promotion engine: Sales, vouchers, cart rules, giftcards.
  • Payment orchestration: multi-gateway, extensible payment API, flexible flows.
  • Cart: Advanced payment and tax options, with full control over discounts and promotions.
  • Payments: Flexible API architecture allows integration of any payment method.
  • Translations: Fully translatable catalog.
  • SEO: Unlimited SEO freedom with headless architecture.
  • Apps: Extend dashboard via iframe with any web stack.

Saleor Dashboard - Modern UI for managing your e-commerce

Installation

See the Saleor docs for step-by-step installation and deployment instructions. For local development without Docker, follow our Contributing Guide.

Note: The main branch is the development version of Saleor and it may be unstable. To use the latest stable version, download it from the Releases page or switch to a release tag.

The current production-ready version is 3.x and you should use this version for all three components:

  • Saleor:
  • Dashboard:
  • Storefront:

Saleor Cloud

The fastest way to develop with Saleor is by using developer accounts in Saleor Cloud.

Register here or install our CLI tool:

npm i -g @saleor/cli

and run the following command:

saleor register

Bootstrap your first storefront with:

saleor storefront create --url {your-saleor-graphql-endpoint}

Documentation

Saleor documentation is available here: docs.saleor.io

To contribute, please see the saleor/saleor-docs repository.

Saleor Platform

The easiest way to run all components of Saleor (API, storefront, and dashboard) together on your local machine is to use the saleor-platform project. Go to that repository for instructions on how to use it.

View saleor-platform

Storefront

An open-source storefront example built with Next.js App Router, React.js, TypeScript, GraphQL, and Tailwind CSS.

React Storefront Repository

View Storefront Example

Dashboard

For the dashboard, go to the saleor-dashboard repository.

Contributing

We love your contributions and do our best to provide you with mentorship and support. If you are looking for an issue to tackle, take a look at issues labeled Good first issue and Help wanted.

If nothing grabs your attention, check our roadmap or start a Discord discussion about a feature you'd like to see. Make sure to read our [Contribution Guidelines](http://docs.saleor.io/developer/c

readme truncated — read the full docs on github

Frequently asked questions

Is Saleor free to use?

Saleor is open source under the BSD-3-Clause licence. There is no licence fee and no seat count — you can self-host it or, where the project offers one, pay a vendor for a managed version instead.

What does Saleor do?

Flexible e-commerce platform for modern businesses

What is Saleor written in?

Saleor is primarily written in Python. Its source is publicly available at https://github.com/saleor/saleor, and it has 23,339 GitHub stars.

What is a good open source alternative to Shopify?

Saleor is one of the open source options listed as an alternative to Shopify. Compare licences, stars and activity side by side on the Saleor profile.