head to head
Shopify vs Medusa
Medusa is the open source alternative to Shopify — e-commerce platform. Here is the honest comparison.
Yes — Medusa is a viable free replacement for Shopify. Medusa is open source under its own open-source terms, written in TypeScript, with 36,356 GitHub stars, 5,260 forks and 194 open issues; it was last pushed 5 hours ago. Shopify costs from $29, while self-hosting Medusa carries no licence fee — the trade is your operational time instead of a subscription. 3 other open source Shopify alternatives are tracked here, led by Saleor at 23,339 stars. Medusa ranks #1 of 4 tracked open source Shopify alternatives by stars. The tracked set, by adoption: Saleor (23,339 stars), WooCommerce (10,514 stars), Vendure (8,446 stars). Replacement criteria on this page: 4 reasons to move to Medusa and 3 reasons to stay on Shopify.
choose Medusa if
- Your Shopify bill is growing with seats or usage
- You need your data in a format and server you control
- Your compliance posture requires auditing the code that touches sensitive data
- You have (or can rent) a server and basic Docker comfort
stick with Shopify if
- You need the polished onboarding and support SLAs of a commercial vendor
- Your team has zero capacity to operate software, even self-hosted-simple
- You depend on a Shopify integration ecosystem that the OSS alternatives have not replicated
Side by side
| Medusa (open source) | Shopify | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free (self-hosted) | $29-$299/month |
| License | Custom / other | Proprietary |
| Source code | Public, auditable | Closed |
| Self-hosting | Yes — medusajs/medusa | Cloud only |
| Data ownership | Your server, your format | Vendor's cloud |
| Community | ★ 36K · ⑂ 5.3K | — |
| Built with | TypeScript | — |
Why people look for a Shopify alternative
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 →
Other open source alternatives to Shopify
last updated nightly · ranking method: github stars, live-tracked
Frequently asked questions
Is Medusa a good replacement for Shopify?
Medusa is an open source alternative to Shopify (E-commerce platform). It is written in TypeScript and licensed under its own terms, with 36,356 GitHub stars.
Is Medusa free compared to Shopify?
Yes. Medusa is open source — there is no licence fee, and you can self-host it. Shopify is typically a paid subscription, so the trade-off is licence cost against the operational work of running it yourself.
How do I migrate from Shopify to Medusa?
Migration effort depends on the data formats involved. Check Medusa's documentation for import options, and compare the feature table above to confirm the capabilities you depend on are covered before switching.