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Gumroad vs Medusa

Gumroad and Medusa are both E-commerce tools. Gumroad is aimed at creators, while Medusa is aimed at developers. Both have a free plan.

Gumroad

Sell digital products with zero monthly fee

Medusa

Open-source, headless commerce framework

PricingFreeOpen source · $29
Starting priceNot published$29/mo
Free planYesYes
Free trial——
Built forCreatorsDevelopers
Platformswebweb
CountryUS · 2011DK · 2021
Rating——

Choose Gumroad if

Creators starting to sell digital products without upfront costs.

  • No monthly fee
  • Extremely simple setup
  • Tax handled as merchant of record

Look elsewhere if: Established sellers with volume (Lemon Squeezy, Payhip, Stripe).

Choose Medusa if

Developer teams building custom commerce.

  • Open source
  • Highly customizable
  • Modern stack

Look elsewhere if: Non-technical merchants.

Gumroad vs Medusa pricing

Gumroad

  • Direct sales10% + $0.50/saleNo monthly fee; profile or direct links
  • Discover sales30%/saleSales via Gumroad Discover marketplace

Medusa

  • Open source$0MIT-licensed framework, self-hosted
  • Developfrom $29/moMedusa Cloud; 1M edge requests, previews, 0% GMV fee
  • Launchfrom $99/moAutoscaling, custom domains, 7-day backups
  • Scalefrom $299/moBackground workers, priority support, semantic search
  • EnterpriseCustomSLA, SSO, RBAC, BYOC, dedicated support engineer

Gumroad · Key features

  • Sell digital downloads, memberships and courses
  • Simple product pages and storefront
  • Merchant of record for sales tax
  • Discount codes, upsells and affiliates
  • Email updates to customers
  • Discover marketplace

Cons

  • 10% fee is high at scale
  • Limited design customization
  • Discover fee is 30%

Medusa · Key features

  • Modular commerce engine
  • Multi-region and currency
  • Admin dashboard
  • Plugins
  • Headless APIs
  • Next.js starter

Cons

  • Developer-required
  • Hosting responsibility
  • Smaller ecosystem than Shopify

Gumroad vs Medusa: FAQ

Do Gumroad and Medusa have a free plan?

Yes, both Gumroad and Medusa have a free plan; paid plans add more usage and features.

Not sure yet?

Gumroad vs Medusa (2026): Pricing and Features