Medusa is a e-commerce tool for Developers, offered as open source ($29/mo). Founded in in 2021.
About Medusa
Medusa is an open-source, headless commerce platform built with Node.js and TypeScript. It was started in Copenhagen by Sebastian Rindom and Oliver Juhl and is released under the MIT licence. Rather than a hosted store builder, Medusa gives developers a modular commerce backend with APIs for products, carts, orders, customers, inventory, pricing, promotions, payments, fulfilment and multi-region selling, plus an admin dashboard for merchandisers.
Medusa 2.0, released in late 2024, rebuilt the platform around independent commerce modules, a workflow engine for custom business logic and a framework for extending the data model, so teams can replace or add modules for B2B pricing, marketplaces, subscriptions or ERP integrations. A Next.js storefront starter speeds up front-end work. The framework is free to self-host; Medusa Cloud is the company's managed hosting, with Develop, Launch and Scale plans at fixed monthly prices plus usage overages, preview environments and deployment tooling.
Medusa fits developer teams building custom commerce: headless brands, B2B portals, marketplaces and multi-region retailers who would otherwise fight the limits of a SaaS platform. It requires developers for setup and maintenance, hosting and upgrades are your responsibility when self-hosting, and the plugin ecosystem is far smaller than Shopify's. Shopify with Hydrogen is easier for most merchants, commercetools serves large enterprises with a big budget, and Saleor and Vendure are the closest open-source alternatives.
Key features of Medusa
- Modular commerce engine
- Multi-region and currency
- Admin dashboard
- Plugins
- Headless APIs
- Next.js starter
Pros and cons
Pros
- Open source
- Highly customizable
- Modern stack
- No platform fees
Cons
- Developer-required
- Hosting responsibility
- Smaller ecosystem than Shopify
- Upgrades between versions
Medusa pricing
Medusa uses a open source model.
| Plan | Price | Includes |
|---|---|---|
| Open source | $0 | MIT-licensed framework, self-hosted |
| Develop | from $29 / mo | Medusa Cloud; 1M edge requests, previews, 0% GMV fee |
| Launch | from $99 / mo | Autoscaling, custom domains, 7-day backups |
| Scale | from $299 / mo | Background workers, priority support, semantic search |
| Enterprise | Custom | SLA, SSO, RBAC, BYOC, dedicated support engineer |
Source: medusajs.com · checked on Oct 20, 2026
How Medusa compares in E-commerce
- Rank by votes
- #2 / 36
- Starting price
- $29
- Free alternatives
- 3
0 votes from members
At the category median of $29/mo
Free or open-source tools in E-commerce
Medusa ranks #2 of 36 e-commerce tools by community votes and is priced in line with the category.
Common use cases
- 1Custom headless store
- 2B2B commerce
- 3Marketplace
- 4Multi-region retail
Best for
Developer teams building custom commerce.
Not ideal for
Non-technical merchants.
Integrations
- Stripe
- PayPal
- Algolia
- Contentful
- Sanity
- Next.js
- S3
Our take
Medusa is the best open-source headless commerce.
FAQ
- What is Medusa?
- Medusa is a E-commerce tool: Open-source, headless commerce framework.
- How much does Medusa cost?
- Medusa is Open source; there is no mandatory paid plan.
- What does Medusa integrate with?
- Medusa integrates with Stripe, PayPal, Algolia, Contentful, Sanity, Next.js and more.
- Which platforms does Medusa support?
- Medusa is available on web.
- Who is Medusa for?
- Developer teams building custom commerce.
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