Saleor vs Medusa: Comparing the Leading Open-Source Commerce Engines

Saleor launched in 2018 as a Python/Django-based headless platform built around GraphQL. The numbers speak for themselves: 22,215 GitHub stars and 5,832 forks. It positions itself squarely as a modern enterprise alternative to platforms like Magento. Medusa entered the scene later in 2021 with a Node.js foundation, but it has since gained impressive traction—30,970 stars and 3,769 forks on GitHub. The growth rates tell an interesting story: Medusa shows 33.4% month-on-month growth compared to Saleor's 2.1%.

Both platforms embrace headless architecture, enabling developers to build tailored e-commerce experiences. The similarities end there. Saleor bets on enterprise-grade features powered by GraphQL-first architecture. Medusa goes lightweight and developer-friendly, making rapid MVP development its strength.

The global headless commerce market continues to expand—North America holds 38.6% market share, while Asia Pacific is the fastest-growing region. Choosing between these open-source options means weighing technical requirements against development resources and business goals. We'll examine how Saleor and Medusa compare across architecture, customization, performance, and community support to help you determine which platform matches your specific e-commerce needs.

Key Takeaways

When choosing between these leading open-source commerce engines, understanding their core differences helps avoid costly implementation mistakes and ensures the right technical foundation for your e-commerce goals.

• Architecture drives developer experience: Saleor uses Python/Django with GraphQL for enterprise-grade structured development, while Medusa leverages Node.js/REST for JavaScript-focused teams seeking rapid deployment.
• Community momentum favors Medusa: With 30,970 GitHub stars and 33.4% monthly growth, compared with Saleor's 22,215 stars and 2.1% growth, Medusa shows stronger developer adoption.
• Cost models differ significantly: Medusa offers transparent infrastructure pricing with zero GMV fees starting at $29/month, while Saleor targets mid-market with $159/month plans that include GMV-based fees.
• Extensibility approaches reflect platform philosophy: Saleor separates core from extensions through external apps for system stability, while Medusa uses in-process plugins for simpler integration.
• Performance scales differently: Both handle high traffic effectively, but Medusa has proven capable of processing thousands of requests per second during product drops, while Saleor excels at complex data queries.

The wrong platform choice can cost $50,000-$500,000 in wasted development, making this decision critical for long-term success. Choose Saleor for enterprise requirements with existing Python expertise, or Medusa for JavaScript teams prioritizing speed-to-market and cost efficiency.

Architecture and API Design: GraphQL vs REST in Headless Commerce

The architectural foundations of Saleor and Medusa reveal distinct philosophies for implementing headless commerce. Both platforms embrace API-first principles, yet their technical choices create vastly different developer experiences and scalability characteristics.

Backend Stack: Django/Python vs Node.js/Express

Saleor is built on Python and Django, drawing on the frameworks' mature ecosystems and battle-tested security features. This Python foundation offers structured development patterns that enterprise teams gravitate toward for long-term maintainability. Django's built-in user authentication and database management create a robust foundation for complex e-commerce operations.

Medusa takes a different path with Node.js and Express, capitalizing on JavaScript's dominance in modern web development. This choice eliminates context switching for frontend developers—they work in JavaScript throughout the entire stack. For startups and MVP development, Medusa's Node.js foundation enables faster iteration cycles.

The backend decision essentially boils down to Python's structured approach versus JavaScript's developer-friendliness. Teams with Python expertise find Saleor's territory familiar, while JavaScript-focused organizations typically encounter a gentler learning curve with Medusa.

API Access: GraphQL Queries vs REST Endpoints

Here's where these platforms diverge most dramatically. Saleor fully commits to GraphQL as its primary API interface, enabling clients to request exactly the data they need through a single endpoint. This eliminates the notorious over-fetching and under-fetching problems that plague traditional REST implementations.

Medusa sticks with RESTful architecture, which many developers find approachable due to widespread adoption and straightforward implementation. REST's familiarity typically translates to faster initial development, especially for teams without GraphQL experience.

What does this mean for real-world e-commerce development? Saleor's GraphQL implementation delivers specific advantages:

• Clients can request multiple related resources in a single query
• Mobile apps can tailor data requests precisely to minimize bandwidth
• API changes maintain backward compatibility with clear deprecation warnings

Medusa's REST approach brings different strengths:

• Standardized HTTP methods for CRUD operations
• Simpler caching at the HTTP level
• Lower initial learning curve for most development teams

Frontend Flexibility and SDK Generation

Both platforms support truly headless implementations, pairing their commerce backends with any frontend technology. Their integration support differs considerably, though.

Saleor uses GraphQL's introspection capabilities to automatically generate SDKs across various frontend frameworks. This self-documenting nature helps developers discover available queries, mutations, and types without having to dive deep into the documentation.

Medusa provides straightforward REST endpoints that work with any frontend capable of making HTTP requests. The platform includes official Next.js starter kits that accelerate storefront development.

For frontend flexibility, both platforms support popular JavaScript frameworks like React, Vue, and Angular. Their integration approaches reflect their underlying API philosophies—Saleor's GraphQL foundation requires slightly more initial setup but pays dividends for complex user interfaces with diverse data requirements.

The architectural decisions made by each platform ultimately shape developer experience, system performance, and long-term maintenance considerations for e-commerce projects built on these foundations.

Customization and Extensibility Models

Every serious commerce implementation eventually hits the same wall: the need to extend core functionality beyond what comes out of the box. How each platform handles this challenge reveals its true philosophy. Saleor and Medusa take markedly different approaches to extensibility, and these differences matter more than you might expect.

Plugin Systems: In-Process vs External Apps

The architecture choices here directly impact both development workflows and system security. Neither approach is inherently superior, but each comes with distinct trade-offs.

Medusa builds around an abstraction-first philosophy. The platform provides a layer that lets developers integrate third-party services without jumping through hoops. Its plugin system runs within the same process space as the core, which makes integration remarkably straightforward—often just yarn add <package> followed by yarn install gets functionality fully integrated with the core system. This in-process approach gives plugins direct database access and the same permissions as the core application.

Saleor takes a dual-approach strategy that's more complex but arguably more secure:

• In-process plugins written in Python that run within Saleor's core, accessing the database directly
• External apps that operate outside the core and communicate exclusively through webhooks and the GraphQL API

This separation offers real security benefits. Admin users can quickly disable external apps if something goes wrong, effectively blocking potentially harmful activities. The network gap between Saleor and its extensions acts as a protective barrier, preventing issues from spreading between systems.

Custom Fields and Schema Extensions

What happens when you need to store data that doesn't fit the standard commerce model? Both platforms solve this problem differently.

Medusa uses module linking, which maintains module isolation while enabling relationships between data models. Developers can create custom data models and link them to core entities like Customer without touching the platform's source code. This approach keeps core systems intact during upgrades, though it requires database migrations.

Saleor goes with a more streamlined metadata system. Nearly all objects in Saleor support metadata fields, letting you store and retrieve virtually any key-value data. This built-in functionality provides immediate extensibility without database schema modifications, though it's less structured for complex relationships.

Interestingly, both platforms continue evolving their approaches. Medusa is still evaluating options for supporting custom attributes on entities, including JSONB fields, generic entity references, and database schema extensions.

Third-Party Integrations and Event Hooks

How do you know when something important happens in your commerce system? The event systems reveal another fundamental difference in platform philosophy.

Medusa implements an event-based system similar to webhooks, embedded within the codebase. Developers create subscribers—asynchronous functions that execute when specific events like order.placed are triggered. You can handle events without setting up separate applications:

Medusa's event system uses Event Modules, with options for local development (default) or a Redis-based implementation for production environments.

Saleor relies primarily on webhooks for event handling and third-party integrations. These webhooks work with both local and external apps, with payloads defined using GraphQL subscription syntax. Saleor categorizes events as either synchronous (executed immediately during GraphQL requests) or asynchronous (executed after request completion). This distinction matters because synchronous webhooks directly impact API response times.

Both platforms provide extensive integration capabilities for essential commerce services. Medusa offers ready-made integrations with search engines like MeiliSearch and Algolia, payment processors such as Stripe, PayPal, and Klarna, and CMS platforms such as Strapi and Contentful. Saleor supports similar integrations through its app marketplace, including Stripe, Authorize.net, and regional payment gateways like RazorPay.

The extensibility models reveal each platform's core philosophy—Medusa prioritizes developer freedom and modular construction, while Saleor emphasizes a lean core with a rich ecosystem of external applications that maintain system integrity through clear boundaries.

Performance, Scalability, and Hosting Options

Infrastructure decisions determine whether your e-commerce platform thrives or crashes under pressure. Traffic spikes and operational complexity can expose weaknesses that seemed insignificant during development. Both Saleor and Medusa offer flexible deployment paths, but their approaches to handling growth reveal important differences.

Deployment Models: Docker, Cloud, Self-hosted

Containerization drives modern deployment strategies for both platforms. Saleor ships with Docker preconfigured, simplifying deployments to cloud container services such as Amazon ECS. The platform adheres to the 12-factor application principles and relies on environment variables for configuration. This containerized approach works particularly well for microservice architectures.

Medusa supports Docker containers in production environments with a plug-and-play deployment model. Merchants can deploy the Medusa backend, storefront, and admin panel as a unified package.

Managed solutions target different market segments. Saleor Commerce provides Saleor Cloud—a fully managed SaaS version aimed at mid-to-large businesses with pricing starting in the hundreds per month. The service includes automatic scaling and backups, though it requires substantial investment.

Medusa Cloud launched in 2025 with Git integration and preview environments. Unlike Saleor's approach, Medusa Cloud uses infrastructure-based pricing without transaction fees. This appeals to growing businesses wanting uptime guarantees without prohibitive costs.

Background Jobs and Asynchronous Tasks

How do these platforms handle the behind-the-scenes work that keeps commerce running smoothly?

Saleor uses Celery with Redis as its message broker for asynchronous and periodic tasks. The platform runs scheduled operations at different intervals:

• Hourly tasks (deactivating preorders, deleting allocations)
• Daily tasks (removing expired reservations, cleaning event data)
• Frequent operations (recalculating prices every 30 seconds)

Medusa implements scheduled jobs through Redis and Bull. This architecture manages background tasks, such as inventory synchronization with ERP systems. Medusa's Batch Jobs API enables asynchronous, iterative operations—such as product exports—with progress tracking.

Event handling differs between platforms. Saleor's asynchronous webhooks use an exponential backoff strategy, retrying delivery up to five times when endpoint issues occur. Medusa employs an event system similar to webhooks but embedded within the codebase.

Handling High Traffic and Flash Sales

Medusa has demonstrated solid performance during high-volume product drops, processing thousands of requests per second without degradation. Fashion brands and digital product sellers benefit from this rapid transaction processing capability.

Performance testing shows Medusa's API response times vary considerably by hosting provider:

• UnderHost Netherlands VPS: 89ms average
• AWS t3.xlarge: 142ms average
• DigitalOcean Premium: 167ms average

Here's something that might surprise you: headless implementation doesn't automatically deliver better performance. Data indicates that traditional platforms like Shopify Liquid currently outperform most headless implementations in Core Web Vitals. This performance gap widened in March 2024 when Interaction to Next Paint (INP) replaced First Input Delay as a Core Web Vital.

Both platforms benefit from specific performance optimizations:

• Redis caching implementation
• Dedicated servers with a minimum of 4+ vCPUs
• NVMe storage for complex catalog implementations

Saleor's cloud infrastructure adapts to varying loads during flash sales, ensuring consistent uptime even during peak traffic. The platform uses its GraphQL API for efficient data handling—essential for sites that handle high transaction volumes.

Admin UI and Storefront Development

Building and managing online stores shouldn't require a computer science degree, but the reality often proves more complex. The user interfaces and development tools that come with these platforms can make or break your team's productivity. Saleor and Medusa take notably different approaches to solving this challenge.

Admin Panel UX: Macaw UI vs Gatsby Admin

Saleor's admin panel runs on React and JavaScript, polished through their Macaw-UI design system. The component library maintains consistent styling and user experience across the platform. What's particularly useful for developers is the ability to create private app keys directly from the admin interface, making custom add-on integration much more straightforward.

Medusa's admin console goes a different route with TypeScript and the Gatsby framework. This React-based setup runs as a separate application that communicates with the Medusa server via REST APIs. The flexibility here is obvious—you can deploy the admin independently or bundle it with the server. The admin handles all the essential commerce operations: products, orders, returns, and more.

Starter Storefronts: Next.js vs Gatsby/Vue/Remix

Each platform provides ready-made storefront options to speed up development, though their philosophies differ considerably. Saleor offers a React Storefront built on Next.js as its primary starter. It comes pre-configured to work with Saleor's GraphQL API, covering essential e-commerce functions such as product pages and cart management.

Medusa really shines with storefront variety. Their flagship Gatsby starter packs impressive functionality—not just basic e-commerce pages but advanced features like user authentication and order returns. The options don't stop there:

• Next.js for React developers
• Vue.js for teams preferring the Vue ecosystem
• Remix for server-side rendering benefits
• Svelte for those wanting a compiled approach

Each starter connects to Medusa's backend through the appropriate APIs, giving developers freedom to match their team's expertise.

Custom Admin Extensions and Developer Experience

Admittedly, extending admin interfaces can get complicated quickly. Saleor handles this through private app keys that connect custom add-ons to the core platform. Since the admin stays decoupled from the backend, developers can fork and customize as needed while keeping API communication through GraphQL intact.

Medusa's React-based admin follows a similar decoupled pattern, making it relatively straightforward for JavaScript developers to add new components. Teams get to choose—use the provided admin or build custom interfaces. Even within the standard admin, developers can seamlessly integrate custom React components.

For practical implementation, Medusa's admin enables comprehensive product management, allowing merchants to configure detailed product information, including name, handle, description, and weight. Both platforms support custom storefront development with their respective UI libraries—Macaw UI for Saleor and Vue Storefront UI components for Medusa implementations.

Community, Ecosystem, and Documentation

Developer communities can make or break an open-source platform's future. They serve as both support networks and innovation engines, determining whether a platform thrives or fades. Saleor and Medusa have built distinctly different ecosystems, each with unique approaches to collaboration, documentation, and third-party extensions.

GitHub Stars and Activity

The community metrics tell two different stories. Medusa leads with 30,970 GitHub stars, compared to Saleor's 22,215, indicating strong developer interest in JavaScript-based architecture. But Saleor counters with 5,832 forks—a solid indicator that developers are actively extending the platform rather than just watching from the sidelines.

Both projects stay busy with development cycles that often see updates within hours of each other. What catches attention is Medusa's growth trajectory. The platform jumped from roughly 9,000 stars in earlier reports to its current numbers, demonstrating month-over-month growth that significantly outpaces industry standards.

Plugin Ecosystem and Marketplace

Each platform takes a different approach to extending functionality. Medusa keeps tight control with a curated plugin collection managed by its core team. This ensures quality but limits ecosystem diversity.

Saleor goes the marketplace route with preloaded plugins and add-ons. This model invites broader community participation in building extensions, though it may introduce greater variability in code quality. Both platforms connect to common third-party services, but through different architectural approaches that reflect their core philosophies.

Support Channels: Discord vs Gitter

Where you get help matters, especially when deadlines loom. Medusa centralizes community support through Discord, where senior team members actively jump into troubleshooting sessions. This direct access to core developers speeds up the resolution of blocking issues and creates immediate feedback loops for implementation challenges.

Saleor's developer conversations take place mainly on Gitter and GitHub. This approach encourages deeper technical discussions but sacrifices real-time problem-solving. For enterprises needing guaranteed support, both platforms offer paid options beyond their community channels.

Documentation styles reveal another key difference. Medusa delivers concise, practical guides focused on getting things done quickly—perfect for teams pushing toward rapid deployment. Saleor provides comprehensive technical depth but assumes significant development experience, potentially creating steeper learning curves for platform newcomers.

Cost, Licensing, and Long-Term Investment

Financial decisions around open-source commerce platforms require careful analysis beyond the initial "free" appeal. Making the wrong choice here can cost businesses between $50,000 and $500,000 in wasted development and 6-12 months of lost time.

Open Source vs Managed Cloud Pricing

The licensing approach differs between platforms. Medusa operates under the MIT license, while Saleor uses the BSD-3-Clause license. Both provide free community versions for self-hosting, but their managed services tell different pricing stories.

Medusa Cloud launched with straightforward infrastructure-based pricing—$29/month for hobby projects and $299/month for professional deployments. What makes this appealing is the complete absence of GMV platform fees (0.0%) across all plans.

Saleor Cloud targets a different market segment. Their Select plan starts at $159/month and includes up to $200,000 in monthly GMV before additional fees apply. Higher-volume merchants can opt for the Volume plan at $399/month, which accommodates up to a million dollars in monthly GMV.

Developer Availability and Hiring Considerations

Your technology stack choice directly affects recruitment costs and team dynamics. E-commerce developers typically earn between $91,175 and $102,523 annually, with skills in React and Next.js commanding premium rates.

Medusa's JavaScript foundation offers hiring advantages—teams can find developers who work across the entire stack without language switching. Saleor usually requires separate expertise in Python/Django for the backend and JavaScript/React for the frontend. This can complicate team coordination and increase hiring complexity.

Total Cost of Ownership Over Time

Initial development represents just the beginning of your investment. Beyond the $50,000-$500,000 development range, factor in agency implementation costs ($50,000-$150,000+) and ongoing maintenance, which typically runs 30-50% higher than with traditional platforms.

Most businesses see ROI after 8-10 months. However, successful headless commerce implementations often deliver revenue increases of around 30% through expanded product offerings and enhanced customer experiences.

For early-stage projects and MVPs, Medusa's Node.js foundation and simpler deployment requirements make it particularly cost-effective. Saleor's more complex architecture—requiring Redis and additional services—demands higher initial infrastructure investment but delivers enterprise-grade stability for established businesses.

The true ownership cost calculation must include both obvious expenses, such as hosting and development, and hidden costs, such as system complexity, integration efforts, and potential revenue impacts from performance differences.

Comparison Table

The technical specifications and business models of these platforms tell a clear story about their different target markets and development philosophies. Here's how Saleor and Medusa stack up side by side:

What stands out immediately is Medusa's rapid community growth—33.4% monthly compared to Saleor's 2.1%—despite being three years younger. The pricing difference is equally striking: Medusa Cloud starts at $29/month with no GMV fees, while Saleor Cloud begins at $159/month with volume-based pricing tiers. These numbers reflect each platform's positioning: Medusa targeting startups and rapid development, Saleor focusing on established businesses with enterprise needs.

Conclusion

The choice between Saleor and Medusa comes down to matching each platform's strengths to your specific situation. Both deliver solid headless commerce foundations, but they serve different needs and team configurations.

Saleor works well when you need enterprise-grade stability and have Python expertise on your team. Its GraphQL-first approach pays dividends for complex data requirements, while the external app architecture keeps your core system protected. The tradeoff? Higher initial setup complexity and steeper learning curves for teams without Python/Django experience.

Medusa shines for rapid development cycles and JavaScript-heavy teams. Its straightforward Node.js foundation means frontend developers can work across the entire stack without context switching. The growing community momentum—33.4% monthly growth versus Saleor's 2.1%—suggests strong developer satisfaction with this approach.

What should guide your decision? Start with your team's existing skills. JavaScript teams will move faster with Medusa, while Python shops will find Saleor more natural. Next, consider your timeline and budget constraints. Medusa's simpler architecture and zero GMV fees make it appealing for MVPs and growing businesses. Saleor's enterprise features and infrastructure requirements suit established companies with complex commerce needs.

Both platforms avoid vendor lock-in through open-source licensing and headless architecture. You can build sophisticated storefronts with either choice, integrate with the same third-party services, and scale to handle significant traffic volumes.

The headless commerce landscape continues evolving rapidly. Whichever platform you choose, focus on building with flexibility in mind. The real value comes from creating commerce experiences that adapt to changing customer expectations and business requirements—something both Saleor and Medusa enable when implemented thoughtfully.