Medusa vs Saleor vs Vendure 2026: The Best Headless Commerce Backend for Your Store

Every store that outgrows a hosted platform eventually faces the same question: do you stay on an all-in-one like Shopify, or go headless — decoupling the commerce backend from a storefront you fully control? Headless commerce gives you a custom frontend in any framework, your own design system, and a backend you can extend without fighting a theme engine. The trade is that you now own the integration, the hosting, and the choice of engine underneath.

In 2026 three open-source platforms lead the headless commerce space for developers: Medusa, Saleor, and Vendure. They solve the same problem — catalog, cart, orders, payments and fulfillment behind an API — but they make very different bets on language, API style, and how you extend them. The right pick depends as much on your stack and team as on any single feature.

This guide breaks down what each one is, how they compare on the things that actually matter — stack, API, extensibility, hosting, cost and storefront support — and which to choose, whether you are building your own store or shipping an e-commerce template others will buy.

Headless commerce separates the backend from a storefront you fully control

The Three at a Glance

Medusa: The TypeScript-Native Commerce Engine

Medusa is the headless platform that feels most at home in a modern JavaScript stack. It is written in TypeScript on Node.js, exposes a clean REST API for both the storefront and the admin, and ships an official Next.js starter so you can go from clone to a working store quickly. For teams already building in Next.js, React and TypeScript, Medusa removes the language mismatch that other platforms introduce.

Its defining idea in 2026 is a modular architecture: commerce domains — products, pricing, inventory, orders, fulfillment — are modules you can use, replace or extend, orchestrated by a workflow engine that lets you compose multi-step operations (with compensation on failure) in regular TypeScript. You extend Medusa in-process, in the same language as your frontend:

npx create-medusa-app@latest

// A simple custom endpoint on the Medusa backend (TypeScript).
import type { MedusaRequest, MedusaResponse } from "@medusajs/framework/http";

export async function GET(req: MedusaRequest, res: MedusaResponse) {
  const productModule = req.scope.resolve("product");
  const [products, count] = await productModule.listAndCountProducts(
    { status: "published" },
    { take: 20 }
  );
  res.json({ products, count });
}

From the storefront, Medusa's REST API and JavaScript SDK are straightforward to call from Next.js server components and route handlers:

import Medusa from "@medusajs/js-sdk";

const medusa = new Medusa({ baseUrl: process.env.MEDUSA_BACKEND_URL! });

export async function getProducts() {
  const { products } = await medusa.store.product.list({ limit: 20 });
  return products;
}

The trade-offs. Because you extend Medusa in-process, you run and maintain the backend yourself (or on Medusa's managed hosting), including a PostgreSQL database and background workers. Its ecosystem of ready-made plugins is younger than the all-in-one platforms, so some integrations you build yourself. But for a JavaScript team that wants a single language from database to storefront, Medusa is the most cohesive and the fastest to ship.

Saleor: The Enterprise GraphQL Platform

Saleor is the most enterprise-oriented of the three. It is built in Python on Django, is GraphQL-first, and is designed for complex, high-volume catalogs — strong multi-channel, multi-warehouse, pricing and tax handling, and a mature permissions model. It offers Saleor Cloud as a managed option, so you can adopt it without operating the infrastructure yourself.

The GraphQL API is the centerpiece: your storefront requests exactly the fields it needs in a single round trip, which is a real advantage for rich product pages, faceted search and deeply nested data. Saleor provides an official React storefront and strong GraphQL tooling, so it integrates well with Next.js despite the Python backend:

query ProductList {
  products(first: 20, channel: "default-channel") {
    edges {
      node {
        id
        name
        thumbnail { url }
        pricing {
          priceRange { start { gross { amount currency } } }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

The key architectural point is how you extend it: instead of editing the core, you build external apps that communicate over the GraphQL API and webhooks. That keeps the core clean and upgradable and lets you write extensions in any language — but it is a different mental model from in-process plugins, and simple customizations can feel heavier than they would on a Node-native engine.

The trade-offs. If your team is JavaScript-first, the Python/Django core means your backend and frontend live in different languages, and deep backend work requires Python skills. In exchange you get a platform proven on large, complex stores, with enterprise features that Medusa and Vendure are still maturing. Saleor is the pick when catalog complexity and scale outweigh the convenience of a single-language stack.

Enterprise catalogs need multi-channel, multi-warehouse and precise tax handling

Vendure: The GraphQL-First TypeScript Engine

Vendure sits between the other two: it is TypeScript on Node.js like Medusa, but GraphQL-first like Saleor. That combination appeals to teams who want a single TypeScript codebase *and* a GraphQL API they can type end to end with code generation. It is built on NestJS, ships separate Shop and Admin GraphQL APIs, and includes one of the most polished admin UIs in open-source commerce.

Its standout strength is a first-class plugin system: you extend the server directly in TypeScript — adding entities, GraphQL fields, custom logic and admin UI — with a well-structured, documented API. For developers who like extending the backend in code (rather than through external apps), Vendure's model is clean and powerful:

import { VendurePlugin, PluginCommonModule } from "@vendure/core";

@VendurePlugin({
  imports: [PluginCommonModule],
  // Extend the schema, add resolvers, entities, admin UI, and more.
})
export class LoyaltyPointsPlugin {}

From a Next.js storefront, you consume Vendure's Shop API with any GraphQL client and generated types:

query GetProducts {
  products(options: { take: 20 }) {
    items {
      id
      name
      featuredAsset { preview }
      variants { priceWithTax }
    }
  }
}

The trade-offs. Vendure's ecosystem and community are smaller than Saleor's enterprise footprint and Medusa's fast-growing JavaScript momentum, so you may find fewer off-the-shelf integrations. And GraphQL-first means you take on a GraphQL client and schema tooling in your storefront. But if you want TypeScript everywhere, a GraphQL API, in-code extensibility and a strong admin out of the box, Vendure is the most complete fit.

Feature Comparison

API Style: REST vs GraphQL Is the First Fork

The clearest decision point is the API, because it shapes how your storefront fetches data every single day.

If you have ever weighed this trade-off at the API layer in general, it is the same calculus we cover in REST vs GraphQL vs tRPC: REST for low-friction simplicity, GraphQL for precise, typed, nested fetching. Commerce just raises the stakes because catalogs are deeply nested by nature.

Extensibility: Where You Write Your Custom Logic

Every real store needs custom logic — a loyalty program, a tax rule, a third-party fulfillment integration. How each platform lets you add it matters as much as its feature list.

The pattern: Medusa and Vendure favor teams that like extending the backend directly in code; Saleor favors keeping a pristine core and building around it. Neither is wrong — they optimize for different team structures and upgrade strategies.

Hosting, Database and Cost

All three store data in PostgreSQL (Vendure also supports other databases via TypeORM), and all three need the usual production pieces: a database, a server process, background workers for async jobs, and a CDN in front of the storefront. If you are choosing the database layer for the first time, our PostgreSQL vs MySQL vs MongoDB comparison explains why Postgres is the default here.

On cost, the honest framing is that the software is free, running it is not. Self-hosting any of these costs infrastructure and maintenance time. Saleor Cloud and Medusa's managed hosting trade a monthly fee for not operating the backend yourself, which is often the right call for small teams. Budget for the operations, not the license — the same lesson that separates a store that scales from one that falls over on its first big sale, a theme we cover in what makes code production-ready.

Storefront and Payments

Because all three are headless, the storefront is entirely yours — typically a Next.js, Remix or Astro app that talks to the commerce API. Medusa's official Next.js starter gives you the fastest on-ramp; Saleor ships a React storefront; Vendure provides framework-agnostic examples you adapt. Whichever you choose, you own the design, the checkout UX and the performance budget.

Payments are integrated through each platform's provider system — Stripe is first-class everywhere, with others available via plugins or apps. If you are still deciding how to take money and who is the merchant of record (which affects tax and compliance), read Stripe vs Paddle vs Lemon Squeezy before you wire up checkout.

Many headless stores also pull editorial content — landing pages, buying guides, blog posts — from a separate headless CMS alongside the commerce API, so the content team and the catalog stay decoupled.

Your storefront is a Next.js app you fully own — design, checkout and performance

Which One Should You Choose?

If you are assembling the whole thing from scratch, the backend is only one layer — the storefront framework, database, auth and payments all have to fit together, which is exactly the exercise in choosing a coherent tech stack. And if you would rather start from a proven base than wire a storefront by hand, our best Next.js e-commerce templates and the fuller e-commerce templates buyer's guide walk through what a production-ready storefront should include.

The Bottom Line

Three platforms, three bets:

Pick Medusa for the fastest JavaScript start, Saleor for enterprise-grade GraphQL, and Vendure for TypeScript-plus-GraphQL done cleanly — and remember the backend is only half the store. What turns it into a product your customers (and buyers) trust is the storefront you build on top, around a typed API, a sensible payments setup and a clean tech stack.

Building a headless storefront or admin on one of these? List your template on CodeCudos — every listing is quality-scored for TypeScript coverage, security and documentation — or browse production-ready e-commerce templates to start from a proven storefront instead of a blank API.