Medusa - the practical guide.

Medusa is an open-source, developer-first headless commerce platform written in TypeScript. It positions itself as the open alternative to Shopify and Commerce Layer, giving teams a flexible commerce backend they can self-host or run on Medusa Cloud, with a modular architecture that supports custom workflows, modules and integrations.

Developer-led teams, digital agencies and product-led brands wanting full control over their commerce backend without enterprise pricing. Particularly suitable for technical founders building custom storefronts on Next.js or similar, and for B2B and marketplace experiments.

Open source and free to self-host (you pay infrastructure and engineering costs). Medusa Cloud offers managed hosting with usage-based pricing - free tier for early-stage projects, paid plans scale with orders, modules and team seats. Enterprise plans include SLAs and custom support.

Right for engineering teams who want headless commerce they can shape to their workflow, particularly when Shopify's platform fees or constraints become a problem. Wrong fit for non-technical merchants or teams without dev capacity - this is a code-first platform.

Ecosystem is younger than Shopify or commercetools - fewer plug-and-play integrations and apps. Self-hosted setups need ongoing security and infrastructure work. Medusa Cloud reduces that burden but introduces vendor lock-in for hosting. Confirm which modules are stable vs experimental for production.