Open Source Alternatives

Open Source E-commerce Alternatives to Shopify

E-commerce platform for building online stores.

3 drop-in replacements

shopify.com ↗

Shopify is a trademark of its respective owner.

Updated May 2026

What you gain

✓No monthly platform fee starting at $39-399/mo
✓Full control over your storefront code and hosting
✓No per-transaction fee on top of payment processing (Shopify charges 0.5-2%)
✓Self-hosted deployment with complete data ownership

What you give up

△No Shopify App Store with 8,000+ prebuilt e-commerce integrations
△No Shopify Payments with integrated fraud protection
△No managed checkout with Shop Pay and accelerated checkout
△No Shopify POS for unified online and in-store inventory

Switching Cost

Shopify's lock-in is the ecosystem. Product data and customer records export via CSV or API. But the theme customizations, app integrations, and checkout flow are deeply proprietary. Solo merchants with under 100 products can migrate in a week. Established stores with custom themes, 10+ apps, and Shopify Payments should budget 3-6 weeks. The hidden cost is payment migration: Shopify Payments includes fraud protection and handles chargebacks, and you'll need a separate payment processor and fraud solution. Also, Shop Pay's accelerated checkout converts significantly better than standard checkout.

Quick Compare

	Vendure	medusa	saleor
Overlap	65%	60%	55%
Migration	significant	significant	significant
License	GNU General Public License v3.0	MIT	BSD-3-Clause
Best for	Small teams	Teams with DevOps	Teams with DevOps

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Drop-in Replacements

Ranked by feature coverage

Vendure

5865% coverage

The commerce platform with customization in its DNA.

Vendure is a headless commerce framework for teams that want to build their own storefront and don't want to pay Shopify's percentage of every transaction. Node.js, TypeScript, NestJS, GraphQL.

8.1k ★GNU General Public License v3.0

medusa

7360% coverage

The world's most flexible commerce platform.

Medusa is a headless commerce engine built in TypeScript. You get the full back end: products, orders, carts, payments, fulfillment, as modular building blocks you wire into any front end.

33.0k ★+89/wkTypeScriptMIT