Medusa vs Saleor (2026): which should you pick?
As of Nov 12, 2026, Medusa grades higher than Saleor: 2.4 against 1.6 out of 4.0.
Checked Nov 12, 2026 · graded Nov 12, 2026 by ToolGPA
Medusa grades higher on value for money and the free plan. They get the same grade on features, ease of use and platforms.
Price, platforms and features side by side. The table says where each price was read and when.
Saleor
Open-source headless commerce with managed Cloud hosting
Which one is for you
Pick Medusa if
- Fits if your team writes JavaScript and wants a custom or headless store
- Works for builders who don't want a platform fee on sales
Look elsewhere if
- Not for you if you want a store without developers, as setup takes engineering work
- Skip it if you can't host a server, because the free version means doing that yourself
- Watch out: Cloud costs grow with usage, with edge requests past the allowance at $0.30 per 1M
- Watch out: Medusa Cloud can't accept cards issued by banks registered in India
Pick Saleor if
- Fits if you're a high-volume merchant with engineers and want a custom headless build
- Works for teams that want the option to self-host and keep their data
Look elsewhere if
- Pricey if you're small: Cloud starts at $1,599 a month, and Volume is $3,999
- Not for you if you want to try it on a real shop free, since Sandboxes are non-commercial
- Watch out: Accelerator is $6,000 and Forward Deployed Engineering $12,000, credited back over 12 months after go-live
- Skip it if you want a finished store, as Saleor Engine is beta and the storefront is yours to build
How we grade them
| 2.4GPAMedusaFair | 1.6GPASaleorWeak | |
|---|---|---|
| Value for money | BCloud Develop is $29 a month, in the category's cheaper quarter, and the open-source version is free. Higher Cloud tiers are $99 and $299, and costs grow with usage. | DSelect is $1,599 a month for up to $200,000 in monthly sales, with 0.8% on orders above that. The category's dearest tenth starts at $89. Migration help and 24/7 support are included. |
| Free plan and trial | BThe open-source software is free with no sales-volume fee, but you host it yourself. Cloud has no free plan or trial. | DSandboxes are free forever but for non-commercial use only, so you can't run a real shop on them. No trial is listed. |
| Features | CProducts, carts, orders, payments, regions, multi-warehouse stock and promotions as building blocks. A store takes engineering work to assemble. | CGraphQL core, Saleor Apps, a dashboard and Cloud-only Essential Apps. Saleor Engine is labeled beta, and a storefront has to be built. |
| Ease of use | DNo store rating on record. It is a developer framework, set up with code and a PostgreSQL database. | DNo store rating on record. Customising means building apps over GraphQL, so it needs developers. |
| Platforms and integrations | BWeb, with an admin and a Cloud hosting service, an MCP server and a CLI. No phone or desktop app. | BWeb, with GraphQL, webhooks and pub/sub, and a Cloud or self-hosted option. No phone or desktop app. |
| Best for | custom stores built in JavaScript | API-first stores for high-volume sellers |
The GPA is the average of the five grades: an A is 4 points, an F is none. The full reasons are on each tool's page: Medusa and Saleor. How we grade
Price against what you get
Medusa starts at $29 a month and scores 2.0 out of 4 on features, ease of use and platforms. Saleor starts at $1,599 a month and scores 2.0.
They score the same, and Medusa starts $1,570 a month lower. Of the other online store builders on the chart, 4 score higher than Medusa for less, and 13 score higher than Saleor for less.
Features, ease of use and platforms, averaged
What paid plans start at, a month (each step along is roughly double) →
- The best score at each price
- Has a free plan
- No free plan
Where they differ
At a glance
| Medusa | Saleor | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free plan | Free plan |
| Starts at | $29 per month and up, billed monthly (Cloud Develop) | $1599 per month (Cloud Select, up to $200,000 monthly GMV) |
| Free plan | The open-source software is free to self-host; the Cloud plans start at $29 a month. | Sandboxes: free forever for non-commercial use such as prototyping and trying new features. |
| Free trial | None listed | None listed |
| Web | ||
| Made by | Medusa | Saleor Commerce |
| Price read from | medusajs.com | saleor.io |
| Checked | Nov 12, 2026 | Nov 12, 2026 |
Worth knowing
Medusa
- It is a developer framework: the admin and a starter storefront exist, but a store takes engineering work to set up.
- Cloud prices start at the listed figure and grow with infrastructure and usage; edge requests beyond the allowance cost $0.30 per 1M.
- Cloud development access is billed per seat, and log drains are a $50 per month add-on on some plans.
- Medusa Cloud cannot accept cards issued by banks registered in India.
Saleor
- Cloud pricing is tied to monthly GMV, and orders above the plan's limit add a percentage fee (0.8% on Select, 0.4% on Volume).
- The free Sandboxes plan is for non-commercial use only.
- Optional add-ons: the Accelerator Plan costs $6,000 and Forward Deployed Engineering $12,000, credited back over 12 months after go-live.
- Saleor Engine is labeled beta, and the Essential Apps run only on Saleor Cloud.
Key features
Medusa
- Commerce building blocks
- Products, carts, orders and payments are provided as primitives inside a framework, so developers customize behavior instead of working around a fixed storefront.
- Sales channels and regions
- Several sales channels with their own rules and products, plus multiple currencies, local tax rules and region-specific shipping and payment settings.
- Inventory and promotions
- Multi-warehouse inventory with order reservations, and a promotion engine for campaigns, free shipping and customer or B2B pricing.
- Medusa Admin
- A merchant dashboard for daily operations. The Cloud FAQ says Admin users are free and unlimited, and only development seats are billed.
- Cloud hosting
- Medusa Cloud deploys from GitHub and hosts the backend, admin and storefront on a CDN, with previews, logs, backups and autoscaling on higher plans.
- AI tooling
- A Medusa MCP server, a development agent and a Cloud CLI are included on every Cloud plan; custom workflow agents are Enterprise only.
Saleor
- Headless GraphQL core
- Customization is done by building Saleor Apps that connect through GraphQL, webhooks and pub/sub, which keeps the core files untouched.
- Saleor Engine
- A beta feature that runs your storefront, apps and ERP sync alongside Saleor, with deployment, variables and logs managed from the Dashboard.
- Essential Apps
- Cloud-only apps cover multilingual customer emails, Adyen payments, Google Merchant Center feeds, MCP, ACP/UCP and Ink AI Search.
- Pulse dashboard
- Dashboard home shows revenue, orders, returns and low stock, and flags anything that looks unusual.
- Migration and engineering support
- Each Cloud plan includes migration from platforms such as Shopify Plus or Magento, a delivery lead, a Slack channel and 24/7 support with SLAs.
- Cloud and self-hosted
- Moving between Saleor Cloud and self-hosted open source is supported, though a data migration or version update may be needed.
Plans
Medusa
Open source$0
The open-source platform from GitHub, which you host and run yourself on your own PostgreSQL database.
Cloud Develop$29
per month and up, billed monthly
Hosted backend, admin and storefront, GitHub deploys, previews on pull requests, Medusa Search and Emails, with 1M edge requests.
Cloud Launch$99
per month and up, billed monthly
Adds autoscaling, custom storefront domains, automatic backups, webhook events, a Redis-backed store and 5M edge requests.
Cloud Scale$299
per month and up, billed monthly
Adds background workers, priority support, semantic search, longer backup retention, a custom backend domain and 10M edge requests.
Cloud EnterpriseCustom
Adds SLA-backed support, RBAC, SSO and audit logs, a dedicated support engineer and a 99.99% uptime guarantee. Sold through sales.
Saleor
Sandboxes$0
Free forever, for non-commercial use only: prototyping, side projects and trying new features.
Select$1599
per month, up to $200,000 monthly GMV
For new projects and smaller companies; 0.8% charged on orders above the GMV limit, with a fair API usage policy.
Volume$3999
per month, up to $1,000,000 monthly GMV
For high-volume businesses; 0.4% charged on orders above the GMV limit, with a fair API usage policy.
EnterpriseCustom
Negotiated pricing with a fair API usage policy. Sold through sales.
Common questions
Which is cheaper, Medusa or Saleor?
As of Nov 12, 2026, Medusa is cheaper to start with: $29 a month, against $1,599 a month for Saleor. Medusa starts at $29 per month and up, billed monthly (Cloud Develop), and Saleor starts at $1599 per month (Cloud Select, up to $200,000 monthly GMV).
Which has a free plan, Medusa or Saleor?
As of Nov 12, 2026, both Medusa and Saleor have a free plan.
More comparisons
How this page was made
- The verdict at the top follows a fixed rule. When both tools are in the same category and either is in our top three for it, the verdict follows that ranking: the higher-placed tool is our pick. The top three weigh who each tool suits as well as its grades, so a pick can go against the GPA. Otherwise the page does not pick one and says which grades higher: the higher GPA first; on a tie, the one with a free plan, then the one that starts cheaper in dollars a month, counted the same way for both; if they are still level, what the choice depends on.
- The grades are our own, from each tool’s review or report card. The GPA is their average.
- Prices, plans and platforms come from each tool’s listing. The table above says where each price was read and when.
- The differences and the answers to the questions are worked out from those listings.