Medusa vs Shopizer (2026): which should you pick?
As of Nov 13, 2026, Medusa grades higher than Shopizer: 2.4 against 1.8 out of 4.0.
Checked Nov 12, 2026 and Nov 13, 2026 · graded Nov 12, 2026 and Nov 13, 2026 by ToolGPA
Medusa grades higher on value for money, features and platforms. They get the same grade on the free plan and ease of use.
Price, platforms and features side by side. The table says where each price was read and when.
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 Shopizer if
- Fits if you have Java developers and want to build your own commerce backend
- Makes sense if you want code you control and don't need a finished store
Look elsewhere if
- Not for you if you want a ready-made store, as there's no storefront builder
- Skip it if you need paid support, since only community support is listed
- Too light for non-technical owners: it's a set of backend services
- Watch out: the older headless release, 3.2.7, is kept available separately from the newer microservices
How we grade them
| 2.4GPAMedusaFair | 1.8GPAShopizerWeak | |
|---|---|---|
| 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. | C$0, but you run it yourself on a server or Kubernetes, so it sits in the middle. |
| 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. | BOpen source with no caps, though you provide the hosting and the front end. |
| Features | CProducts, carts, orders, payments, regions, multi-warehouse stock and promotions as building blocks. A store takes engineering work to assemble. | DCatalog, merchant, order, identity, inventory and rules services. It has no storefront, so it's a set of parts rather than a store. |
| Ease of use | DNo store rating on record. It is a developer framework, set up with code and a PostgreSQL database. | DNo rating on record. Running Spring Boot services on Docker or Kubernetes is developer work. |
| Platforms and integrations | BWeb, with an admin and a Cloud hosting service, an MCP server and a CLI. No phone or desktop app. | CWeb services only, deployable on AWS, GCP, Azure or Kubernetes. No apps and no integration list. |
| Best for | custom stores built in JavaScript | Java developers building their own commerce services |
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 Shopizer. 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. Shopizer has no paid plan and scores 1.3.
Medusa scores higher, and starts $29 a month higher: the question is whether the extra is worth that to you. Of the other online store builders on the chart, 15 score higher than Medusa for less, and none scores higher than Shopizer 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
- Shopizer also covers inventory.
At a glance
| Medusa | Shopizer | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free plan | Free |
| Starts at | $29 per month and up, billed monthly (Cloud Develop) | Free |
| Free plan | The open-source software is free to self-host; the Cloud plans start at $29 a month. | Open source at $0 with community support and basic features. |
| Free trial | None listed | None listed |
| Web | ||
| Made by | Medusa | Shopizer |
| Price read from | medusajs.com | shopizer.com |
| Checked | Nov 12, 2026 | Nov 13, 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.
Shopizer
- This is a set of backend services for developers, not a ready-made storefront builder.
- Only community support is listed, and the pricing section has a single free plan.
- The previous headless release, version 3.2.7, is kept available separately from the newer microservices.
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.
Shopizer
- Microservices architecture
- Spring Boot 3 services that can be deployed and scaled independently; the site says it can run locally with Docker and Kind.
- Commerce services
- Separate services for product catalog, merchants, order management, identity provider, inventory management and dynamic rules.
- Security framework
- Spring Security with role-based access control and support for multiple identity providers.
- Cloud-agnostic deployment
- Deployable on AWS, GCP, Azure or any Kubernetes-capable cloud.
- Data storage
- Supports PostgreSQL, JSONB and pgvector.
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.
Shopizer
Open Source$0
Community support, basic features and the GitHub community. You host it yourself.
Common questions
Which is cheaper, Medusa or Shopizer?
As of Nov 13, 2026, Shopizer is cheaper to start with: it is free, against $29 a month for Medusa. Medusa starts at $29 per month and up, billed monthly (Cloud Develop), and Shopizer is free.
Which has a free plan, Medusa or Shopizer?
As of Nov 13, 2026, both Medusa and Shopizer 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.