Medusa vs Sylius (2026): which should you pick?

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 Sylius if

• Fits if you have PHP and Symfony developers
• Works for teams that want a headless API and are fine paying for Plus later

Look elsewhere if

• Not for you if you have no developers, because there is no hosted store builder
• Skip it if you need marketplace, RFQ, RBAC or returns, as those are paid Plus modules
• Watch out: Plus has no published price, and buyers are pointed to a demo and sales
• Tight if you want to launch fast, since the work is engineering

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.

Sylius

• It is a developer framework, so launching a store takes engineering work; there is no hosted store builder.
• The Community Edition lacks marketplace, RFQ, RBAC and returns features, which are paid Plus modules.
• Sylius Plus prices are not published; the site points buyers to a live demo and sales contact.

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.

Sylius

Headless REST API

A REST API built with API Platform lets the framework sit behind the front end or microservices architecture of your choice.

Symfony developer framework

Built for Symfony developers, with automated testing practices and a Behavior Driven Development approach baked into projects.

B2B Suite (Plus)

Plus adds tailored price lists for customer groups, ordering on behalf of customers, wish lists and a request-for-quotation flow.

Marketplace Suite (Plus)

Plus adds vendor onboarding, communication, payment splitting, reports and document handling for multi-vendor stores.

Advanced multi-store and multi-source stock

Plus modules run several stores from one admin and ship from more than one warehouse, with ERP-friendly inventory handling.

Returns, loyalty and subscriptions

Plus modules cover a returns (RMA) process, loyalty rules, partial shipments, a product configurator and subscription sales.

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.

Sylius

• Community Edition$0

  The open-source framework with a REST API, which you host and build on yourself, for example on a VPS, Docker or Kubernetes.

• Sylius PlusCustom

  Subscription modules on top of the core, such as B2B Suite, Marketplace Suite and RBAC. No price is published; sold through sales.