# Medusa review (2026): is the free plan enough? > Open-source commerce framework for developers Checked Nov 12, 2026 ยท graded Nov 12, 2026 by ToolGPA. Medusa is an open-source commerce platform with a built-in framework for customization, used to build B2B or DTC stores, marketplaces and other commerce apps in Node.js on PostgreSQL. You can self-host it for free or pay for Medusa Cloud, which hosts the backend, admin and storefront and charges for infrastructure instead of a share of sales. - **Category:** Online Store Builders - **Made by:** Medusa - **Website:** https://medusajs.com/ - **Runs on:** Web - **Who should skip it:** Not for you if you want a store without developers, as setup takes engineering work. - **Facts last checked:** Nov 12, 2026 ## Pricing As of Nov 12, 2026, Medusa has a free plan, and paid plans start at $29 per month and up, billed monthly (Cloud Develop). - **Pricing model:** Free plan - **Free plan:** The open-source software is free to self-host; the Cloud plans start at $29 a month. - **Free trial:** None listed. | Plan | Price | What you get | | --- | --- | --- | | 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 Enterprise | Custom | Adds SLA-backed support, RBAC, SSO and audit logs, a dedicated support engineer and a 99.99% uptime guarantee. Sold through sales. | Read from https://medusajs.com/pricing on Nov 12, 2026. Prices change, so confirm with Medusa before buying. ## Key features - **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. ## Good for - Developer teams building custom or headless stores in JavaScript - Teams that want to avoid a platform fee on sales volume - B2B and marketplace builds that need custom commerce logic ## Worth knowing - 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. ## ToolGPA grades **GPA: 2.4 out of 4**, graded Nov 12, 2026. Medusa is an open-source commerce framework in JavaScript, with a merchant admin, a starter storefront and optional hosting from $29 a month. A store still takes engineering work to set up, hosting costs grow with usage, and the Cloud can't take cards from banks registered in India. - **Value for money: B.** Cloud 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. - **Free plan and trial: B.** The open-source software is free with no sales-volume fee, but you host it yourself. Cloud has no free plan or trial. - **Features: C.** Products, carts, orders, payments, regions, multi-warehouse stock and promotions as building blocks. A store takes engineering work to assemble. - **Ease of use: D.** No store rating on record. It is a developer framework, set up with code and a PostgreSQL database. - **Platforms and integrations: B.** Web, with an admin and a Cloud hosting service, an MCP server and a CLI. No phone or desktop app. These are ToolGPA's own grades. Graded from this listing, whose facts were read from Medusa's own pages on 12 November 2026. Not based on using the product, and shorter than our full reviews. ## Where it stands among online store builders - Medusa's GPA of 2.4 is higher than 15 of the 26 other online store builders we grade, and level with 5. - It stands best on value for money (B, above 22 of 26) and worst on ease of use (D, above 0). - Its paid plans start at $29 a month, against a middle price of $29 for the category: 5 of the 18 others that charge start lower. - On features, ease of use and platforms it scores 2.0 out of 4. 4 tools score higher and cost less. The category's chart of price against score: https://toolgpa.com/charts/online-stores ## Keep it, or make your own? **Keep it.** To replace Medusa you would be making checkout, card payments and sales tax handled for you. That is not a weekend's work, with an AI app builder or without one. It costs $348 a year. Medusa is open source, so there is a third way: take its code and run it yourself. - You could not: Checkout, card payments and sales tax handled for you. - You could not: It plugs into other products, GitHub, PostgreSQL and Redis among them, and has an API. - You could not: AI features, unless you pay a model provider for each request yourself. A judgement by ToolGPA from this listing, by rules that are the same for every tool. Nothing was built to test it. ## Works with GitHub, PostgreSQL, Redis **Tags:** Online store, Open source, Self-hostable, Public API, AI features ## Alternatives - [Saleor](https://toolgpa.com/tools/saleor): Open-source headless commerce with managed Cloud hosting. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/medusa-vs-saleor) - [Vendure](https://toolgpa.com/tools/vendure): Open-source B2B commerce framework with paid plans. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/medusa-vs-vendure) - [commercetools](https://toolgpa.com/tools/commercetools): API-first headless commerce platform for large retailers. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/commercetools-vs-medusa) - [Shopware](https://toolgpa.com/tools/shopware): Open-source commerce platform for B2B and B2C stores. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/medusa-vs-shopware) - [BigCommerce](https://toolgpa.com/tools/bigcommerce): Hosted ecommerce platform with plans set by yearly sales. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/bigcommerce-vs-medusa) ## Sources The prices, plans, platforms and features above were read from these pages on Nov 12, 2026: - https://medusajs.com/pricing - https://medusajs.com/ - https://github.com/medusajs/medusa Page: https://toolgpa.com/tools/medusa Listed by ToolGPA (toolgpa.com).