At a glance — how these 4 alternatives compare
Our read on each project's adoption, maintenance activity and commercial-use risk, derived from GitHub signals and SPDX license terms rather than star count alone. Sorted by stars. How we score.
| Project | Adoption | Maintenance | Commercial use |
|---|---|---|---|
| ★ 36,647 · TypeScript | Flagship | Active | Low risk Embed in a proprietary product with no copyleft obligation |
| ★ 23,419 · Python BSD-3-Clause | Mainstream | Active | Low risk Embed in a proprietary product with no copyleft obligation |
| ★ 10,540 · PHP | Mainstream | Active | High risk Distributing a derived work obliges releasing its source |
| ★ 8,505 · TypeScript NOASSERTION | Mainstream | Active | Unknown risk No clear SPDX id — treat as all-rights-reserved until verified |
† Licenses marked † were read from the repository's LICENSE file on 2026-09-05 (linked, pinned to the commit we read) because the GitHub API returned no SPDX id for them. Unmarked licenses are the GitHub API's SPDX classification.
The alternatives
The world's most flexible commerce platform for agents and developers
medusajs/medusa Updated 2026-10-08 saleor
Saleor Core: the high performance, composable, headless commerce API.
saleor/saleor Updated 2026-10-07 A customizable, open-source ecommerce platform built on WordPress. Build any commerce solution you can imagine.
woocommerce/woocommerce Updated 2026-10-08 vendure
Open-source headless commerce platform built with TypeScript, NestJS, React, and GraphQL
vendurehq/vendure Updated 2026-10-08 Editor's take
Yusuke Morinaga · last revisited · star counts quoted in the text (≈) are as of that date; the cards above are refreshed daily
Two of these are headless frameworks that hand you a bill in engineering hours. One is a plugin built on WordPress. Know the difference.
The most expensive mistake when leaving Shopify is not picking the wrong platform — it is not realising that two of the three projects below ship no storefront at all. Shopify is end-to-end: theme, checkout, payments, inventory, fulfillment, the whole thing, out of the box. Medusa and Saleor are headless commerce frameworks — they give you a commerce API and expect you to build the storefront yourself. That is enormous flexibility and an enormous amount of frontend engineering. WooCommerce is the only entry here that gives you a working store without a frontend team. Decide whether you have that team before you read any further.
If you have engineers and want control → Medusa
Medusa (≈36.1k★, TypeScript, MIT core) is the strongest headless pick for a
JavaScript/TypeScript shop. The GitHub API returns no SPDX id for it; the
LICENSE we read is MIT except for the Enterprise Edition materials covered by
ENTERPRISE-LICENSE.md — the cleanest terms in this group for the open-source
part — and it has the most flexible architecture: you model the
commerce backend, then build a Next.js (or any) storefront against it. This is
the right call when your differentiator is the customer experience and a
Shopify theme felt like a straitjacket. The cost is honest and large: every
piece of UI Shopify gave you for free — cart, checkout, account pages,
order history — you now build and maintain. Budget a frontend team, not a
weekend.
If you want GraphQL-first and multi-warehouse → Saleor
Saleor (≈23.3k★, Python, BSD-3-Clause) is the other serious headless option, GraphQL-first, with notably strong multi-currency and multi-warehouse support baked in. BSD-3-Clause is permissive and embedding-friendly. Choose Saleor over Medusa when your team is more comfortable in Python than TypeScript, or when complex inventory across warehouses and currencies is a first-order requirement rather than an edge case. Same caveat applies: you are building the storefront.
If you do NOT have a frontend team → WooCommerce
WooCommerce (≈10.5k★, PHP, GPL-2.0-or-later) is the genuinely different option and, for many small merchants, the right one. It is built on WordPress, which means you get a working storefront, themes, and the largest extension ecosystem of any project here — payment gateways, shipping calculators, everything — without building a frontend from scratch. The trade is the operational surface that comes with WordPress hosting: plugin updates, and the security hygiene that a public site on that stack demands. If you were a small Shopify merchant who wants out of the monthly fee and transaction cuts but does not have engineers, WooCommerce is the realistic landing spot, not the headless pair.
The thing you are really giving up
Shopify’s hosted checkout — PCI-handled, fraud-screened, conversion-optimised, maintained by someone else — is the single hardest thing to replace. With any of these you take on payment integration and the compliance surface around it. That is the real reason Shopify can charge what it charges, and it is the line item that most often sends merchants back.
Comparison notes
Medusa provides a headless commerce API with no bundled storefront — teams must build a frontend using Next.js or similar, gaining flexibility while adding engineering overhead for every UI component. Saleor is GraphQL-first and designed for developers comfortable with headless architecture, with strong multi-currency and multi-warehouse support but a steeper initial setup curve than Shopify's out-of-the-box tooling. WooCommerce requires WordPress hosting and plugin management overhead but offers the largest ecosystem of payment and shipping extensions outside Shopify's own app store.
Migration tips
- Export your Shopify product catalog via the built-in CSV export and import into your chosen platform's product importer, reviewing field mapping carefully for custom metafields.
- Migrate customer records with attention to email consent status — opt-in records must be preserved to remain GDPR and CAN-SPAM compliant after migration.
- Test payment processing end-to-end in a staging environment before DNS cutover, and keep the old Shopify store in read-only mode until you confirm order volumes are stable on the new platform.
Which alternative should you pick?
Replacing Shopify isn't a single call — it's a trade between license terms, team size, and how much early-stage roughness you can absorb. The 4 projects above split along those lines:
- You want the project with the most GitHub stars in this list → medusa. 36,647★ — the most of the 4 projects here. Stars measure attention, not quality or maintenance; check the last-push date and the Editor's take before reading more into it.
- You want a copyleft project whose modifications must be shared back → woocommerce. GPL-2.0-or-later licensed — distributing a modified version (and, under AGPL, offering it over a network) obliges releasing the source, which is what some teams explicitly want.
- You want the project with the most recent push activity → woocommerce. Last push 2026-10-08 — the freshest activity in this list.
License & commercial-use notes
When replacing Shopify, the license usually decides more than the feature list — whether you can modify it, ship it inside a product, or host it as a service. The 4 projects here fall into:
- Permissive (medusa, saleor) — MIT / Apache / BSD / ISC — modify and embed inside a commercial product with no copyleft obligation. The safest bucket for shipping in a proprietary codebase.
- Strong copyleft (woocommerce) — GPL / EPL — distributing a derived work obliges you to release its source under the same terms. Fine for internal use; plan carefully before proprietary distribution.
- Unverified license (vendure) — GitHub returned no clear SPDX id. Treat as all-rights-reserved until you read the project's LICENSE file directly — do not assume commercial use is permitted.
License fields come from the GitHub API's SPDX classification and can lag a relicense. Where the API returned no SPDX id, the license marked † was read from the repository's LICENSE file on 2026-09-05; the † links to the exact file and commit we read. The repository linked on each card is authoritative — confirm its LICENSE file before any license-sensitive deployment.
Maintenance health of these 4 projects
Of the 4 projects listed, 4 shipped at least one commit in the last 12 months. See how we rank for the full criteria and our self-hosting cost reality check, which apply across every comparison on this site.
Frequently asked questions
How do these 4 alternatives compare on maintenance health?
4 of 4 have shipped a commit in the last 12 months. At least one project here has 5,000+ GitHub stars. Always check the last-pushed date in the cards above and read the latest closed issues — those two signals are the fastest public check we know of.
How this page was compiled
- Repository facts (stars, license, language, last push) come straight from the GitHub public API and are linked on each card as the primary source. Where the API returned no SPDX id, the licence marked † was read from the repository's
LICENSEfile (linked, pinned to the commit we read, with the date checked). - Editorial analysis (the intro, comparison notes and migration tips) is Claude-drafted from Shopify's use case and the alternatives' repository metadata — in Claude Code sessions or scheduled routines run under the operator's account. Samples are spot-checked against the upstream repositories; entries are not individually reviewed unless they carry a signature. See what Claude drafts and what the operator writes.
- Editor's take is signed by Yusuke Morinaga. It was drafted in a Claude Code session the operator ran, then read and confirmed by Yusuke Morinaga before publication, and carries the date it was last revised. It is written from each project's README, LICENSE, release history and issue tracker — not from running the project in production; where that distinction matters, the take says so.
- Maintenance signal: 4 of 4 projects shipped a commit in the last 12 months as of the latest rebuild (most recent activity: ).
- Last editorial review: by Yusuke Morinaga.
- Spotted an error? Email [email protected] with the page URL (subject prefix
[correction]) — we ship corrections within 14 days.