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Medusa.js Agency: headless shops with custom logic

MEDUSA.JS HEADLESS COMMERCE

Medusa.js

Medusa.js is an open-source headless commerce framework on Node.js: modular, API-first and ideal for custom shops beyond rigid off-the-shelf systems.

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Medusa or Shopware? Architecture review as a first step

Medusa.js in figures

37K
37
2.22.3
19 days
858K

What is Medusa.js?

Medusa is an open-source commerce framework built on Node.js and TypeScript. It ships commerce modules for cart, pricing, inventory, payments and orders, plus a customisable admin and a framework for your own API endpoints, workflows and integrations. The storefront isn't included – you build it separately, for example with Next.js.

What matters for decision-makers: the core is MIT-licensed, with no fees per revenue or order. You can run Medusa on your own infrastructure or on the paid Medusa Cloud. The trade-off is that Medusa is a toolkit: what a shop system brings out of the box is written as code in your project here.

Whether Medusa or a standard system like Shopware suits your project better is covered further down.

Warehouse aisle with shelves full of cardboard boxes

Price rules, live – B2C or B2B

Switch the customer group, change quantities and apply a coupon: group price, tier price, free-shipping threshold and VAT recalculate instantly. The list shows which rule changed the price. Example products and prices, calculated in your browser.

Consumers always see gross prices

  • Work gloves

    €23.74 / unitwas €24.99

    €284.88

  • Cordless drill

    €99.96 / unit

    €99.96

  • Screw set

    €5.00 / unit

    €0.00

Goods value
€384.84
Shipping
free
Total
€384.84
incl. 19 % VAT
€61.45

Rules applied

  • Tier price from 10 units −5 %: Work gloves−€15.00
  • Free shipping from €150.00 goods value−€5.95

Example products and prices. Tiers: from 10 units −5 %, from 25 units −10 %. Calculated in your browser.

The Medusa ecosystem

Storefront & admin

What customers and your team see

Next.js Starter Storefront

A Next.js storefront with catalog, cart, checkout and customer account. A starting point you adapt to your design and checkout flow – not a finished theme.

Storefront and admin talk to the backend through the Store and Admin APIs

Framework

Where your own logic lives

Workflows and API routes call the modules and link their data

Modules

Commerce features and infrastructure

Modules store data in PostgreSQL and use services such as Redis

Your infrastructure

Not Medusa: PostgreSQL, Redis and your hosting. Alternatively the paid Medusa Cloud runs it for you.

What we build with Medusa

Bookable individually or as a project. And if a standard system fits better, we tell you up front.

  • New shop on Medusa

    A data model that follows the commerce modules, with custom modules only where your business departs from the standard. Admin and Store API set up so your team and frontend can work with them straight away.

  • Storefront with Next.js

    A custom Next.js storefront using Medusa's Store API and JS SDK: catalog, cart, checkout and customer account in your design.

  • Pricing, promotion and fulfillment logic

    Special rules such as customer group prices, tiered pricing or shipping from several warehouses as dedicated modules and workflows – traceable in code instead of scattered across plugins.

  • ERP, PIM, payment and shipping integrations

    Integrations encapsulated in the module system, data sync via workflows and subscribers. That way you can swap a service later without rebuilding the shop.

  • Architecture review as a first step

    Planning a Medusa project or already running one? We review the data model, custom modules and integrations, and you get a prioritized list of what holds up and what doesn't.

  • Operations, maintenance and updates

    Deployment, monitoring and backups for self-hosted instances. We roll out updates to Medusa and your own modules after testing them.

How your Medusa.js project runs

Cost and duration depend on scope. Our project calculator gives you a first range; the binding figure comes with the offer after the workshop.

  1. First call

    You describe the goal, the users and the systems you already have. We tell you straight away whether Medusa.js fits or whether another route is better.

  2. Architecture workshop

    We define the data model, interfaces and hosting and cut the scope into packages. The offer is based on that.

  3. Delivery in iterations

    We ship in short steps to a test environment, so you see every stage. Tests and code review are part of each step.

  4. Go-live and operations

    We deploy to your infrastructure or run the application for you. After that we handle updates and monitoring if you want.

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Brands that work with us

  • Bike-Discount logo
  • Mellerud logo
  • Apple of Eden logo
  • Etikettenmeister logo
  • Suthor logo
  • Xtreme Events logo
  • Thea Mika logo

Pros and cons of Medusa.js

Pros

  • Custom logic for pricing, promotions and fulfillment lives as clean code in its own modules rather than as plugin workarounds.
  • TypeScript throughout: backend, admin and storefront share one language and one set of types.
  • Headless by design, so you choose the frontend freely, for example Next.js or a native app.
  • Open source and self-hostable: full control over code, data and roadmap with no license fees for the core.

Cons

  • Medusa is a framework, not a finished shop system: much of what other platforms ship out of the box has to be built.
  • The extension ecosystem is smaller, especially for German payment methods, legal texts and ERP systems.
  • You are responsible for hosting, updates and security unless you opt for the paid cloud offering.
  • Without an in-house or contracted development team, running and evolving a Medusa shop is hardly realistic.

Is Medusa.js right for you?

A good fit if …

  • your business model needs pricing, discount or fulfillment rules that standard systems cannot handle.
  • you want commerce as one building block alongside your own CMS, search and PIM.
  • your team or agency is at home in Node.js and TypeScript.
  • you want to avoid depending on a platform vendor and its license model.

Probably not if …

  • a standard shop system already covers your requirements today.
  • your team expects lots of ready-made features and store extensions without development.
  • you cannot budget for ongoing development, updates and operations.
  • you want to launch quickly and need little custom logic.

We build with Medusa.js

Medusa cleanly separates commerce logic from the frontend. We use its modular architecture to tailor shops precisely to your processes.

  • Modular commerce architecture on Node.js and TypeScript
  • Store and Admin API for any frontend
  • Custom modules for pricing, promotions and fulfillment
  • Integration with ERP, PIM, payment and shipping
Image about: We build with Medusa.js

Medusa or Shopware?

We work with both. Five questions about your project, and you see which way it leans and why. The weighting follows the trade-off table below.

Question 1 of 5

What are you planning?

All trade-offs as a table

When Medusa – and when Shopware?

We work with both. As a Shopware partner we know the limits of the standard as well as the cost of building your own. This is how we weigh it:

DecisionLean toward MedusaLean toward the alternative
Custom logicMedusa, if pricing, promotions or fulfillment are so specific that a standard system can only handle them through workarounds.Shopware, if your processes largely follow retail standards and the Rule Builder or existing extensions cover the special cases.
Out-of-the-box featuresMedusa, if you only need the commerce building blocks and deliberately pick CMS, search and frontend separately.Shopware, if you want to use the storefront, Shopping Experiences and ready-made extensions from the store without development.
TeamMedusa, if your team works in Node.js and TypeScript and sees the shop as part of its own software.Shopware, if you build on PHP or want to choose from a large market of agencies and developers.
Marketing and contentMedusa, if content comes from a headless CMS anyway and the frontend should stay open.Shopware, if marketing should build landing pages and campaigns in the shop admin themselves.
Operations and costMedusa, if you want no license dependency and have hosting, updates and ongoing development firmly in the budget.Shopware, if you want to go live quickly and keep ongoing development small – with license or subscription costs depending on the edition.

As of October 2026. The table doesn't replace an architecture decision – we make that with you on the actual project.

Medusa.js compared

Medusa.js next to technologies of the same category, measured with the same public sources.

Medusa.js compared
FigureMedusaOXID eShopShopwareSpryker
Stars on GitHub37K2383.5K39
Releases in 12 months37115312
Median between releases8 days22 days6 days15 days
Latest version2.22.3 (04/11/2026)7.6.0 (07/10/2026)6.7.16.0 (22/10/2026)3.87.1 (14/09/2026)
Downloads per month858K (npm)25K (Packagist)281K (Packagist)31K (Packagist)
Active contributors (12 months)16782040
Security advisories (12 months)10140
Search interest in Germany (Google Trends, 12 months, 100 = most searched in the group)< 1< 1100< 1

Sources: GitHub, Google Trends (DataForSEO), OSV.dev, Packagist, npm · as of 06/11/2026. Figures are indicators, not a verdict on quality. Go to the pages: OXID eShop · Shopware · Spryker

Releases & issues

Releases & issues
VersionDateIssues openedof which closed
2.22.230/10/202610
2.22.123/10/2026198
2.22.021/10/2026133
2.21.228/09/20266531
2.21.122/09/20263326

Source: GitHub · as of 01/11/2026

Headless from the ground up

Medusa ships the commerce engine as an API – you choose the frontend freely: Next.js, Remix or native apps. The customer experience stays independent of the backend.

Modular, not monolithic

Every domain – cart, pricing, inventory – is a swappable module. Custom logic lives as clean code instead of plugin hacks.

Illustration of Headless from the ground up and Modular, not monolithic

A TypeScript stack without seams

Backend, admin and storefront share language and types. That shortens onboarding and reduces integration errors.

Scaling through services

Workflows, an event bus and subscribers enable asynchronous processes and horizontal scaling as load and catalog grow.

Illustration of A TypeScript stack without seams and Scaling through services

Selected references

Custom B2C and B2B shops

Where standard systems fail on special processes, Medusa expresses complex pricing, discount and fulfillment logic as code.

Composable commerce

Medusa fits as a commerce layer into a best-of-breed landscape of CMS, search and PIM.

Illustration of Custom B2C and B2B shops and Composable commerce

Medusa.js Data & Insights

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Frequently asked questions about Medusa.js

Your question isn't here?

Ask directly
When is Medusa.js the right choice for our shop?
Medusa.js makes sense when you need to model custom processes beyond rigid off-the-shelf systems and want full control over both commerce logic and frontend. As an open-source headless framework on Node.js and TypeScript, it cleanly separates backend and storefront, so you can tailor pricing, promotions and fulfillment exactly to your business. For plain standard requirements with no special logic, the effort is often hard to justify.
How do you approach building a Medusa shop?
We start with architecture and module design, modeling your domain along Medusa's modular structure. From there we build custom modules for pricing, promotions or fulfillment where needed and put a custom storefront with Next.js on top via the Store API. That keeps commerce logic decoupled from the frontend, so both sides can evolve independently.
How do you connect Medusa.js to our existing systems?
Medusa is built API-first: through the Store and Admin APIs we connect the backend to any frontend and to your internal tools. For ERP, PIM, payment and shipping we use the module system to encapsulate integrations cleanly instead of wiring them into the core. That keeps every connection swappable and easy to reason about.
Can we migrate from a standard shop system to Medusa.js?
Yes, a migration is possible, but it should be planned deliberately because Medusa is not a one-to-one replacement for a finished off-the-shelf platform. We move catalog, customer and order data step by step and express your logic in modules rather than rebuilding a rigid platform. If your current system already covers your needs and no special logic is required, Medusa is not automatically the better option.
What does running a Medusa shop look like?
Since Medusa is a self-hosted Node.js backend, we handle deployment, monitoring and ongoing development. We plan framework and custom-module updates deliberately, because unlike with a pure SaaS provider you are responsible for hosting and maintenance yourself. In return you get full control over code, data and roadmap with no vendor lock-in.

Sources

As of: October 2026

An e-commerce project with Medusa?

From architecture and storefront to operations: we build your headless shop with Medusa.js.

To E-Commerce Development

Ready for your Medusa.js project?

Let's talk about your requirements – we'll get back to you within one business day with concrete next steps.

What's it about?

Discuss your project +49 (0) 2161 539 71 60
Profile picture of Paul Kalisch, Executive Partner

Paul Kalisch

Executive Partner

  1. 30 minutes by video or phone
  2. You talk directly to a partner, not to sales
  3. You get the order of steps, risks and rough costs

+49 (0) 2161 539 71 60info@next-levels.de

Related services and technologies for Medusa.js

All technologies

* Sources: GitHub (01/11/2026), npm (06/11/2026) · Green: strong, orange: weaker, red: notably weak, each against usual values. A pointer, not a verdict.