Building a DTC Website vs Marketplace

Also Read: Headless vs Hybrid vs “Universal” CMS: Which Model Fits Multi-Team Delivery?

Here’s how they fare:

API Style

Medusa exposes a RESTful API by default for both storefront and admin interactions. This straightforward approach often means easier onboarding for developers (REST is ubiquitous and simple to test). Saleor is strictly GraphQL API, all queries and mutations go through GraphQL endpoints. Vendure by design also uses GraphQL APIs for both its shop and admin endpoints.

(Vendure does allow adding REST endpoints via custom extensions if needed, but GraphQL is the primary interface).

There are pros and cons here:

• GraphQL allows more flexible data retrieval (clients can ask for exactly what they need), which is great for complex UI needs and can reduce network requests. However, GraphQL adds complexity, you need to construct queries and manage a GraphQL client.
• REST, on the other hand, is simple and cache-friendly but can sometimes require multiple requests for complex pages.
• Importantly, for those who care about GraphQL vs REST, Medusa historically did not have a built-in GraphQL (though you could generate one via OpenAPI specs or community projects), whereas Saleor and Vendure natively support GraphQL out-of-the-box.
• If GraphQL is a must-have for you or your dev team, Saleor and Vendure tick that box easily; Medusa might require some extra work or using its REST endpoints.
• On the flip side, if GraphQL seems overkill for your needs, Medusa’s simpler REST approach can be a relief. (Note: GraphQL being “language agnostic” means even if Saleor’s core is Python, you can consume its API from any stack; an argument some make that the core language matters a bit less if you treat the platform as a standalone service.)

Architecture and Modular Design

All three are headless and API-first, meaning the back-end business logic is decoupled from any front-end. They each allow (or encourage) running additional services for certain tasks:

Medusa

The architecture is relatively monolithic but modular internally. You run a Medusa server which handles all commerce logic and exposes APIs. Medusa’s philosophy is to keep the core simple and let functionality be added via plugins (which run in the same process).

This design avoids a microservices explosion for small projects; everything is one Node process (plus a database and perhaps a search engine). This is great for smaller teams. Medusa uses a single database (by default Postgres) for storing data, and you can deploy it as a single service (with optional separate services for things like a storefront or an admin dashboard UI).

Saleor

Saleor’s architecture revolves around Django conventions. It’s also monolithic in the sense that the Saleor server handles everything (GraphQL endpoints, business logic, etc.) in one service, backed by a PostgreSQL database. However, Saleor encourages a slightly different extensibility model: you can extend by writing “plugins” within the core or by building “apps” (microservices) that integrate via webhooks and the GraphQL API.

This dual approach means if you want to alter core behavior deeply, you might write a Python plugin that has access to the database and internals. Or, if you prefer to keep your extension separate (or write it in another language), you can create an app that talks to Saleor’s API from the outside and is authorized via API tokens.

The latter is useful for decoupling (and is language-agnostic), but it means that extension can only interact with Saleor through GraphQL calls and webhooks, not direct DB access. Saleor’s design also supports containerization and scaling; it’s easy to run Saleor in Docker and scale out the services (plus it has support for background tasks and uses things like Celery for asynchronous jobs in newer versions).

Vendure

Vendure is structured as a Node application with a built-in modular system. It runs as a central server (plus an optional separate worker process for heavy tasks). Vendure’s internal architecture is plugin-based: features like payment processing, search, etc., are implemented as plugins that can be included or replaced.

Developers can write their own plugins to extend functionality without forking the core. Vendure uses an underlying NestJS framework, which imposes a certain organized structure (modules, providers, controllers, etc.) that leads to a clean separation of concerns.

It also means Vendure can benefit from NestJS features like dependency injection and middleware. Vendure includes a separate Worker process capability, e.x., for sending emails or updating search indexes asynchronously, a background worker can be run to offload those tasks. This is great for scalability, as heavy operations don’t block the main API event loop.

Vendure’s use of GraphQL and a strongly typed schema also means frontends can auto-generate typed SDKs (for example, generating TypeScript query hooks from the GraphQL schema).

Admin & Frontend Architecture

It’s worth noting how each handles the Admin dashboard and starter Storefronts, since these are part of architecture in a broad sense:

Medusa Admin

Medusa provides an admin panel (open source) built with React and GatsbyJS (TypeScript). It’s a separate app that communicates with the Medusa server over REST. You can deploy it separately or together with the server.

The admin is quite feature-rich (products, orders, returns, etc.) and since it’s React-based, it’s relatively straightforward for JS developers to customize or extend with new components. Medusa’s admin UI being a decoupled frontend means it’s optional, if you wanted, you could even build your own admin or integrate Medusa purely via API; but most users will use the provided one for convenience.

Saleor Admin

Saleor’s admin panel is also decoupled and is built with React (they have a design system called Macaw-UI). It interacts with the Saleor core via GraphQL. You can use the official admin or fork/customize it if needed. Saleor allows creating API tokens for private apps via the admin, so you can integrate external back-office systems easily. Saleor’s admin is quite polished and supports common tasks (managing products, orders, discounts, etc.). As with Medusa, the admin is essentially a client of the backend API.

Vendure Admin

Vendure’s admin UI comes as a default part of the package; implemented in Angular and delivered as a plugin (AdminUiPlugin) that serves the admin app. By default, a standard Vendure installation includes this admin. Administrators access it to manage catalog, orders, settings, etc.

Even if you’re not an Angular developer, you can still use the admin as provided. Vendure documentation notes that you “do not need to know Angular to use Vendure” and that the admin can even be extended with custom UI extensions written in other frameworks (they provide some bridging for that).

However, major custom changes to the admin likely require Angular skills. Some teams choose to build a custom admin interface (e.g., in React) by consuming Vendure’s Admin GraphQL API, but that’s a bigger effort. So out-of-the-box, Vendure gives you a functioning admin UI which is sufficient form many cases, though perhaps not as slick as Medusa’s or Saleor’s React-based UIs in terms of look and feel.

Storefronts

All three being headless means you’re expected to build or integrate a storefront. To jump-start development, each provides starter storefront projects:

Medusa offers a Gatsby starter that’s impressively full-featured, including typical e-commerce pages (product listings, cart, checkout) and advanced features like customer login and order returns, all wired up to Medusa’s backend. It basically feels like a ready-made theme you can customize, which is great for fast prototyping. Medusa also has starters or example integrations with Next.js, Nuxt (Vue), Svelte, and others.

Saleor provides a React/Next.js Storefront starter (sometimes referred to as “Saleor React Storefront”). It’s a Next.js app that you can use as a foundation for your shop, already configured to query the Saleor GraphQL API. This covers basics like product pages, cart, etc., but might not be as feature-complete out of the box as Medusa’s Gatsby starter (for example, handling of returns or customer accounts might require additional work).

Vendure, as mentioned, has official starters in Remix, Qwik, and Angular. These starter storefronts include all fundamental e-commerce flows (product listing with facets, product detail, search, cart, checkout, user accounts, etc.) using Vendure’s GraphQL API. The Remix and Qwik starters are particularly interesting as they focus on performance (Remix for fast server-rendered React, Qwik for ultra-fast hydration). Vendure thus gives a few choices depending on your front-end preference, though notably, there isn’t an official Next.js starter from Vendure’s team as of 2025. However, the community or third parties might provide one, and in any case, you can build one easily with their GraphQL API.

All modern e-commerce platforms cover the basics: product listings, shopping cart, checkout, order management, etc. However, differences emerge in how features are implemented and what is provided natively vs. via extensions. Let’s compare some key feature areas and note where each platform stands out:

Product Catalog Management

Product Models

Products in Medusa can have multiple variants (for example, a T-shirt with different sizes/colors) and are grouped into Collections (a collection is essentially a group of products, often used like categories). Medusa also supports tagging products with arbitrary tags for additional grouping or filtering logic.

Medusa’s philosophy is to keep the core product model fairly straightforward, and encourage integration with external Product Information Management (PIM) or CMS if you need extremely detailed product content (e.g., rich descriptions, multiple locale content, etc.). It does provide all the basics like images, description, prices, SKUs, etc., and inventory tracking out of the box.

Saleor’s product catalog is a bit more structured. It supports organizing products by Categories and Collections. A Category in Saleor is a tree structure (like traditional e-commerce categories) and a Collection is more like a curated grouping (similar to Medusa’s collections).

Saleor also has a notion of Product Types and attributes; you can define custom product attributes and assign them to types (for example, a “Shoes” product type might have size and color attributes). These attributes can then be used as filters on the storefront.

This system provides flexibility to extend product data without modifying code, which can be powerful for store owners. Saleor supports multiple product variants per product as well (with the attributes distinguishing them).

As for tagging, Saleor doesn’t have simple tags via the admin either (at least as of that comparison), but because it has custom attributes and categories, that gap is usually filled by those features.

Saleor’s admin also allows adding metadata to products if needed, and its GraphQL API is quite adept at querying any of these structures.

Vendure combines aspects of both. It has Product entities that can have variants, and it supports a Category-like system through a feature called Collections (Vendure’s Collections are hierarchical and can have relations, effectively serving the role of categories).

Vendure also allows defining Custom Fields on products (and other entities) via configuration, meaning you can extend the data model without hacking the core. For example, if you want to add a “brand” field to products, Vendure lets you do that through config and it will generate the GraphQL schema for it. This is part of Vendure’s extensibility.

Vendure supports facets/facet values which can be used as product attributes for filtering (similar to Saleor’s attributes).

Vendure provides a highly customizable catalog structure with a bit of coding, whereas Saleor provides a lot through the admin UI, and Medusa keeps it simpler (with the option to integrate something like a CMS or PIM for additional product enrichment).

Multi-Language (Product Content)

Saleor has built-in multi-language support for product data. Product names, descriptions, etc., can be localized in multiple languages through the admin, and the GraphQL API allows querying in a specified language. This is one of Saleor’s selling points (multi-language, multi-currency).

Vendure supports multi-language by marking certain fields as translatable. Internally, it can store translations for product name, slug, description, etc., in different languages. This is configured at startup (you define which languages you support), and the admin UI allows inputting translations. It’s quite robust in that area for an open-source platform.

MedusaJS does not natively have multi-language fields for products in the core. Typically, merchants using Medusa would handle multi-language by using an external CMS to store translated content (for example, using Contentful or Strapi with Medusa, as suggested by Medusa’s docs).

The Medusa backend itself might not store a French and English version of a product title; you’d either store one in the default language or use metadata fields or region-specific products. However, Medusa’s focus on regions is more about currency and pricing differences, not translations.

Recognizing this gap, the community has created plugins to assist with multilingual catalogs (for instance, there’s a plugin that works with MeiliSearch to index products with internationalized fields). Moreover, Medusa’s Admin recently introduced multi-language support for the admin interface (so the admin UI labels can be in different languages), but that’s separate from actual product content translation.

For a primarily single-language store or one with minimal translation needs, Medusa’s approach is fine, but if you have a complex multi-lingual requirement, Saleor or Vendure may require less custom work.

Multi-Currency and Regional Settings

A highlight of Medusa is its multi-currency and multi-region support. In Medusa, you can define Regions which correspond to markets (e.g., North America, Europe, Asia) and each region has a currency, tax rate, and other settings.

For example, you can have USD pricing for a US region and EUR pricing for an EU region, for the same product. Medusa’s admin and API let you manage different prices for different regions easily. This is extremely useful for DTC brands selling internationally. Medusa also supports setting different fulfillment providers or payment providers per region.

Saleor supports multi-currency through its Channels system. You can set up multiple channels (which could be different countries, or different storefronts) each with their own currency and pricing. Saleor even allows differentiating product availability or pricing by channel.

This covers the multi-currency need effectively (Saleor’s demo often shows, for instance, USD and PLN as two currencies for two channels). Tax calculation in Saleor can integrate with services or be configured per channel as well. So, Saleor is on par with Medusa in multi-currency capabilities, and it additionally handles multi-language as mentioned. It’s truly built for multi-market operation.

Vendure has the concept of Channels too. Channels can represent different storefronts or regions (for example, an EU channel and a US channel). Each channel can have its own currency, default language, and even its own payment/shipping settings.

Vendure allows products to be in multiple channels with different prices if needed. This is basically how Vendure supports multi-currency and multi-store scenarios. It’s quite flexible, although configuring and managing multiple channels requires deliberate setup (like creating a channel, assigning products, etc.).

Vendure’s approach is powerful for multi-tenant or multi-brand setups as well (one Vendure instance could serve multiple shops if configured via channels and perhaps some custom logic).

Search and Navigation

Medusa does not have a full-text search engine built into the core; instead, it provides easy integrations for external search services. You can query products by certain fields via the REST API, but for advanced search (fuzzy search, relevancy ranking, etc.), Medusa leans on plugins.

The Medusa team has provided integration guides or plugins for MeiliSearch and Algolia, two popular search-as-a-service solutions. For example, you can plug in MeiliSearch and have typo-tolerant, fast search on your catalog.

This approach means a bit of setup but results in a better search experience than basic SQL filtering. The trade-off is that search is as good as the external system you use and if you don’t configure one, you only have simple queries.

Saleor’s approach (at least up to recently) for search was relatively basic; you could perform text queries on product name or description via GraphQL to implement a simple search bar. It did not include a built-in advanced search engine or ready connectors to one at that time.

Essentially, to get a robust search in Saleor, you might need to use a third-party service or write a plugin/app. Given that Saleor is GraphQL, one could use something like ElasticSearch by syncing data to it, but that requires development work (some community projects likely exist). In an enterprise context, it’s expected you’ll integrate a dedicated search system.

Vendure includes a built-in search mechanism which is pluggable. By default, it uses a simple SQL-based search (with full-text indexing on certain fields) to allow basic product searches and filtering by facets. For better performance or features, Vendure provides an ElasticsearchPlugin, a drop-in module that, when enabled, syncs product data to Elasticsearch and uses that for search queries.

There’s also mention of a Typesense-based advanced search plugin in development. This shows Vendure’s emphasis on modularity: you can start with the default search and later move to Elastic or another search engine by adding a plugin, without changing your storefront GraphQL queries.
Vendure’s search supports faceted filtering (e.g., by attributes, price ranges, etc.), especially when using Elasticsearch. This is great for storefronts with category pages that need filtering by various criteria.

All three platforms handle the full checkout flow including cart, payment processing (via integrations), and order management, but with some nuances:

Checkout Process & Shopping Cart

Each platform provides APIs to manage a shopping cart (often called an “order draft” or similar) and then convert it to a completed order at checkout.

• MedusaJS has built-in support for typical cart operations (add/remove items, apply discounts, etc.) and a checkout flow that can be customized. Medusa’s APIs handle everything from capturing customer info to selecting shipping and payment method, placing the order, and then updating order status as fulfillment happens.
• Saleor similarly has a checkout object in its GraphQL API, where you add items, set shipping, payment, etc., and then complete an order. Saleor’s logic is quite robust, covering digital goods, multiple shipments, etc., because of its focus on enterprise scenarios.
• Vendure’s API includes a “shop” GraphQL endpoint where unauthenticated or authenticated users can manage an active order (cart) and proceed to checkout. Vendure even has features like order promotions and custom order states (through its workflow API) if needed.

Payment Gateway Integrations

Medusa ships with several payment providers integrated: Stripe, PayPal, Klarna, Adyen are supported. Medusa abstracts payment logic through a provider interface, so adding a new gateway (say Authorize.net or Razorpay) is a matter of either installing a community plugin or writing a small plugin yourself to implement that interface.

Thanks to this abstraction, developers have successfully extended Medusa with many region-specific providers too. Medusa does not charge any transaction fees on top; you use your gateway directly (and with the new Medusa Cloud, the team behind Medusa emphasize they don’t take a cut either).

Saleor supports Stripe, Authorize.net, Adyen out of the box, and through its plugin system, it also has integration for others like Braintree or Razorpay. Being Python, if an API exists for a gateway, you can integrate it via a Saleor plugin in Python.

Saleor’s approach to payments is also abstracted (it had a payment plugins interface). So both Medusa and Saleor cover the common global gateways, with Saleor perhaps having a slight edge in some additional regional ones via community (e.g., Razorpay as mentioned).

Vendure has a robust plugin library that includes payments such as Stripe (there’s an official Stripe plugin), Braintree, PayPal, Authorize.net, Mollie, etc. Vendure’s documentation guides on implementing custom payment processes as well. So Vendure’s coverage is quite broad given the community contributions.

Order Management & Fulfillment

Medusa shines with some advanced features here. It supports full Return Merchandise Authorization (RMA) workflows. This means customers can request returns/exchanges, and Medusa’s admin allows processing returns, offering exchanges or refunds, tracking inventory back, etc. Medusa also uniquely has the concept of Swaps: allowing exchanges where a returned item can trigger a new order for a replacement.

These are sophisticated capabilities usually found in more expensive platforms, and having them in Medusa is a big plus for fashion and apparel DTC brands that deal with returns often. Medusa’s admin and API let you handle order status transitions (payment authorized, fulfilled, shipped, returned, etc.), and it can integrate with fulfillment providers or you can handle it manually via admin.

Saleor covers standard order management. You can see orders, update statuses, process payments (capture or refund), etc. However, a noted difference is that Saleor’s approach to returns/refunds was a bit more manual or basic at least in earlier versions.

There isn’t a built-in automated RMA flow; a store operator might have to mark an order as returned and manually create a refund in the payment gateway or such. They may improve this over time or provide some apps, but it isn’t as streamlined as Medusa’s RMA feature.

For many businesses, this might be acceptable if returns volume is low or they handle it via customer service processes. But it’s a point where Medusa clearly invested effort to differentiate (likely because Shopify’s base offering lacks easy returns handling too, and Medusa wanted to cover that gap).

Vendure’s core includes order states and a workflow that can be customized. It doesn’t natively have a “magic” RMA module built-in to the same degree, but you can implement returns by leveraging its order modifications.

Vendure does allow refunds (it has an API for initiating refunds through the payment plugins if supported), and partial fulfillments of orders, etc. If a robust returns system is needed, it might require some custom development or use of a community plugin in Vendure. Since Vendure is very modular, one could create a returns plugin that automates some of that.

Discounts and Promotions

Medusa supports discount codes and gift cards from within its own functionality. You can create percentage or fixed-amount discounts, limit them to certain products or customer groups, set expiration, etc. Medusa allows product-level discounts (specific products on sale) easily. It also has a gift card system which many platforms don’t include by default.

Saleor also supports discounts (vouchers) and gift cards. Saleor’s discount system can apply at different levels; one interesting note is that Saleor can do category-level discounts (apply to all products in a category), which might be a built-in concept. Saleor, being oriented to marketing needs, has quite an extensive promotions logic including “sales” and “vouchers” with conditions and requirements.

Vendure includes a Promotions system where you can configure promotions with conditions (e.g., order total above X, or buying a certain product) and actions (e.g., discount percentage or free shipping). It’s quite flexible and is done through config or the admin UI. Vendure doesn’t call them vouchers but you can set up coupon codes associated with promotions. Gift cards might not be in the core, but could be implemented or might exist as a plugin.

Extensibility and Customization

One of the biggest reasons to choose a headless open-source solution over a SaaS platform is the ability to customize and extend it to fit your business, rather than fitting your business into it. Let’s compare how our three contenders enable extension:

MedusaJS is designed with a plugin architecture from the ground up. Medusa encourages developers to add features via plugins rather than forking the code. A plugin in Medusa is essentially an NPM package that can hook into Medusa’s backend; it can add API endpoints, extend models, override services, etc.

For instance, if you wanted to integrate a third-party ERP, you could write a plugin that listens to order creation events and sends data to the ERP. Medusa also prides itself on allowing replacement of almost any component; you could even swap out how certain calculations work by providing a custom implementation via dependency injection (advanced use-case).

Saleor’s extensibility comes in two flavors as noted: Plugins (in-process, written in Python) and Apps (out-of-process, language-agnostic). Saleor’s plugins are used for things like payment gateways, shipping calculations, etc., and run as part of the Saleor server. If you have a specific business logic (say, a custom promotion rule), you might implement it as a plugin so that it can interact with the core logic and database.

On the other hand, Saleor introduced a concept of Saleor Apps which are somewhat analogous to Shopify apps; they are separate services that communicate via the GraphQL API and webhooks. An app can be hosted anywhere, subscribe to events (like “order created”) via webhook, and then call back to the API to do something (like add a loyalty reward, etc.).

This decouples the extension and also means you could use any programming language for the app. The admin panel allows store staff to install and manage these apps (grant permissions, etc.). The advantage of the app approach is safer upgrades (your app doesn’t hack the core) and more flexibility in tech stack; the downside is a slight overhead of maintaining a separate service and the limitations of only using the public API.

Vendure takes an extreme plugin-oriented approach. Almost all features in Vendure (payments, search, reviews, etc.) are implemented as plugins internally, and you can include or exclude them in your server setup. Writing a Vendure plugin means writing a TypeScript class that can tap into the lifecycle of the app, add new GraphQL schema fields, override resolvers or services, etc.

The core of Vendure provides the commerce primitives, and you compose the rest. This is why some view Vendure as ideal if you have very custom requirements. The community has contributed plugins for many needs (reviews system, wishlist, loyalty points, etc.). Vendure’s official plugin list includes not only integrations (like payments, search) but also features (like a plugin that adds support for multi-vendor marketplace functionality, which is something a company might need to add to create a marketplace).

Enterprise Support and Hosting

As of 2025, Medusa has introduced Medusa Cloud, a managed hosting platform for Medusa projects. This caters to teams that want the benefits of Medusa without dealing with server ops. The Medusa Cloud focuses on easy deployments (with Git integration and preview environments) and transparent infrastructure-based pricing (no per-transaction fees).

This shows that Medusa is evolving to serve more established businesses that might require uptime guarantees and easier scaling. Apart from that, Medusa’s core being open-source means you can self-host on AWS, GCP, DigitalOcean, etc., using Docker or Heroku or any Node hosting. Many early-stage companies go that route to save cost.

Saleor Commerce (the company) offers Saleor Cloud, which is a fully managed SaaS version of Saleor. It’s targeted at mid-to-large businesses with a pricing model that starts in the hundreds of dollars per month. This service gives you automatic scaling, backups, etc., and might be attractive if you don’t want to run your own servers.

However, it’s a significant cost that perhaps only later-stage businesses or those with no devops inclination would consider. Saleor’s open-source can also be self-hosted in containers; some agencies specialize in hosting Saleor. Because Saleor is more complex to set up (with services like Redis, etc., possibly needed), the cloud option is a convenient but pricey offering.

Vendure’s company does not currently offer a public cloud SaaS. They focus on the open-source product and consulting. That said, because Vendure is Node, you can host it similarly easily on any Node-friendly platform. Some third-party hosting or PaaS might even have one-click deployments for Vendure.

From a total cost of ownership perspective: all three being open-source means you avoid licensing fees of traditional enterprise software. If self-hosted, your costs are infrastructure (cloud servers, etc.) and developer time.

• Saleor might incur higher dev costs if you need both Python and front-end expertise, and possibly higher infrastructure if GraphQL/Python stack needs more scaling.
• Medusa and Vendure could be more resource-efficient for moderate scale (Node can handle a lot on modest hardware, and you can optimize with cluster mode, etc.).

For any growing business, the platform needs to handle increased load: more products, more traffic, flash sales, etc. Let’s consider how each platform fares and what it means for your project’s scalability:

MedusaJS (Node/Express, REST):

• Medusa’s lightweight nature can be an advantage for performance. With a lean Express.js core and no GraphQL parsing overhead, each request can be handled relatively fast and with low memory usage.
• Node.js can handle a high number of concurrent requests efficiently (non-blocking I/O), so Medusa can serve quite a lot of traffic on a single server. If more power is needed, you can run multiple instances behind a load balancer.
• Also, because Medusa can be containerized easily (they provide a Docker deployment guide), scaling horizontally in the cloud is straightforward. For database scaling, you rely on whatever your SQL DB (Postgres, etc.) can do; typically vertical scaling or read replicas if needed.
• Medusa being stateless fits cloud scaling well. For small-to-medium businesses, Medusa’s performance is more than enough, and even larger businesses can scale it out.

Saleor (Python/Django, GraphQL):

• Saleor is built on Django, which is a robust framework used in many high-scale sites. Performance-wise, GraphQL adds some overhead per request (parsing queries, resolving fields). However, GraphQL also can reduce the number of requests the client needs to make (one query vs multiple REST calls).
• Saleor’s architecture can be scaled vertically (powerful servers) or horizontally by running multiple app instances behind a gateway. Because it uses Django, it typically will use more memory per process than a Node process, and handling extremely high concurrency might require more instances.
• That said, Saleor has been shown to handle enterprise loads when properly configured (using caching for queries, etc.). Saleor’s advantage is that if you use their cloud or a similar setup, they already incorporate scalability best practices (like auto-scaling on high traffic).
• For a new store, Saleor will likely run just fine on modest infrastructure (it’s easy to start with say a $20/mo Heroku dyno or similar), but as you grow, the resource usage might grow faster compared to a Node solution.

Vendure (Node/NestJS, GraphQL):

• Vendure, using NestJS and GraphQL, has a performance profile somewhere between Medusa and Saleor. Node.js is generally very performant with I/O, and NestJS adds a bit of overhead due to its structure but also helps by providing tools like a built-in GraphQL engine (Apollo Server).
• Vendure can use Node’s ability to handle concurrent connections much better. The use of GraphQL means each request might do more work on the server to assemble the response, but Vendure’s team likely optimized common queries.
• Vendure also has the concept of a Worker process for heavy tasks, which means if you have computationally intensive jobs (e.g., rebuilding a search index, sending bulk emails), those can be offloaded, keeping the main API responsive.
• Vendure being TypeScript means you can catch performance issues at compile time (to an extent) and ensure you’re using proper types for big data operations.

Handling Growth:

• If you anticipate massive scale (millions of users, hundreds of thousands of orders, etc.), Saleor’s approach might be appealing due to its enterprise orientation and cloud offering. However, it doesn’t mean Medusa or Vendure can’t handle it, they absolutely can if engineered well. In fact, the lack of heavy abstractions in Medusa could be a benefit when fine-tuning for performance.
• For fast-growing DTC brands (think going from 100 orders/day to 1000+ orders/day after a few influencer hits), Medusa and Vendure provide a lot of agility. Medusa’s focus on being “lightweight, flexible architecture, ideal for speed and adaptability” makes it a strong choice for those who need to iterate quickly. You can optimize or add capabilities as needed without waiting on vendor roadmaps.
• Saleor is more like a high-performance sports car; it’s equipped for high speed, but you need a skilled driver (developers who know GraphQL/Python well) to push it to its limits and maintain it.

Also Read: Content Modeling 101 for Omnichannel Using dotCMS

All three can be customized heavily. If you foresee the need to implement highly unique business logic or integrate unusual systems, consider how you’d do it on each:

• With Medusa, you may likely write a plugin in Node or directly modify the server code (since it’s simple JS/Express). Great for quickly adding something like “I want to apply a custom discount rule for VIP customers; just drop in some JS in the right place.”
• With Saleor, consider whether it can be done with an App (external service using the API) or needs an internal plugin. If internal, you need Python dev skills and understanding of Saleor’s internals. If external, you need to be comfortable with GraphQL and possibly running an additional service.
• With Vendure, write a plugin in TypeScript. If you like structured code and strongly typed schemas, this is very satisfying. If not, it might feel like an extra ceremony.

A Few Final Words

MedusaJS, Saleor, and Vendure all tick the “headless, open-source, flexible” boxes but each wins in different places.

• MedusaJS shines for lean, fast-moving teams that want to hack, extend, and own their stack.
• Saleor is best when you need enterprise-grade stability, global readiness, and a GraphQL-first mindset.
• Vendure appeals to TypeScript-heavy teams that want strong typing, modular plugins, and deep architectural control.

Your right choice depends less on which is “objectively best” and more on which aligns with your team’s skills, your growth plans, and the trade-offs you’re willing to make. In the end, the winner is the one that fits your context.