Magento Open Source vs Saleor: which one to choose in 2026?
Both are open source alternatives to Shopify Plus. We compare license, tech stack and features to help you decide which fits your team best.
| Magento Open Source | Saleor | |
|---|---|---|
| Category | E-commerce | E-commerce |
| License | OSL-3.0 | BSD-3-Clause |
| GitHub stars | ~10k | ~21k |
| Tech stack | PHP, MySQL, Elasticsearch | Python, Django, GraphQL, PostgreSQL |
| Replaces | Shopify Plus, BigCommerce | Shopify Plus |
Saleor has more GitHub stars, which usually indicates a larger community (not necessarily that it's the best option for your use case).
Magento Open Source
Highly customizable enterprise ecommerce, an alternative to Shopify Plus.
ℹ️ This docker-compose is incomplete for a real deployment: markoshust/magento-nginx is only the nginx proxy from the docker-magento development kit, with no PHP-FPM container holding Magento's actual code, no Elasticsearch/OpenSearch (required since Magento 2.4) and no Redis. Follow Adobe Commerce/Magento Open Source's official guide or the full docker-magento project for a stack that actually works.
Pros
- Supports massive B2B/B2C catalogs with complex attributes and native multi-store
Things to consider
- Considerably higher server requirements
- This catalog's docker-compose is incomplete (see note above) — it needs PHP-FPM, Elasticsearch/OpenSearch and Redis beyond what's shown
Saleor
GraphQL headless ecommerce at scale, an alternative to Shopify Plus.
Pros
- Designed from the ground up for very high-traffic stores
Things to consider
- Steeper learning curve than all-in-one platforms
Key features
Magento Open Source
- Massive catalogs with complex attributes
- Native multi-store and multi-language
- Very wide extension ecosystem
Saleor
- Complete GraphQL API
- Fully customizable checkout
- Event-driven architecture (webhooks)
Already know which one you prefer?
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