Medusa vs Sylius: which one to choose in 2026?
Both are open source alternatives to Shopify. We compare license, tech stack and features to help you decide which fits your team best.
| Medusa | Sylius | |
|---|---|---|
| Category | E-commerce | E-commerce |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| GitHub stars | ~26k | ~8k |
| Tech stack | Node.js, PostgreSQL, Redis | PHP, Symfony, MySQL |
| Replaces | Shopify | Shopify |
Medusa has more GitHub stars, which usually indicates a larger community (not necessarily that it's the best option for your use case).
Medusa
Headless ecommerce in Node.js, an alternative to Shopify for developers.
ℹ️ Medusa doesn't publish any official Docker image — their own documentation says so explicitly. medusajs/medusa doesn't exist on Docker Hub. The officially supported path is create-medusa-app or building your own Dockerfile with Postgres and Redis, following Medusa's official guide.
Pros
- No commission per sale, unlike Shopify
Things to consider
- Requires development skills to fully customize
- No official Docker image (see note above) — build your own via create-medusa-app
Sylius
Symfony ecommerce framework, a flexible alternative to Shopify.
ℹ️ There's no official all-in-one "sylius:latest" image: Sylius is a framework to build your store on top of (like Symfony), and its real artifact is the ghcr.io/sylius/sylius-php base image, which needs your own application code and a web server in front of it. This docker-compose isn't deployable as-is — follow Sylius's official installation guide to generate your own project.
Pros
- Maximum flexibility for complex business logic
Things to consider
- Requires solid Symfony experience to get the most out of it
- No official all-in-one image (see note above) — you need to generate the project following the install guide
Key features
Medusa
- Customizable order, inventory and pricing modules
- REST API and admin panel included
- Native multi-region and multi-currency
Sylius
- Extensible Symfony architecture
- Supports B2B and B2C stores
- Complete REST API
Already know which one you prefer?
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