Headless backend, or a store that already has a front.

Medusa is a headless commerce backend in Node and TypeScript, and you supply the storefront. Litestore ships the storefront, the admin, and the commerce core as one application.

See pricing All comparisons

Side by side.

A tick is a claim about this codebase; where the other product is stronger, its column says so. Prices change, so numbers stay out.

LitestoreMedusa

Shape

One app: storefront and admin together

Backend service plus a storefront you build

Storefront

Included, block-composed, themed by tokens

Starters you take over and maintain

Language

TypeScript on Next.js and Prisma

TypeScript on Node

Licence

MIT, with no hosted offering

MIT, with a separate cloud offering

Extension model

Edit the app; modules are folders in the repo

Modules and plugins against a defined API

Best fit

One team shipping one store end to end

Several frontends against one commerce backend

Which one to pick.

Choose Litestore when

You want a working store this week rather than two projects to finish first.
You'd rather change a component than integrate against an API you also own.
The admin matters to you as a product surface, and not only as a data entry screen.

Choose Medusa when

You're powering several storefronts, apps, or kiosks from one commerce backend.
You want a stable, versioned extension API instead of a codebase you edit.
Your frontend is already built and you only need the commerce engine behind it.

MIT licensed · self-hosted

Read the code before you decide.

Get the source Migrating from Medusa?