A Medusa.js implementation costs nothing to license. Medusa is open source under the MIT license, with no per-seat fee and no cut of your sales. What you pay for is everything around the code: building the store, hosting it, and keeping it maintained after launch. Those three costs are real, and the build is almost always the largest.
We build Medusa stores through our Medusa.js development service, and we also tell standard direct-to-consumer stores when Shopify is the better fit. This guide goes through each cost line, what makes it bigger or smaller, and when Medusa is the more expensive choice. Prices below are third-party list prices as of October 2026, each linked to its source. We don’t publish a price for a Medusa build, because it depends on your scope, and the sections below show why.
Short answer: the Medusa software is free and managed hosting starts at $29/month. The build is set by your storefront, your integrations and your custom commerce logic, not by Medusa. Ongoing developer time for updates and changes is part of the cost for as long as the store runs.
What Medusa Itself Costs
The Medusa core is free. You can download it, run it on your own servers and change any part of it without paying Medusa anything. There is no platform fee on sales at any volume. Other open source platforms license and host differently; our open source headless ecommerce comparison covers them. For one head-to-head, see Medusa vs Vendure.
If you don’t want to run the servers yourself, Medusa sells managed hosting called Medusa Cloud. Its plans, as of October 2026 (source):
| Plan | Price | What’s included | Beyond the allowance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Develop | from $29/month | 1 shared server, 600 compute hours (capped), 1 Cloud seat | Capped, no overage |
| Launch | from $99/month | 2 shared servers, 1,000 compute hours, 3 preview environments | $0.16 per compute hour |
| Scale | from $299/month | Autoscaling (2 servers, 1 worker), 2,800 compute hours, 3 Cloud seats | $0.16 per compute hour |
| Enterprise | Custom | Dedicated support engineer, SLA-backed uptime, SSO, RBAC, audit logs | Quoted by Medusa |
Extra Cloud seats are $30/month each, an extra long-lived environment (such as a staging copy) is $60/month and an extra preview environment is $10/month. Every plan includes unlimited orders, products, sales channels and regions, and Medusa states there is no GMV fee on any of them.
Medusa Cloud hosts the Medusa backend. Your storefront is a separate application, and it needs its own hosting unless you run it alongside the backend.
Self-Hosting Instead of Medusa Cloud
Self-hosting means you, or your agency, run the infrastructure. A production Medusa setup needs:
- The Medusa server, a Node.js application. Medusa v2 needs Node.js 20 or newer.
- A worker process for background jobs such as order emails, imports and scheduled tasks.
- PostgreSQL, the database that holds products, orders and customers.
- Redis, used for caching, events and job queues in production.
- File storage for product images and uploads, usually an S3-compatible bucket.
- Storefront hosting for the customer-facing site, often a Next.js app.
- Deployment, monitoring and backups, so releases are repeatable and problems are caught early.
Self-hosting gives you full control over where the data lives and how the infrastructure scales. In return, someone has to set it up, patch it and respond when it breaks. Medusa Cloud trades some of that control for a team that runs the backend for you. For most stores without in-house DevOps, the managed plan is the simpler path. Our guide to Medusa hosting and infrastructure covers the setup in more detail.
The Build: What Drives the Cost
The build is where most of the money goes, and it’s also where quotes vary the most. Two Medusa projects can differ in cost by several times because they’re different projects. These are the factors that set the size of yours.
The storefront. Medusa provides the commerce backend and an admin dashboard, not your customer-facing site. Medusa publishes a Next.js starter storefront that a team can adapt. A fully custom design, with your own product pages, navigation, content sections and animations, is a much larger job. Starter-based and fully custom storefronts are different budgets.
Integrations. Every system the store has to talk to adds work: ERP, PIM, warehouse or 3PL, tax calculation, shipping rates, search, reviews, email marketing, accounting. Some have existing Medusa plugins, others need a custom integration. The number of integrations, and how much data moves through each one, is often the biggest single driver.
Custom commerce logic. This is usually why a business chooses Medusa in the first place. B2B pricing per customer group, quote-to-order flows, approval steps, marketplace order splitting, rental or deposit logic and subscriptions are built as code. Each rule is a piece of development work. Our guide to Medusa architecture shows where this logic lives.
Checkout rules. A standard card checkout is straightforward. Conditional payment methods, split shipments, custom validation and region-specific steps add scope. See Medusa checkout customization for what’s involved.
Data migration. Moving from another platform means carrying over the catalog, customers and order history, then redirecting old URLs so search traffic follows. Messy product data, many variants or years of orders make this bigger. Customers usually have to reset their passwords, and saved payment methods need a plan with your payment provider.
Content and markets. If editorial content drives sales, you’ll connect a headless CMS, because Medusa doesn’t include one. Selling in several countries adds currencies, tax rules, translations and region-specific shipping.
A store that uses the starter storefront, standard checkout and two or three existing plugins is a small project. A custom-designed B2B store with an ERP integration, customer-specific pricing and a large migration is a large one. Both run on the same free Medusa core.
Ongoing Cost: Upkeep and Upgrades
A Medusa store isn’t finished at launch. It’s software you own, so it needs regular attention:
- Security patches for Medusa, Node.js and the libraries the store depends on.
- Dependency and runtime updates, because packages and Node.js versions reach end of life.
- Major version upgrades. Medusa v2 was a significant rewrite of v1, with a database that isn’t compatible with v1. Moving a v1 store meant a real migration project (Medusa’s v1-to-v2 guide). Future major versions are worth planning for.
- Monitoring and backups, more so if you self-host.
- New features. A new payment method, a pricing rule or a storefront section is developer work, not a setting.
This work is done by an in-house developer or an agency on an ongoing arrangement. Day-to-day store operations don’t need a developer: Medusa Admin handles products, inventory, orders, customers and promotions. Budget for developer time anyway, because it’s a recurring cost that doesn’t go away.
Payment Processing
Every store pays a payment processor on each sale, whatever the platform. On Medusa, you connect a provider such as Stripe and pay that provider’s rates directly. Medusa adds no fee on top.
The contrast is with platforms that charge extra when you use an outside gateway. Shopify, for example, adds a fee of 2%, 1% or 0.6% depending on the plan when you don’t use Shopify Payments, as of October 2026 (source). For stores that can’t or won’t use the platform’s own payments, that fee grows with revenue, while Medusa’s cost doesn’t.
When Medusa Costs More Than Shopify
For many stores, Medusa is the more expensive choice, and it’s better to know that before the build starts. Shopify plans as of October 2026 (source):
| Plan | Billed monthly | Billed yearly | Fee without Shopify Payments |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | $39/month | $29/month | 2% |
| Grow | $105/month | $79/month | 1% |
| Advanced | $399/month | $299/month | 0.6% |
| Plus | from $2,300/month (3-year term) or $2,500/month (1-year term) | — | Quoted by Shopify |
Shopify includes hosting, checkout, security and updates in that plan. Most stores add app subscriptions and theme or development work on top. If you sell a standard catalog with a standard checkout, Shopify will almost always cost less than building and maintaining a Medusa store. Our Shopify agency handles those builds.
Medusa starts to pay off when the costs on Shopify are already high, or when Shopify can’t do what you need:
- You pay for several apps, workarounds or custom code to bend Shopify around your pricing, checkout or order logic.
- You pay the third-party gateway fee on a large share of revenue.
- Your model, such as B2B, a marketplace or multi-channel inventory, needs logic the platform doesn’t support.
- You have developers, or a long-term agency partner, to build and maintain the store.
Our Medusa vs Shopify guide compares the two in full. If you’re weighing a self-hosted PHP option instead, see Medusa vs WooCommerce; for content-led stores that don’t need custom commerce logic, our WooCommerce development work is often the better fit.
How to Get a Real Number
A reliable figure for a Medusa implementation comes from scope, not from a price list. Before you ask anyone for a quote, have these answers ready:
- Catalog: how many products and variants, and how clean the data is.
- Integrations: every system the store must connect to, and which direction data flows.
- Commerce rules: pricing, checkout, fulfillment or B2B logic that a standard store doesn’t have.
- Storefront: a starter-based design, or fully custom.
- Markets: countries, currencies and languages at launch and later.
- Migration: where you’re moving from, and how much order history must come across.
- Ownership: who maintains the store after launch, and whether you’ll use Medusa Cloud or self-host.
With these answered, quotes from different teams become comparable, because they describe the same project.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Medusa.js free?
Yes, the software is. Medusa is open source under the MIT license, and self-hosting it carries no license fee. You still pay for hosting (your own servers or Medusa Cloud), a storefront host, any third-party services, and developer time to build and maintain the store.
How much does Medusa Cloud cost?
As of October 2026, Medusa Cloud has three published plans: Develop from $29/month, Launch from $99/month and Scale from $299/month. Enterprise is priced on request. Launch and Scale charge $0.16 per compute hour beyond their allowance. Extra seats, environments and edge requests are billed separately (source).
Does Medusa charge transaction fees?
No. Medusa takes no percentage of sales on the open-source version or on any Medusa Cloud plan. You pay only your payment provider’s processing fees, which apply on any platform.
What makes a Medusa build expensive?
A fully custom storefront design, many integrations (ERP, PIM, 3PL, tax, search), custom commerce logic such as B2B pricing or marketplace order splitting, and a large data migration. A store built on the starter storefront with standard checkout and existing plugins is a much smaller project.
Is Medusa cheaper than Shopify?
The software and hosting usually are. The total often isn’t, because Medusa needs a storefront and custom features built and maintained. Medusa ends up cheaper when it replaces app fees, gateway fees and workarounds that are already expensive. For a standard store, Shopify is usually cheaper overall.