Medusa

What it is for

Medusa is an open-source commerce desk: you file an order, edit a product, and you can start Cloud Develop at $29/month or self-host the public app at $0. Use it when the job is orders you start at $29 Cloud or OSS $0, not when you need a $20 chat seat.

What makes it unique: the cover is the official Medusa order (Medusa Sweatshirt, customer, payment capture) from the orders user guide — not a pricing card. The order itself is ops of Orders.

Key features

• Orders — a sale you fulfill and capture (orders; pricing). One order. Payments and activity are ops of this. The cover is ops. Drafts sit next to this as an unsent order, not a product.
• Products — a catalog row with variants (pricing). A SKU, not an order. Price lists are how this is priced, not a second catalog.
• Inventory — stock you decrement when an order allocates (user guide). A count, not a product row.
• Customers — a buyer record the order attaches to. A person, not an SKU. Promotions (codes / campaigns) sit next to this as a discount, not a customer.
• Self-host / Cloud — the open-source app you run, or Medusa Cloud from $29/month (How to set up Medusa; pricing). A deploy, not an order. Cloud bills the environment, then usage (edge requests, search, compute hours).

Cloud cards are Develop / Launch / Scale. Search, vector, preview environments, and log drains are SKU of Cloud. The JS SDK is install.

Who it's for

Best fit: store teams who will self-host OSS at $0 while they file a first order, or start Cloud Develop at $29/month when they want zero-config infra and one preview environment without running Postgres themselves.

Pricing

Verified 2026-10-22 (Asia/Shanghai) from medusajs.com/pricing. Cloud is environment + usage. Self-host of the public app is $0. No GMV tax is printed on the page we fetched.

• Develop — from $29/month. Zero-config Cloud for building. Concurrent previews and a sender domain print on the card.
• Launch — from $99/month. Production card. More preview environments and reliability features than Develop.
• Scale — from $299/month. Growing traffic and teams.
• Enterprise — custom.
• Usage (printed) — extra edge requests $0.3 / 1M after the plan block; free-text search $20 / 100,000 after 10,000; vector requests $40 / 100,000 after 10,000 on Scale; long-lived environments $60/mo; preview environments $10/mo; compute hours $0.16/hr after the included block; log drains $50/mo on the cards that list them.
• Self-host — $0 for the public GitHub app. You run it.

Confirm checkout; taxes follow your location. Re-check the usage table — do not invent a GMV %.

Limitations / costs

• $29 is Develop, not a production SLA. Launch is $99/month when you go live.
• Usage is a second bill. Search and preview environments stack on the card.
• A commerce desk, not a CMS. For a content type you publish see Strapi. For a payment MoR see Polar.

Alternatives

• Strapi — a headless CMS when the row is an article, not an order.
• Polar — Merchant of Record checkout when you sell a license, not a sweatshirt.
• Directus — a data studio when you will not run cart and fulfillment.

Official tutorial

Official Medusa channel video: How to set up Medusa (oEmbed author: Medusa). First-party setup; the orders user-guide still is the cover.

Written path: medusajs.com/pricing plus the orders user guide.

Website

https://medusajs.com

Repository

https://github.com/medusajs/medusa

Source

Catalog row curated for AI Tools Nav. Cover is the official Medusa order from the orders user guide. Dollars checked on medusajs.com/pricing (Develop $29; Launch $99; Scale $299; self-host $0). Tutorial oEmbed author: Medusa.

Last verified

2026-10-22 (Asia/Shanghai) editorial check.