The Merchant Engine compared with Medusa
Both are TypeScript commerce platforms you can run yourself. Medusa is a framework you build a commerce application with, and it has the larger ecosystem, a cloud to deploy to and a much longer history. The Merchant Engine is a finished stack you install: one command, an admin and a storefront included, three languages with right-to-left, and cash on delivery working the day it boots.
What Medusa does better
Medusa has been public since 2020, is MIT licensed at its core, and has a plugin and module ecosystem this project does not have. Its admin supports right-to-left languages, which ours does not. If you want to build a bespoke commerce application on a framework with a large community, Medusa is the stronger choice and this page will not pretend otherwise.
Row by row
Every claim about Medusa was read from its own documentation on 2026-09-09 and carries the page it came from. Every claim about The Merchant Engine links the documentation page that proves it. If a row is wrong, it is a bug: write to bbadii@pm.me and it gets corrected.
| Criterion | Medusa | The Merchant Engine |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A commerce platform with a customization framework, aimed at developers building a commerce application. “Medusa is a digital commerce platform with a built-in Framework for customization.” Source: docs.medusajs.com | A self-hosted ecommerce platform: a REST API, an admin dashboard and a server-rendered storefront, installed together on your own server with one command. Read the page that proves it |
| Language and runtime | TypeScript on Node, with the server built on Express.js. “The Medusa server is based on Express.js, which handles incoming requests.” Source: docs.medusajs.com | TypeScript on Node. NestJS and Prisma for the API, Angular for the admin, Analog.js for the storefront. Read the page that proves it |
| API | REST API routes, with separate store and admin surfaces. “An API route is a REST endpoint that exposes commerce features to external applications” Source: docs.medusajs.com | REST, one versioned surface under /v1, split by audience into a storefront and an admin OpenAPI document that are generated from the code, never hand-written. Read the page that proves it |
| Admin dashboard | Included with the install, built with React and Vite. “When you install the Medusa application, you also install the Medusa Admin.” Source: docs.medusajs.com | Included and installed with everything else. Angular, role-based permissions on every endpoint, light and dark, and one editing tab per locale on every text field. Read the page that proves it |
| Storefront | A Next.js starter storefront, described by the docs as a place to start building yours. “The Next.js Starter Storefront is a good place to start building your storefront.” Source: docs.medusajs.com | Included and installed with everything else, server-rendered, and branded from the store configuration rather than forked: colours, fonts, logo, locales and money come from the database. Read the page that proves it |
| Install path | One scaffolding command creates the project, then you start it yourself. “npx create-medusa-app@latest my-medusa-store” Source: docs.medusajs.com | One command. ./setup.sh asks for the store’s values, verifies each third-party integration live, builds the images, creates the database, issues the certificates and creates the owner account. Read the page that proves it |
| License | MIT at the core. A named set of enterprise materials, including RBAC and SSO, is proprietary and needs a separate agreement. “The Enterprise Materials... are proprietary software. They are not licensed under the MIT License” Source: raw.githubusercontent.com | Source available: PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0, free for personal, educational, research and nonprofit stores. A store that takes money buys a yearly commercial license in one of four tiers. Read the page that proves it |
| Hosting model | Self-hosted or Medusa Cloud, with the pricing page built around the cloud and self-hosting stated in the FAQ. “You can export your data anytime to run Medusa on your own infrastructure.” Source: medusajs.com | Self-hosted only. There is no vendor cloud, no hosted tier and nothing to sign up for; the install runs on your box and the licence check is an offline signed file. Read the page that proves it |
| Extension model | Modules, plugins, workflows with rollback, subscribers and scheduled jobs. “A module is a reusable package of functionalities related to a single domain or integration.” Source: docs.medusajs.com | You own the checkout: it is a modular monolith you change in place, with a documented recipe per kind of change and the gates that keep the change honest. Read the page that proves it |
| Payment providers | Stripe is the documented official third-party provider, plus a built-in placeholder provider that processes nothing. “a `system` payment provider that acts as a placeholder payment provider. It doesn't handle payment processing” Source: docs.medusajs.com | Cash on delivery, manual bank transfer and gift cards ship and work. No card gateway ships in the first release; the payments module has the seams and a recipe for adding one. Read the page that proves it |
| Cash on delivery | No cash-on-delivery feature by that name; the docs say the placeholder provider behaves like one, and the merchant handles collection. “acts similarly to a cash-on-delivery (COD) payment method” Source: docs.medusajs.com | Shipped. A payment method row the store owner switches on, published by the public checkout endpoint with its translated name, and snapshotted onto the order. Read the page that proves it |
| Content languages | A translation module serves catalogue resources in several languages. “Manage and serve resources like products in multiple languages to cater to a diverse customer base.” Source: docs.medusajs.com | French, English and Arabic catalogues ship. A store enables the ones it serves and picks a default; every user-facing field holds one value per locale in one database. Read the page that proves it |
| Right to left | The admin dashboard mirrors for right-to-left languages from v2.11.0. This is more than ours does, which mirrors the storefront and not the admin. “the Medusa Admin interface automatically adjusts to support RTL text direction” Source: docs.medusajs.com | The storefront mirrors: the store configuration names the RTL locales and the pages set dir and lang per locale. The admin edits Arabic in a right-to-left tab, but its own interface is English and is not mirrored. Read the page that proves it |
| Infrastructure | PostgreSQL is the only supported database. “Medusa only supports PostgreSQL as the underlying database.” Source: docs.medusajs.com | PostgreSQL and Redis, in Docker, on one Linux box. The installer sets both up; a second box for the storefront is optional. Read the page that proves it |
| Maturity | On major version 2, at v2.20.1 when this page was read. No official page states a first-release date. “v2.20.1” Source: github.com | The youngest product on this page, and the page says so: the first public release is not tagged yet. What stands in for a version history is the gate set every push runs, published rather than described. Read the page that proves it |
Which one to pick
Pick Medusa when
- You are building a bespoke commerce application and want a framework, an ecosystem of modules and a large community behind it.
- You want a managed cloud to deploy to without building the deployment yourself.
- Your admin users read a right-to-left language and need the dashboard itself mirrored.
- You need an MIT licence for the core with no commercial fee at any store count.
Pick The Merchant Engine when
- You want a store running on a client's server today, not a project scaffold to finish.
- The storefront is part of the deal and has to be brandable from settings, not forked per client.
- The store sells in Arabic, French or English, and the catalogue has to hold all three.
- Cash on delivery is the tender that matters and it has to work without writing a provider.
Questions
Is The Merchant Engine a Medusa fork?
No. It is an independent codebase: NestJS and Prisma on the API side, Angular for the admin, Analog.js for the storefront.
Medusa is MIT and this is not. Why?
Because the commercial tier is what funds it. Personal, educational and nonprofit stores run free under PolyForm Noncommercial; a store that takes money buys a yearly licence. If an OSI licence is a requirement, Medusa is the right answer.
Does Medusa include a storefront?
It ships a Next.js starter storefront that its own documentation describes as a place to start building yours. Ours is a finished server-rendered storefront branded from the store configuration.
Which one installs faster?
Medusa scaffolds a project with one command and you run it yourself. The Merchant Engine's single command goes further: it verifies your integrations live, builds the images, creates the database, issues the certificates and creates the owner account on a real server.
See it for yourself
The fastest check on any row above is to run the thing: install it locally in one command, or read what an install puts on a box. The other comparisons are on the compare index.
Last updated . Every claim on this page is read from a published source and cited beside it.