Medusa

Medusa is an open source headless commerce engine originally founded in Copenhagen, Denmark in 2021, built to give developers and merchants complete control over their e-commerce stack. Designed as a composable alternative to monolithic platforms, Medusa provides a modular Node.js backend that can be customized and extended to fit any commerce use case, from direct-to-consumer brands to complex B2B and marketplace scenarios.

The platform offers a headless commerce engine with multi-region and multi-currency support, custom workflow automation, a powerful plugin system for extending functionality, an admin dashboard for managing orders and products, a REST API and JavaScript SDK for building storefronts, and tax-inclusive pricing built for European markets. Medusa's architecture allows merchants to swap out any component -- from payment providers to fulfillment engines -- making it one of the most flexible open source commerce platforms available.

Medusa is developed by a team rooted in Copenhagen, Denmark, and the project has gained significant traction in the open source community with thousands of GitHub stars and a growing ecosystem of plugins and integrations. Licensed under MIT, it offers maximum freedom for commercial use. For European businesses seeking a GDPR-compliant, developer-friendly alternative to proprietary e-commerce platforms like Shopify or WooCommerce, Medusa delivers the flexibility of a headless architecture combined with the transparency and data sovereignty that open source provides.