Medusa vs thirty bees
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted e-commerce platforms options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
Medusa
Composable commerce engine for developers
VS
thirty bees
Stable e-commerce platform forked from PrestaShop
| Feature | Medusa | thirty bees |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 99 · Excellent | 81 · Excellent |
| Category | E-commerce Platforms | E-commerce Platforms |
| License | MIT | OSL-3.0 |
| Language | TypeScript | PHP |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 1,024 MB | 1,024 MB |
| Deployment | docker, bare-metal, source | bare-metal, docker |
| GitHub stars | ★ 36,440 | ★ 767 |
| First released | 2021 | 2017 |
| Replaces | Shopify, commercetools | Shopify |
What are Medusa and thirty bees?
Medusa
Medusa is a headless, open-source commerce platform written in JavaScript. It provides modular building blocks for building custom online stores, marketplaces, and B2B commerce experiences with a powerful admin and API.
- Headless commerce architecture
- Modular plugin system
- Built-in admin dashboard
- Multi-region and multi-currency
thirty bees
thirty bees is an open-source e-commerce platform forked from PrestaShop with a focus on stability, performance, and merchant-friendly features. It runs traditional online stores and is compatible with many PrestaShop modules.
- PrestaShop module compatibility
- Stability focus
- Multi-store support
- Theme system
Medusa vs thirty bees: key differences
Medusa is written in TypeScript, while thirty bees is built with PHP. Licensing differs — MIT for Medusa versus OSL-3.0 for thirty bees. Thirty bees is the more established project (first released 2017), while Medusa arrived in 2021. Medusa has the considerably larger community, at 36,440 GitHub stars versus 767.
Why pick each one
Choose Medusa if…
- Highly customizable for developers
- Modern TypeScript codebase
Watch out for
- Requires development effort for storefront
- Less turnkey than hosted platforms
Choose thirty bees if…
- Released under the OSL-3.0 license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Written in PHP
Watch out for
- Smaller community
- Slower release cadence
Frequently asked questions
Is Medusa or thirty bees better?
Neither is universally better. Medusa has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Medusa and thirty bees free and open-source?
Yes. Medusa is licensed under MIT and thirty bees under OSL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Medusa and thirty bees with Docker?
Medusa: yes. thirty bees: yes.