When every promotion, checkout tweak or new market needs a workaround, the platform has stopped working for you. Going headless separates the storefront from the commerce engine, but it also moves work onto your team. Lists of the best headless commerce platforms rarely answer the question that matters: what you rent, what you own, and who keeps it running once the launch party is over.
What Headless Commerce Means in Practice
Headless commerce splits an online store into two parts that talk through APIs: the storefront customers see, and the commerce backend that holds products, prices, carts, orders and payments.
Headless Architecture Compared With a Traditional Platform
A traditional platform, such as Adobe Commerce or a standard Shopify theme, ships the storefront and the backend as one product. Headless architecture removes that link. The storefront becomes its own application, usually built by frontend developers in a JavaScript framework, and it calls the commerce backend for every price, cart and order.
That separation is the whole point of headless commerce architecture. It is also where the extra work comes from, because the pieces a traditional platform joined for you now need joining by your team.
Headless and Composable Commerce
Headless and composable commerce are often used together. Headless describes the split between storefront and backend. Composable goes further and splits the backend too, so search, content, promotions or checkout can each come from a different service. Commerce Layer, covered below, is an example of that composable approach.
Where a Headless CMS Fits
Most headless storefronts also need a headless CMS for pages, campaigns and rich product content. The commerce backend owns the transactional data, the CMS owns the words and images, and the storefront joins them. Keeping the two in sync is a recurring theme in the sections below.
What a Headless Commerce Platform Leaves You to Own
Every headless ecommerce platform separates the front end from the back end through APIs and steps back from the presentation layer. What changes from one vendor to the next is how much sits behind that API and how much sits in your repository. In practice, you end up owning some mix of the following:
The Five Layers You Own
- The storefront. Routing, rendering, design system, SEO markup and performance budgets are yours on every platform in this article.
- Hosting and operations. With a SaaS backend you rent uptime. With an open-source backend you also run the database, workers, caching, backups and upgrades, unless you pay the vendor’s cloud to do it.
- Integrations. ERP, PIM, CMS, search, tax, payments and fulfilment rarely connect themselves. Someone writes and maintains the glue.
- Custom business logic. Pricing rules, approval flows and bundles either fit the platform’s model or become code you own.
- Upgrades. SaaS APIs get versioned and deprecated on the vendor’s schedule. Self-hosted frameworks get new major versions you have to adopt.
The comparison below is organised around those five points, because that is where cost and team size are decided.
Headless Commerce Cost Is Mostly Ownership
Headless commerce cost rarely sits in the licence line alone. The larger share is the team that builds and runs the layers listed above, which is why each platform below is described by what you rent and what you own.
Headless Commerce Platforms Side by Side
The table summarises seven headless commerce platforms: four hosted SaaS products and three open-source frameworks you can host yourself.
| Platform | Licence / hosting | What’s built in | What you write yourself | Team needed after launch | Where it gets hard |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| commercetools | Hosted SaaS, priced on request | Carts, orders, payments, customers, products APIs, Merchant Center, checkout | Storefront, integrations, data model design | Frontend, integration engineers, platform architect | Assembling the back office and getting the data model right early |
| Shopify Plus (Hydrogen) | Hosted SaaS, from $2,300/month | Storefront API client, cart, variants, filtering, customer accounts; checkout stays on Shopify | UI, routing, sessions, account pages, SEO | Frontend engineers, Shopify app/Functions developer | Checkout and data model limits; rebuilding theme/app behaviour |
| BigCommerce | Hosted SaaS, plans from $39/month, Performance from $1,499/month billed annually | Catalogue, carts, checkout, orders, payments, customer data | Storefront and application layer | Frontend, API integration engineers | Multi-API flows, session sync, GMV-linked plan tiers |
| Medusa | MIT; self-host or Medusa Cloud from $29/month | Commerce modules, workflows, replaceable providers, PostgreSQL | Storefront, custom modules, integrations | Node.js/TypeScript engineers, DevOps if self-hosted | Upgrades, plugin compatibility, operations |
| Saleor | BSD 3-Clause; self-host or Saleor Cloud | GraphQL API, products, checkout, channels, promotions, payments, apps | Storefront, apps, integrations | GraphQL-fluent engineers, DevOps if self-hosted | Logic in separate app services; GMV-linked Cloud pricing |
| Vendure | GPLv3 or commercial; Self-host; Cloud in closed beta (GA planned Q1 2027) | Admin and Shop GraphQL APIs, Dashboard, storefront starters | Storefront, plugins, hosting | TypeScript/NestJS engineers, DevOps | Operations from day one; plugin ownership |
| Commerce Layer | Hosted only, no on-premise; free Developer plan, paid tiers priced on request | Prices, inventory, payments, promotions, orders, subscriptions | Storefront, content source, integrations | Frontend, integration engineers | Keeping content and commerce data in sync; market model design |
commercetools: Hosted APIs, Everything Else Is Yours
commercetools is a hosted, API-first commerce backend. Its documentation covers Carts, Orders, Payments, Customers and Products APIs, alongside a Merchant Center, a Checkout product, Connect for extensions and frontend tooling. Its pricing page describes an order-based model rather than a GMV-based one, add-ons such as Advanced B2B APIs and Premium Support, and purchase through Google Cloud or AWS marketplaces. Pricing is priced on request through sales.
What You Rent and Own on commercetools
What you rent: the commerce engine, its scaling and its uptime.
What you own:
- The storefront, unless you adopt commercetools’ own frontend products.
- The integration layer to ERP, PIM, OMS and CMS.
- Data modelling decisions: product types, attributes and channel structure shape everything that follows.
Where commercetools Gets Hard
Where it gets hard: commercetools gives you building blocks rather than a finished store. Teams that expected a ready-made back office with merchandising conveniences often discover how much product, content and operations tooling they still need to assemble. A strong architect early on matters more here than on platforms with tighter defaults, because catalogue and channel models are expensive to rework after launch.
Shopify Plus Headless (Hydrogen): Storefront Freedom on Shopify’s Checkout
Hydrogen is Shopify’s headless toolkit. It handles the Shopify-specific parts of a storefront, such as the Storefront API client, cart, variant selection, collection filtering, analytics and customer accounts, and it works with frameworks like React Router, Next.js, Nuxt, Astro and SvelteKit. The same docs are clear about the split: your app owns UI, routing, session storage, account pages, images and SEO, and checkout stays on Shopify. The React Router template deploys to Oxygen, while the Next.js template deploys to Vercel.
Shopify Plus starts at $2,300 USD per month on a 1- or 3-year term.
What You Rent and Own on Shopify Plus
What you rent: catalogue, orders, payments, checkout and the admin.
What you own: the whole frontend and its hosting decisions, plus any app or Shopify Functions logic.
Where Shopify Plus Gets Hard
Where it gets hard: anything that has to change the checkout or the back-office data model is bounded by what Shopify exposes. Headless also means rebuilding storefront behaviour that themes and apps would otherwise provide, so some app functionality has to be reimplemented or wired in by hand.
BigCommerce Headless: SaaS Catalogue, Your Own Frontend
BigCommerce positions itself as a commerce backend for headless storefronts. Its developer guide covers creating channels, fetching product data, carts, moving a cart to checkout, customer login, orders and PCI compliance, and states that BigCommerce creates the order and processes payments so you do not build that infrastructure. It also offers starter apps and pre-built solutions, with Catalyst referenced as its own storefront option.
Published plans on the BigCommerce pricing page list Core at $39/month, Growth at $105/month, Scale at $399/month, and Performance starting at $1,499 per month billed annually, with plan thresholds tied to trailing twelve-month GMV.
What You Rent and Own on BigCommerce
What you rent: catalogue, checkout, payments, customer data and order storage.
What you own: the storefront, the application layer between it and BigCommerce’s APIs, and any custom logic such as personalised discounts.
Where BigCommerce Gets Hard
Where it gets hard: a headless build on BigCommerce often spans several APIs and authentication contexts. Its headless guide describes grouping multi-step operations, such as checkout followed by payment, with a correlation header, and keeping customer sessions in sync between storefront and hosted checkout takes deliberate work. Plan pricing that moves with GMV is also something to model before you grow into the next tier.
Medusa: Open-Source Commerce Modules You Host
Licence and Architecture
Medusa’s repository is licensed under the MIT License, except for separately identified Enterprise Edition materials. Its architecture docs describe an Express.js-based server, workflows that hold business logic, domain-specific commerce modules, and PostgreSQL as the only supported database. Payments, fulfilment, file storage, notifications, caching and events plug in through replaceable module providers.
You can self-host, or rent infrastructure on Medusa Cloud, where plans start from $29/month (Develop), $99/month (Launch) and $299/month (Scale), with Enterprise priced on request.
What You Rent and Own on Medusa
What you rent: optionally, hosting and managed infrastructure.
What you own: the source code, the storefront, every custom module and workflow, and, if you self-host, the database, Redis and deployment pipeline.
Medusa in Our Own Builds
Habbit.sg, a JML brand, went live on Medusa in 12 weeks with custom promotion and pricing rules. We rebuilt Above Diamond off WordPress on Medusa with Payload CMS, with 150,000+ diamonds synced from supplier feeds, three currencies and three payment gateways. Builds like these are the core of our Medusa.js development work.
For the Medusa side in more depth, see the 3-year cost of Medusa versus Shopify and where Medusa falls short.
Where Medusa Gets Hard
Where it gets hard: open source headless commerce means flexibility and responsibility arrive together. Major version upgrades, plugin compatibility and production operations are your team’s job unless you hand hosting to Medusa Cloud.
Saleor: GraphQL-First Commerce You Run or Rent
Saleor Core is released under the BSD 3-Clause License. Its documentation centres on a GraphQL API, with core concepts covering products, checkout, channels, promotions, payments and extending the commerce model, and an app model for integrations such as Adyen, Stripe, AvaTax, search and CMS.
You can run the open-source build yourself or use Saleor Cloud. The Saleor pricing page lists a free sandbox for non-commercial use, a Volume plan at $3,999/month for up to $1,000,000 GMV monthly with 0.4% on orders above that, and Enterprise pricing on negotiation. The same page states you can move between Saleor Cloud and the open-source version, with a data migration.
What You Rent and Own on Saleor
What you rent: optionally, hosting, scaling and a delivery team on Cloud plans.
What you own: the storefront, any apps you write, and the full stack if you self-host.
Where Saleor Gets Hard
Where it gets hard: when custom logic is built as Saleor apps, it runs as separate services that need their own hosting and monitoring. Teams need to be comfortable with GraphQL across both frontend and integrations. On Cloud, GMV-linked pricing needs modelling as volume grows.
Vendure: TypeScript Commerce Framework for Custom Builds
Vendure Core is available under GPLv3 as the Community Edition, with a commercial licence as an alternative. The licence includes a plugin exception that allows Vendure plugins to be distributed under a different licence, and Core is free and runs wherever you put it.
Paid plans add B2B capabilities, from €199/month, excluding VAT. Vendure Cloud is included in paid plans but is in closed beta, with general availability planned for Q1 2027. Implementation is not included.
The installation guide shows Admin and Shop GraphQL APIs, a Dashboard, support for Postgres, MySQL, MariaDB and SQLite, and optional Next.js or TanStack Start storefront starters.
What You Rent and Own on Vendure
What you own: hosting, the storefront, plugins and upgrades.
Where Vendure Gets Hard
Where it gets hard: Vendure suits teams that think in TypeScript and NestJS. Without that skill set in-house, the plugin model becomes a dependency on whoever wrote the plugins. Self-hosting is currently the only option, so operations sit with you from day one.
Commerce Layer: Composable Checkout and Order APIs
Commerce Layer is a hosted API platform, and its pricing FAQ states there is no on-premise version. The Core API docs describe a REST API for transactional commerce covering multi-currency prices, distributed inventory, localised payment gateways, promotions, orders and subscriptions.
The pricing page lists a free Developer plan with 1,000 SKUs, two markets and 100 free live orders a month, and a custom-quoted plan beyond that, with add-ons such as a distributed OMS and a promotion engine. Paid tiers are priced on request. Payment gateway fees are not included.
What You Rent and Own on Commerce Layer
What you rent: pricing, inventory, cart, checkout and order logic.
What you own: the product content source, the storefront, and the integrations that connect them.
Where Commerce Layer Gets Hard
Where it gets hard: rich product content usually comes from a separate CMS or PIM, so SKUs, prices and content have to be kept in sync across systems. Its market-based model (merchant, price list, inventory model per market) is powerful for multi-region selling but needs careful upfront design.
How to Choose a Headless Ecommerce Platform
No headless ecommerce solution suits every business model. The useful comparison is between what each option asks your team to own after launch.
Hosted SaaS or Open Source
Hosted enterprise headless platforms such as commercetools, Shopify Plus, BigCommerce and Commerce Layer rent you the commerce backend, its scaling and its uptime. Open-source headless platforms such as Medusa, Saleor and Vendure give you the source code and leave hosting and upgrades with you, unless you pay for their cloud.
Commerce Capabilities and Business Rules
Check how your business rules map to each platform’s model: pricing, promotions, bundles, approval flows and markets. Where the built-in commerce capabilities fit, you configure. Where they do not, you write custom development that you then maintain.
The Storefront API and Your Frontend
Every headless platform in this article leaves the storefront to you. Look at the storefront API each one offers, REST or GraphQL, and at the starters it ships, because they set how much your frontend developers write from scratch.
The Team You Need After Launch
Launch is the cheapest month of a headless build. After it, the team you need depends on what you chose to own:
Roles After a Headless Implementation
- Frontend engineers on every platform. The storefront is yours, so performance, accessibility, SEO and new campaign pages never stop.
- Backend or integration engineers in proportion to your integrations. A SaaS backend reduces commerce code but not ERP or PIM work.
- DevOps capacity if you self-host Medusa, Saleor or Vendure: database operations, backups, observability, security patching and scaling for peaks.
- A platform owner who understands the data model, approves changes to it and owns vendor or open-source upgrade planning.
- Commerce operations people who can work in the admin without filing tickets, which depends on how much admin tooling the platform ships.
Covering the Roles
Smaller businesses often cover these roles with a mix of in-house staff and an external partner for custom ecommerce development. On our own builds, we write down who owns each layer before work starts, because gaps in ownership show up as outages.
Where Headless Commerce Breaks in Production
Most headless problems sit in the seams between systems that nobody owned:
Common Failure Points
- Cache and data freshness. Stale prices or stock on a cached storefront produce oversold items and support tickets.
- Checkout handoffs. Sessions, carts and customer identity crossing between your frontend and a hosted checkout are a common failure point.
- Integration drift. An ERP field changes, a webhook fails silently, and orders stop flowing without an alert.
- API versioning and upgrades. SaaS vendors deprecate API versions; open-source projects ship major releases. Both need scheduled work.
- Preview and content workflows. Merchandisers lose the “edit and see it live” loop they had on a monolith unless someone rebuilds it.
- Observability gaps. With several services, a slow page could be the storefront, the commerce API, search or the CMS. Without tracing across them, diagnosis is guesswork.
Planning for the Seams
Any headless commerce platform comparison is incomplete without asking how each option handles these seams, and who on your team will be paged when one of them fails.
Headless Commerce Platforms: Frequently Asked Questions
Which headless commerce platform is the best?
It depends on what your team can own after launch. Hosted platforms such as commercetools, Shopify Plus, BigCommerce and Commerce Layer suit teams that want to rent uptime. Open-source options such as Medusa, Saleor and Vendure suit teams ready to run the headless backend themselves.
What are the best headless commerce platforms?
The seven compared here are commercetools, Shopify Plus with Hydrogen, BigCommerce, Medusa, Saleor, Vendure and Commerce Layer. Each leaves the storefront to you, and they differ in how much of the backend, hosting and upgrades you take on.
Is there an open source ecommerce platform for headless builds?
Yes. Medusa is MIT-licensed, Saleor Core uses the BSD 3-Clause licence, and Vendure Core is available under GPLv3 or a commercial licence. All three can be self-hosted, and Medusa and Saleor also offer a paid cloud.
Do I need a headless CMS as well?
Usually, yes. The commerce backend holds products, prices and orders, while rich content and campaign pages tend to live in a headless CMS. Someone then has to keep SKUs, prices and content in sync across both.
What team does a headless commerce platform need after launch?
Frontend engineers on every platform, plus integration engineers in proportion to your ERP, PIM and other systems. Self-hosting Medusa, Saleor or Vendure adds DevOps work, and every option needs a platform owner for the data model and upgrades.
If you are weighing this for your own business, start with a plan. In two to three weeks we map how the system would connect to your ERP, warehouse, payments and sales channels, set out the build in phases with the cost to run it over three years, and give a fixed quote for the first phase. You keep the plan whatever you decide.