Open-source Swell alternatives

Medusa is an open-source commerce platform that includes its own framework for customizing behavior. Rather than a fixed storefront product, it supplies foundational commerce building blocks, so developers can assemble custom commerce applications without reinventing core logic such as carts, orders and payments.

The framework and modules can power advanced B2B or direct-to-consumer stores, marketplaces, distributor platforms, point-of-sale systems and service businesses. Its core commerce modules are open source and published on npm, while Enterprise Edition features are marked separately in the repository. It is written in TypeScript on Node.js, and its topics mention AI coding tools alongside the standard e-commerce stack. Release notes and an integrations catalog help teams keep a project current and connected to payment, shipping and other services.

For hosting, Medusa Cloud is a managed environment tuned for Medusa apps with automated deployments, scaling and maintenance, and you can also run the code locally or on your own servers by following the documentation. The license is listed as 'Other', so review which components are covered by which terms.

Saleor Core is an open-source headless commerce platform written in Python. It is API-only and GraphQL-native, so storefronts, dashboards and other clients talk to the backend exclusively through its API, which makes it a building block for composable commerce rather than a monolithic store application.

The project highlights several design choices: technology-agnostic, with no monolithic plugin system or lock-in; GraphQL only rather than a mix of API styles; open source with a single version and no feature fragmentation; cloud native; and native multichannel, with per-channel control over pricing, currencies, stock and products. Extension happens through webhooks and apps instead of modifying core code. Topics also mention product information management and order management.

Saleor is BSD-3-Clause licensed. The wider platform includes a separate dashboard and a storefront, and the README links documentation and community channels. You can self-host the core or use the vendor's cloud offering, and it suits engineering teams building custom shops, marketplaces and multi-country commerce experiences.

Spree is an open-source commerce platform written in Ruby. It bundles a full REST API, TypeScript SDKs, an admin dashboard written in React and a Next.js storefront ready for production, and the BSD 3-Clause license means you keep ownership of your code, data and infrastructure. The project's pitch is self-hosting with no platform fees and no vendor lock-in.

It is designed as a set of commerce primitives that adapt to different business models. For multi-vendor marketplaces it offers seller onboarding with configurable checklists, orders split by seller, commission rules, a payout ledger that uses Stripe Connect, and a dedicated seller panel. For B2B and wholesale it covers tiered volume pricing in price lists, customer groups, company accounts that have several locations, contacts, tax exemptions, and separate catalogs per segment. It also supports headless direct-to-consumer, cross-border and omnichannel selling alongside existing ERP, PIM and payment systems.

Spree has been developed since 2008, with documentation, an API reference, a roadmap and a Discord community. It suits engineering teams that want an owned, customizable commerce backend rather than a hosted store builder.

EverShop is an open-source ecommerce platform built with TypeScript, GraphQL and React. It is designed for developers and provides essential commerce features in a modular architecture that can be customized extensively, so teams can build tailored shopping experiences without starting from scratch.

The platform can be started quickly from a Docker image, which saves installing dependencies by hand, and a full installation guide is available. Its documentation covers extension development and theme development, which is how most customization is done, and a demo store lets you see the storefront and admin before installing anything.

EverShop is licensed under GPL-3.0 and runs on your own infrastructure. The project is community driven, with a Discord channel for questions and an issue tracker for bug reports and feature requests. It suits developers and agencies who prefer a JavaScript and TypeScript stack for online stores.

Sylius is an open-source ecommerce framework built on Symfony, described as headless and based on PHP, Symfony and API Platform. It targets developers who need an online store tailored to specific business requirements rather than a fixed, off-the-shelf shop.

The code base is developed with full-stack behavior-driven development, using PHPUnit and Behat, and the project stresses code quality and testing culture. A REST API makes it possible to integrate the store with other systems and build customer experiences on any device. Installation is done through Composer, documentation lives at docs.sylius.com, and community support is available through Slack and Stack Overflow.

Sylius is licensed under MIT. The company also sells Sylius Plus, a commercial edition with modular features such as one-page checkout, a B2B suite, multi-store management, partial order fulfillment, returns handling, loyalty features and inventory spanning multiple sources, along with SLA-backed support. Plugins are available from the Sylius Store marketplace.

Vendure is a headless commerce platform, released as open source and written in TypeScript. Its backend uses Node.js, NestJS and GraphQL, and its admin dashboard is built with React and TanStack, so a team works in one language across the stack. It is plugin-first, so most behavior can be changed without forking the core.

One backend models catalog, orders, pricing, promotions and customers, and serves any frontend through a GraphQL API for D2C, B2B, marketplace and omnichannel scenarios. Built-in building blocks cover the catalog, orders, customers, promotions, sales channels, tax, shipping, payments and stock levels. Stable plugin contracts and service overrides allow custom entities, pricing logic and workflows. The introspectable GraphQL schema is described as straightforward to connect to LLM tool-calling, MCP servers and agent frameworks.

New projects are scaffolded with a command that sets up the server, admin dashboard and GraphQL API, and they require a current Node.js release (20.19 or 22.12) plus a SQL database such as PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB or SQLite. The repository lists the licence as Other, so check the licence terms before commercial use.

Storecraft helps developers build headless e-commerce backends in TypeScript and JavaScript, with AI features built in. Its chat endpoint hosts an agent that can serve customers with carts and checkout, and similarity search works with popular large language models and vector stores. It is aimed at developers who want a programmable store back end they can run on serverless or conventional infrastructure.

The backend manages products, collections, orders, customers, authentication and emails through a programmable API, a REST API with generated reference documentation, and a query language called VQL for queries and similarity search. Payments are supported through PayPal, Stripe and Razorpay. It runs on Deno, Bun, Node, Cloudflare Workers, AWS Lambda and Google Cloud Functions, connects to databases such as MongoDB, libSQL, SQLite, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Neon, Turso, D1 and PlanetScale, and can store files locally or in R2, S3-compatible or Google storage.

A new app is created with a CLI command, and the generated server exposes a chat page, an official dashboard and an API reference. The architecture is modular, extensible and event based, and the repository is an npm workspace monorepo. The repository metadata lists the license as Other, so review the license file.

AvoRed is a headless e-commerce system built as a Laravel package, exposing a GraphQL API rather than shipping a fixed storefront theme. It is aimed at PHP developers who want full control over the frontend presentation layer while relying on Laravel for the commerce backend logic.

Setting it up involves creating a new Laravel project and adding the AvoRed framework package along with optional add-ons for dummy data, cash-on-delivery payments and pickup options, then running the AvoRed installer and publishing its service provider, after which a GraphiQL interface becomes available for exploring the API. A separate frontend application, cloned from the same organization's repository, consumes this GraphQL API, and the whole stack can also be stood up through a documented Docker-based development setup.

AvoRed is written primarily in TypeScript for its frontend tooling alongside a Laravel and PHP backend. The repository metadata does not state a license, so check the repository before using it commercially.