What is EC-CUBE used for?

EC-CUBE is an open-source e-commerce platform from Japan, built with PHP, Symfony and Doctrine for creating customizable online stores. It is a good fit for online stores for the Japanese market and custom e-commerce development on Symfony.

Is EC-CUBE open source?

Yes. EC-CUBE is open source under a custom licence. Its source code is on GitHub at EC-CUBE/ec-cube and is written mainly in PHP.

Yes. EC-CUBE is open source, so the software itself is free to use under the terms of its own licence.

Can I self-host EC-CUBE?

Yes. EC-CUBE can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.

What is EC-CUBE an alternative to?

EC-CUBE is an open-source alternative to BigCommerce, Shift4Shop and Ecwid. Other open-source alternatives to BigCommerce include Bagisto, WooCommerce and Shopware.

Is EC-CUBE actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to EC-CUBE was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is 4.3.1-p1, published on 4 March 2026. The project has 789 stars on GitHub.

EC-CUBE: open-source alternative to BigCommerce, Shift4Shop

About EC-CUBE

EC-CUBE is an open-source e-commerce platform developed in Japan and written in PHP on the Symfony framework with Doctrine ORM and Twig templates. The repository README, which is in Japanese, is aimed mainly at developers, while ready-to-install packages are distributed from the official EC-CUBE site.

The current development line is 4.4, with older 2.x and 3.x versions maintained in separate repositories. The documented environment is Apache 2.4 with mod_rewrite and mod_ssl, PHP 8.2 through 8.5, and PostgreSQL 13 through 18 or MySQL 8.4 LTS. Front-end styles are written in Sass and JavaScript is bundled with esbuild, and a Docker Compose setup is available for development.

Developer documentation lives at doc4.ec-cube.net and accepts pull requests, community discussion happens in a developer forum and Slack, and contributions follow a published guide with CI checks for code style, static analysis and tests. The license is listed as Other, so review the terms before commercial use.

Key features

Symfony, Doctrine and Twig foundation
Packages distributed from the official site
Sass and esbuild front-end build
Docker Compose development environment
Developer documentation for 4.x
Support for PostgreSQL and MySQL

Good fit for

→Online stores for the Japanese market
→Custom e-commerce development on Symfony

Built with: PHP
Tags: ecommerce; php; symfony; doctrine; twig; japan; self-hosted

EC-CUBE: questions and answers

What is EC-CUBE used for?: EC-CUBE is an open-source e-commerce platform from Japan, built with PHP, Symfony and Doctrine for creating customizable online stores. It is a good fit for online stores for the Japanese market and custom e-commerce development on Symfony.
Is EC-CUBE open source?: Yes. EC-CUBE is open source under a custom licence. Its source code is on GitHub at EC-CUBE/ec-cube and is written mainly in PHP.
Is EC-CUBE free?: Yes. EC-CUBE is open source, so the software itself is free to use under the terms of its own licence.
Can I self-host EC-CUBE?: Yes. EC-CUBE can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
What is EC-CUBE an alternative to?: EC-CUBE is an open-source alternative to BigCommerce, Shift4Shop and Ecwid. Other open-source alternatives to BigCommerce include Bagisto, WooCommerce and Shopware.
Is EC-CUBE actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to EC-CUBE was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is 4.3.1-p1, published on 4 March 2026. The project has 789 stars on GitHub.