Sylius vs Medusa: a comparison for companies choosing an e-commerce platform

What Sylius is, what Medusa is

Sylius is an open source e-commerce platform written in PHP on the Symfony framework, developed by the Polish company Sylius. According to the project’s composer.json, the 2.0 branch is MIT-licensed, requires PHP 8.2 and runs on Symfony 6.4 or 7.1. Version 2.0 shipped on 12 November 2024 with a new Bootstrap-based admin and shop and an API built on API Platform. Next to the free Sylius Standard, the company sells Sylius Plus: commercial modules for B2B (B2B Suite), marketplace, advanced multi-store, returns (RMA), multi-source inventory, loyalty, RBAC, partial shipment, request for quotation (RFQ), product configurator and subscriptions, with SLA-backed support and a one-day response time. Hosting is on your side; for the cloud, Sylius points to a PaaS offering with its partner Platform.sh.

Medusa is an open source e-commerce platform written in Node.js and TypeScript, developed by MedusaJS, Inc. The core is MIT-licensed. Version 2.0 shipped on 23 October 2024 and rebuilt the platform around modules (products, cart, orders, pricing, inventory) and workflows. Medusa delivers a backend with an API and an admin panel; the customer-facing store is built separately, usually in Next.js. The paid Enterprise Edition has covered RBAC and SSO since August 2026, and the managed Medusa Cloud starts at $29 per month (source, as of 2026-10) plus usage. We cover it in more depth in what is Medusa.js.

These two paragraphs already contain the most important difference: Sylius sells ready-made modules for a licence and ships a store in the box, Medusa gives you an open core and leaves more to build. That is not a difference in quality. It is a difference in what you pay for and who does the work.

The comparison in one table

The table says what separates the platforms. It does not say which to pick. Four questions below do.

Question 1. Which team will maintain the code after launch

This question matters more than every feature combined. A store on Sylius or Medusa is code that somebody has to develop, upgrade and fix for years. If you have PHP and Symfony people in-house or at a partner, Sylius is natural for them: same framework, same tooling, same community. If your team or partner works in TypeScript, Medusa lets you build the backend and the storefront in one language, one repository and one toolchain.

The worst case looks the same on both: the agency implements, leaves, and nobody in the company knows the stack. We see it at companies on Sylius whose Symfony and PHP upgrades eat the development budget, and at companies on Medusa v1 that nobody moved to v2. So before you choose a platform, choose the team and ask them what they will be maintaining in three years.

Question 2. What you want to pay for: a licence or work

The core of both platforms is free. The difference is what you buy on top.

In Sylius, the features B2B sales depend on sit in Sylius Plus: the B2B Suite, RBAC, multi-source inventory, returns. According to the description of the licence model, modules can be bought separately, and the price depends on gross merchandise volume, geographic scale, business model, the number of modules and whether it is a migration or an upgrade. The licence is paid monthly, yearly or as a lifetime licence. You get ready-made, vendor-maintained modules and SLA support. You pay a licence that grows with turnover.

In Medusa, customer groups, price lists and sales channels are in the MIT core, and company accounts, quotes and order approvals are built as custom modules following the official B2B recipe. Only RBAC and SSO are paid, in Enterprise. You get an open foundation and work to do. You pay for the work once, and the code belongs to you.

Neither road is objectively cheaper. A company that wants to buy ready-made B2B and has the budget for a licence that grows with turnover will do well with Sylius Plus. A company with unusual sales rules that prefers to pay for writing them into code it owns will do well with Medusa. We run the same calculation in custom vs off-the-shelf software.

Question 3. How much storefront you want in the box

Sylius 2 ships a Bootstrap shop and admin. For a project where the store has to look correct rather than distinctive, that saves work. For a brand that wants a purchase path designed for its customers, that store gets rebuilt anyway.

Medusa ships no store. It gives you the API and a Next.js starter, and the storefront is designed and built separately. That is more work at the start and a second application to maintain. In return, the purchase path, from categories and search to cart and checkout, does not depend on a theme system. In our implementations the storefront is part of the foundation, so the client does not start from a blank page.

Question 4. How fast the store has to take orders

Both platforms are frameworks, so time to a live store depends on the vendor, not on the platform. A Sylius agency with its own accelerators will ship faster than a team learning Sylius. The same applies to Medusa.

With us that time is written into the offer: live e-commerce in 30 days, from €10,000 net, on our implementation foundation with Medusa. A larger scope, such as ERP integrations or data migration, is quoted at a fixed price after a conversation. If you are comparing quotes, ask both sides for the same thing: the date from which the store takes orders and the list of what works on that date.

When Sylius is the better choice

We say this plainly, because otherwise this comparison would be worthless. Choose Sylius when:

• you have a PHP and Symfony team in-house or at a partner that will maintain the code for years,
• you want to buy ready-made B2B, marketplace, returns or loyalty modules with vendor support and accept a licence tied to turnover,
• your current systems and integrations are in PHP and your team knows them inside out,
• you need a shop and admin in the box, and storefront design is not a brand advantage,
• you work with a Sylius partner agency that has its own accelerators and references in your industry.

When Medusa is the better choice

Choose Medusa when:

• you want one TypeScript stack for backend, admin and storefront, maintained by one team,
• your B2B sales rules are unusual and you prefer to write them into code you own rather than fit them to a ready module,
• you accept that the storefront is a separate application and want to design it around the purchase path,
• you do not want a licence that grows with turnover and accept that RBAC and SSO are in the paid Enterprise edition,
• you want a live store in 30 days on a proven implementation foundation.

How we build and grow such stores is on the Medusa.js development page, and what a B2B platform with company accounts and per-customer price lists looks like is on the B2B e-commerce page.

What about PrestaShop and Magento

The question “Sylius or Medusa” comes up most often at companies that have outgrown PrestaShop or Magento. Both platforms in this comparison are a step in the same direction for them: from a store with plugins to a store with code built around the process. If you run Magento today, we run the same calculation: the cost of maintaining it for 24 months against the cost of moving. How we run a store migration is described separately.

How we make this decision with a client

We do not start with the platform. We start with a 20-minute conversation about how the company sells, who will maintain the code and what the store does not need to do. The outcome is a recommendation: buy, build or skip. If Sylius at a Symfony partner turns out to be better, we say so and do not send an offer. If Medusa turns out to be better, you get the scope and a fixed price for the first stage.