Best Headless Ecommerce Platforms in 2026
Short answer: commercetools is the default headless ecommerce platform in 2026, a MACH-certified engine that prints no public price. Shopify's Hydrogen framework is the fastest headless build for a brand already on Shopify Plus, from $2,300/mo on a three year term. Medusa and Vendure are free, open source engines an engineering team can self-host at zero license cost, and BigCommerce, Saleor, and Elastic Path publish real entry prices when a buyer needs a number before the first sales call. Ten platforms ranked below, with real pricing and honest architecture tradeoffs.
commercetools leads for full composable control; Shopify Hydrogen and BigCommerce Catalyst ship fastest when the backend can stay put.
A headless ecommerce platform is not a themed storefront with an API bolted on. It decouples the frontend a shopper sees from the backend that holds products, carts, and orders, connected only through an API, so an engineering team can build a fully custom experience on any framework instead of being boxed into one vendor's template system.
Toolradar data: 68 of the 104 ecommerce platforms we track are paid only (65%), and 33% offer a free or freemium plan (12 free and 22 freemium). The platforms in this guide sit on both sides of that split, from Medusa's and Vendure's free open source cores to commercetools' fully negotiated enterprise contract, which is why architecture and hosting model matter here as much as the sticker price.
How we chose: these 10 were ranked for an engineering-led team deciding how much of the commerce stack to own, out of the 104 tools in that category. Every price below was checked on the vendor's own pricing page in September 2026, in USD. The method is on how we rate.
Top Picks
Picked by editorial review, informed by G2 and Capterra review volume and rating and by media mentions, the signals behind our category rankings. How we rate
| Tool | Starting price | Rating | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| commercetools | No public list price | 4.6 34 reviews | Enterprises with an engineering team that wants full API control over the storefront and data model. |
| Shopify (Hydrogen) | From $2,300/mo (3-yr term) | 4.5 992 reviews | Brands that want a custom frontend without rebuilding checkout, payments, and fulfillment from scratch. |
| BigCommerce (Catalyst) | From $29/mo (Core, annual) | 4.3 922 reviews | Teams that want a free, open source headless framework on a platform with published monthly pricing. |
| Saleor | From $1,599/mo (Select) | n/a | Engineering teams that want a GraphQL-native API and the choice between self-hosting and a managed plan. |
| Elastic Path | From $49,500/yr (Entry) | 4.2 30 reviews | Engineering-led teams that want composable architecture but need one real number to start a budget conversation. |
| Medusa | From $50/mo | n/a | JavaScript and TypeScript teams that want a modern, open source engine with a low-cost managed option. |
| Commerce Layer | Free (Developer tier) | n/a | Teams building a custom, multi-market storefront that want commerce infrastructure, not a finished front end. |
| Vendure | Free core; Platform custom quote | 4.9 10 reviews | Engineering teams handling complex B2B logic that want to self-host a headless engine for free. |
| Swell | From $29/mo | 4.5 372 reviews | Smaller merchants and subscription brands that want headless APIs without an enterprise price tag. |
| Crystallize | Free (Particle); $949/mo (Atom) | 4.9 8 reviews | Content-heavy catalogs that want product data, media, and commerce in one API instead of three tools. |
Enterprises with an engineering team that wants full API control over the storefront and data model.
- Pro: commercetools prices on an order-based model instead of gross merchandise value, a structure the vendor's own pricing page frames as avoiding a hidden penalty when revenue and order count grow at different rates.
- Pro: Business Units model any account hierarchy natively, with role-based permissions for purchasing, approvals, and quote management built into the core API rather than sold as an add-on.
- Pro: The API-first, MACH-certified architecture lets search, CMS, payments, and ERP connectors be swapped independently, which matters when a team already owns pieces of the stack and wants to keep them.
- Con: No dollar figure appears anywhere on commercetools' public pricing page; every deployment routes through a sales conversation, and the order-based model still needs an internal or agency team to build the storefront.
- Con: There is no self-hosted option: commercetools is a managed API only, so a team that wants full infrastructure control should look at Medusa or Vendure instead.
Brands that want a custom frontend without rebuilding checkout, payments, and fulfillment from scratch.
- Pro: Hydrogen, Shopify's React framework for building custom storefronts on the Storefront API, ships free and works on any Shopify plan, not only Plus, so a team can prototype before an enterprise contract.
- Pro: Oxygen, Shopify's edge hosting built for Hydrogen storefronts, deploys alongside the framework at no separate infrastructure cost, confirmed on Shopify's own developer documentation.
- Pro: Checkout, payments, fraud protection, and fulfillment stay on Shopify's core platform, so a headless rebuild only replaces the frontend, not the parts of the stack most expensive to get wrong.
- Con: The published Plus price above is the platform fee alone; a real Hydrogen build still needs frontend engineering time that a templated Shopify theme would not.
- Con: Checkout stays on Shopify's own flow by default, so a team that wants a fully custom, headless checkout as well as a headless storefront works within Shopify's more limited checkout extensibility APIs, not a blank slate.
The base fee covers up to 9 stores, B2B tools, checkout customization via Shopify Functions, POS Pro, and the lowest payment processing rates on the platform.
Teams that want a free, open source headless framework on a platform with published monthly pricing.
- Pro: Catalyst is a free, open source Next.js storefront framework published on BigCommerce's own GitHub, built with React storefront components and the GraphQL Storefront API, so there is no separate license fee for the headless layer itself.
- Pro: The backend platform's entry tier is priced above on bigcommerce.com's own pricing page, billed annually, well ahead of the custom-priced Performance tier reserved for accounts over $1M in annual sales.
- Pro: Every plan includes a 15-day free trial with no credit card required, so a team can wire up Catalyst against a real BigCommerce backend before paying anything.
- Con: Catalyst is a storefront framework, not the commerce engine. Product, order, and pricing data still live on BigCommerce's SaaS backend, so this is headless-as-an-option, not the fully backend-agnostic model commercetools or Commerce Layer offer.
- Con: The Scale tier, where a growing store typically lands, adds a usage fee once monthly sales pass its cap, a cost a flat-fee platform like Medusa Cloud does not carry.
It's best for growing businesses looking for a robust, scalable e-commerce solution.
Watch out
App store add-ons for advanced features
Engineering teams that want a GraphQL-native API and the choice between self-hosting and a managed plan.
- Pro: Saleor OSS is free to self-host, and the vendor's own pricing page confirms migration between the self-hosted core and Saleor Cloud is supported, so a team is not locked into either path.
- Pro: Saleor Cloud's Select plan is published at the price above for up to $200,000 in monthly GMV, with a 0.8% fee above that cap, a real number a buyer can budget against before a sales call.
- Pro: The Volume plan raises the GMV cap to $1,000,000 a month at $3,999 a month with a lower 0.4% overage fee, giving a growing store two published price points instead of one flat wall.
- Con: Every paid Saleor Cloud tier bundles in discovery sessions, a solution architect, and dedicated Slack support, services a smaller team may not need but still pays for inside the flat monthly fee.
- Con: The Enterprise tier, the one a high-GMV store eventually needs, drops back to negotiated pricing with no public figure, so Select and Volume are budget anchors, not a ceiling.
Saleor's pricing is incredibly generous, offering a fully-featured open-source option for free.
Engineering-led teams that want composable architecture but need one real number to start a budget conversation.
- Pro: Elastic Path publishes the price above on its own pricing page, all-in, for either an order-based tier (up to 15,000 orders a year) or a GMV-based tier (up to $5M), a rare concrete figure among composable platforms.
- Pro: That entry tier already includes Search, a Visual Builder and CMS, front-end hosting, Product Experience Manager, and Promotions Builder, so the published price is not a stripped-down trial.
- Pro: Commerce Extensions let a team define custom data models with automatic CRUD APIs, used in practice for B2B account attributes, custom pricing rules, and warranty tracking without waiting on a platform release.
- Con: Professional and Enterprise tiers, the ones a larger catalog is likely to need, drop back to a sales quote with no public figure, so the entry number above is a floor, not a ceiling.
- Con: Like commercetools, this is an engine, not a finished storefront. A business without an engineering team should budget an agency build on top of the license.
JavaScript and TypeScript teams that want a modern, open source engine with a low-cost managed option.
- Pro: Medusa Core is free and open source to self-host, marketed on its own site as the #1 open source commerce platform on GitHub, so a team with infrastructure capacity pays no license fee at all.
- Pro: Medusa Cloud's Develop plan matches BigCommerce Core's and Swell Starter's published entry rate for zero-config hosting of both storefront and backend, with higher tiers adding autoscaling and background workers as volume grows.
- Pro: The platform ships an agent-friendly framework with Model Context Protocol support, aimed at teams building AI-assisted commerce workflows on top of the core API.
- Con: Usage past the included limits on Medusa Cloud adds metered charges for extra edge requests, semantic search vector requests, and emails, so the flat monthly rate is a floor, not the full bill at scale.
- Con: The Enterprise tier, with role-based access control, single sign-on, and a dedicated support engineer, is custom-priced with no public figure, so a compliance-heavy team still ends up in a sales conversation.
Medusa's pricing is incredibly generous, offering a full-featured open-source tier for $0.
Teams building a custom, multi-market storefront that want commerce infrastructure, not a finished front end.
- Pro: The Developer tier is free on Commerce Layer's own pricing page: one organization, two markets, 1,000 SKUs, and 100 free live orders a month, enough to run a real small store at zero license cost.
- Pro: The API runs on more than 400 endpoints, and the vendor states a sub-90-millisecond average response time with a 99.99% uptime guarantee, figures published on its own site.
- Pro: Universal Checkout, a distributed order-management system, a promotion engine, and a POS product all sit on the same API, so a team is not stitching together separate vendors for each capability.
- Con: Ships no storefront at all. Unlike Catalyst or Hydrogen, there is no starter frontend, so a buyer needs a separate front-end build before a shopper sees a single page.
- Con: Enterprise pricing past the free tier is entirely custom, with no published number, so real usage past 100 orders a month starts in a sales conversation.
Commerce Layer's pricing is fair for its target market, offering a free Developer tier for testing and custom quotes for Growth and Enterprise.
Engineering teams handling complex B2B logic that want to self-host a headless engine for free.
- Pro: Vendure Core is free under a GPLv3 license, described on the vendor's own site as built for developers building and operating a custom ecommerce application, with no license fee for self-hosting.
- Pro: The platform targets complex B2B commerce specifically: company accounts, approval workflows, and contract pricing ship as core capabilities rather than an add-on, while still handling B2C channels on the same install.
- Pro: Vendure Platform, the commercial tier, bundles every current and future platform capability, defined support response times, security updates, and quarterly roadmap calls into one flat annual subscription with no GMV, order, or per-user fee.
- Con: Vendure Platform publishes no dollar figure. The vendor states each project is quoted individually, so a buyer needs a sales conversation even for the flat-fee commercial tier.
- Con: Vendure Core, the free option, comes with no vendor support by definition. A team self-hosting it is on its own for uptime, security patching, and scaling.
Vendure's pricing is exceptionally generous as it is entirely free and open source.
Smaller merchants and subscription brands that want headless APIs without an enterprise price tag.
- Pro: Swell's own pricing page publishes Starter billed yearly for up to $50,000 in revenue, matching Medusa Cloud's and BigCommerce Core's entry rate and far below BigCommerce's or Shopify Plus's higher tiers.
- Pro: Backend and frontend API references ship alongside customizable storefronts, so a team can build a fully headless experience or start from a hosted storefront and go headless later.
- Pro: Every published tier includes unlimited products, subscriptions, and test environments, so a subscription-commerce brand is not paying extra for recurring billing as a separate module.
- Con: Each tier caps annual revenue and charges an overage fee above it, highest on Starter and falling on higher tiers, so a fast-growing store's real cost rises with sales, not just the flat fee.
- Con: Standard, the first tier with priority support and international price lists, is the plan a global or fast-scaling brand is likely to need sooner than the entry tiers provide.
Swell's pricing is fair for businesses with predictable sales volumes, but the overage fees can make it expensive for rapid growth.
Watch out
Overage fees (2% to 0.4%) on sales
Content-heavy catalogs that want product data, media, and commerce in one API instead of three tools.
- Pro: The Particle tier is genuinely free, published on Crystallize's own pricing page with 25 orders, 100 items, and 25,000 API calls included a month before any metered overage kicks in.
- Pro: Product information management, content management, and commerce share a single data model and GraphQL API, so a catalog change updates the storefront, the CMS, and the order data at once.
- Pro: Atom, the paid tier priced above, publishes a real starting number plus metering, rare among unified PIM-plus-commerce platforms that usually route straight to a sales call.
- Con: Every tier meters usage past its included volume, so a store that grows past the free or Atom limits sees its bill move with every extra order, item, and API call.
- Con: Only one tenant per project ships on Particle and Atom. Multi-tenant setups need Crystal, the Enterprise tier, which publishes no price at all.
Crystallize's pricing is fair for its target market, offering a generous Free tier for development.
Other E-commerce Platforms worth considering
More published tools from our E-commerce Platforms category, ordered by our category ranking. They are not part of the editorial picks above.
What headless ecommerce actually means
Headless ecommerce splits the storefront a shopper sees from the commerce engine that holds product data, carts, and orders, with the two sides talking only through an API. A team builds the frontend on whatever framework fits (Next.js, Remix, Vue) and can swap it later without touching checkout, inventory, or payment logic underneath.
Three shapes compete for this budget in 2026. Fully composable, API-only engines (commercetools, Elastic Path, Commerce Layer) sell the backend alone and expect a team to build the entire frontend. Open source, self-hostable engines (Medusa, Vendure, and Saleor's OSS core) offer the same composable model at zero license cost, in exchange for owning the infrastructure. SaaS platforms with a free headless framework (Shopify Hydrogen, BigCommerce Catalyst) let a team decouple the frontend while checkout, payments, and fulfillment stay on a proven backend.
A category that looks adjacent but answers a different question: a themed storefront builder, the kind covered in the general ecommerce platforms guide, bundles frontend and backend together on purpose, trading flexibility for a faster, template-based launch. The content and product data underneath many of these storefronts also overlaps with the headless CMS guide, worth a look when commerce content, not just checkout, needs to be decoupled too.
Why the architecture choice matters more than the feature list
The features that sell a themed storefront, a polished checkout flow or a big app store, are not why a team goes headless. The real question is who owns the frontend, and how much engineering time that ownership costs against the speed a shopper actually needs.
Two patterns separate the platforms below. A backend-agnostic engine (commercetools, Medusa, Vendure) hands a team full control over the data model and lets it swap frontend frameworks freely, at the cost of building or buying the storefront from scratch. A headless mode bolted onto a SaaS platform (Shopify Hydrogen, BigCommerce Catalyst) reuses a proven checkout and backend, trading some architectural purity for a faster path to a live store.
The other pattern is pricing itself. commercetools and, past its smallest tier, Elastic Path print little to nothing in public dollars, because enterprise composable contracts are negotiated on order volume or GMV. Medusa, Vendure, and Commerce Layer sit at the other end, with a genuinely free way to start building before any contract exists at all. Settle the commercetools vs Shopify Plus question first if the composable-versus-SaaS-backend decision is still open.
Key Features to Look For
API-only product, cart, and order data (Essential)
The commerce engine exposes every product, cart, and order operation as an API with no assumptions about how the frontend renders it. commercetools and Commerce Layer are the purest examples; Shopify Hydrogen and BigCommerce Catalyst expose the same data through the Storefront and GraphQL APIs, but the backend behind them stays proprietary.
A starter framework or SDK (Essential)
Hand-wiring a storefront to a raw API from zero is slow. Hydrogen (Next.js/Remix-style React), Catalyst (Next.js), and Medusa's Next.js starter all ship a working reference storefront a team clones and customizes, cutting weeks off a first build compared to commercetools or Commerce Layer's bare API.
Checkout ownership (Essential)
A custom, headless checkout puts PCI compliance scope on the buyer's own infrastructure. Shopify and BigCommerce keep checkout on their own hosted flow by default, which most teams use to sidestep that scope; commercetools, Medusa, and Vendure leave checkout to the team building on top of the API.
Self-hosted versus managed (Important)
Medusa, Vendure, and Saleor's core ship free and open source for self-hosting, which trades license cost for owning uptime, scaling, and patching. commercetools, Elastic Path, and the managed clouds (Saleor Cloud, Medusa Cloud) remove that ops burden for a recurring fee.
Pricing model transparency (Important)
Some platforms publish a real number (BigCommerce, Saleor Cloud, Elastic Path's entry tier, Medusa Cloud, Swell, Crystallize); others (commercetools, most of Elastic Path's higher tiers) route every deployment through a sales call priced on order volume or GMV.
Composable ecosystem and certifications (Important)
MACH Alliance certification, a marker commercetools holds as a certified ISV on the Alliance's own member directory, signals the vendor meets a published composability standard for microservices, API-first, cloud-native, and headless architecture, useful shorthand when evaluating an unfamiliar composable platform.
Multi-channel and content unification (Nice to have)
Crystallize bundles PIM, CMS, and commerce on one GraphQL API and data model; most other platforms here expect a separate CMS or PIM connected by integration, which adds a system to maintain but keeps each tool best-in-class for its own job.
What to weigh before you build
Decide whether the backend itself needs to be fully composable and vendor-neutral (commercetools, Medusa, Vendure, Commerce Layer) or whether a headless mode on a platform you already trust for checkout is enough (Shopify Hydrogen, BigCommerce Catalyst).
Weigh self-hosting an open source core against a managed cloud plan honestly: Medusa and Vendure cost nothing in license fees but need someone to own uptime, scaling, and security patching.
Price the pricing model, not just the entry tier. GMV-metered plans (Saleor Cloud, Swell, Crystallize) and order-based enterprise contracts (commercetools, Elastic Path) both move as the business grows, in different directions.
Confirm checkout scope early. A fully custom headless checkout moves PCI compliance onto your own infrastructure; most teams keep checkout on the vendor's hosted flow and only decouple the storefront around it.
Match the frontend framework to the team's real skills. Hydrogen and Catalyst both assume Next.js-style React; Medusa and Vendure are framework-agnostic Node.js and TypeScript engines a team can pair with anything that speaks GraphQL or REST.
Evaluation Checklist
Clone the vendor's starter kit (Hydrogen, Catalyst, or Medusa's Next.js starter) and get a real product page rendering against live API data within a day, not a week.
Load a realistic catalog (variants, bundles, or B2B price lists if relevant) and confirm the API returns it without a workaround or a support ticket.
If evaluating a composable engine with no storefront included, get a written estimate for the frontend build from an internal team or agency before comparing license cost to a SaaS alternative.
For any GMV-metered or order-based plan, ask the vendor to model the bill at your current volume and at double that volume before committing.
Test the checkout path specifically: confirm whether it stays hosted by the vendor or genuinely needs a custom, PCI-scoped build on your own infrastructure.
Pull the vendor's own uptime and API latency figures where published, and ask for a reference customer running a comparable catalog size.
Pricing Overview
Free, open source, self-hosted
$0 license, infra cost only
Free developer or entry tier
Commerce Layer's Developer tier and Crystallize's Particle tier for prototyping before a contract.
Free up to a usage cap, then metered
Published flat SaaS fee
BigCommerce, Medusa Cloud, and Swell when finance wants a number before the first call.
Flat monthly rate by tier
GMV-metered managed cloud
Saleor Cloud and Crystallize's Atom tier once volume outgrows the free option.
Flat base fee plus overage
Order-based or negotiated enterprise contract
commercetools and Elastic Path's Professional and Enterprise tiers for the largest catalogs.
No public price
Pricing Comparison
| Tool | Best for | Entry price | Architecture | Self-hosted option |
|---|---|---|---|---|
MACH-certified composable engine | No public price | Composable API, order-based | No, managed only | |
Fastest headless build on a proven backend | From $2,300/mo (Plus, 3-yr term) | Free framework on Shopify's SaaS backend | No | |
Free open source Next.js storefront framework | From $29/mo (Core, annual) | Free framework on BigCommerce's SaaS backend | No | |
Saleor | GraphQL API with an open source core | From $1,599/mo (Select) | Composable API, GMV-capped | Yes, OSS core |
Composable commerce with a published entry price | From $49,500/yr (Entry) | Composable API, order or GMV-based | No | |
Medusa | Modern TypeScript engine, fastest-growing on GitHub | From $29/mo (Cloud Develop) | Composable API, Node.js/TypeScript | Yes, OSS core |
Pure API-first commerce infrastructure | Free (Developer tier) | Composable API, no storefront included | No, infra only | |
Vendure | Open source, B2B-first headless engine | Free (Core, GPLv3) | Composable API, Node.js/TypeScript | Yes, OSS core |
Swell | Extensible SaaS with headless storefront APIs | From $29/mo (Starter, annual) | Headless-capable SaaS, GMV-capped | No |
Crystallize | Unified PIM, CMS, and commerce on one API | Free (Particle) | Composable API, usage-metered | No |
Verified September 24, 2026 on vendor pages: commercetools pricing, Shopify Plus pricing, BigCommerce pricing, BigCommerce Catalyst, Saleor pricing, Elastic Path pricing, Medusa pricing, Commerce Layer pricing, Vendure pricing, Swell pricing, Crystallize pricing.
Mistakes to Avoid
- ×
Choosing a fully composable engine (commercetools, Elastic Path, Commerce Layer) without budgeting a front-end team, when the license is only half of what a live storefront costs.
- ×
Treating Shopify Hydrogen or BigCommerce Catalyst as fully headless, when the commerce backend itself still runs on that vendor's SaaS platform, not a backend-agnostic API.
- ×
- ×
Comparing a flat monthly SaaS fee directly against a GMV-metered plan without modeling the overage at real order volume, not just the entry tier's headline number.
- ×
Assuming an open source core includes vendor support, when free self-hosting typically means the team owns uptime and patching alone.
Expert Tips
- →
Start with the checkout question, not the frontend framework. Confirm whether checkout, payments, and fraud protection stay on the vendor's platform (Shopify, BigCommerce, Swell) or need a custom, PCI-scoped build (commercetools, Elastic Path, Commerce Layer).
- →
- →
For any GMV-metered plan, ask the vendor to model the bill at double current volume before signing, since that is the point at which a flat fee stops being flat.
- →
If the brand already runs on Shopify or BigCommerce, price Hydrogen or Catalyst before evaluating a separate composable platform. Both frameworks are free and reuse a checkout the team does not have to rebuild.
- →
Budget the front-end build separately from any composable license (commercetools, Elastic Path, Commerce Layer, Vendure). None of these four ship a finished storefront.
Red Flags to Watch For
-
A 'headless' pitch that turns out to be a theme-based storefront with an API bolted on, not a genuine decoupled frontend and backend.
-
A composable-platform sales call that ends with no per-order, per-GMV, or per-seat number in writing, a discovery call rather than a quote.
-
A self-hosted open source recommendation with no mention of who on the team owns infrastructure, security patching, and uptime once it ships.
-
Any blog or aggregator's specific dollar estimate for commercetools, since the vendor itself publishes no public price; treat those numbers as someone else's guess.
-
A managed cloud quote that omits the metering rate, per order, per API call, or per email, that decides the real bill once volume grows past the included tier.
The Bottom Line
Buy commercetools when the team wants the widest MACH-certified ecosystem and full API control, and can absorb that it prints no public price. Choose Shopify's Hydrogen or BigCommerce's Catalyst when the commerce backend can stay on a proven SaaS platform and only the frontend needs to go headless; both frameworks are free, and their backend pricing is public.
Pick Medusa or Vendure for a genuinely free, open source, self-hosted core when the team owns its own infrastructure, and Saleor when a GraphQL-native API with the choice of self-hosting or managed cloud fits better. Elastic Path is the composable platform with an actual published entry price, Commerce Layer the leanest pure-API option with a real free developer tier, Swell the cheapest published entry point for a smaller headless build, and Crystallize the pick when product content and commerce need to share one data model.
Prices above were checked on vendor pages in September 2026, against the 104 tools in the ecommerce platforms category. Cite this: Toolradar, "Best Headless Ecommerce Platforms 2026", September 2026.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best headless ecommerce platform in 2026?
commercetools is the default for a fully composable, MACH-certified rebuild, though it prints no public price. Shopify's Hydrogen and BigCommerce's Catalyst are the fastest headless builds when the backend can stay on a proven SaaS platform, both free frameworks with published backend pricing. See the comparison table above for exact figures.
How much does a headless ecommerce platform cost?
BigCommerce Core, Medusa Cloud Develop, and Swell Starter all publish the same low entry rate, the exact plan limits for each are in the comparison table above. Saleor Cloud starts from $1,599/mo, Shopify Plus from $2,300/mo on a three year term, and Elastic Path's entry tier from $49,500/yr. commercetools publishes no list price.
Is there a free headless ecommerce platform?
Yes. Medusa and Vendure Core are free, open source engines a team can self-host with no license fee, and Saleor's OSS core is free as well. Commerce Layer's Developer tier and Crystallize's Particle tier are also genuinely free up to a stated usage cap before any metered charge applies.
Is Shopify Hydrogen truly headless?
Partially. Hydrogen decouples the storefront, letting a team build a fully custom React frontend against the Storefront API, but the commerce backend, checkout, payments, and fulfillment stay on Shopify's platform rather than a backend-agnostic engine. A team that wants both a custom frontend and a fully vendor-independent backend should look at commercetools, Medusa, or Vendure instead.
commercetools vs Medusa: which should an engineering team pick?
Choose commercetools for the widest MACH-certified ecosystem, enterprise SLAs, and a managed API with no infrastructure to run, accepting that it publishes no price. Choose Medusa for a free, open source, TypeScript-native engine the team fully owns, with a low-cost managed cloud plan if self-hosting is not wanted.
What is the difference between a headless platform and a normal ecommerce platform?
A normal ecommerce platform ships the storefront, checkout, and backend as one connected system, like a standard theme-based store. A headless platform separates the storefront a shopper sees from the commerce engine that holds product, cart, and order data, connected only through an API, so a team can build a fully custom frontend, on any framework, against a backend it may or may not also control.
Do I need an engineering team to go headless?
Yes, for most of the platforms in this guide. commercetools, Elastic Path, Commerce Layer, Medusa, and Vendure all ship the commerce engine without a finished storefront, so a frontend build is required. Shopify's Hydrogen and BigCommerce's Catalyst lower that bar with a free starter framework, but still need frontend development time, not just a theme install.
Cite this page: Toolradar, "Best Headless Ecommerce Platforms in 2026", updated September 2026, https://toolradar.com/guides/best-headless-ecommerce-platforms
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