10 Best Headless Commerce Platforms in 2026, Compared by Price and Fit

Swell is our pick for the best headless commerce platform: a hosted, API-first backend with native subscriptions, B2B pricing and custom data models at published prices. Shopify with Hydrogen is the safest pick for brands already on Shopify. BigCommerce with Catalyst suits hosted stores that want a ready-made Next.js storefront. commercetools, Elastic Path and Salesforce Commerce Cloud serve enterprise programs, and Medusa, Saleor and Vendure suit engineering teams that want open source they can run and change themselves.

Swell publishes this guide, so weigh our own entry accordingly. Every price below was checked on the vendor's own site on November 4, 2026. Prices are per month unless noted, Shopify, BigCommerce and Swell figures are for yearly billing, and payment processing is extra on every platform. If you are new to the term, start with what headless commerce is and how it works.

Headless commerce platforms compared (November 2026)

Key Takeaways

• Swell is our top pick: a hosted, API-first backend with subscriptions on every plan, custom data models and published prices from $29/month billed yearly.
• Who runs the platform matters most: hosted suites, API-first SaaS, enterprise platforms and open-source platforms are all sold as headless, but they split hosting, upgrades and checkout work very differently.
• Published entry prices run from free to $49,500 a year: Medusa, Saleor and Vendure are free to self-host, Commerce Layer has a free Developer plan, Shopify, BigCommerce and Swell start at $29/month billed yearly, and Elastic Path sits at the top of that range.
• Free software still costs money to run: open-source licenses cost nothing, but hosting, upgrades and the engineers who look after them do.
• Checkout is a major dividing line: Shopify hands shoppers off to its own checkout, while Swell hosts a checkout and also lets you build your own with its APIs.
• Plenty of stores do not need headless: Shopify's docs say a headless storefront costs more to build and run than a theme, and Swell's docs recommend themes and storefront apps as the first choice for new stores.

What Makes a Commerce Platform Headless

A headless commerce platform separates the storefront from the commerce backend. Products, carts, pricing, checkout and orders sit behind APIs, and the storefront is a separate application that calls them. Our guide to headless commerce covers the architecture, the tradeoffs and when it makes sense.

Vendors sell several kinds of product as headless:

• Hosted suites with storefront APIs: Shopify, BigCommerce and Salesforce Commerce Cloud. The vendor runs the store and the admin, and you replace the storefront.
• Hosted API-first platforms: Swell and Commerce Layer. The vendor runs the commerce backend, and you can build the whole storefront on its APIs.
• Enterprise platforms: commercetools and Elastic Path. You build on a set of commerce services, often with an implementation partner.
• Open-source platforms: Medusa, Saleor and Vendure. You get the source code for the core and choose where it runs.

The order below is our editorial judgment, not a feature score.

1. Swell: Best Overall Headless Commerce Platform

We rank Swell first for four reasons. You control checkout: use the hosted checkout or build your own flow on the Frontend API, where Shopify's Storefront API hands shoppers off to Shopify's checkout. Subscriptions are in the core on every plan, where Shopify relies on an app, and Recharge's Storefront API and JavaScript SDK start at its $499/month Scale plan as of November 2026. Your own data lives in the same API as products and orders, through custom models and fields. And there is no commerce backend to host or upgrade, with published plans from $29/month billed yearly and no Swell surcharge for using your own payment gateway.

Swell is a hosted commerce platform built around its APIs. The Backend API handles server-side work with secret keys, and the public Frontend API covers carts, checkout, customer accounts and subscriptions from the browser. The APIs follow HTTP/REST standards, so any language can call them, and headless storefronts can use Next.js, Nuxt, React, Vue or another framework with the Swell.js SDK. Swell hosts the backend, admin dashboard and checkout, and you can use the hosted checkout or build your own flow with the APIs.

Subscriptions are part of the core platform on every plan, and one-time and subscription items can share a cart. Wholesale tools include customer groups and volume price rules, and you can email an invoice with a payment link from a dashboard order. You can add custom models and fields in the dashboard model editor or through the Backend API, and Swell Apps add functions triggered by store events, a schedule or an HTTP call.

Smashing Magazine moved to Swell for tax rules, invoicing, memberships and bundles that mix physical and digital products. Infinitas Learning launched a headless store across several European markets, and Spinn runs a coffee marketplace linked to a mobile app and a connected brewer.

• Best for: brands and B2B sellers building a custom storefront that need subscriptions, price rules or custom data without running a commerce backend.
• Pricing: Starter $29 up to $50K in trailing-12-month sales (2% above that), Basic $79 up to $250K (1.5%), Standard $299 up to $1M (1%), Unlimited $2,250 up to $5M (0.4%), and custom pricing above $10M a year. Plans include 100K, 500K and 2M API requests a month, unlimited on Unlimited, then $5 per 100K. See Swell pricing. A 14-day free trial is available with no credit card required.
• Watch for: net terms are not built in, and B2B orders without a card charge need a manual or app-based flow. Swell's app ecosystem is much smaller than Shopify's. Headless storefronts are hosted outside Swell. You extend Swell from outside its core, and a requirement that changes how orders or pricing fundamentally work fits an open-source platform better.

2. Shopify with Hydrogen: Best for Brands Already on Shopify

Shopify's headless APIs cover the storefront side of the store. The Storefront API serves products, collections, search and the cart, and the Customer Account API handles sign-in, orders and profiles. Hydrogen is Shopify's open-source toolkit on top of those APIs, with cart, search and account primitives for React Router, Next.js, Nuxt, SvelteKit, Astro and SolidStart. Shopify hosts Hydrogen storefronts on Oxygen at no extra cost, and they can also run on Vercel, Cloudflare or your own Node server.

Keeping Shopify as the backend means the admin, payments and staff workflows stay the same, though apps that inject features into a theme may not carry over. B2B features are available on Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus, and Shopify documents how to bring B2B pricing into a headless storefront.

• Best for: brands already on Shopify that have outgrown their theme.
• Pricing: Basic $29, Grow $79 and Advanced $299 per month billed yearly, and Plus from $2,300 per month on a 1- or 3-year term. Third-party transaction fees, charged when you do not use Shopify Payments, are 2%, 1%, 0.6% and 0.2% by plan. See Shopify pricing.
• Watch for: the Storefront API hands customers off to Shopify's checkout, so the last step of the journey stays on Shopify. Shopify also tells merchants to confirm they have developers to maintain the storefront after launch.

3. BigCommerce with Catalyst: Best Hosted Option with a Next.js Storefront to Start From

Catalyst is BigCommerce's open-source storefront for Next.js and React Server Components, with a UI kit and a GraphQL Storefront API client. You keep BigCommerce's hosted backend and admin and start from working storefront code instead of an empty repository.

• Best for: merchants who want a custom Next.js frontend on a hosted suite.
• Pricing: Core $29 up to $30K in trailing-12-month GMV, Growth $79 up to $100K, Scale $299 up to $33,333 a month in GMV with 0.9% above that, and Performance from $1,499 billed annually. See BigCommerce pricing and our breakdown of what it costs.
• Watch for: plans upgrade automatically as trailing-12-month GMV grows, from Core at $30K, from Growth at $100K and to Performance at $2 million. Core, Growth and Scale also carry an Open Payment Provider fee of 2%, 1% and 0.6% on orders through providers outside BigCommerce's embedded list.

4. commercetools: Best for Large Enterprise Programs

commercetools sells Sphere, an API-first commerce platform for large enterprises that covers catalog, cart and order management, inventory, promotions and pricing. Account hierarchies, buyer approval flows and quote management come through its Advanced B2B APIs, and pricing is based on orders rather than GMV.

• Best for: enterprises with a dedicated engineering team or implementation partner.
• Pricing: not published, so you need to contact sales. The 60-day free trial needs no credit card and covers the core APIs and Merchant Center. See how commercetools pricing works.
• Watch for: quotes go through sales, which makes cost hard to compare up front. InStore and Frontend are separate products and are not part of the free trial.

5. Medusa: Best Open-Source Platform for TypeScript Teams

Medusa is an open-source commerce platform with a built-in framework for customization, written in TypeScript. You extend it with modules and workflows in your own codebase and deploy it yourself or on Medusa Cloud. Its core is MIT-licensed, and the Enterprise Edition materials need a commercial agreement.

• Best for: TypeScript teams that want to own their commerce logic.
• Pricing: free to self-host. Medusa Cloud has Develop from $29, Launch from $99, Scale from $299 and custom Enterprise plans, plus usage, with no GMV platform fee. See our Medusa cost breakdown.
• Watch for: customizations live in your repository, and your team tests them against each Medusa upgrade. Medusa documents subscriptions as a recipe you build. Swell vs Medusa compares the two approaches in detail.

6. Saleor: Best Open-Source Platform with a GraphQL API

Saleor is an open-source commerce platform with a GraphQL API, written in Python and licensed under BSD-3-Clause. You can self-host it or buy Saleor Cloud, which adds storefront hosting through Engine (in beta), apps and a delivery team. Saleor says you can move between the two.

• Best for: teams that want open source and a managed option from the same vendor.
• Pricing: free to self-host, with free sandboxes for non-commercial use. Saleor Cloud has Select at $1,599/month up to $200,000 in monthly GMV (0.8% above that), Volume at $3,999/month up to $1,000,000 (0.6%), and negotiated Enterprise pricing.
• Watch for: the Cloud entry price sits well above the hosted $29 plans. Weigh it against your sales volume and the delivery help you need. Self-hosting means running a Python service.

7. Vendure: Best Open-Core Platform for Complex B2B

Vendure is TypeScript end to end with a GraphQL API. Vendure Framework is open source under GPLv3, and the B2B capabilities are licensed through paid plans: company accounts and quotes from Starter, branches and departments from Growth, and contract prices and order approvals from Scale.

• Best for: B2B sellers with account hierarchies or procurement workflows and a TypeScript team.
• Pricing: Framework free. Paid plans are Starter €199, Growth €599 and Scale €2,499 per month on a 12-month term, excluding VAT, and Enterprise starts at €60,000 a year.
• Watch for: Vendure Cloud is not open yet, with general availability planned for Q1 2027, and you host Vendure yourself until then. Building your storefront and integrations is separate from the plan price. Vendure itself says the free Framework is very likely all you need if customers place standard orders and pay by card.

8. Elastic Path: Best Enterprise Option with a Published Entry Price

Elastic Path prices its enterprise platform on annual order volume or GMV. Its entry tier includes search, a visual builder and CMS, front-end hosting, Product Experience Manager, Promotions Builder, Composer and Commerce Extensions.

• Best for: distributors, manufacturers, multi-brand portfolios and other enterprises that want a published starting price.
• Pricing: Entry starts at $49,500 a year, all-in, for up to 15,000 orders or $5M in GMV. Professional and Enterprise tiers are priced by quote.
• Watch for: the entry price is an annual commitment sized for enterprises.

9. Commerce Layer: Best API-First Option for Multi-Market Selling

Commerce Layer is API-first commerce built around markets. A market ties together a merchant, an inventory model and a price list, which suits brands selling in several regions from one account. It also offers an API-first checkout for selling across channels.

• Best for: developers adding multi-market commerce to an existing site or CMS.
• Pricing: the Developer plan is free, with 2 markets, 1,000 SKUs, unlimited test orders and 100 live orders a month. Enterprise is custom.
• Watch for: there is no published plan between free and Enterprise, and moving up is a sales conversation. Distributed OMS and the promotion engine are Enterprise add-ons, and there is no on-premise version.

10. Salesforce Commerce Cloud: Best for Enterprises Standardized on Salesforce

Commerce Cloud comes in B2C and B2B editions, and it makes the most sense when sales, service and marketing data already live in Salesforce. Salesforce's headless commerce guide points to vendor-provided templates as a starting point for custom builds.

• Best for: large organizations already committed to Salesforce.
• Pricing: Commerce Cloud B2C Premium and B2B Growth Edition both show contact for pricing.
• Watch for: quote-only pricing means you cannot compare cost until you are in a sales process.

What the Platform Price Leaves Out

A full budget also includes:

• Frontend build and hosting: the storefront is a separate application that someone has to build, host and monitor. Oxygen, Medusa Cloud and Elastic Path include front-end hosting. On many other platforms, including a headless Swell build, you pay a hosting provider.
• Checkout: a hosted checkout reduces payment and security work. A custom flow gives you full control and makes the payment path yours to build and test.
• Payment processing: card and gateway fees are extra on every platform in this guide.
• Content and search: a custom frontend usually needs a CMS and search provider unless the platform includes them.
• Theme-dependent apps: apps that inject features into a theme may not carry over to a custom frontend, so check each one you rely on.
• SEO work: server rendering, metadata, structured data, redirects and sitemaps become your team's responsibility.
• Upgrades and maintenance: hosted platforms update themselves, while open-source deployments and custom frontends need ongoing engineering time.

How to Choose a Headless Commerce Platform

Match the platform to your team and your hardest requirement:

• Need subscriptions, B2B pricing or custom data without running a commerce backend: Swell.
• Already on Shopify and happy with its checkout: Shopify with Hydrogen.
• Want a hosted suite and a Next.js storefront to start from: BigCommerce with Catalyst.
• Engineers want to own the commerce code: Medusa or Saleor.
• Selling to procurement teams: Vendure, or commercetools at enterprise scale.
• Enterprise budget and an implementation partner: commercetools, Elastic Path or Salesforce Commerce Cloud.
• Adding commerce to an existing site in several markets: Commerce Layer.
• A theme already does what you need: stay on the theme. Our ecommerce platform guide covers platforms for stores that do not need a custom frontend.

Before you commit, build a small prototype on your top two options. Take one real product through cart, checkout and order, and include your hardest requirement, such as a subscription swap, a customer-specific price or a tax rule. API coverage and developer experience are easier to judge in a working prototype than on a feature page.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a headless commerce platform?

A headless commerce platform runs products, carts, pricing, checkout and orders behind APIs, separate from the storefront. Developers build the storefront in any framework and connect it to those APIs.

What is the best headless commerce platform?

Swell is our top pick for most custom builds: a hosted, API-first platform with subscriptions on every plan, custom data models and published prices from $29/month billed yearly. Shopify with Hydrogen is the safest choice for brands already on Shopify, commercetools and Elastic Path fit enterprise programs, and Medusa, Saleor and Vendure suit teams that want open source. Swell publishes this guide, so test your top two options with a working prototype.

Is Shopify a headless commerce platform?

Shopify is a hosted suite that also supports headless builds. The Storefront API and Hydrogen let you replace the storefront, while Shopify keeps running the admin and checkout.

How much does a headless commerce platform cost?

Platform fees run from free for self-hosted open source to $29 a month billed yearly for Shopify, BigCommerce and Swell, $49,500 a year for Elastic Path's entry tier, and quote-only pricing for commercetools and Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Building and maintaining the storefront, plus hosting and third-party tools, add to the platform fee.

Is there a free headless commerce platform?

Medusa and Saleor are free to self-host, Vendure Framework is free under GPLv3, and Commerce Layer's Developer plan includes 100 live orders a month. Self-hosting still costs money in infrastructure and engineering time.

What is the difference between headless and composable commerce?

Headless separates the storefront from the commerce backend. Composable commerce goes further and builds the whole stack from separate services, such as search, CMS and payments, that can each be replaced. A headless store does not have to be composable.

Do you need developers for headless commerce?

Yes. Someone has to build the storefront, connect it to the APIs and maintain it after launch. If you do not have developers, a theme is the better starting point.

Is headless commerce better for SEO?

Headless is not automatically better for SEO. A custom storefront can be fast and flexible, but your team becomes responsible for server rendering, metadata, structured data, redirects and sitemaps, which a theme handles for you.

When should a brand avoid headless commerce?

Stay on a theme if it meets your needs. Shopify suggests considering headless when its sales channels, themes and apps cannot deliver what you need, and Swell recommends exploring themes and storefront apps first for new stores.