ChatGPT answers, unedited

For a 10-person team building a high-traffic headless storefront, I’d narrow it to Saleor, Vendure, and Medusa. I would not start with Magento/Adobe Commerce unless you have a specific reason to accept its operational complexity.

My shortlist

Saleor is explicitly API-only/headless and documents a cloud-native architecture, multichannel commerce, webhooks and extensions. Its current public cloud metrics also show substantial production traffic. Saleor Commerce GitHub Saleor Commerce

Vendure is particularly interesting for a small engineering team: it's TypeScript end-to-end, built on NestJS/GraphQL, and lets you extend or override core behavior through plugins and service overrides rather than maintaining a fork. It supports PostgreSQL/MySQL/MariaDB/SQLite and self-hosting on Docker/Kubernetes. GitHub Vendure

Medusa is another strong TypeScript option. Its core commerce modules are open source and designed specifically as a customizable foundation for DTC, B2B, marketplaces and other commerce applications. GitHub

What I'd pick

If your team is primarily TypeScript: I'd prototype Vendure first, with Medusa as the other serious contender.

The reason isn't that Vendure is universally "better"—it's that a 10-person startup benefits enormously from keeping the commerce backend in the same language/ecosystem as the storefront and from having a fairly opinionated commerce model without locking yourselves into a SaaS platform. Vendure's plugin architecture is also a good fit when you expect unusual pricing, fulfillment, catalog, or checkout logic. GitHub GitHub

If your team is comfortable with Python and you want a very API/composable-oriented architecture: I'd put Saleor at the top of the POC list. Its GraphQL-only architecture and app/webhook model are particularly attractive for a genuinely headless storefront. Saleor Commerce Saleor Documentation

For "high traffic," I'd optimize the architecture—not just the platform

I'd build roughly:

Next.js storefront → CDN/edge cache → commerce API → PostgreSQL + Redis → async workers/events

with:

• aggressive CDN caching for product/category pages
• server-side/API caching for catalog queries
• PostgreSQL as the source of truth
• Redis for appropriate ephemeral/cache workloads
• asynchronous processing for email, search indexing, analytics, feeds, etc.
• a dedicated search engine once catalog/search requirements justify it
• payment provider hosted/tokenized flows rather than putting card data through your infrastructure
• load testing checkout and cart separately from cacheable catalog traffic

The important distinction is that 1M product-page requests and 1M checkout requests are completely different scaling problems. A headless platform can handle enormous read traffic if you keep the storefront/CDN/cache architecture doing its job; checkout, inventory, promotions and order writes are where I'd concentrate the load-testing effort.

One other consideration: license matters for a startup. Vendure Core is GPLv3, while Medusa's core is MIT and Saleor is BSD-3. GitHub GitHub Saleor Commerce I'd have counsel review the exact way you plan to modify/distribute the backend before committing.

If you tell me your expected traffic/orders, catalog size, TypeScript vs Python preference, and whether you need B2B/multi-region/multi-warehouse, I can give you a much more concrete architecture and a Saleor vs Vendure vs Medusa decision matrix for your specific workload.

What I'd pick

If your team is primarily TypeScript: I'd prototype Vendure first, with Medusa as the other serious contender.

The reason isn't that Vendure is universally "better"—it's that a 10-person startup benefits enormously from keeping the commerce backend in the same language/ecosystem as the storefront and from having a fairly opinionated commerce model without locking yourselves into a SaaS platform. Vendure's plugin architecture is also a good fit when you expect unusual pricing, fulfillment, catalog, or checkout logic. GitHub GitHub

If your team is comfortable with Python and you want a very API/composable-oriented architecture: I'd put Saleor at the top of the POC list. Its GraphQL-only architecture and app/webhook model are particularly attractive for a genuinely headless storefront. Saleor Commerce docs.saleor.io

For "high traffic," I'd optimize the architecture—not just the platform

I'd build roughly:

Next.js storefront → CDN/edge cache → commerce API → PostgreSQL + Redis → async workers/events

with:

For a 10-person startup building a headless storefront that needs to handle high traffic, I’d shortlist Medusa, Saleor, and Vendure. I would not start with WooCommerce/Magento unless you have a specific reason to want their ecosystems.

My shortlist

1. Medusa — my default starting point

medusajs.com

If your team is primarily TypeScript/React/Next.js, I'd investigate Medusa first. Its Node/TypeScript backend means your commerce engineers can stay in essentially the same ecosystem as the storefront. Its architecture is modular, so you're not forced into a giant monolith when you need custom pricing, fulfillment, promotions, etc. OSSAlt Kryeo

For a startup, that matters: engineering velocity and simplicity are often more important than having every enterprise commerce feature on day one.

I'd architect it roughly as:

                    CDN / Edge
                        │
                 Next.js storefront
                        │
                  BFF / API layer
                        │
                ┌───────┴───────┐
                │    Medusa     │
                │ commerce core │
                └───────┬───────┘
                        │
              ┌─────────┼─────────┐
           Postgres   Redis    Workers
              │                  │
          commerce DB       async jobs

For high traffic, I'd make the storefront independently scalable from the commerce backend. Don't assume that "headless" automatically makes the commerce engine infinitely scalable—the architecture around it matters at least as much.

2. Saleor — particularly interesting for very high scale

saleor.io

Saleor deserves serious consideration if GraphQL, multi-channel commerce, and scale are major requirements. It's Python/Django-based and GraphQL-native. Saleor currently reports production Cloud activity exceeding 1B requests/month and 400k orders/month, which is useful evidence that the architecture has been exercised at substantial scale. Saleor Commerce Saleor Commerce

Its API-first approach also fits nicely if you expect multiple clients—web, mobile, kiosks, partner applications, etc. Saleor Commerce

The tradeoff is that you're introducing a Python/Django commerce backend into your stack. For a TypeScript-heavy startup, that's meaningful.

3. Vendure — worth evaluating if customization is central

vendure.io

Vendure is another strong choice for a TypeScript team. It's built around Node.js, NestJS and GraphQL, with a plugin architecture designed to let you modify commerce behavior without forking the core. GitHub

I'd particularly investigate it if you anticipate unusual commerce requirements—marketplaces, complex B2B, custom pricing, multiple channels, subscriptions, etc. Vendure explicitly positions its extension model around these kinds of use cases. GitHub

The big thing to investigate with your legal team is its GPLv3 licensing, although Vendure says storefronts/services consuming its GraphQL API aren't thereby subject to GPLv3 and provides a plugin license exception. GitHub

What I'd choose for your startup

Assuming:

• 10 engineers
• primarily TypeScript
• Next.js/React storefront
• consumer/DTC rather than extremely complicated B2B
• substantial traffic spikes
• you want to own the infrastructure
• you don't want to spend half the team maintaining an ecommerce platform

I'd prototype with Medusa and Saleor, with Vendure as the third candidate.

The important thing is not to benchmark "requests per second" in isolation. I'd build the same representative flow in each:

1. Product/category page
2. Search/filter
3. Add-to-cart
4. Checkout
5. Promotion/discount
6. Inventory reservation
7. Order creation
8. Webhook/event processing
9. Admin/catalog update

Then load-test checkout and inventory, not just catalog reads. Catalog traffic can be heavily cached; checkout and inventory are where concurrency and consistency become much more interesting.

Also, for genuinely high traffic, I'd keep search, CMS, media, analytics, and possibly recommendations outside the commerce engine rather than turning the ecommerce backend into the entire application.

If you tell me your stack (Next.js? Remix?), expected peak requests/orders, catalog size, DTC vs B2B, and whether you need multi-region, I can narrow these three down much more concretely and sketch the production architecture.

                    CDN / Edge
                        │
                 Next.js storefront
                        │
                  BFF / API layer
                        │
                ┌───────┴───────┐
                │    Medusa     │
                │ commerce core │
                └───────┬───────┘
                        │
              ┌─────────┼─────────┐
           Postgres   Redis    Workers
              │                  │
          commerce DB       async jobs

For high traffic, I'd make the storefront independently scalable from the commerce backend. Don't assume that "headless" automatically makes the commerce engine infinitely scalable—the architecture around it matters at least as much.

2. Saleor — particularly interesting for very high scale

saleor.io

Saleor deserves serious consideration if GraphQL, multi-channel commerce, and scale are major requirements. It's Python/Django-based and GraphQL-native. Saleor currently reports production Cloud activity exceeding 1B requests/month and 400k orders/month, which is useful evidence that the architecture has been exercised at substantial scale. Saleor Commerce Saleor Commerce

Its API-first approach also fits nicely if you expect multiple clients—web, mobile, kiosks, partner applications, etc. Saleor Commerce

The tradeoff is that you're introducing a Python/Django commerce backend into your stack. For a TypeScript-heavy startup, that's meaningful.

3. Vendure — worth evaluating if customization is central

vendure.io

Vendure is another strong choice for a TypeScript team. It's built around Node.js, NestJS and GraphQL, with a plugin architecture designed to let you modify commerce behavior without forking the core. github.com

I'd particularly investigate it if you anticipate unusual commerce requirements—marketplaces, complex B2B, custom pricing, multiple channels, subscriptions, etc. Vendure explicitly positions its extension model around these kinds of use cases.

For a 10-person startup building a high-traffic, headless storefront, I'd shortlist Medusa, Vendure, and Saleor. I would not start with WooCommerce/Magento unless you have a strong reason to inherit their ecosystems.

My pick: Medusa

I'd choose Medusa for most startups in your situation.

Why:

• TypeScript/Node.js — particularly attractive if your storefront is Next.js/React and your team is already JS/TS-heavy.
• Headless-first architecture rather than adapting a traditional monolith into headless.
• Modular/workflow architecture gives you room to customize checkout, pricing, promotions, fulfillment, etc. without immediately forking the platform.
• PostgreSQL + Redis-friendly architecture, so you can scale the stateless application tier horizontally.
• MIT-licensed core, which is a meaningful advantage for a startup that doesn't want licensing surprises.
• Its ecosystem/community is currently larger than Vendure's, which matters when a 10-person team hits an obscure production problem. Current comparisons put Medusa at roughly 36k GitHub stars versus ~8k for Vendure and ~23k for Saleor. Owerczuk Kryeo

The important caveat: don't interpret "high traffic" as "the commerce backend needs to serve every page request." I'd architect it roughly:

                    ┌───────────────┐
                    │    CDN / WAF  │
                    └───────┬───────┘
                            │
                    ┌───────▼───────┐
                    │ Next.js /     │
                    │ Storefront    │
                    └───────┬───────┘
                            │
                ┌───────────▼───────────┐
                │   Commerce API        │
                │   Medusa              │
                └──────┬─────────┬──────┘
                       │         │
                 ┌─────▼───┐ ┌──▼──────┐
                 │Postgres │ │  Redis  │
                 └─────────┘ └─────────┘
                       │
             ┌─────────▼──────────┐
             │ Payments / ERP /   │
             │ PIM / fulfillment  │
             └────────────────────┘

Cache/catalog/search aggressively at the edge. Keep checkout/order mutations strongly consistent. Don't make your commerce database the bottleneck for anonymous product browsing.

The shortlist

Vendure is particularly compelling if your team loves GraphQL and NestJS. Its plugin architecture is clean, and it's a strong choice for sophisticated multi-channel/multi-brand setups. The major thing I'd investigate with your legal team is its GPLv3 licensing model. Owerczuk Vendure

Saleor is the one I'd seriously consider if you have Python expertise or unusually complex enterprise commerce requirements. Its GraphQL-first approach and built-in capabilities around channels, warehouses, currencies, etc. are excellent. But for a 10-person predominantly TypeScript startup, running a Python/Django commerce backend introduces another technology stack to own. Kryeo Grafen

What I'd avoid

I wouldn't pick based primarily on benchmark claims like "33ms product queries." At your scale, your architecture will matter vastly more than raw framework benchmarks. CDN caching, database indexes, search architecture, connection pooling, queueing, observability, and how you handle flash-sale/traffic-spike behavior will determine whether the system survives 10× traffic.

I also wouldn't build the commerce backend yourself. A 10-person startup can burn an enormous amount of engineering capacity recreating:

• carts
• promotions
• tax
• inventory reservations
• order state machines
• payment workflows
• refunds
• customer accounts
• multi-region pricing
• fulfillment
• admin tooling

That's precisely the part I'd outsource to an existing commerce engine.

Bottom line: if you're a modern TS/React startup, I'd start with Medusa, prototype your three hardest commerce workflows, and load-test the architecture before committing. If you're GraphQL/NestJS-heavy, put Vendure through the same exercise. If you're Python-heavy or have complex global/B2B commerce, evaluate Saleor.

If you tell me roughly your expected peak requests/sec, catalog size, countries/currencies, B2C vs B2B, and whether you're using Next.js, I can give you a much more concrete architecture and tell you which of the three I'd choose.

Saleor is the one I'd seriously consider if you have Python expertise or unusually complex enterprise commerce requirements. Its GraphQL-first approach and built-in capabilities around channels, warehouses, currencies, etc. are excellent. But for a 10-person predominantly TypeScript startup, running a Python/Django commerce backend introduces another technology stack to own. Kryeo grafen.tn

What I'd avoid

I wouldn't pick based primarily on benchmark claims like "33ms product queries." At your scale, your architecture will matter vastly more than raw framework benchmarks. CDN caching, database indexes, search architecture, connection pooling, queueing, observability, and how you handle flash-sale/traffic-spike behavior will determine whether the system survives 10× traffic.

For a 10-person startup building a high-traffic headless storefront, I would avoid older monolithic ecommerce platforms unless you have a strong reason. Your bottleneck will likely be engineering velocity + scalability + ability to customize, not whether the platform has every merchant feature out of the box.

My shortlist would be:

1. Medusa — my default recommendation for a startup team
2. Saleor — best if you want GraphQL-first and have Python expertise
3. Vendure — best if you are TypeScript/NestJS-heavy and need a strong plugin architecture

Vendure pkgpulse## 1. Medusa — best fit for most 10-person startups

Medusa is what I would start with unless your requirements point elsewhere.

Why it fits:

• TypeScript/Node.js stack → easy pairing with a Next.js storefront
• Headless-first architecture
• Modular backend (products, carts, payments, fulfillment, etc.)
• Easier for a small team to extend than enterprise commerce platforms
• MIT license is startup-friendly
• Good fit for building your own differentiated shopping experience rather than configuring a giant CMS

Vendure Build with MatijaTypical architecture:

Next.js / React storefront
        |
        |
   Medusa API
        |
 -------------------------
 |          |            |
Postgres   Redis      Search
                     (Algolia/
                      Elasticsearch)

For high traffic, I would treat Medusa as the commerce engine, not the entire application platform. Put:

• CDN caching in front of storefront pages
• search in a dedicated service
• inventory/event processing asynchronously
• analytics outside the commerce database

Where Medusa may hurt:

• You will build more yourself.
• Very complex B2B workflows may require custom modules.
• You need engineers comfortable owning architecture.

For a startup, those are often acceptable tradeoffs.

2. Saleor — best if you want a more "commerce platform" feel

Saleor is a strong option if your team likes Python/Django or wants a GraphQL-native backend.

Strengths:

• Excellent GraphQL API
• Strong catalog/channel concepts
• Good multi-warehouse and international commerce support
• More opinionated commerce model

VendureI would lean Saleor if you are building:

• multiple storefronts
• multiple regions/currencies
• complex catalog rules
• B2B-ish workflows

The downside for a 10-person startup is operational: if your frontend team is TypeScript-heavy, you now have another backend ecosystem to own.

3. Vendure — best TypeScript enterprise-style option

Vendure is compelling if your team already likes NestJS.

Strengths:

• TypeScript end-to-end
• Strong plugin architecture
• Clean domain model
• Good for complex custom commerce systems

VendureI would choose Vendure over Medusa if:

• your backend team is already NestJS-oriented
• you expect lots of custom business logic
• you want a more structured framework

The main consideration is ecosystem size and licensing details compared with more permissive alternatives. ShipGarden

What I would probably not pick

WooCommerce

Great ecosystem, but I would not choose it for a new high-traffic headless build unless:

• marketing absolutely requires WordPress
• you need its plugin marketplace
• your commerce complexity is low

Magento Open Source

Powerful, but usually too heavy for a 10-person startup. You can end up spending your engineering budget maintaining the platform rather than building your product.

Building from scratch

Tempting, but checkout, promotions, tax, inventory, refunds, payment edge cases, and order workflows become a multi-year project.

My recommendation by scenario

Vendure pkgpulseFor a 10-person startup expecting high traffic, my starting architecture would likely be:

• Frontend: Next.js + React Server Components
• Commerce core: Medusa
• Database: PostgreSQL
• Cache/queues: Redis
• Search: Algolia or Elasticsearch/OpenSearch
• CMS: separate headless CMS (not your commerce backend)
• Payments: Stripe or Adyen
• Infrastructure: Kubernetes/ECS/etc. only when needed; start simpler

The key question that would change my recommendation: are you building DTC retail, marketplace, B2B commerce, or a commerce platform/SaaS product? Those four have very different best choices.

For a 10-person startup expecting high traffic, my starting architecture would likely be:

For a 10-person startup building a headless storefront for high traffic, I would avoid older monolithic platforms unless you have a very specific reason. Your likely constraints are:

• small engineering team → low operational burden matters
• high traffic → caching, horizontal scaling, queueing, DB performance matter
• headless → API quality and developer experience matter
• startup velocity → you need customization without maintaining a fork

My shortlist would be:

Vendure OpenReplay Blog## 1. My default recommendation: Medusa

Medusa is probably where I would start for a 10-person startup.

Why:

• TypeScript/Node ecosystem matches most modern frontend teams
• headless-first architecture
• easier for a small team to extend
• modular commerce primitives (products, carts, orders, payments, fulfillment)
• good fit with Next.js-style storefronts
• MIT license gives you flexibility

ShipGarden DesignodinA common architecture would look like:

Next.js storefront
        |
        |
     Medusa API
        |
 ---------------------
 |        |           |
Postgres Redis     Queue workers
 |
Search (Algolia/Meilisearch/OpenSearch)
 |
ERP / payments / fulfillment integrations

For a startup, I like that your team can stay mostly in TypeScript instead of operating a Python backend plus JS frontend.

Where Medusa may require work:

• very complex B2B pricing
• enterprise approval workflows
• unusual inventory models
• marketplace logic

Those are solvable, but you should evaluate them early.

2. Saleor if your commerce complexity is high

Saleor is excellent if you are building something closer to an enterprise commerce platform.

Strengths:

• GraphQL-first API
• mature multi-channel concepts
• strong international commerce capabilities
• good inventory and catalog modeling

Vendure GrafenI would choose Saleor if:

• you already have Python expertise
• you expect many storefronts/regions/currencies
• B2B is central
• your catalog is complicated

I would hesitate if your entire engineering team is TypeScript-focused.

3. Vendure if you want a TypeScript commerce framework

Vendure is the one I would compare seriously against Medusa.

Strengths:

• TypeScript-native
• NestJS architecture
• strong plugin model
• good fit for custom commerce applications

Vendure Build with MatijaIt is attractive if your team already likes NestJS patterns and wants a more opinionated backend framework.

What I would not pick for your situation

Magento / Adobe Commerce

Powerful, but a 10-person startup usually pays a high complexity tax:

• heavier infrastructure
• PHP ecosystem
• more specialized developers

WooCommerce

Great product, enormous ecosystem, but for a high-traffic headless build you are fighting the architecture rather than using one designed for it.

Building from scratch

Tempting, but commerce has many sharp edges:

• tax
• refunds
• inventory consistency
• promotions
• payments
• fraud
• order state machines

A commerce engine buys you years of edge cases.

My suggested evaluation process

For a startup, I would spend 1–2 weeks prototyping:

1. Import your real catalog size.
2. Load-test: - product search
3. category pages
4. cart creation
5. checkout
6. Build one custom feature you know you need.
7. Test: - deployment
8. migrations
9. debugging
10. extending core behavior

The winner is usually not the one with the most features; it is the one your team can safely modify at 2 AM.

My ranking for your exact profile

Assuming a modern JS startup:

1. Medusa — best balance of speed, flexibility, and team productivity
2. Vendure — if your team prefers NestJS/backend architecture
3. Saleor — if commerce complexity outweighs engineering simplicity
4. Shopware — if your market pushes you toward European enterprise commerce

I would start by building a proof-of-concept on Medusa + Next.js + Postgres + Redis + a dedicated search layer, then compare against Vendure before committing.

For a 10-person startup building a high-traffic, headless storefront, I’d shortlist Saleor, Medusa, and Vendure. I would not start with WooCommerce/Magento unless you have a specific reason to inherit their ecosystems.

My ranking

1. Saleor — my choice if traffic/scale is the primary concern

Saleor is probably the most compelling fit if you're deliberately building a serious high-traffic commerce backend rather than a conventional online store.

It's API-only and GraphQL-native, with native multichannel capabilities and an architecture designed around composability. Saleor also describes itself as cloud-native and says it is battle-tested on global brands. Saleor Commerce GitHub

The important architectural advantage is that your storefront can be extremely thin:

CDN / Edge
    │
    ▼
Next.js / custom storefront
    │
    ▼
Saleor GraphQL API
    │
 ┌──┴───────────────┐
 ▼                  ▼
Postgres          async/webhooks
                      │
              ┌───────┴────────┐
              ▼                ▼
          payments          search/ERP/etc.

For a 10-person team, I'd particularly value the API-only boundary: you aren't coupling your storefront to server-rendered commerce internals.

Downside: you're introducing Python/Django into a team that may otherwise be TypeScript-heavy. That isn't inherently bad, but it is another ecosystem to operate.

saleor.io

2. Medusa — my choice for a TypeScript-first startup

If your team is primarily React/Next.js/Node/TypeScript, I'd seriously consider Medusa instead.

Its architecture separates API routes, workflows, domain modules, and the datastore, with PostgreSQL as the typical database. Medusa Docs

That makes it attractive when your startup expects a lot of custom business logic rather than merely configuring an ecommerce package.

It's also currently using an open-core model: the core is MIT licensed, while certain Enterprise Edition materials require a commercial agreement. GitHub

The big advantage for a 10-person company is developer velocity:

Next.js / React
      │
      ▼
   Medusa
      │
 ┌────┼──────────────┐
 ▼    ▼              ▼
Cart Orders       Catalog
 │
 ▼
Workflows → Payments / Fulfillment / ERP

If your engineers are already strong in TypeScript, Medusa may actually be the pragmatic winner despite my overall Saleor ranking.

github.com

3. Vendure — excellent if your domain is complicated

Vendure is particularly attractive if you expect things like B2B, multiple channels, marketplaces, unusual pricing, custom workflows, or sophisticated promotions.

It's TypeScript/Node/NestJS/GraphQL and has a plugin-first architecture, so you can extend the platform without maintaining a fork. GitHub GitHub

Its deployment model is also sensible for high traffic: the server and worker can scale independently while sharing the database and job queue. Vendure

One thing I'd investigate carefully before committing is the current licensing model. Vendure's current Core documentation describes GPLv3 licensing, with a commercial license available for teams needing different terms. Vendure

vendure.io

What I'd actually do with 10 engineers

I'd run a 2–3 day spike with Saleor and Medusa, implementing the same thin vertical slice:

• product/catalog queries
• category/search page
• product page
• cart
• checkout
• inventory reservation
• payment authorization
• order creation
• webhook/event processing
• one custom business rule
• cache invalidation
• load test against your expected peak traffic

Don't benchmark "requests per second" in isolation. The important test is your actual read-heavy storefront workload plus checkout/order writes.

For the storefront itself, I'd strongly favor:

Next.js/React → CDN/edge caching → commerce API → PostgreSQL + Redis/cache → async workers

Keep product/category/content reads aggressively cacheable, and keep checkout/order/inventory operations strongly consistent where necessary.

Bottom line

If I were CTO of your 10-person startup:

1. Saleor — if scale, API purity, multichannel and long-term composability are the priorities.
2. Medusa — if your team is heavily TypeScript and you want maximum development velocity/customization.
3. Vendure — if you already know the business is going to have unusually complex commerce rules.

I would not choose based on raw benchmark claims. At your size, the bigger risk is having six engineers spending their time fighting the commerce platform instead of building the differentiated parts of your business.

If you tell me your stack (e.g. Next.js/TypeScript), expected peak traffic/orders, B2C vs B2B, and whether you're doing multi-region, I can narrow this to one and propose a production architecture.

If I were CTO of your 10-person startup:

1. Saleor — if scale, API purity, multichannel and long-term composability are the priorities.
2. Medusa — if your team is heavily TypeScript and you want maximum development velocity/customization.
3. Vendure — if you already know the business is going to have unusually complex commerce rules.

I would not choose based on raw benchmark claims. At your size, the bigger risk is having six engineers spending their time fighting the commerce platform instead of building the differentiated parts of your business.

If you tell me your stack (e.g. Next.js/TypeScript), expected peak traffic/orders, B2C vs B2B, and whether you're doing multi-region, I can narrow this to one and propose a production architecture.

If your team is primarily React/Next.js/Node/TypeScript, I'd seriously consider Medusa instead.

Its architecture separates API routes, workflows, domain modules, and the datastore, with PostgreSQL as the typical database. Medusa Docs

That makes it attractive when your startup expects a lot of custom business logic rather than merely configuring an ecommerce package.

It's also currently using an open-core model: the core is MIT licensed, while certain Enterprise Edition materials require a commercial agreement. GitHub

The big advantage for a 10-person company is developer velocity:

Next.js / React
      │
      ▼
   Medusa
      │
 ┌────┼──────────────┐
 ▼    ▼              ▼
Cart Orders       Catalog
 │
 ▼
Workflows → Payments / Fulfillment / ERP

If your engineers are already strong in TypeScript, Medusa may actually be the pragmatic winner despite my overall Saleor ranking.

github.com

3. Vendure — excellent if your domain is complicated

Vendure is particularly attractive if you expect things like B2B, multiple channels, marketplaces, unusual pricing, custom workflows, or sophisticated promotions.

It's TypeScript/Node/NestJS/GraphQL and has a plugin-first architecture, so you can extend the platform without maintaining a fork. GitHub GitHub

Its deployment model is also sensible for high traffic: the server and worker can scale independently while sharing the database and job queue.

One thing I'd investigate carefully before committing is the current licensing model. Vendure's current Core documentation describes GPLv3 licensing, with a commercial license available for teams needing different terms.

For a 10-person startup building a high-traffic headless storefront, I’d shortlist Medusa, Saleor, and Vendure—and my default choice would be Medusa unless you have unusually complex B2B or enterprise requirements.

My ranking

1. medusajs.com — my default recommendation

If your team is primarily TypeScript/React/Next.js, I'd start here.

Medusa is genuinely headless rather than being an old monolith with a headless API bolted on. Its architecture separates API routes, workflows, domain modules, and the PostgreSQL datastore, which gives you useful seams for scaling and customization. Medusa Docs

The big advantage for a 10-person company is organizational complexity: you can stay largely in one ecosystem instead of operating a Python/Django commerce backend alongside a JS storefront.

I'd architect it roughly as:

                 CDN / Edge
                     │
              Next.js storefront
                     │
              ┌──────┴──────┐
              │   Medusa    │
              │ API + logic │
              └──────┬──────┘
                     │
          ┌──────────┼──────────┐
          ↓          ↓          ↓
      PostgreSQL    Redis    Search
                              (Algolia/
                               Meilisearch/
                               OpenSearch)

For high traffic, don't make the commerce backend serve every storefront page request. Cache aggressively at the CDN/Next.js layer and have the backend primarily handle cart, checkout, customer, inventory, pricing, and order mutations.

That's the architecture I'd be most comfortable putting a 10-person startup behind.

2. saleor.io — choose this for enterprise-grade commerce

Saleor is the one I'd investigate seriously if you're expecting things like multiple channels, internationalization, sophisticated pricing, warehouses, B2B, or very large catalog/transaction volumes.

It's GraphQL-first, Python/Django-based, and explicitly designed as an open-source composable/headless platform. Saleor currently reports cloud infrastructure handling 1B+ requests/month, which is useful evidence that the architecture can operate at substantial scale. Saleor Commerce Saleor Commerce

The tradeoff is that your team is operating a Python/Django commerce engine while your storefront is likely TypeScript/React. That's perfectly reasonable—but for a small startup, I'd value having fewer ecosystems to maintain.

3. vendure.io — excellent if B2B is central

Vendure is probably the strongest alternative to Medusa if your product has complex B2B requirements.

It's TypeScript/NestJS/GraphQL, plugin-oriented, and designed to let you extend the platform without forking the core. GitHub docs.vendure.io

I'd favor it when your requirements include things like:

• Company accounts and organizational hierarchies
• Approval workflows
• Sophisticated B2B pricing
• Multiple sales channels
• Complex promotions/catalog rules

The important caveat is licensing: Vendure Core is GPLv3, whereas Medusa is MIT. That's something I'd have your lawyer review before committing, particularly if you're modifying/distributing the core. GitHub

What I would not pick

I wouldn't start a new high-traffic, headless-first startup project with WooCommerce or Magento/Adobe Commerce unless you have a very specific reason.

They're capable systems, but your constraint is a 10-person engineering organization. I'd rather spend that team's complexity budget on your actual differentiating product than on operating a traditional ecommerce platform.

The bigger architectural decision

For your situation, I'd actually prioritize this over feature checklists:

Don't make your ecommerce platform your storefront.

Use the OSS platform as the commerce engine, and build your differentiated experience separately:

                 ┌───────────────┐
                 │   CDN / Edge  │
                 └───────┬───────┘
                         │
                  Next.js / React
                         │
              ┌──────────┴──────────┐
              │                     │
         CMS / Content          Commerce API
              │                     │
              │                  Medusa
              │                     │
              │             ┌───────┼────────┐
              │             │       │        │
              │           PG      Redis    Search
              │
        Your custom services
       ┌──────┼──────┬───────┐
       │      │      │       │
    Pricing  Recs  Analytics Inventory

That gives you freedom to replace individual components later without rewriting the storefront.

So if I were CTO of your 10-person startup: I'd choose Medusa + Next.js + PostgreSQL + Redis + a dedicated search engine + CDN, unless your requirements point strongly toward Saleor's enterprise/multi-channel model or Vendure's B2B capabilities.

If you tell me your expected traffic (requests/sec), catalog size, number of SKUs, B2C vs B2B, and whether you're on AWS/GCP/Cloudflare, I can sketch the production architecture I'd use and identify the likely bottlenecks.

3. vendure.io — excellent if B2B is central

Vendure is probably the strongest alternative to Medusa if your product has complex B2B requirements.

For a 10-person startup building a headless storefront that needs to handle high traffic, I’d shortlist Saleor, Medusa, and Vendure—and I’d probably choose Saleor or Medusa.

My ranking

1. Saleor — my pick if "high traffic" is the dominant requirement

Saleor was designed around an API-only, GraphQL-first, headless architecture, with native multichannel support and a cloud-native architecture. The project explicitly positions itself as high-performance and says it is battle-tested with global brands. GitHub GitHub

I'd choose it if you're expecting things like:

• Very large catalogs
• Multiple countries/currencies/channels
• Significant traffic spikes
• Complex pricing/inventory
• A separate Next.js/React storefront
• A team comfortable operating Python/Django
• Commerce becoming a core piece of infrastructure rather than simply a feature

The downside for a 10-person startup is organizational weight. You're adding a Python/Django backend to a potentially TypeScript-heavy frontend stack, and Saleor's flexibility means you'll still need to build a fair amount around it.

docs.saleor.io

2. Medusa — probably the best startup choice

If your team is primarily TypeScript/Node/React, I'd seriously consider Medusa first.

Its architecture is particularly attractive for a small engineering team: API routes → workflows → modules → PostgreSQL, with Redis available for things like locking and workflow orchestration. Medusa Docs

That gives you a nice middle ground:

Next.js storefront → CDN/cache → Medusa API → PostgreSQL + Redis

while letting your team write custom commerce logic in the same ecosystem as the storefront.

For a 10-person company, that's a big deal. You don't want to spend half your engineering capacity learning and operating an unnecessarily complicated commerce platform.

docs.medusajs.com

3. Vendure — excellent if customization is unusually important

Vendure is very compelling if you're building something more complicated than a conventional DTC store. It's TypeScript/NestJS/GraphQL and has a plugin-first architecture, allowing you to customize the system without forking the core. GitHub GitHub

Its GraphQL Shop API is explicitly designed to power arbitrary storefronts and exposes catalog, customer, cart and checkout functionality. Vendure Developer Hub

I'd put it ahead of Medusa if you told me:

"Our commerce model is weird, and we're going to deeply customize the backend."

The main consideration is its GPLv3 licensing, which deserves a proper legal review depending on how you're modifying/distributing the software. GitHub

What I would actually do

If I were advising your 10-person team:

TypeScript-heavy team → Medusa

Python/Django expertise + genuinely large/complex commerce → Saleor

Extremely customized commerce model → Vendure

And I would not choose based on benchmark claims like "X requests/sec." At high traffic, the storefront architecture matters enormously more than the raw ecommerce application's benchmark.

I'd design it roughly like:

                    ┌───────────────┐
                    │   CDN / Edge  │
                    └───────┬───────┘
                            │
                    ┌───────▼───────┐
                    │ Next.js/React │
                    │   storefront  │
                    └───────┬───────┘
                            │
                    ┌───────▼───────┐
                    │ Commerce API  │
                    │ Saleor/Medusa │
                    └───┬───────┬───┘
                        │       │
                  ┌─────▼──┐ ┌──▼─────┐
                  │Postgres│ │ Redis  │
                  └────────┘ └────────┘

Put catalog/product pages behind aggressive CDN caching, keep checkout/cart operations dynamic, and push search, recommendations, analytics, email, fulfillment, etc. into appropriate supporting services rather than turning the commerce backend into a giant monolith.

If you tell me your expected traffic (e.g. 100k vs 10M monthly visitors), catalog size, team stack (TS/Python/etc.), and whether you need B2B/multi-region, I can give you a much stronger recommendation between Saleor vs Medusa and a concrete production architecture.

For a 10-person startup building a high-traffic headless storefront, I’d shortlist Vendure, Saleor, and Medusa. My default pick would be Vendure if your team is TypeScript-heavy.

My ranking

1. vendure.io — my recommendation

Vendure is particularly attractive for a 10-person engineering team because you get a real commerce backend rather than a collection of primitives, while retaining a lot of control. It's TypeScript/NestJS/GraphQL end-to-end and has a plugin architecture that lets you change core behavior without maintaining a fork. GitHub GitHub

For high traffic, its architecture is also sensible: the HTTP/API server and background worker can scale independently while sharing a SQL database and persistent job queue. Vendure

I'd structure it roughly as:

Next.js storefront → CDN/cache → Vendure GraphQL → PostgreSQL

with Redis/search/queues/integration workers added where actually needed.

The major caveat is GPLv3. Vendure's FAQ says your storefront/services aren't made GPL merely by consuming its GraphQL API, but I'd still have counsel review the licensing implications of your particular deployment and plugins. GitHub

2. saleor.io — strongest alternative

I'd seriously consider Saleor if scale, internationalization, multiple channels, and API purity are more important than staying entirely in TypeScript.

Saleor is API-only and GraphQL-native, with multichannel support and an explicitly headless architecture. Its backend is Python, which is the biggest consideration for a TS-heavy startup. GitHub GitHub

It's particularly compelling if you're expecting things like:

• multiple countries/currencies
• complex catalog structures
• multiple storefronts/channels
• significant traffic spikes
• a separate BFF/service layer
• strong separation between commerce and frontend

Saleor uses a BSD-3-Clause license, which is substantially less restrictive than Vendure's GPLv3. Saleor Commerce

3. medusajs.com — best if developer velocity wins

Medusa is another very good choice for a startup. It's Node.js/TypeScript and has a modular architecture built around API routes, workflows, modules, and PostgreSQL. Medusa Docs

I'd choose it when the product is going to have unusual commerce workflows and you want your engineers to move extremely quickly in a JS/TS environment.

The important licensing distinction is that Medusa is now open-core: the core is MIT, while certain Enterprise Edition components require a commercial agreement. GitHub

What I'd actually do

For your specific description, I'd go:

Vendure + Next.js + PostgreSQL + Redis + CDN + dedicated search

and keep the architecture boring.

Don't try to make the commerce engine handle every high-traffic read directly. Put your CDN/cache and search/indexing layers in front of it, make product/category pages aggressively cacheable, and keep checkout/order mutations strongly consistent.

I'd choose Saleor instead if your team is comfortable with Python and you anticipate genuinely global/multichannel commerce. I'd choose Medusa instead if rapid customization is the overriding priority.

One other important point: "high traffic" doesn't necessarily mean you need the most distributed commerce platform. For a 10-person startup, operational simplicity is usually worth more than squeezing theoretical maximum throughput out of the backend. Vendure's single coherent backend plus separately scalable worker is a particularly nice middle ground. Vendure

If you tell me your expected requests/sec, catalog size, number of SKUs, regions, checkout volume, and whether you're TypeScript-only, I can narrow this down to one architecture and give you a proposed production topology.

For a 10-person startup building a high-traffic headless storefront, I’d shortlist Saleor, Medusa, and Vendure. My default recommendation would be Saleor if scale/reliability is the primary concern, or Medusa if developer velocity and TypeScript are more important.

My ranking

1. saleor.io — my pick for serious high traffic

I'd lean Saleor if you're expecting substantial traffic and don't want your commerce engine to become the bottleneck.

It's GraphQL-first, headless, and designed around composability. Saleor also has a fairly mature approach to channels, warehouses, promotions, apps, webhooks and extensibility. Its current infrastructure claims are significant: the project reports handling 1B+ API requests/month and 400k orders/month on its cloud infrastructure. Saleor Commerce Saleor Commerce

The important architectural advantage for your use case is that you can keep the storefront extremely thin:

CDN → Next.js/React storefront → BFF/API layer → Saleor → Postgres

and push things like search, recommendations, CMS and analytics into separate systems rather than turning the commerce backend into a giant monolith.

Downside: it's Python/Django. If your 10-person team is overwhelmingly TypeScript, that operational boundary matters.

2. medusajs.com — my pick for a TypeScript startup

If your team is primarily React/Next.js/Node/TypeScript, I'd seriously consider Medusa first.

Its architecture is explicitly modular: API routes → workflows → modules → PostgreSQL, with Redis commonly used for session data. Medusa Docs

That makes it attractive for a startup because you can customize commerce logic without immediately building an entire commerce platform yourself.

I'd choose it over Saleor if:

• Your team is much stronger in TypeScript than Python.
• You expect lots of bespoke commerce logic.
• Developer velocity matters more than having the most mature enterprise-oriented commerce model.
• You want a permissive MIT license.
• You're comfortable owning more of the scaling/operations story yourself.

3. vendure.io — excellent TypeScript alternative

Vendure is worth evaluating if you're a TypeScript/NestJS shop and particularly care about B2B, complex pricing, multi-channel commerce, or workflow customization. Its core is open source and provides the commerce engine, APIs, dashboard and plugin system. Vendure Developer Hub

The major thing I'd investigate carefully before committing is the GPLv3/open-core licensing model versus your intended proprietary extensions and deployment model. Vendure

What I would not start with

I wouldn't make WooCommerce, Magento/Adobe Commerce, or Shopware my first choice for this particular project unless you have a specific reason.

They're excellent ecosystems, but for a new, high-traffic, headless-first product with only 10 engineers, I'd rather start from a commerce engine designed around APIs and composability than spend engineering capital adapting a more traditional platform.

The bigger architectural point

For high traffic, don't expect the ecommerce platform itself to serve all storefront traffic synchronously.

I'd build something approximately like:

                    ┌───────────────┐
                    │   CDN / Edge  │
                    └───────┬───────┘
                            │
                     ┌──────▼──────┐
                     │ Next.js / FE│
                     └──────┬──────┘
                            │
                    ┌───────▼────────┐
                    │ BFF / API layer│
                    └───┬────────┬───┘
                        │        │
              ┌─────────▼─┐   ┌──▼──────────┐
              │   Cache    │   │   Search    │
              │ Redis/etc. │   │ OpenSearch  │
              └─────────┬─┘   └─────────────┘
                        │
                  ┌─────▼─────┐
                  │  Saleor   │
                  │ / Medusa  │
                  │ / Vendure │
                  └─────┬─────┘
                        │
                   PostgreSQL

Cache aggressively at the edge. Product/category pages shouldn't hit your commerce database for every anonymous request. Keep checkout, inventory, pricing and customer-specific operations dynamic.

My decision rule

If you told me:

"We're 10 engineers, all TypeScript, launching a consumer store that could get hammered by a viral event."

I'd pick Medusa.

If you told me:

"We're 10 engineers, traffic could become enormous, commerce is strategically important, and we're willing to have some Python."

I'd pick Saleor.

If you told me:

"We're TypeScript/NestJS and the business has unusually complicated B2B/multi-channel requirements."

I'd pick Vendure.

For a genuinely high-traffic startup, I'd spend 2–3 days load-testing the top two against your actual catalog, checkout, pricing and inventory patterns before committing. Generic benchmark numbers are much less useful than discovering whether your checkout workflow or catalog queries become the bottleneck.

For a 10-person startup building a high-traffic headless storefront, I’d shortlist Medusa, Saleor, and Vendure. My default recommendation would be Medusa, unless your requirements point strongly toward Saleor.

My ranking

🥇 Medusa — probably the best fit

medusajs.com is what I'd start with for a 10-person team.

Its biggest advantage is that you're getting a TypeScript/Node commerce backend, so your storefront and commerce layer can live in essentially the same engineering ecosystem. The core is MIT-licensed and open source, with an open-core model for some enterprise functionality. GitHub

That's particularly attractive when you're trying to move quickly without building an enormous platform team.

I'd choose Medusa if you're doing something like:

Next.js/React → CDN/edge → your BFF/API → Medusa → Postgres/Redis → external search/payment/fulfillment services

The important point for high traffic is that I wouldn't make the commerce backend serve every storefront request directly. Cache aggressively at the CDN/application layer and treat Medusa as the transactional system for things like carts, checkout, orders, inventory and pricing.

🥈 Saleor — strongest alternative

saleor.io is extremely compelling if you expect sophisticated commerce requirements.

It's explicitly designed as a high-performance, composable, headless API, with a GraphQL-only API and native multi-channel capabilities. The core is BSD-3-Clause licensed. GitHub GitHub

I'd lean toward Saleor if you have:

• Multiple storefronts/channels
• Internationalization and multiple currencies
• Complex B2B requirements
• A Python/Django team
• A strong preference for GraphQL
• A willingness to operate a somewhat more sophisticated platform

For a team that's already heavily invested in Python, I'd probably reverse my ranking and put Saleor first.

🥉 Vendure — excellent engineering choice, with a licensing caveat

vendure.io is particularly interesting if your team likes TypeScript and wants an ecommerce framework rather than a more opinionated commerce platform.

It's TypeScript/NestJS, GraphQL-based, and highly plugin-oriented. It can run self-hosted on Docker/Kubernetes/cloud infrastructure. GitHub GitHub

The thing I'd have your lawyer/CTO examine before committing is the GPLv3 license. Vendure has a plugin exception and commercial licensing, but the implications are different from simply adopting an MIT/BSD core. GitHub GitHub

For a startup, I wouldn't introduce that licensing question unless Vendure's architecture gives you a meaningful advantage.

What I would actually build

If you told me:

"We're 10 engineers, primarily TypeScript, building a very fast consumer storefront, expect potentially millions of visitors, and don't want to spend half the company maintaining ecommerce infrastructure."

I'd choose:

Next.js + Medusa + PostgreSQL + Redis + CDN + dedicated search + external payments

and keep the architecture deliberately boring.

The biggest mistake I'd avoid is choosing an ecommerce platform based on whether it can theoretically handle huge traffic. Your storefront traffic and your transactional commerce traffic are different scaling problems. Millions of cached product-page requests shouldn't require millions of requests hitting your commerce database.

For your team size, I'd optimize for developer velocity + clean APIs + ability to replace individual subsystems, rather than choosing the platform with the longest enterprise feature checklist.

If you tell me your expected catalog size, requests/sec, B2C vs B2B, countries/currencies, and whether your team is TypeScript or Python, I can narrow this down to a specific architecture and tell you which one I'd bet the company on.

For a 10-person startup building a high-traffic headless storefront, I would shortlist three open-source platforms and make the choice based on your team’s stack and how much commerce complexity you need. The current serious OSS headless shortlist is generally Medusa, Saleor, and Vendure. Vendure

My default recommendation for a 10-person startup: start with Medusa unless you have a strong reason not to. Shipgarden

Recommended ranking

Vendure Shipgarden## My pick: Medusa

For your specific profile (10 engineers, startup, high traffic, headless), I would likely build:

• Frontend: Next.js / React
• Commerce backend: Medusa
• Database: PostgreSQL
• Cache/queues: Redis
• Search: OpenSearch/Elasticsearch/Algolia depending on needs
• CMS: Sanity, Contentful, Payload, or another headless CMS
• Payments: Stripe/Adyen/etc.
• Infrastructure: Kubernetes/ECS/Fargate/etc. depending on operational maturity

Why:

• Same language as modern storefront stacks. Your engineers can work across frontend and backend without a Python/PHP split.
• Composable architecture. You can replace pieces (pricing, inventory, promotions, fulfillment) instead of fighting a monolith.
• Startup-friendly. Faster iteration matters more than having every enterprise feature built in.
• No SaaS lock-in. You own the deployment and code.

Shipgarden## When I would choose Vendure instead

Pick Vendure if your product is closer to:

• marketplace infrastructure
• multi-tenant commerce
• complex B2B workflows
• multiple channels/brands
• enterprise catalog rules

Its NestJS/TypeScript architecture will feel familiar if your team already likes strongly structured backend systems. Vendure

When I would choose Saleor instead

Pick Saleor if:

• your backend team is already Python/Django-heavy
• GraphQL is a first-class requirement
• you have complex B2B needs (organizations, channels, warehouses, pricing rules)

It is a very capable platform, but I would not introduce Python into an otherwise TypeScript startup unless there is a clear payoff. Vendure

What I would avoid for your case

• Magento/OpenMage: powerful but operationally heavy for a 10-person startup.
• WooCommerce headless: great ecosystem, but the architecture is usually not what you want for a very high-traffic custom storefront.
• Building commerce from scratch: tempting, but checkout, promotions, taxes, inventory, refunds, and edge cases consume years.

Questions that would change my recommendation

1. Is your storefront B2C, B2B, or marketplace?
2. Expected scale: 10k orders/day, 100k/day, or millions/day?
3. Is your team mostly TypeScript, Python, or something else?
4. Do you need complex things like: - multiple warehouses?
5. subscriptions?
6. marketplace sellers?
7. regional pricing/tax?
8. flash-sale traffic spikes?

With those answers I’d probably narrow it to one platform and an architecture.

For a 10-person startup building a high-traffic headless storefront, I’d shortlist Medusa, Saleor, and Vendure. I would not start with WooCommerce/Magento unless you have a specific ecosystem requirement.

My ranking

🥇 I'd probably choose Medusa

medusajs.com is the strongest default for your situation.

It's TypeScript/Node-based, modular, headless-first, and has a large developer community. Its core commerce modules are open source under MIT, although some enterprise functionality is commercial. GitHub

For a 10-person team, the important thing isn't just raw throughput—it's how much engineering effort you spend fighting the platform. Having your storefront, commerce extensions, workers, and backend primarily in the JS/TS ecosystem can be a meaningful productivity advantage.

I'd pair it roughly like:

CDN / edge
    │
Next.js storefront
    │
API / BFF
    │
Medusa
 ┌──┴──────────────┐
Postgres       Redis/cache
    │
workers / async jobs
    │
payments / search / fulfillment

For genuinely high traffic, I'd keep the storefront aggressively cacheable and treat the commerce backend as the transactional system rather than trying to make every page request hit it.

🥈 Saleor if you expect enterprise complexity

saleor.io is arguably the more sophisticated choice if you're building something with multiple markets, channels, currencies, warehouses, B2B requirements, or complicated catalog/pricing rules.

It's API-only and GraphQL-first, with a cloud-native architecture and native multi-channel capabilities. GitHub Saleor

The tradeoff for your startup is that you're taking on a Python/Django backend. If your 10-person team is predominantly TypeScript, that means another ecosystem to own.

I'd choose Saleor over Medusa if your roadmap already looks like:

"We're building a global commerce platform with complicated catalog/inventory/channel requirements."

rather than:

"We're building a really fast consumer storefront and need to ship."

🥉 Vendure is the dark horse

vendure.io is particularly attractive if your team is strongly TypeScript/NestJS-oriented.

It's a headless TypeScript framework built on NestJS with GraphQL and a plugin architecture designed to let you customize the system without forking the core. GitHub Vendure Developer Hub

I'd seriously consider it for a technically sophisticated team, especially if you anticipate B2B, marketplaces, subscriptions, or unusual commerce workflows.

The big thing I'd have your lawyer review early is the GPLv3 licensing of Vendure Core. GitHub

What I'd do in your shoes

If you're 10 engineers, TypeScript-heavy, building a custom high-traffic consumer storefront:

Medusa + Next.js + Postgres + Redis + dedicated search + CDN/edge caching.

If you're Python-heavy or already know you need sophisticated multi-channel/B2B commerce:

Saleor.

If you're TypeScript/NestJS-heavy and expect unusual commerce logic:

Vendure.

One important caveat: don't select based on "can it handle 100k requests/sec?" The commerce engine usually isn't where you want that traffic to land. A properly designed headless architecture should serve most catalog/content traffic from the CDN/cache and reserve the commerce backend for dynamic operations such as cart, checkout, inventory, customer state, and orders.

If you tell me your expected traffic (requests/sec), catalog size, SKU count, regions, B2C vs B2B, and whether you're already TypeScript, I can give you a much more opinionated architecture and pick between the three.

For a 10-person startup building a high-traffic headless storefront, I’d shortlist Medusa, Saleor, and Vendure, with Medusa as my default recommendation.

My ranking

🥇 Medusa — my default choice

Medusa is what I'd pick if your team is primarily TypeScript/JavaScript.

Its core commerce modules are open source, the core is MIT-licensed, and it's designed around modular commerce rather than turning your storefront into a monolith. GitHub

That's particularly attractive for a 10-person company because you can have essentially the same ecosystem across:

Next.js/React → TypeScript → Medusa → PostgreSQL/Redis

rather than introducing a Python/Django backend solely for commerce.

For high traffic, I'd also prefer this architecture because the storefront can be aggressively CDN-cached and scaled independently from the transactional commerce API. The commerce backend doesn't need to serve every page view.

One caveat: Medusa is now an open-core project, so don't assume every feature in its ecosystem is MIT/open source. GitHub

github.com

🥈 Saleor — choose this if GraphQL/B2B matters

Saleor is arguably the strongest alternative.

It's GraphQL-only, API-first, headless, cloud-native, and has native multi-channel capabilities. Its official repo specifically positions it for high-performance composable commerce and says it's battle-tested with global brands. GitHub

I'd lean Saleor over Medusa if you're building something like:

• multiple countries/currencies/channels
• sophisticated B2B pricing
• complex catalogs
• multiple warehouses
• GraphQL as a strategic architectural choice
• an engineering organization already comfortable with Python/Django

The downside for a small startup is that you're operating a Python/Django commerce backend alongside whatever you use for the storefront. That's not necessarily bad, but it's additional organizational complexity.

github.com

🥉 Vendure — excellent if you expect unusual commerce logic

Vendure is very interesting if your business model is more complicated than conventional DTC ecommerce.

It's TypeScript/Node/NestJS, GraphQL, and has a plugin-first architecture designed so you can customize the system without forking the core. Its positioning specifically includes B2B, marketplaces, subscriptions, and unusual business models. GitHub GitHub

The big thing I'd investigate before committing is its GPLv3 license. That's not automatically a problem for a commercial storefront, but it's a materially different legal situation from an MIT/BSD core. GitHub

github.com

What I'd actually build

For your team, I'd start with:

                    ┌───────────────┐
                    │   CDN / Edge  │
                    └───────┬───────┘
                            │
                    ┌───────▼───────┐
                    │ Next.js Store │
                    │   SSR / RSC   │
                    └───────┬───────┘
                            │
                     Commerce API
                            │
                    ┌───────▼───────┐
                    │    Medusa     │
                    └───┬─────┬─────┘
                        │     │
                  ┌─────▼┐  ┌─▼─────┐
                  │ PG   │  │ Redis │
                  └──────┘  └──────┘

Then keep search, CMS, analytics, recommendations, and payments decoupled rather than trying to make the ecommerce platform own everything.

The important high-traffic principle is: don't make the commerce backend your page-serving infrastructure. Cache catalog/content aggressively at the edge; reserve the commerce API for things that actually require transactional state—cart, checkout, inventory, customer data, orders, etc.

Bottom line

If I were CTO of your 10-person startup:

I'd choose Medusa unless you have a specific reason not to.

I'd choose Saleor instead if B2B/multi-channel/GraphQL sophistication is central from day one.

I'd choose Vendure if you anticipate highly customized commerce workflows and are comfortable with its licensing model.

And I wouldn't start with WooCommerce, Magento/Adobe Commerce, or a custom-built commerce backend for this particular scenario. You'd either inherit a lot of legacy architecture or spend a significant fraction of a 10-person team's engineering capacity rebuilding commodity commerce functionality.

If you tell me your stack (Next.js/React/etc.), traffic target, catalog size, B2C vs B2B, and whether you need multi-region inventory, I can narrow this down to a concrete architecture and deployment strategy.

For a 10-person startup building a headless storefront where high traffic is a first-class requirement, I’d shortlist Saleor, Medusa, and Vendure. I would not start with WooCommerce/Magento unless you have a very specific reason to inherit those ecosystems.

My pick: Saleor

saleor.io would be my default choice if traffic scale and a clean headless architecture matter more than having the simplest possible developer experience.

Why:

• Headless/API-only by design — GraphQL is the primary interface, rather than a traditional monolith with a headless layer bolted on. GitHub
• Proven scale — Saleor currently reports handling 1B+ API requests/month and a 24-hour peak above 570k requests/hour, which is unusually relevant to your "high traffic" requirement. Saleor Commerce
• Strong multi-channel model — useful if you're eventually selling through web, mobile, marketplaces, etc. GitHub
• Good separation of concerns — your storefront can be Next.js/React/etc. without being coupled to the commerce backend.
• Open source with a BSD-3-Clause core license. GitHub

The downside is that you're adopting a Python/Django backend. If your 10-person team is overwhelmingly TypeScript/Node, that matters.

The three I'd evaluate

medusajs.com is probably my #2. It's particularly attractive if your team is already TypeScript/Next.js-heavy: the commerce backend and storefront can live in essentially the same ecosystem. Its core is MIT-licensed, although Medusa uses an open-core model with some Enterprise components under commercial licensing. GitHub

vendure.io is the dark horse. It's TypeScript + NestJS + GraphQL, with a plugin architecture and strong B2B/multichannel capabilities. GitHub Vendure Docs The main consideration for a startup is the GPLv3 core, which I'd have counsel review before committing. GitHub

What I'd build

For a high-traffic startup, I'd deliberately avoid making the commerce engine responsible for serving every storefront request:

                    ┌─────────────────────┐
                    │   CDN / Edge Cache   │
                    └──────────┬──────────┘
                               │
                         Next.js Store
                               │
                  ┌────────────┴────────────┐
                  │                         │
             Search API              Commerce API
                  │                         │
          Algolia / OpenSearch        Saleor
                                            │
                              ┌─────────────┼─────────────┐
                              │             │             │
                          PostgreSQL       Redis       Workers
                              │
                         Order / Product
                            data

The important architectural point is: don't scale ecommerce by simply throwing more instances at the whole application.

Cache/catalog pages aggressively at the edge, put search behind a dedicated search system, keep checkout/order mutations uncached and strongly consistent, and push non-critical work into asynchronous workers.

For a 10-person team, I'd also strongly consider managed infrastructure rather than self-hosting every component. Your scarce resource isn't CPU—it is engineering attention.

My decision rule

I'd choose:

• Saleor → if you expect genuinely large traffic, complex catalog/channel requirements, and can comfortably operate Python.
• Medusa → if you're a TypeScript/Node-heavy startup and want the fastest path from zero to a customized commerce backend.
• Vendure → if you want TypeScript/NestJS but need unusually strong B2B, pricing, channels, or plugin-oriented customization.

If you told me "we're 10 engineers, all TypeScript, launching a consumer brand, expecting huge traffic spikes, and don't want to hire a commerce platform team", I'd probably choose Medusa despite Saleor's stronger demonstrated scale story. If you told me "we expect millions of visitors, international/multichannel commerce, and commerce infrastructure is strategically important", I'd lean Saleor.

The bigger mistake would be choosing based on feature count rather than doing a load test of your actual catalog + pricing + cart + checkout workload. High-traffic storefront scale and high-throughput checkout are very different problems.

What I'd build

For a high-traffic startup, I'd deliberately avoid making the commerce engine responsible for serving every storefront request:

                    ┌─────────────────────┐
                    │   CDN / Edge Cache   │
                    └──────────┬──────────┘
                               │
                         Next.js Store
                               │
                  ┌────────────┴────────────┐
                  │                         │
             Search API              Commerce API
                  │                         │
          Algolia / OpenSearch        Saleor
                                            │
                              ┌─────────────┼─────────────┐
                              │             │             │
                          PostgreSQL       Redis       Workers
                              │
                         Order / Product
                            data

The important architectural point is: don't scale ecommerce by simply throwing more instances at the whole application.

Cache/catalog pages aggressively at the edge, put search behind a dedicated search system, keep checkout/order mutations uncached and strongly consistent, and push non-critical work into asynchronous workers.

For a 10-person team, I'd also strongly consider managed infrastructure rather than self-hosting every component. Your scarce resource isn't CPU—it is engineering attention.

My decision rule

I'd choose:

• Saleor → if you expect genuinely large traffic, complex catalog/channel requirements, and can comfortably operate Python.
• Medusa → if you're a TypeScript/Node-heavy startup and want the fastest path from zero to a customized commerce backend.
• Vendure → if you want TypeScript/NestJS but need unusually strong B2B, pricing, channels, or plugin-oriented customization.

If you told me "we're 10 engineers, all TypeScript, launching a consumer brand, expecting huge traffic spikes, and don't want to hire a commerce platform team", I'd probably choose Medusa despite Saleor's stronger demonstrated scale story. If you told me "we expect millions of visitors, international/multichannel commerce, and commerce infrastructure is strategically important", I'd lean Saleor.

The bigger mistake would be choosing based on feature count rather than doing a load test of your actual catalog + pricing + cart + checkout workload. High-traffic storefront scale and high-throughput checkout are very different problems.

For a 10-person startup building a high-traffic headless storefront, I’d shortlist Medusa, Vendure, and Saleor. I would not start with WooCommerce, Magento/Adobe Commerce, or Shopware unless you have a specific reason to inherit their ecosystems.

My recommendation: Medusa

medusajs.com would be my default choice for your team.

Why:

• TypeScript/Node.js — particularly attractive if your storefront is Next.js/React and you want one primary engineering stack.
• Headless from the ground up — the storefront consumes APIs rather than fighting a monolithic rendering layer.
• Modular architecture — catalog, cart, orders, payments, fulfillment, etc. can be extended without turning the whole system into a fork. Medusa's architecture is explicitly organized around API routes, workflows, modules, and PostgreSQL. Medusa Docs
• Good fit for a small engineering team — I'd value developer velocity and hiring familiarity more than squeezing out the last few percent of backend benchmark performance.
• MIT license — a meaningful advantage for a startup that wants maximum freedom around deployment and modification. Current comparisons also put Medusa ahead on ecosystem/developer accessibility for JS/TS teams. OSSAlt OSSAlt

For high traffic, I'd architect it roughly as:

                    CDN / Edge
                       │
                Next.js storefront
                       │
              ┌────────▼────────┐
              │   Load Balancer │
              └────────┬────────┘
                       │
              ┌────────▼────────┐
              │ Medusa API      │
              │ multiple nodes  │
              └───────┬─────────┘
                      │
          ┌───────────┼───────────┐
          ▼           ▼           ▼
      PostgreSQL     Redis      Workers
       primary      cache/jobs  async work
          │
       replicas

The important point is that traffic to your storefront shouldn't translate directly into traffic to your commerce backend. Cache aggressively at the CDN/Next.js layer, keep product/catalog reads cheap, and reserve synchronous commerce calls for things that actually need them—cart, checkout, inventory, customer state, etc.

The two alternatives I'd seriously evaluate

Vendure is probably the most interesting alternative. vendure.io is TypeScript/NestJS/GraphQL, has a strong plugin architecture, and its deployment model lets you scale the API servers and workers independently. GitHub Vendure If your business has unusually complicated pricing, channels, B2B, marketplace, or workflow requirements, I'd seriously consider it.

The catch is GPLv3 for Vendure Core, so I'd have your lawyer look at the implications before committing. GitHub

Saleor is the one I'd pick if your team is already strong in Python and you want a GraphQL-first, enterprise-oriented commerce backend. It has particularly strong multi-channel/B2B capabilities, but I'd hesitate to introduce a Python/Django backend into an otherwise TypeScript startup purely for ecommerce. OSSAlt Vendure

What I'd do with 10 people

I'd choose Medusa + Next.js, but I'd spend more time validating the architecture than comparing feature checklists.

Before committing, I'd run a production-shaped spike testing:

1. Catalog: 1–10M SKUs, realistic variants/options.
2. Traffic: peak requests/sec at 5–10× your expected launch traffic.
3. Cache behavior: especially product/category/search pages.
4. Checkout: concurrent cart → payment → order creation.
5. Inventory contention: the nasty case where thousands of users want the same product.
6. Database: connection pooling, indexes, replicas, and failure/recovery.
7. Async work: emails, fulfillment, webhooks, search indexing, etc.
8. Deployments: zero-downtime upgrades and database migrations.
9. Failure modes: Redis unavailable, DB replica lag, payment provider timeout, duplicate webhooks, etc.

One thing I'd not do is prematurely split Medusa into 15 microservices. A 10-person team gets much more leverage from a well-structured commerce backend plus horizontally scalable stateless API/worker processes than from operating a distributed-systems zoo.

Bottom line:
Medusa is my default → Vendure if your domain is unusually complex → Saleor if you're Python/GraphQL/enterprise-oriented.

If you tell me roughly expected requests/sec, SKU count, orders/day, whether it's B2C/B2B, and your frontend/backend stack, I can give you a much more concrete architecture and tell you which of the three I'd actually bet the company on.

For a 10-person startup building a high-traffic headless storefront, I’d shortlist Medusa, Saleor, and Vendure. My default choice would be Medusa—unless your requirements push you toward Saleor.

My ranking

1. medusajs.com — my default recommendation

If your team is primarily TypeScript/React/Next.js, I'd start here.

Medusa is explicitly headless: the storefront is a separate application, and the backend is structured around API routes, workflows, commerce modules, and PostgreSQL. Medusa Docs Medusa Docs

The big advantage for a 10-person company is how much you can keep in one engineering ecosystem. Your storefront, backend extensions, workers and integrations can all be TypeScript.

It's also designed to be extended rather than forcing you to fight a giant monolithic commerce application. You can add custom data models, workflows, API routes and modules. Medusa Docs

I'd choose Medusa if:

• Your team is JS/TS-heavy.
• You're building a custom storefront rather than adapting a prebuilt theme.
• You expect unusual business logic.
• You want to move quickly with a relatively small engineering team.
• You want to scale the infrastructure independently of the storefront.

For high traffic, though, don't confuse "commerce engine" with "traffic-serving layer." I'd put CDN/cache aggressively in front of the storefront and avoid making every product-page request hit Medusa.

2. saleor.io — strongest alternative

I'd seriously consider Saleor if you're building something more enterprise/global.

Saleor is GraphQL-native and has strong concepts around channels, multi-region commerce, currencies, promotions, checkout, payments and multi-warehouse commerce. Saleor Documentation Saleor Commerce

That's particularly attractive if "high traffic" also means international, multi-market commerce rather than simply lots of requests.

The downside for a small team is that you're introducing a Python/Django backend if the rest of your stack is TypeScript. That's not inherently bad, but it creates another ecosystem for your engineers to own.

I'd pick Saleor over Medusa if:

• You need serious multi-region/channel functionality.
• GraphQL is central to your architecture.
• Your team already knows Python/Django.
• You anticipate sophisticated enterprise commerce requirements.

3. vendure.io — worth a serious POC

Vendure is the other one I'd put through your benchmark.

It's TypeScript/NestJS-based and exposes a GraphQL Shop API for products, customers, carts and checkout. Its plugin architecture is particularly appealing when you expect to build a lot of custom commerce functionality. Vendure Vendure

I'd lean toward Vendure when extensibility and a strongly structured commerce backend matter more than having the lowest possible implementation complexity.

The thing I'd investigate carefully before committing is licensing and the boundary between Vendure Core and its commercial Platform offerings.

What I would actually build

For your particular situation, I'd probably prototype:

Next.js storefront → CDN/edge cache → BFF/API layer → Medusa → PostgreSQL + Redis

with:

• Next.js for the storefront
• CDN caching for product/category/content pages
• Medusa for catalog, cart, checkout, orders, inventory, etc.
• PostgreSQL as the source of truth
• Redis for appropriate ephemeral/cache workloads
• Search separated into a dedicated search engine if your catalog/search requirements warrant it
• Object storage + CDN for product media
• Async workers/queues for emails, fulfillment, indexing, webhooks, etc.
• Observability from day one

The key architectural decision is that your high-traffic read path shouldn't necessarily be your transactional commerce path.

For example, I'd want:

                    ┌───────────────┐
                    │   CDN / Edge  │
                    └───────┬───────┘
                            │
                 ┌──────────▼──────────┐
                 │   Next.js Storefront │
                 └──────────┬──────────┘
                            │
                 ┌──────────▼──────────┐
                 │      BFF / API       │
                 └──────────┬──────────┘
                            │
                 ┌──────────▼──────────┐
                 │       Medusa         │
                 └─────┬─────────┬─────┘
                       │         │
                ┌──────▼───┐ ┌──▼──────┐
                │PostgreSQL│ │  Redis  │
                └──────────┘ └─────────┘

That gives you considerably more room to scale than treating the ecommerce backend as the thing serving every storefront request.

One important caveat

I wouldn't choose based on benchmark claims alone. For a startup expecting genuinely high traffic, I'd build the same representative workload against Medusa and Saleor (and Vendure if you have the bandwidth):

• 10–100M product-page requests/day
• realistic catalog size
• concurrent cart/checkout load
• flash-sale traffic
• inventory contention
• search traffic
• cache hit/miss behavior
• database failover
• queue backlogs
• webhook bursts

Then measure p95/p99 latency and recovery behavior, not just requests/sec.

Bottom line: if you're a typical 10-person, TypeScript-heavy startup, I'd start with Medusa. If you're building sophisticated global/multi-channel commerce, I'd give Saleor the strongest look. I'd keep Vendure in the bake-off if deep backend customization is a major requirement.

I wouldn't choose based on benchmark claims alone. For a startup expecting genuinely high traffic, I'd build the same representative workload against Medusa and Saleor (and Vendure if you have the bandwidth):

• 10–100M product-page requests/day
• realistic catalog size
• concurrent cart/checkout load
• flash-sale traffic
• inventory contention
• search traffic
• cache hit/miss behavior
• database failover
• queue backlogs
• webhook bursts

Then measure p95/p99 latency and recovery behavior, not just requests/sec.

Bottom line: if you're a typical 10-person, TypeScript-heavy startup, I'd start with Medusa. If you're building sophisticated global/multi-channel commerce, I'd give Saleor the strongest look. I'd keep Vendure in the bake-off if deep backend customization is a major requirement.

For a 10-person startup building a high-traffic headless storefront, I would shortlist Medusa, Vendure, and Saleor. I would not start with Magento/WooCommerce unless you have a specific reason (existing ecosystem, legacy integrations, SEO needs, etc.). The modern headless OSS choices are designed more like commerce backends you compose with your own frontend. Vendure OpenReplay Blog

My default recommendation:

1. Medusa — best default for a 10-person TypeScript startup

medusajs.com

I would pick Medusa if your team is primarily React/Next.js/Node/TypeScript.

Why it fits a startup:

• Same ecosystem as a modern frontend stack.
• Modular architecture: you can replace pieces without forking the whole platform.
• MIT license is startup-friendly.
• Good fit for custom storefronts, marketplaces, subscriptions, and unusual business logic.
• Easier hiring: many full-stack JS engineers can contribute.

Tradeoffs:

• It is more of a commerce engine than a complete enterprise suite.
• You will build more yourself: merchandising workflows, some admin customization, complex B2B logic, etc.
• You need strong engineering discipline around inventory, checkout, promotions, and integrations.

For a 10-person team, I like that tradeoff: keep your engineers building differentiated product instead of fighting a giant monolith. Vendure pkgpulse

2. Vendure — best if you expect complex commerce rules

vendure.io

Pick Vendure if you are building something closer to:

• multi-vendor marketplace
• B2B commerce
• multiple channels/brands
• complex pricing rules
• enterprise workflows

Strengths:

• TypeScript + NestJS.
• GraphQL-first.
• Strong plugin architecture.
• Very clean for teams that like strongly structured backend systems.

Tradeoffs:

• Smaller ecosystem than older platforms.
• Licensing is something to review carefully if you modify core code or need enterprise features.

Vendure is a strong engineering choice, especially if your team already likes NestJS patterns. Vendure

3. Saleor — best if you are Python/GraphQL-native

saleor.io

Pick Saleor if:

• your backend team is Python/Django-oriented,
• you want a very polished GraphQL API,
• you have sophisticated catalog/channel requirements.

Strengths:

• Excellent GraphQL model.
• Strong multi-channel concepts.
• Good fit for larger commerce operations.

Tradeoffs:

• A worse fit if your whole company is TypeScript.
• More enterprise-oriented operating model.

Vendure

What I would avoid for your situation

Magento Open Source

Powerful, but usually too operationally heavy for a 10-person startup unless you already have Magento expertise.

WooCommerce headless

Great ecosystem, but WordPress as a commerce backend is usually not what I would choose for a high-traffic custom storefront.

Building your own commerce backend

Tempting, but carts, inventory reservations, taxes, payments, refunds, promotions, and order state machines become a multi-year maintenance burden.

My recommendation by scenario

For a 10-person startup, my bias would be:

Medusa + Next.js + PostgreSQL + Redis + a dedicated search engine (Algolia/OpenSearch/Elastic) + headless CMS.

I would only choose Vendure over Medusa if your roadmap already includes serious B2B complexity or marketplace-style workflows. Vendure buildwithmatija.com

A few details would change the recommendation:

1. Are you DTC, marketplace, or B2B?
2. Expected scale: orders/day and SKUs?
3. What stack is your team using (TypeScript, Python, something else)?
4. Do you need multi-region inventory/tax/currency from day one?

Powerful, but usually too operationally heavy for a 10-person startup unless you already have Magento expertise.

WooCommerce headless

Great ecosystem, but WordPress as a commerce backend is usually not what I would choose for a high-traffic custom storefront.

Building your own commerce backend

Tempting, but carts, inventory reservations, taxes, payments, refunds, promotions, and order state machines become a multi-year maintenance burden.

My recommendation by scenario

For a 10-person startup, my bias would be:

Medusa + Next.js + PostgreSQL + Redis + a dedicated search engine (Algolia/OpenSearch/Elastic) + headless CMS.

I would only choose Vendure over Medusa if your roadmap already includes serious B2B complexity or marketplace-style workflows.

A few details would change the recommendation:

For a 10-person startup building a high-traffic headless storefront, I’d shortlist Saleor, Medusa, and Vendure—and my default recommendation would be Saleor if you expect serious scale and a fairly sophisticated commerce model.

1. My pick: Saleor

Saleor is particularly compelling for your use case because it is API-only, GraphQL-native, headless, and designed around composable architecture. It also has native channels, currencies, inventory and pricing concepts that become important once you're operating at scale. GitHub Saleor Documentation

I'd choose it if:

• Your storefront is Next.js/React or otherwise frontend-independent.
• You expect internationalization, multiple storefronts/channels, or B2B eventually.
• You want the commerce backend to remain relatively independent from your frontend architecture.
• You have enough backend expertise to be comfortable with Python/Django.

The important architectural advantage is that your storefront isn't carrying the commerce logic. Your CDN/edge can absorb enormous amounts of product/catalog traffic while Saleor handles transactional operations behind it.

saleor.io

2. Medusa if your team is TypeScript-heavy

If your 10 people are primarily TypeScript/Node engineers, I'd seriously consider Medusa instead.

Medusa is built around a modular architecture with API routes, workflows, commerce modules and PostgreSQL, and it is explicitly designed to be customized rather than forcing you into a monolithic ecommerce model. Medusa Documentation GitHub

That's a very good fit for a startup because you can keep your entire engineering stack close to:

Next.js → Medusa → PostgreSQL/Redis → specialized services

rather than having your team learn a completely different ecosystem.

docs.medusajs.com

3. Vendure is the sleeper choice

Vendure would be my third choice, but possibly #1 if you're building complicated B2B/omnichannel functionality.

It's TypeScript/NestJS/GraphQL, has a plugin architecture, and lets you extend both the Shop and Admin APIs without modifying the core. GitHub Vendure

The catch is the GPLv3 license, which I'd have your lawyer review before making it the foundation of a proprietary commercial product. GitHub

docs.vendure.io

What I would not do

For this particular project, I wouldn't start with WooCommerce, Magento/Adobe Commerce, or PrestaShop unless you have a specific reason to inherit their ecosystems.

You're a 10-person engineering-led startup building headless + high traffic. I'd rather start with a commerce engine whose architecture assumes that the storefront is separate than spend engineering effort fighting a legacy monolith into that shape.

The architecture I'd build

The critical thing is that "high traffic" shouldn't mean scaling the ecommerce application linearly with every pageview.

I'd aim for:

                    ┌───────────────┐
                    │   CDN / Edge  │
                    └───────┬───────┘
                            │
                    Next.js storefront
                            │
             ┌──────────────┴──────────────┐
             │                             │
       Cached catalog                 Transactional
       / CMS content                  commerce API
             │                             │
             │                     ┌───────┴───────┐
             │                     │ Saleor/Medusa │
             │                     └───────┬───────┘
             │                             │
             │                    PostgreSQL + Redis
             │
       Search service
       (Algolia/Elastic/etc.)

Keep catalog browsing, search, images and content aggressively cached, while checkout, inventory reservations, payments and order mutations remain transactional.

That distinction matters much more for high-traffic performance than whether you choose Saleor versus Medusa.

My decision rule

• Python/backend sophistication + enterprise/global commerce → Saleor
• TypeScript startup + maximum developer velocity → Medusa
• TypeScript + complex B2B/omnichannel + comfortable with GPL → Vendure

If you told me nothing else about the company, I'd start a technical spike with Saleor and Medusa, implement the same 5 flows in both—catalog, search, cart, checkout, and order—and choose based on developer friction rather than benchmark numbers. For a 10-person team, that choice will probably save you more time than squeezing another 20% out of the commerce backend.

If your 10 people are primarily TypeScript/Node engineers, I'd seriously consider Medusa instead.

Medusa is built around a modular architecture with API routes, workflows, commerce modules and PostgreSQL, and it is explicitly designed to be customized rather than forcing you into a monolithic ecommerce model. Medusa Documentation GitHub

That's a very good fit for a startup because you can keep your entire engineering stack close to:

Next.js → Medusa → PostgreSQL/Redis → specialized services

rather than having your team learn a completely different ecosystem.

docs.medusajs.com

3. Vendure is the sleeper choice

Vendure would be my third choice, but possibly #1 if you're building complicated B2B/omnichannel functionality.

It's TypeScript/NestJS/GraphQL, has a plugin architecture, and lets you extend both the Shop and Admin APIs without modifying the core. GitHub Vendure

The catch is the GPLv3 license, which I'd have your lawyer review before making it the foundation of a proprietary commercial product. GitHub

docs.vendure.io

What I would not do

For this particular project, I wouldn't start with WooCommerce, Magento/Adobe Commerce, or PrestaShop unless you have a specific reason to inherit their ecosystems.

You're a 10-person engineering-led startup building headless + high traffic. I'd rather start with a commerce engine whose architecture assumes that the storefront is separate than spend engineering effort fighting a legacy monolith into that shape.

The architecture I'd build

The critical thing is that "high traffic" shouldn't mean scaling the ecommerce application linearly with every pageview.

I'd aim for:

                    ┌───────────────┐
                    │   CDN / Edge  │
                    └───────┬───────┘
                            │
                    Next.js storefront
                            │
             ┌──────────────┴──────────────┐
             │                             │
       Cached catalog                 Transactional
       / CMS content                  commerce API
             │                             │
             │                     ┌───────┴───────┐
             │                     │ Saleor/Medusa │
             │                     └───────┬───────┘
             │                             │
             │                    PostgreSQL + Redis
             │
       Search service
       (Algolia/Elastic/etc.)

Keep catalog browsing, search, images and content aggressively cached, while checkout, inventory reservations, payments and order mutations remain transactional.

That distinction matters much more for high-traffic performance than whether you choose Saleor versus Medusa.

My decision rule

• Python/backend sophistication + enterprise/global commerce → Saleor
• TypeScript startup + maximum developer velocity → Medusa
• TypeScript + complex B2B/omnichannel + comfortable with GPL → Vendure

If you told me nothing else about the company, I'd start a technical spike with Saleor and Medusa, implement the same 5 flows in both—catalog, search, cart, checkout, and order—and choose based on developer friction rather than benchmark numbers. For a 10-person team, that choice will probably save you more time than squeezing another 20% out of the commerce backend.

For a 10-person startup building a high-traffic headless storefront, I’d shortlist Medusa, Saleor, and Vendure. I would not start with WooCommerce or Magento unless you have a specific reason to inherit their ecosystems.

My recommendation: Medusa

Medusa would be my default choice if your team is primarily TypeScript/Node.js.

Medusa is headless by design, with API-driven storefronts and a modular architecture around workflows, modules, Redis, and PostgreSQL. Medusa Documentation

Why I like it for a 10-person startup:

• TypeScript/Node.js end-to-end — easier for a small team if your storefront is Next.js/React.
• Headless-first rather than adapting a traditional CMS/ecommerce monolith.
• Modular architecture, so you can replace or extend pieces without rebuilding the whole platform. Medusa Documentation
• Postgres + Redis gives you a familiar foundation for scaling.
• Large developer ecosystem and relatively low organizational overhead.
• You can keep the storefront aggressively optimized/CDN-cached while the commerce backend handles transactional operations.

For high traffic, I'd architect it roughly as:

CDN → Next.js storefront → BFF/API layer → Medusa → PostgreSQL + Redis

with search, analytics, email, etc. handled asynchronously rather than making every storefront request traverse the entire commerce stack.

The other two I'd seriously consider

Saleor is particularly compelling if your team is comfortable with Python and you want a very GraphQL-centric architecture. Its core is open source, API-first, and explicitly designed to work with arbitrary frontend/BFF stacks. Saleor Commerce Saleor Commerce

Vendure is probably the most interesting alternative if you want TypeScript but prefer a more opinionated commerce framework. It uses NestJS, GraphQL and a plugin architecture, and its server/worker model lets you scale API-serving and background processing independently. Vendure Developer Hub Vendure

One important distinction: Vendure Core is GPLv3, whereas Saleor's core and Medusa have more permissive licensing. That's worth getting legal advice on before committing, particularly if you expect to modify/distribute the core. GitHub

What I'd choose for your startup

If you're Next.js + TypeScript:
→ Medusa

If you're Python + GraphQL:
→ Saleor

If you're TypeScript + NestJS and expect complicated commerce logic/B2B:
→ Vendure

The bigger architectural point is that high traffic doesn't necessarily mean you need a heavyweight ecommerce platform. Your bottleneck will usually be database contention, checkout/inventory concurrency, search, cache invalidation, and third-party payment/shipping integrations—not serving product pages. Keep product/catalog reads heavily cached and CDN-backed, and isolate the transactional paths.

If you tell me your stack (Next.js/etc.), expected traffic/requests per second, catalog size, B2C vs B2B, and whether you need multi-region, I can narrow this down to one and sketch the production architecture I'd use.

For a 10-person startup building a high-traffic headless storefront, I would narrow the field pretty aggressively. You probably do not want a traditional monolith like Magento/WooCommerce unless you have a very specific reason. For a greenfield headless build, the strongest open-source candidates today are Medusa, Saleor, and Vendure. Vendure

My default recommendation for your team:

1. Pick Medusa if you are a TypeScript/React shop

Best fit: 10–30 person product teams building a custom DTC/B2B storefront that need speed and flexibility.

Why I’d lean here:

• TypeScript/Node stack pairs naturally with a Next.js storefront.
• Modular architecture: you can replace pieces rather than fork the whole platform.
• Good developer experience for a small team.
• MIT license is startup-friendly.
• Easier hiring: many frontend/full-stack engineers can contribute. Vendure Build With Matija

Tradeoffs:

• You are still building a lot: merchandising UX, CMS workflows, search, analytics, personalization, etc.
• Some enterprise commerce features may require custom modules.

A common architecture would be:

Next.js storefront
        |
        v
Medusa API
        |
  ----------------
  |      |       |
Postgres Redis  Workers
        |
Stripe / Adyen / Tax / Shipping APIs

For a startup, I like this because your team owns the customer experience instead of fighting a legacy admin system.

2. Pick Saleor if you have complex commerce requirements

Best fit: marketplaces, international commerce, B2B, multi-channel.

Strengths:

• GraphQL-first API.
• Strong catalog/channel concepts.
• Mature handling of things like warehouses, pricing, and complex commerce models. Designodin

Tradeoffs:

• Python/Django backend means less overlap if your team is all TypeScript.
• More opinionated architecture.
• Operationally heavier for a small team.

I would choose Saleor over Medusa if your roadmap includes things like:

• multiple regions/currencies from day one
• complicated pricing rules
• wholesale accounts
• multiple inventory locations
• marketplace-style workflows

3. Pick Vendure if your team loves NestJS

Best fit: TypeScript teams wanting a strongly structured backend.

Strengths:

• TypeScript end-to-end.
• NestJS architecture feels familiar to backend engineers.
• Good plugin model.
• Strong fit for custom commerce applications. OpenReplay Blog

Tradeoffs:

• Smaller ecosystem/community than Medusa.
• You may build more integrations yourself.

What I would avoid for your situation

Magento / Adobe Commerce

Powerful, but a 10-person startup usually spends too much time operating and customizing it.

WooCommerce headless

Great ecosystem, but the underlying model is still WordPress-centric. It is usually not what I would start with for a high-traffic, API-first storefront.

Building from scratch

Tempting, but commerce has thousands of edge cases:

• tax
• refunds
• inventory race conditions
• promotions
• carts
• payment retries
• fulfillment states

You want to own your differentiation, not reinvent checkout state machines.

My shortlist for your startup

For a typical 10-person startup targeting high traffic, I would start with Medusa + Next.js + PostgreSQL + Redis + a managed search layer (Algolia/OpenSearch/Elastic) and keep the commerce core replaceable.

The bigger scaling risks usually won't be the commerce engine itself; they will be:

• product search
• inventory consistency
• checkout/payment reliability
• caching strategy
• content delivery
• observability

Those deserve architectural attention early. OSSAlt

A few details would change my recommendation:

1. Is this DTC, B2B, or a marketplace?
2. What stack is your team strongest in (TypeScript, Python, PHP)?
3. Expected scale: 10k, 100k, or millions of SKUs/orders?

• tax
• refunds
• inventory race conditions
• promotions
• carts
• payment retries
• fulfillment states

You want to own your differentiation, not reinvent checkout state machines.

My shortlist for your startup

For a typical 10-person startup targeting high traffic, I would start with Medusa + Next.js + PostgreSQL + Redis + a managed search layer (Algolia/OpenSearch/Elastic) and keep the commerce core replaceable.

The bigger scaling risks usually won't be the commerce engine itself; they will be:

• product search
• inventory consistency
• checkout/payment reliability
• caching strategy
• content delivery
• observability

Those deserve architectural attention early.

A few details would change my recommendation:

For a 10-person startup building a high-traffic headless storefront, I’d shortlist Medusa, Saleor, and Vendure—and my default recommendation would be Medusa unless you have a strong reason to choose otherwise.

My ranking

1. medusajs.com — my default pick

I'd choose Medusa if your team is primarily TypeScript/React/Next.js.

It's designed as a commerce backend rather than a giant storefront monolith, and its current architecture gives you modules for things like products, carts, orders, payments, inventory and fulfillment while allowing substantial customization. GitHub

For a startup, I particularly like the team-to-complexity ratio: you can build a very custom storefront without also having to build the fundamental commerce machinery yourself.

For high traffic, I'd architect it roughly as:

CDN → Next.js storefront → cache/BFF → Medusa → Postgres + Redis + async workers

Don't make the commerce API serve every anonymous product-page request directly. Cache aggressively at the edge and treat search, recommendations, pricing, inventory, checkout, etc. as separate workloads.

Why I'd pick it: you're only 10 people, so developer productivity and keeping the operational surface manageable matter enormously.

2. saleor.io — strongest alternative

I'd seriously consider Saleor if you expect international, multi-channel, B2B, or unusually complex catalog/warehouse requirements.

Saleor is API-only and GraphQL-first, with native multi-channel capabilities and an extension model based around APIs, apps and webhooks rather than modifying a monolithic storefront. GitHub Saleor Commerce

Its documentation specifically covers multi-region commerce, multiple channels, warehouses, checkout, promotions and marketplace scenarios. Saleor Documentation

The downside for a small startup is that you're committing to a Python/Django backend, even if your storefront is TypeScript. That's not inherently bad, but I'd avoid introducing a second ecosystem unless Saleor's capabilities solve a real problem for you.

3. vendure.io — worth considering

Vendure is attractive if your team loves TypeScript and wants a highly extensible commerce framework. It's built around NestJS/GraphQL and has a particularly strong plugin/customization model.

I'd put it behind Medusa primarily because ecosystem/community size and licensing complexity matter more to a 10-person startup than they do to a large engineering organization. Current comparisons also put Vendure's GPLv3 licensing in a different category from Medusa's MIT license. ShipGarden Vendure

What I would not choose

I wouldn't start a new high-traffic headless build on WooCommerce unless WordPress/content is a central requirement. It's enormously mature, but you're effectively turning a WordPress-oriented platform into the commerce backend rather than starting with a commerce engine designed around headless use.

I also wouldn't choose Magento/Adobe Commerce for a 10-person startup unless you have very specific enterprise requirements that justify its operational and development overhead.

The bigger architectural point

For your use case, "can it handle high traffic?" shouldn't be the primary differentiator.

All three can be deployed in a scalable architecture. The more important question is whether your architecture prevents traffic from reaching the expensive parts of the system unnecessarily.

I'd aim for:

                    ┌── CDN / Edge Cache
                    │
Users ──> Next.js ──┼──> Search
                    │
                    ├──> Commerce API ──> Postgres
                    │                 └──> Redis
                    │
                    └──> CMS / Content

                     ↓
              async job system
                     ↓
          payments / fulfillment /
          email / analytics / etc.

For a high-traffic storefront, I'd want product/catalog pages to be cacheable at the edge, search to have its own optimized index (rather than hammering Postgres), and checkout/order operations isolated from the read-heavy storefront workload.

Bottom line

If you're a 10-person TypeScript startup: choose Medusa.

I'd choose Saleor instead if your roadmap already screams multi-region + B2B + complex catalog/warehouse + GraphQL. I'd choose Vendure if your team strongly prefers NestJS and its plugin architecture fits your domain.

If you tell me roughly your expected traffic (e.g. 100k vs 10M monthly visitors), catalog size, B2C/B2B, regions, and whether you're using Next.js, I can give you a much more concrete architecture and tell you which of the three I'd actually deploy.

For a 10-person startup building a high-traffic headless storefront, I’d shortlist Medusa, Saleor, and Vendure. My default recommendation would be Medusa, unless you have a strong reason to prefer GraphQL/Python or need Saleor’s particular commerce model.

My ranking

The current open-source headless shortlist is essentially Medusa, Saleor, and Vendure, with each making a different tradeoff around language, architecture, and extensibility. Vendure OpenReplay Blog

1. Medusa — my default choice

medusajs.com

For a 10-person startup, I'd probably start here.

Medusa is TypeScript/Node-based, modular, headless, and MIT-licensed at its core. Its architecture separates API routes, workflows, commerce modules, and the underlying datastore, which is a nice fit when you expect to customize business logic rather than fight a monolithic platform. Medusa Docs GitHub

Why I like it for your situation:

• Same language as a modern React/Next.js storefront.
• You can heavily customize commerce behavior without forking an enormous monolith.
• PostgreSQL + Redis is a familiar operational stack.
• Good fit for a small team that needs to move quickly.
• MIT licensing is startup-friendly.
• You can put the storefront behind a CDN and keep the commerce API focused on dynamic operations.
• Its modular architecture gives you a reasonable path to replacing/customizing individual pieces as you scale.

The important caveat: don't interpret "high traffic" as "the commerce backend must handle every page request." Your architecture should make most storefront traffic static/cacheable.

I'd aim for:

                         ┌── CDN / Edge ──┐
                         │                │
Browser ──> Next.js ─────┤ cached pages   │
                         │ cached assets  │
                         └───────┬────────┘
                                 │
                         dynamic requests
                                 │
                          ┌──────▼──────┐
                          │   Medusa    │
                          │ commerce API│
                          └──┬─────┬───┘
                             │     │
                         Postgres Redis
                             │
                   ┌─────────┴─────────┐
                   │ search / payments │
                   │ ERP / fulfillment │
                   └───────────────────┘

That separation matters much more to scalability than whether you choose Medusa versus Saleor.

2. Saleor — strongest alternative

saleor.io

I'd seriously consider Saleor if your team likes GraphQL and you're expecting sophisticated multi-channel/global commerce.

Saleor is API-only and GraphQL-first, with native concepts around channels, currencies, stock, products, promotions, payments, and multi-region commerce. It also has an official Next.js/React/TypeScript storefront example. Saleor Documentation GitHub

It's particularly attractive if you're building something like:

• multiple storefronts
• multiple countries/currencies
• complicated pricing
• multiple warehouses
• B2B + DTC
• marketplace-like functionality
• lots of independent frontend clients

Its architecture is deliberately API-first rather than relying on a traditional plugin-heavy monolith. Saleor Commerce

I'd choose Saleor over Medusa if the commerce model is complex enough that its existing primitives map unusually well to your business.

The downside for a small startup is that you're taking on a Python/Django backend even if the rest of your team is TypeScript.

3. Vendure — worth a serious look

vendure.io

Vendure is compelling if you're an all-TypeScript team but want a more structured NestJS/GraphQL commerce framework.

It's especially interesting for B2B, multi-channel, and heavily customized commerce. The tradeoff I'd investigate carefully is its GPLv3 licensing versus Medusa's MIT core. Current comparisons also put Vendure behind Medusa in ecosystem/community size, although it's a mature project. Vendure ShipGarden

For a startup, I wouldn't choose it merely because it benchmarks well. I'd choose it if Vendure's plugin/domain model fits your product better than Medusa's.

What I would not do

I wouldn't start with WooCommerce, Magento, or PrestaShop for this particular project unless you have a very specific reason.

They're excellent software in their respective niches, but you're describing a new, high-traffic, headless product with a 10-person engineering team. I'd rather start with a commerce engine designed around APIs than turn a traditional CMS/ecommerce system into one.

I also wouldn't build the entire commerce backend from scratch. You'd quickly find yourselves recreating:

• carts
• pricing
• promotions
• inventory
• orders
• payments
• fulfillment
• refunds
• tax
• customer accounts
• product variants
• channels
• webhooks
• admin tooling

That's a terrible place for a 10-person startup to spend its engineering budget.

The decision I'd make

If I were on your team:

1. Medusa — default choice.
2. Saleor — choose this if GraphQL + sophisticated multi-channel/global commerce are central.
3. Vendure — choose this if you're deeply TypeScript/NestJS-oriented and its plugin architecture fits you.

And I'd spend considerably more time designing the scaling architecture around the commerce engine than debating these three.

For a high-traffic storefront, I'd want CDN/edge caching, Next.js or equivalent, aggressive read caching, PostgreSQL with replicas where appropriate, Redis, asynchronous workflows/queues, external search, and idempotent payment/order operations. The commerce platform should sit behind that architecture rather than being directly exposed to every page view.

If you tell me roughly (a) expected peak requests/sec, (b) SKU count, (c) B2C vs B2B, (d) whether you're all-TypeScript, and (e) whether you're self-hosting, I can narrow this to a concrete recommendation and deployment architecture.

What I would not do

I wouldn't start with WooCommerce, Magento, or PrestaShop for this particular project unless you have a very specific reason.

They're excellent software in their respective niches, but you're describing a new, high-traffic, headless product with a 10-person engineering team. I'd rather start with a commerce engine designed around APIs than turn a traditional CMS/ecommerce system into one.

For a 10-person startup building a high-traffic headless storefront, I’d shortlist Medusa, Saleor, and Vendure. I would not start with WooCommerce/Magento unless you have a specific reason to inherit their ecosystems.

My ranking

1. Medusa — my default choice

For a 10-person startup, I'd probably pick Medusa.

It's TypeScript/Node-based and designed as a modular, headless commerce engine rather than a giant monolithic storefront. That fits a small engineering team particularly well: your frontend can be Next.js/React, while the commerce backend handles products, carts, orders, payments, promotions, fulfillment, etc. Current comparisons also put Medusa ahead when the team is primarily JavaScript/TypeScript. ShipGarden OSSAlt

The big advantages for you:

• TypeScript end-to-end, reducing context switching.
• Modular architecture, so you don't have to fork the platform for every customization.
• Headless from the beginning, rather than retrofitting an old monolith.
• MIT license, which is attractive for a startup that wants maximum freedom.
• Good fit for building your own high-performance caching/CDN strategy around the commerce API.

medusajs.com

The caveat: Medusa is an engine, not a turnkey ecommerce business. Your team will still own a meaningful amount of application architecture and integrations. That's actually a positive if your storefront itself is the product differentiator.

2. Saleor — choose this if commerce complexity is the hard part

I'd seriously consider Saleor if you're doing things like:

• multiple countries/currencies
• multiple warehouses
• B2B pricing
• many sales channels
• complex catalog structures
• sophisticated inventory
• GraphQL everywhere

Saleor is Python/Django and GraphQL-only, with native multi-channel capabilities and an API-first architecture. Its own documentation emphasizes that the API is the only way to interact with and extend the backend. GitHub Saleor Commerce

That's a very attractive architecture for a high-traffic storefront because you can put your own BFF/cache layer in front of it and keep the customer-facing application decoupled.

saleor.io

The downside for a typical startup: if your engineers are all TypeScript, you're introducing a Python/Django backend that the team has to understand and operate.

3. Vendure — the one I'd benchmark against Medusa

Vendure is also TypeScript-based, built around NestJS, and uses GraphQL. It's particularly interesting if you anticipate B2B, multi-channel, marketplace, or multi-brand requirements. Vendure Grafen

Its architecture is appealing for an engineering-heavy team: rather than modifying core behavior, you can implement strategies/plugins for things like pricing, shipping, tax, and promotions.

vendure.io

The main thing I'd investigate before committing is its GPLv3 licensing model versus Medusa's MIT license. That's not necessarily a problem, but it's worth having your lawyer review given that you're a startup.

What I'd actually build

For your situation, I'd lean toward:

Next.js storefront → CDN/edge cache → your BFF/API layer → Medusa → PostgreSQL + Redis

And I'd deliberately keep the high-traffic path away from the transactional commerce backend where possible.

For example:

                    ┌───────────────┐
                    │   CDN / Edge  │
                    └───────┬───────┘
                            │
                    ┌───────▼───────┐
                    │ Next.js / BFF  │
                    └───────┬───────┘
                            │
              ┌─────────────┴─────────────┐
              │                           │
       catalog/search               transactions
              │                           │
       ┌──────▼──────┐             ┌──────▼──────┐
       │ cache/search│             │   Medusa    │
       │ layer       │             │             │
       └─────────────┘             └──────┬──────┘
                                          │
                                  ┌───────┴───────┐
                                  │ PostgreSQL    │
                                  │ Redis / jobs  │
                                  └───────────────┘

The important point is that "high traffic" shouldn't mean trying to make the ecommerce application itself serve every product-page request. Cache aggressively at the edge, isolate reads from writes, use a dedicated search system if the catalog warrants it, and treat checkout/order operations as the comparatively small transactional workload.

My decision rule

If you told me:

"We're 10 engineers, all comfortable with TypeScript, we're building a custom React/Next.js storefront, and we expect potentially millions of visitors."

I'd choose Medusa first, prototype the hardest commerce workflows, and benchmark it under your catalog/order workload.

I'd choose Saleor instead if you said:

"We're doing international/B2B/multi-channel commerce and have Python expertise."

And I'd choose Vendure if you said:

"We're TypeScript-heavy, want NestJS/GraphQL, and expect substantial B2B or multi-store customization."

One important distinction: don't choose based on benchmarked requests/sec alone. At high traffic, CDN/cache strategy, search, database design, personalization, observability, and how you partition read-heavy versus transactional workloads will matter far more than whether Commerce Engine A can do 500 vs. 700 API requests/sec.

For a 10-person team, I'd optimize for how little custom infrastructure you have to maintain while retaining architectural control. That's why Medusa is my starting point. ShipGarden pkgpulse.com

For a 10-person startup building a high-traffic headless storefront, my default recommendation would be medusajs.com—with saleor.io as the main alternative and vendure.io worth considering if you're strongly TypeScript/NestJS-oriented.

My shortlist

Why I'd pick Medusa

The important thing for your situation isn't merely "does it support headless?"—all three do. It's how much engineering capacity your 10-person team has to spend maintaining the commerce backend instead of building your product.

Medusa's architecture is particularly well suited to this: API routes sit over workflows and modular commerce components, with PostgreSQL as the normal persistence layer and Redis available for locking/workflow infrastructure. Medusa Documentation

Your storefront is also genuinely decoupled from the backend. Medusa documents the storefront as a separately built and hosted application, including Next.js support, which makes it straightforward to put your high-traffic read path behind a CDN/cache layer. Medusa Documentation

And its modular architecture means you can replace/customize things like payments, fulfillment, pricing, inventory, and other business logic without turning the whole commerce engine into a fork. Medusa Documentation

For a startup, I particularly like TypeScript end-to-end + MIT licensing. You don't need a separate Python backend team, and you're less likely to encounter licensing questions as you build proprietary extensions.

When I'd choose Saleor instead

I'd seriously consider Saleor if your requirements look more like:

• Lots of B2B functionality
• Multiple warehouses/channels/markets
• GraphQL is a strong architectural preference
• You already have a strong Python/Django team
• Commerce domain complexity is more important than minimizing engineering overhead

Saleor is GraphQL-first and has a mature extension/app model; its official project emphasizes channels, product types, shipping/tax configuration, and independently versioned apps. Saleor Commerce

The downside for a typical 10-person JavaScript/TypeScript startup is that you're introducing a Python/Django backend into an otherwise potentially TypeScript-heavy stack.

When I'd choose Vendure

Vendure is compelling if your team is deeply invested in TypeScript and NestJS and you want a very extensible commerce framework.

I'd favor it over Medusa if you have unusually complex multi-channel, B2B, marketplace, or organizational requirements and you're comfortable with its GPLv3 licensing model. Current comparisons also put Vendure's strength in its TypeScript-native architecture and extensibility. Vendure Grafen

The smaller ecosystem is the tradeoff I'd worry about for a startup: when you're debugging something at 2 a.m., community size and available integrations matter.

One important caveat about "high traffic"

I wouldn't select the commerce engine based on its advertised request/sec number.

For a high-traffic storefront, I'd architect it roughly as:

CDN → Next.js storefront → cache/search layer → commerce API → PostgreSQL

with:

• CDN/edge caching for product/category/content pages
• Dedicated search infrastructure rather than hammering PostgreSQL for catalog search
• Aggressive caching for catalog reads
• PostgreSQL with proper indexes, connection pooling, replicas where justified
• Redis for appropriate ephemeral state/work coordination
• Async workers for email, fulfillment events, webhooks, etc.
• Checkout/order creation kept on strongly consistent paths
• Load testing against your actual catalog and checkout workflows

The backend doesn't need to serve every anonymous product-page request. That's where headless architecture can really pay off.

What I'd do in your shoes

Start with Medusa + Next.js, unless you already know that you have Saleor-specific requirements.

I'd spend the initial engineering effort on making the read-heavy catalog path aggressively cacheable, rather than trying to make the commerce API itself handle enormous anonymous traffic.

Medusa's deployment model also supports separating the Medusa application from one or more storefronts, and its managed option can handle infrastructure such as the server, database, and Redis if you decide that operating all of this isn't a good use of your team's time. Medusa Documentation

If you tell me your expected requests/sec, SKU count, catalog update frequency, regions, B2C vs B2B, and whether you're using Next.js, I can narrow this down much further and sketch the architecture I'd use for the 10-person team.

CDN → Next.js storefront → cache/search layer → commerce API → PostgreSQL

with:

For a 10-person startup building a headless storefront that needs to handle high traffic, I'd shortlist Medusa, Saleor, and Vendure. I would not start with WooCommerce/Magento unless you have a specific reason to inherit their ecosystems.

My recommendation: Medusa

Medusa would be my default choice for your team.

It is TypeScript/Node.js, headless-first, modular, and MIT-licensed at its core. Its architecture separates API routes, workflows, commerce modules, and PostgreSQL, which makes it a good foundation for a custom high-traffic storefront rather than something you're trying to turn headless after the fact. docs.medusajs.comgithub.com

Medusa documentation

Why I'd pick it for a 10-person team:

• TypeScript end-to-end — particularly attractive if your storefront is Next.js/React.
• Headless by design rather than an adaptation of a monolithic CMS.
• Modular architecture means you can replace/customize pricing, payments, fulfillment, etc.
• MIT core license, which is a nice property for a startup building proprietary functionality around it. docs.medusajs.comgithub.com
• Large and active developer community; its GitHub repo currently has ~35K stars. docs.medusajs.comgithub.com
• You can keep the storefront extremely cache-heavy and make the commerce API responsible for the genuinely dynamic operations.

The important caveat: Medusa isn't what makes a high-traffic storefront fast. Your architecture around it does.

I'd aim for:

                    CDN / Edge
                        │
                  Next.js Storefront
                        │
              ┌─────────┴─────────┐
              │                   │
         Cacheable APIs      Dynamic APIs
              │                   │
              └─────────┬─────────┘
                        │
                     Medusa
                   /    │    \
             Redis   PostgreSQL  Workers
                        │
                 Search / Payments

Keep product/category/content pages aggressively cached at the edge, and make checkout/cart/inventory/order operations the small dynamic portion of the system.

The alternatives

Saleor is the one I'd investigate most seriously alongside Medusa. Saleor is GraphQL-only, API-only, cloud-native, and explicitly designed for composable/headless commerce. It has particularly strong multi-channel capabilities and is a compelling choice if you're expecting sophisticated internationalization, multiple warehouses/channels, or enterprise B2B. github.com

Saleor open-source project

Vendure is my third choice. Vendure It's TypeScript/NestJS and has a very extensible plugin architecture. I'd move it to #1 if your requirements are heavily B2B/multi-channel and your team already loves NestJS. The GPLv3 licensing model is something I'd have your lawyer review before committing. vendure.io

Vendure

What I would not optimize for

Don't choose based primarily on "which one can handle the most requests/sec." For a high-traffic store, the commerce engine should rarely be in the hot path for anonymous page views.

I'd instead evaluate these five things with a proof-of-concept:

1. Catalog size — 100K products is a very different problem from 10M.
2. Traffic shape — millions of cached product-page views vs. huge concurrent checkouts.
3. Inventory semantics — especially flash sales and overselling prevention.
4. Search — whether you're using Algolia/Typesense/Elastic/OpenSearch rather than hammering the commerce DB.
5. Checkout extensibility — payment, promotions, tax, shipping, fraud, and order workflows.

For a 10-person company, I'd strongly favor buying/using an existing commerce engine and spending your engineering budget on the differentiated storefront, rather than building the commerce backend yourselves.

Bottom line:
Medusa if you're primarily a TypeScript/React startup and want maximum control with minimal organizational overhead. Saleor if you're expecting sophisticated multi-channel/B2B/enterprise commerce. Vendure if you're TypeScript/NestJS-native and its licensing model works for you.

If you tell me your expected peak RPS, catalog size, B2C vs B2B, countries/currencies, and whether you're on Next.js, I can narrow this down to one and sketch the production architecture I'd use.

For a 10-person startup building a high-traffic headless storefront, my shortlist would be:

1. Saleor — my pick for highest-scale / most demanding storefronts
2. Medusa — my pick for fastest development and a TypeScript-heavy team
3. Vendure — excellent if you need deep customization/B2B

My recommendation: Saleor

I'd lean Saleor if "high traffic" is a core requirement rather than just marketing language.

It's genuinely API-only/headless, GraphQL-first, cloud-oriented, and designed around composability. It also has native multichannel support and a Next.js/React/TypeScript storefront reference implementation. github.com

The important architectural advantage for you is that you can keep the storefront extremely independent:

CDN → Next.js → Saleor GraphQL → PostgreSQL/Redis/etc.

That lets you aggressively cache product/category/content reads at the edge while keeping checkout, inventory, pricing, and order mutations dynamic.

Saleor's core is BSD-3 licensed, which is also attractive for a startup that wants to own its deployment. github.com

When I'd choose Medusa instead

Choose Medusa if your team is primarily TypeScript/Node.js and you value developer velocity over having the most opinionated commerce platform.

Medusa is particularly appealing for a 10-person team because its architecture is modular and its core is MIT licensed. github.com

I'd probably choose it if you're building something that is commerce-adjacent rather than a conventional store—for example, unusual pricing, marketplace behavior, subscriptions, custom fulfillment, or lots of bespoke business logic.

The tradeoff is that you'll likely own more of the architecture yourself.

Vendure

Vendure is a very good third option, especially if you're already a NestJS/TypeScript shop. Its plugin architecture is excellent, and it can run self-hosted, in Docker/Kubernetes, or on its managed platform. github.com

The big caveat for a startup is licensing: the community edition is GPLv3, with a commercial license available. That's something I'd get legal comfortable with before committing. github.com

What I'd actually do with 10 engineers

One thing I'd not do: pick based on raw requests/sec benchmarks. For a high-traffic storefront, the commerce backend shouldn't be serving every anonymous product-page request anyway. Put the storefront behind a CDN, aggressively cache/catalog-read traffic, and reserve the commerce engine for dynamic operations.

If I were CTO of your startup: I'd prototype Saleor + Next.js + PostgreSQL + Redis + CDN first. If the team strongly prefers Node/TypeScript and wants maximum freedom to bend the commerce model, I'd switch that decision to Medusa.

The key question that could change my recommendation is what "high traffic" means for you—e.g. 1k, 10k, or 100k requests/sec, plus whether you need B2B, multi-region inventory, marketplace functionality, or just DTC.

For a 10-person startup building a high-traffic headless storefront, my default recommendation would be Medusa—with Saleor as the main alternative.

My ranking

🥇 Medusa — my pick for your team

If you're already building the storefront in Next.js/React, Medusa is particularly attractive because the backend is TypeScript/Node as well. Its architecture is modular, so you can replace or customize pieces such as inventory, payments, fulfillment, and order workflows rather than fighting a monolithic ecommerce system. contracollective.com

For a 10-person startup, that's important: you want an ecommerce engine, not another giant platform your team has to become experts in.

I'd run roughly:

CDN → Next.js storefront → Medusa API → PostgreSQL + Redis → async workers → external payment/search/ERP services

And make the storefront aggressively cacheable. Your high traffic should primarily hit the CDN and your read paths—not your commerce database.

Medusa

🥈 Saleor — if your commerce model is genuinely complex

Saleor is the one I'd investigate seriously if you're expecting things like:

• huge/complex catalogs
• multiple countries, currencies and channels
• sophisticated warehouse/inventory requirements
• GraphQL as a core architectural choice
• enterprise/B2B commerce

It's Python/Django + GraphQL rather than TypeScript, so there's a bigger organizational decision for a JS-heavy startup. But its commerce model is very capable. contracollective.com

Saleor

🥉 Vendure — worth considering for B2B

Vendure is also TypeScript/NestJS and has an excellent plugin architecture. I'd move it up the list if you're building B2B commerce with customer-specific pricing, organizations, approvals, quotes, etc. contracollective.com

The licensing model deserves legal review before committing, though.

Vendure

What I would not optimize for

Don't pick based primarily on "which handles the most requests/sec." At your scale, the architecture around the commerce engine will matter enormously more:

• CDN/cache strategy
• database indexing and read/write separation
• async jobs
• search infrastructure
• image optimization
• idempotent checkout/order APIs
• inventory contention
• observability
• rate limiting
• failure/retry behavior

A well-architected Medusa deployment can be a much better high-traffic system than a poorly architected "enterprise" platform.

Bottom line: if I were CTO of your 10-person startup, I'd start with Medusa + Next.js + PostgreSQL + Redis, and run a serious proof-of-concept against Saleor if your catalog/multi-region requirements are unusually complex. The current 2026 landscape broadly supports that split: Medusa for composability and TypeScript velocity, Saleor for more complex enterprise commerce, Vendure for specialized TypeScript/B2B use cases. contracollective.com

If you tell me your expected peak requests/sec, SKU count, regions, B2C vs B2B, and whether you're already TypeScript/Next.js, I can narrow this down much more concretely.

For a 10-person startup building a high-traffic headless storefront, I’d shortlist Saleor, Medusa, and Vendure. My default recommendation would be Saleor, with Medusa as the alternative if your team is strongly TypeScript/Node-oriented.

1. 🏆 Saleor — my choice for your situation

Saleor is specifically designed around a high-performance, API-only/headless architecture, with GraphQL as the primary interface. It supports multichannel commerce, complex catalogs, multiple currencies, inventory, and extensibility through apps/webhooks rather than requiring you to fork the core. github.com

For a small team, that's important: you get a lot of mature commerce functionality without having to build the boring-but-dangerous pieces yourselves.

The other thing I like for your use case is that Saleor's architecture lends itself naturally to:

CDN → Next.js storefront → GraphQL API → cached/read-heavy commerce paths → PostgreSQL/Redis/etc.

You can keep the storefront independently scalable from the commerce backend.

The core is BSD-licensed, which is also unusually friendly if you're building proprietary infrastructure around it. github.comgithub.com

I'd pick Saleor if: you're expecting genuinely large traffic, international/multichannel commerce, or a catalog/order model that's going to get complicated.

Saleor GitHub

2. Medusa — best if your team is TypeScript-native

Medusa is probably the one I'd evaluate immediately alongside Saleor.

It's TypeScript/Node-based, MIT licensed, and designed as a modular commerce framework. The current architecture gives you modules for things like products, orders, payments, fulfillment, and customers without forcing you into a monolithic storefront. github.com

For a 10-person engineering team, developer experience may actually outweigh raw architectural differences. If everyone already lives in TypeScript/React/Next.js, Medusa lets you stay in that ecosystem.

I'd choose it over Saleor if your product is more application-like than traditional ecommerce—e.g. unusual checkout flows, marketplace-like behavior, custom business logic, or lots of bespoke commerce workflows.

Medusa GitHub

3. Vendure — excellent, particularly for complex domain logic

Vendure is another strong TypeScript choice. It's built on NestJS and GraphQL and has a particularly good plugin architecture: you can extend the system through plugins rather than maintaining a fork. github.com

I'd seriously consider it if you're doing B2B, complex pricing, multiple channels, marketplace functionality, or unusual business rules.

The main thing I'd flag for a startup is licensing: Vendure Core is GPLv3, versus MIT for Medusa and BSD-3-Clause for Saleor's core. github.comgithub.com

Vendure GitHub

What I would not optimize for

Don't choose based primarily on benchmark claims like "X requests/sec." For high traffic, your storefront architecture matters enormously more than the ecommerce framework's theoretical throughput.

I'd architect it roughly like:

                    CDN / Edge
                        │
                 Next.js storefront
                        │
             ┌──────────┴──────────┐
             │                     │
       Cached catalog         Commerce API
             │                     │
          Redis/CDN             Saleor
                                   │
                            PostgreSQL + Redis
                                   │
                     ┌─────────────┼─────────────┐
                     │             │             │
                  Payments     Search        Fulfillment

Keep product/category/content pages aggressively cacheable. Don't make every anonymous page request hit your commerce database. Treat checkout, cart, inventory, pricing, and customer-specific data as the dynamic path.

My decision rule

If I were your CTO, I'd do a 2–3 day spike with Saleor and Medusa, implementing the same:

• 100k+ product catalog
• category/search page
• PDP
• cart
• checkout
• inventory update
• webhook/event flow
• 10× expected peak traffic load test

Then pick whichever produces the simplest production architecture, not whichever wins a synthetic benchmark.

My starting bet: Saleor 60%, Medusa 30%, Vendure 10%.

If you tell me roughly expected requests/sec or concurrent users, catalog size, PostgreSQL/Redis/cloud stack, and whether you're B2C or B2B, I can narrow this down substantially and suggest a concrete production architecture.

For a 10-person startup building a high-traffic headless storefront, I’d shortlist Medusa, Saleor, and Vendure—and my default choice would be Medusa unless you have unusually complex catalog/multi-region requirements.

My ranking

1. Medusa — my pick

Medusa is built specifically as a composable commerce backend, with commerce functionality split into modules that you can customize rather than fighting a monolithic platform. Its core modules are open source and available through npm. github.com

For a 10-person team, that's attractive because you can keep the architecture relatively simple:

Next.js storefront → CDN/cache → Medusa → Postgres + Redis → external search/payment/etc.

I'd choose it if:

• Your team is primarily TypeScript/Node
• You're building a differentiated buying experience
• You expect substantial custom business logic
• You want to move quickly without building commerce primitives yourself
• You want the option of managed infrastructure later

Its main advantage for a startup is developer velocity rather than theoretical maximum scale.

Medusa GitHub

2. Saleor — strongest if "high traffic" really means large-scale commerce

Saleor is the one I'd investigate most seriously if you're expecting very high traffic, internationalization, multiple storefronts/channels, complex catalogs, or significant operational scale.

It's API-only and GraphQL-native, with multi-channel capabilities and an architecture designed to keep extensions outside the core. Saleor explicitly positions scalability and independent scaling of extensions as architectural goals. github.com

The downside for a 10-person startup is that you're taking on a Python/Django/Celery ecosystem rather than staying entirely in TypeScript.

So:

**If your team is Node/TS → Medusa.
If your commerce architecture is unusually sophisticated → Saleor.**

Saleor GitHub

3. Vendure — excellent TypeScript alternative

Vendure is compelling if you want TypeScript but prefer a more structured, enterprise-style architecture. It's built on NestJS, exposes separate Shop/Admin GraphQL APIs, and has a plugin architecture designed to let you extend the system without modifying core code. docs.vendure.iogithub.com

I'd favor it over Medusa if you're expecting things like:

• sophisticated B2B organizations/permissions
• complex pricing
• multiple channels
• extensive plugins/customizations
• a team that already likes NestJS

One important consideration: Vendure Core is GPLv3, whereas Medusa is MIT, so have your counsel review the licensing implications for your particular distribution/deployment model. docs.vendure.iogithub.com

Vendure GitHub

What I would not pick

I wouldn't start a new high-traffic headless startup project with WooCommerce/Magento/Shopware unless you have a specific reason to. They're excellent ecosystems, but for a greenfield, engineering-led product, the newer headless platforms generally give you a cleaner architectural starting point.

The bigger issue: don't optimize the commerce backend for storefront traffic

This is the architectural distinction I'd make with your team:

10 million page views ≠ 10 million commerce API requests.

Put the storefront behind a CDN and aggressively cache product/category/content responses. Keep the commerce backend primarily responsible for dynamic operations:

• cart
• checkout
• inventory
• pricing
• customer state
• orders
• payment

That means a properly designed Medusa/Saleor/Vendure deployment can handle a very large storefront without requiring your commerce database to serve every page view.

For your specific situation, I'd prototype Medusa first, Saleor second. Spend a week implementing your hardest flows—catalog, pricing, cart, checkout, inventory, promotions—and see which model feels less constraining. The difficult-to-replace decision isn't the storefront framework; it's the commerce domain model.

If you tell me your expected traffic/GMV, SKU count, B2C vs B2B, regions, and preferred stack (TS/Python), I can narrow this down considerably and propose a production architecture for a 10-person team.

For a 10-person startup building a headless storefront that needs to handle high traffic, I'd shortlist Medusa, Saleor, and Vendure, with Medusa as my default recommendation.

1. 🥇 Medusa — my default choice

Medusa

For a 10-person engineering team, I'd lean Medusa unless you have unusually complex catalog/multi-region requirements.

Its architecture is particularly appropriate for a startup: HTTP API → workflows → domain modules → PostgreSQL, with modules that can be extended or replaced. docs.medusajs.com

That gives you a good balance of:

• TypeScript/Node.js, so your storefront and commerce backend can share the same ecosystem.
• Modular domains for products, carts, orders, inventory, payments, etc.
• Freedom to build your own Next.js/React storefront.
• Less need to fight a monolithic ecommerce application's assumptions.
• A relatively small engineering team can understand the whole system.

For high traffic, I'd not interpret "high traffic" as requiring an exotic ecommerce engine. Put the storefront behind a CDN, aggressively cache catalog/PDP responses, keep checkout/order mutations uncached, and scale the commerce API horizontally. The database and inventory/order consistency are likely to become more important bottlenecks than raw HTTP throughput.

2. 🥈 Saleor — strongest if you're building sophisticated global commerce

Saleor

I'd seriously consider Saleor if you expect:

• multiple countries/currencies/channels,
• complicated catalogs,
• multiple warehouses,
• substantial enterprise-scale traffic,
• GraphQL as a core architectural choice.

Saleor is GraphQL-native and explicitly designed for headless/composable implementations; its current architecture also emphasizes APIs, webhooks, and external extensions rather than requiring you to modify the core. saleor.io

The tradeoff for your 10-person team is that you're taking on a Python/Django ecosystem rather than staying entirely in TypeScript. That's not inherently bad, but if everyone is already a TS/Node engineer, it creates an organizational cost.

3. 🥉 Vendure — excellent if you're TypeScript + GraphQL + plugins

Vendure

Vendure is probably the one I'd put through a bake-off against Medusa.

It's TypeScript/NestJS, GraphQL-based, and has a very coherent architecture: the server handles APIs while a separate worker handles background jobs such as search indexing and email. Servers and workers can scale independently. docs.vendure.io

I'd favor it over Medusa if you expect B2B complexity—customer-specific pricing, organizations, approvals, sophisticated promotions, etc.—or if you particularly like the NestJS/plugin model.

One thing I'd investigate carefully before committing is the current Core vs. commercial Platform licensing/features, because Vendure's offering has evolved. vendure.io

What I'd build with 10 people

If you told me "we need to launch, but expect potentially millions of storefront requests during traffic spikes," I'd probably use:

Next.js storefront → CDN/edge cache → Medusa → PostgreSQL + Redis → async workers

with external services for things that don't need to live inside the commerce engine:

• Search: Algolia / OpenSearch / Elasticsearch
• CMS: Sanity / Contentful / Payload
• Payments: Stripe/Adyen/etc.
• CDN: Cloudflare/Fastly
• Observability: OpenTelemetry + your preferred backend
• Queue/event infrastructure as traffic requires it

The important architectural decision is not to make the ecommerce backend serve every storefront request dynamically. Product/category/content pages should be heavily cacheable. Checkout, cart, customer and inventory operations are where you want strong consistency.

My decision rule

Choose Medusa if you're a typical 10-person TypeScript startup and want maximum development velocity.

Choose Saleor if you're already thinking about global/multi-channel commerce and very large catalogs.

Choose Vendure if your business model is B2B-heavy or you strongly prefer NestJS/GraphQL/plugin architecture.

I would not start with Magento/Adobe Commerce or WooCommerce for this particular project unless you have a specific ecosystem requirement. They're enormously mature, but you're choosing a lot of legacy/platform machinery when your stated goal is a modern headless storefront.

If you give me your expected requests/sec, SKU count, number of countries, B2C vs B2B, and whether the team is TypeScript/Python, I can narrow this down to a concrete architecture and tell you which one I'd actually deploy.

For a 10-person startup building a high-traffic headless storefront, I would shortlist Medusa, Saleor, and Vendure. I would not start with Magento/Adobe Commerce or WooCommerce unless you have a very specific reason—they can scale, but they bring more legacy complexity than most small product teams want. blog.openreplay.com

My default recommendation:

1. Medusa — best fit for most 10-person startups

Pick this if your team is TypeScript/Node-oriented and you want to move fast. contracollective.comvendure.io

Why I’d lean here:

• TypeScript end-to-end → easier hiring and faster iteration
• Headless-first architecture
• Modular commerce primitives (catalog, cart, orders, payments, fulfillment)
• Easier to customize than traditional ecommerce platforms
• Good fit for a custom storefront with a Next.js/React stack designodin.com

Watch-outs:

• You own more of the commerce architecture
• Complex inventory, OMS, ERP, or marketplace flows may require engineering work
• You need strong observability and load testing for high traffic

A typical stack:

• Next.js storefront
• Medusa backend
• PostgreSQL
• Redis
• OpenSearch/Elasticsearch for search
• Stripe/Adyen for payments
• CDN + edge caching

For a startup, this is usually the best balance of speed + control.

2. Saleor — best if you have enterprise-style complexity

Choose this if you expect:

• Multi-region
• Multi-currency
• Large catalogs
• Complex pricing
• Multiple warehouses
• GraphQL-first APIs

Saleor is more opinionated and enterprise-oriented, with a strong GraphQL model and Python/Django stack. contracollective.com

Tradeoffs:

• Python/Django may slow a team that is entirely JS/TS
• More platform thinking required up front
• Smaller extension ecosystem than older commerce platforms

I’d choose Saleor over Medusa if your business model looks like:

• global retail
• marketplace
• complex SKU/variant management
• B2B + D2C hybrid

3. Vendure — best if you want a structured TypeScript commerce framework

Vendure is interesting for teams that like NestJS-style architecture and want strong plugin boundaries. contracollective.comvendure.io

Strengths:

• TypeScript
• GraphQL-first
• Clean plugin architecture
• Good fit for complex business logic

Tradeoffs:

• Smaller ecosystem
• More framework-like; you may build more yourself

What I would avoid for your situation

Magento / Adobe Commerce

Good for:

• huge catalogs
• enterprise merchants already invested in Magento

Bad fit for:

• a 10-person startup wanting velocity

You’ll likely spend too much time operating the platform.

WooCommerce

Great ecosystem, but it is not really designed as a modern high-scale headless commerce backend. You can make it work, but you’ll fight the architecture.

My ranking for your exact profile

The biggest question is not traffic alone—it is where your complexity lives:

• Complex frontend + custom buying experience → Medusa
• Complex catalog, regions, inventory → Saleor
• Complex business workflows/B2B → Vendure

For a 10-person team, I would probably start with Medusa unless you already know you need Saleor-level commerce complexity. contracollective.comvendure.io

I’d also spend time designing the architecture around search, caching, inventory consistency, checkout reliability, and observability—those are usually the bottlenecks at high traffic, not the storefront framework itself.

For a 10-person engineering-heavy startup building a headless storefront for high traffic, I'd shortlist Medusa, Saleor, and Vendure—and I'd probably start with Medusa unless your requirements point strongly toward Saleor.

1. Medusa — my default recommendation

For a 10-person startup, I'd favor Medusa because it gives you a headless, modular commerce backend without forcing you into a giant enterprise architecture. Its commerce modules are open source, and the framework is explicitly designed for building customized commerce applications rather than treating the storefront as an afterthought. github.com

It's particularly attractive if your team is already TypeScript/Node-heavy. You can keep your stack relatively coherent:

Next.js/React → CDN/edge → BFF → Medusa → Postgres/Redis → async workers/search/payment services

For high traffic, I would not try to make the commerce backend serve every page directly. Cache aggressively at the storefront/API layer and make commerce operations—cart, checkout, inventory, orders—the strongly consistent path.

2. Saleor — strongest alternative for truly large-scale commerce

I'd choose Saleor over Medusa if you're expecting very large catalogs, multiple markets/channels, sophisticated inventory, or unusually high global traffic.

Saleor is GraphQL-only, headless/API-only, and designed around independently scalable extensions/apps. Its documentation specifically describes separating extensions from the core to improve reliability, upgrades, and independent scaling. github.com

The tradeoff is that you're adopting a more substantial Python/Django + GraphQL ecosystem. For a 10-person team, that's perfectly reasonable if you already have Python expertise, but I'd avoid introducing Python solely because Saleor benchmarks well.

3. Vendure — excellent TypeScript alternative

Vendure is particularly compelling if you want TypeScript end-to-end but prefer a more opinionated backend architecture.

It's built on NestJS, exposes separate Shop/Admin GraphQL APIs, and has a separate worker for background work such as search indexing and email. The server and worker can be scaled independently. docs.vendure.io

That's a very sensible architecture for high traffic.

The main thing I'd investigate before committing is its GPLv3/commercial licensing model and whether that fits your company's distribution/commercialization plans. github.comgithub.comvendure.io

What I would not choose

I wouldn't start a new high-traffic headless build on WooCommerce or Magento/Adobe Commerce unless you have a specific reason to need their enormous existing plugin/merchant ecosystems. They're mature, but you're taking on substantially more legacy/platform baggage than you need for a new headless product.

My decision rule

I'd make the choice like this:

• TypeScript team + highly customized DTC/product experience → Medusa
• Python team + global/multichannel/complex commerce → Saleor
• TypeScript + NestJS + complex B2B/domain logic → Vendure
• Need maximum control and you're willing to build/operate more infrastructure → Saleor or Medusa
• 10 engineers and need to ship quickly → Medusa

One important caveat: "high traffic" doesn't necessarily mean you need the most scalable commerce engine. Your storefront should absorb most of the traffic through CDN/edge caching; the commerce backend should be designed around relatively low-volume, state-changing operations. That architecture matters more than whether platform A can theoretically handle 2× platform B's requests.

If you tell me your expected requests/sec, catalog size, traffic geography, stack (Next.js/etc.), and whether you need B2B/multi-region/multi-warehouse, I can narrow this to one and sketch the architecture I'd use for a 10-person team.

For a 10-person startup building a high-traffic headless storefront, I’d shortlist Medusa, Saleor, and Vendure. I would not start from Magento/WooCommerce unless you specifically need their mature merchant ecosystems; they are usually a worse fit for a greenfield, API-first architecture. blog.openreplay.com

My default recommendation:

1. Medusa — probably my pick for your team

Medusa official site

Pick this if: your team is TypeScript/Node-heavy and you want maximum control.

Why it fits a 10-person startup:

• TypeScript end-to-end → easier hiring and faster iteration.
• Modular architecture → replace pieces as you outgrow defaults (pricing, inventory, fulfillment, payments).
• Good fit for a custom Next.js storefront, mobile apps, marketplaces, AI shopping experiences, etc.
• Less "platform-shaped" than traditional ecommerce systems; you can build your own workflows. contracollective.com

Potential concerns:

• You own more of the commerce complexity.
• You need strong engineering discipline around:
  • inventory consistency
  • order state machines
  • promotions
  • tax
  • fulfillment edge cases

For a startup with strong engineers, that tradeoff is often worth it.

My rating for your situation: 9/10

2. Saleor — best if commerce complexity is the hard part

Saleor official site

Pick this if: you expect enterprise-grade commerce requirements early.

Strengths:

• Excellent GraphQL-first API.
• Strong catalog modeling.
• Good for:
  • many SKUs
  • multiple regions/currencies
  • complex inventory
  • B2B-ish workflows. contracollective.comvendure.io

Tradeoffs:

• Python/Django stack.
• Less natural if your team is already a modern JS/TS shop.
• You may spend more time adapting the platform than with Medusa.

My rating for your situation: 8/10

3. Vendure — strong TypeScript alternative

Vendure official site

Pick this if: you like NestJS patterns and want a structured plugin system.

Strengths:

• TypeScript-native.
• Clean plugin architecture.
• Strong GraphQL model.
• Good for teams that want a more opinionated backend framework. contracollective.comvendure.io

Tradeoffs:

• Smaller ecosystem.
• Less mindshare than Medusa.
• You may build more integrations yourself.

My rating for your situation: 8/10

What I would build for a 10-person high-traffic startup

A stack I’d seriously consider:

Frontend:
Next.js / React
+
Edge CDN (Cloudflare/Fastly)

Commerce:
Medusa

Data:
PostgreSQL
Redis
OpenSearch/Elasticsearch (catalog search)

CMS:
Sanity / Contentful / Strapi

Payments:
Stripe

Infra:
Kubernetes or managed containers
Observability:
Datadog / Grafana

The commerce backend should not be responsible for everything. Keep:

• search → search engine
• content → CMS
• personalization → separate service
• analytics → event pipeline
• recommendations → separate ML/service layer

That separation matters more than squeezing every feature out of the commerce platform.

Questions that would change my recommendation

1. What does "high traffic" mean for you?
   • 100k visits/day?
   • 10M visits/day?
   • flash-sale spikes?

2. Are you:
   • DTC retail?
   • marketplace?
   • B2B?
   • subscriptions?

3. What is your stack?
   • TypeScript/Node?
   • Python?
   • Go?
   • something else?

4. How complex is inventory?
   • single warehouse?
   • multiple warehouses?
   • dropship?
   • real-time availability?

With only the information given, I’d start by prototyping Medusa + Next.js and keep Saleor as the benchmark if your catalog/order complexity is unusually high.

For a 10-person startup building a high-traffic headless storefront, I’d shortlist Saleor, Medusa, and Vendure. I would not start with Magento/Adobe Commerce unless you have unusually complex enterprise requirements.

My ranking

1. Saleor — my pick if traffic/scale is the priority

Saleor is particularly compelling if you're deliberately building a serious, API-first storefront rather than customizing an existing monolith. It's GraphQL-only, API-only, supports multiple channels, and is designed around a cloud-native architecture. github.com

The big advantage for your situation is that you can keep the storefront extremely thin:

CDN → Next.js/etc. → Saleor GraphQL → PostgreSQL/services

That separation is valuable when traffic spikes: most catalog/content traffic can be aggressively cached at the edge, while checkout/order operations hit the commerce backend.

The downside is that you're adopting Python/Django. For a 10-person startup, I'd only choose it if you're comfortable operating a Python service or already have Python expertise.

2. Medusa — best for a TypeScript startup

If your team is predominantly TypeScript/Node, I'd seriously consider Medusa over Saleor.

Medusa's architecture separates HTTP APIs, workflows, domain modules, and the data layer, and its modules can be replaced or extended. PostgreSQL is the normal persistence layer, with Redis and external infrastructure services available where appropriate. docs.medusajs.comgithub.com

That makes it attractive when you expect the product to become more than a conventional store—custom pricing, unusual checkout logic, marketplace-like functionality, custom fulfillment, etc.

It also has a very startup-friendly property: you can progressively customize the system instead of forking a giant ecommerce application. github.com

I'd choose Medusa if: your team is 8–10 JS/TS engineers and you expect substantial custom commerce logic.

3. Vendure — excellent dark horse

Vendure is probably the one I'd evaluate if you have strong TypeScript/NestJS engineers and expect sophisticated pricing, promotions, B2B, or custom workflows.

It's headless, GraphQL-based, TypeScript/NestJS, and heavily plugin-oriented. Its architecture explicitly separates the API server from background workers, which is a nice property for commerce workloads involving indexing, email, imports, and other asynchronous work. docs.vendure.io

The main thing I'd investigate carefully is the GPLv3 licensing/commercial model for your particular product and distribution model.

What I'd actually do with a 10-person team

If you told me:

"We're building a high-traffic DTC storefront, we're mostly TypeScript, and we want to move fast."

I'd pick Medusa.

If you told me:

"We're building infrastructure for very large catalogs/channels and traffic is our primary concern; GraphQL is a first-class requirement."

I'd pick Saleor.

If you told me:

"We're TypeScript/NestJS people and the commerce domain itself is going to be highly customized."

I'd pick Vendure.

One important caveat

Don't select based on "can the backend handle 100k requests/sec?" That's usually the wrong bottleneck for a headless store.

For high traffic, I'd architect it roughly as:

CDN/edge cache
↓
Next.js / custom storefront
↓
BFF/API layer
↓
Commerce engine
↓
Postgres + Redis + async workers

Keep product/category/search pages aggressively cacheable. Keep cart, inventory reservation, checkout, payment and order mutation paths uncached and carefully transactional.

In other words, your storefront architecture will have a much larger impact on peak traffic performance than whether you choose Saleor vs. Medusa vs. Vendure.

For a 10-person team, I'd also strongly prefer a platform where you can avoid modifying core code. Saleor's API/app approach, Medusa's modules/workflows, and Vendure's plugins all give you substantially better upgradeability than starting with a traditional monolithic ecommerce system. github.com

My default choice: Medusa for a TS startup; Saleor if scale/composability outweighs language familiarity.

For a 10-person startup building a high-traffic headless storefront, I’d shortlist Medusa, Saleor, and Vendure—but my default recommendation would be Medusa if your team is TypeScript/Node-heavy.

1. 🥇 Medusa — my default choice

Medusa is particularly attractive for a 10-person team because the architecture is familiar to modern web engineers: TypeScript/Node, PostgreSQL, Redis, and modular commerce services. Its request path is essentially API → workflow → module → datastore, and the modules/workflows can be replaced or customized. docs.medusajs.com

The MIT license is also unusually startup-friendly. github.com

I'd choose it if you're building something like:

Next.js storefront → CDN/cache → BFF → Medusa → Postgres/Redis → payment/search/ERP services

The important point is that high storefront traffic doesn't necessarily mean your commerce backend needs to handle every page request. I'd put aggressively cacheable product/category content behind a CDN and keep Medusa primarily responsible for dynamic operations: carts, checkout, pricing, inventory, orders, etc.

2. 🥈 Saleor — choose this if scale/commerce complexity dominates

Saleor is the one I'd seriously consider over Medusa if you're expecting very large catalogs, international/multi-channel commerce, or unusually high transaction volume.

Saleor is API-only and GraphQL-native, with a deliberately service-oriented extension model. Its own documentation emphasizes that extensions can be deployed and scaled independently rather than becoming plugins inside the core. github.com

It's also BSD-3-Clause licensed at the core. github.com

The downside for a 10-person team is organizational: you're taking on a Python/Django/PostgreSQL backend rather than staying in the TypeScript ecosystem. That's not inherently bad, but if your engineers are all JS/TS, Medusa/Vendure will probably have lower cognitive overhead.

3. 🥉 Vendure — excellent if you want a strongly typed commerce backend

Vendure is compelling if your team loves TypeScript/NestJS and expects to build substantial custom commerce behavior. It has a clean server/worker architecture, GraphQL Shop/Admin APIs, and a mature plugin/strategy model. docs.vendure.io

One thing I'd flag for a startup: Vendure Core is currently GPLv3, with a separate commercial license available. github.com That's materially different from Medusa's MIT and Saleor's BSD license, so I'd have your counsel look at the implications before committing.

What I'd do in your shoes

If you're TypeScript-heavy:
Medusa + Next.js + CDN + PostgreSQL + Redis, with search and other expensive workloads offloaded into dedicated services.

If you're Python-capable and expect serious international/catalog complexity:
Saleor.

If you anticipate lots of bespoke B2B/pricing/order workflows and want everything strongly typed:
Vendure.

One caveat: I wouldn't select based on benchmark claims like "X handles 10× more requests." For your architecture, the real scalability questions are checkout transactions/sec, cart concurrency, inventory contention, catalog size, search workload, cacheability, and database write volume. A CDN can make a storefront serving 100k requests/sec quite different from a checkout system doing 1k orders/sec.

If you give me your approximate traffic (requests/sec), orders/sec, SKU count, and whether you're B2C/B2B, I can narrow this to one and sketch the production architecture I'd use for a 10-person team.

For a 10-person startup building a high-traffic headless storefront, I would narrow the field aggressively. You probably do not want a traditional ecommerce suite (Magento/Adobe Commerce, WooCommerce, PrestaShop) unless you have a very specific reason. For a small engineering team, the winning criteria are:

• API-first/headless from day one
• strong caching and horizontal scaling story
• easy customization without forking core
• good TypeScript support (if your storefront is React/Next.js)
• manageable ops burden

The current open-source shortlist is mainly Medusa, Saleor, and Vendure. contracollective.comvendure.io

My default recommendation: Medusa

For a 10-person startup, I would start with Medusa unless you have unusually complex enterprise requirements. It is TypeScript/Node-based, modular, and designed around composable commerce workflows. contracollective.com

Why it fits a startup:

• Your team can likely keep the whole stack in TypeScript:
  • Next.js storefront
  • Node commerce backend
  • shared types/tooling
• Easier to hire for than Python/Django commerce stacks
• You can replace pieces (inventory, payments, fulfillment, pricing) instead of fighting a monolith
• Good fit for custom UX and nonstandard buying flows contracollective.com

Potential issues:

• You will own more commerce logic than with a mature enterprise suite
• Very complex inventory/warehouse scenarios may require more engineering
• You need to build strong operational practices (observability, queues, backups, deployment)

For a startup, I would rather spend engineering time building your differentiation than maintaining a giant commerce platform.

Strong alternative: Saleor

Pick Saleor if your business looks more like:

• international commerce
• many currencies
• many warehouses
• complex catalogs
• marketplace-like inventory
• enterprise customers

Saleor is GraphQL-first and has a strong data model for channels, regions, and complex catalogs. contracollective.com

Tradeoffs:

• Python/Django stack
• more opinionated architecture
• potentially less natural if your team is all-in on TypeScript

I would choose Saleor over Medusa if your biggest problem is commerce complexity, not product iteration speed.

Worth considering: Vendure

Vendure is a good option if your team likes TypeScript and wants a very structured plugin architecture. It is built around NestJS patterns and has a strong GraphQL approach. contracollective.comvendure.io

I would look at it for:

• B2B commerce
• complex pricing rules
• multi-channel systems
• teams that value strict architecture

The ecosystem is smaller than Medusa's, which matters for a small team trying to move quickly. contracollective.comvendure.io

My ranking for your situation

Architecture I would probably build

For a high-traffic startup:

Next.js storefront
        |
        |
Commerce API (Medusa/Saleor/Vendure)
        |
        +-- PostgreSQL
        +-- Redis
        +-- Search (OpenSearch/Algolia/Meilisearch)
        +-- Queue workers
        +-- CDN
        +-- Payment provider
        +-- ERP/WMS integrations

Do not let the ecommerce backend handle everything. At scale, keep:

• search outside the commerce database
• recommendations/personalization separate
• CMS separate
• analytics/event pipelines separate

The commerce engine should be the source of truth for:

• products
• prices
• carts
• orders
• inventory state

If you tell me:

1. expected GMV/orders per day,
2. catalog size (SKUs/variants),
3. DTC vs B2B vs marketplace,
4. your stack (Next.js? TypeScript? Python?),

I’d probably narrow this to one choice.