Shopify vs Saleor
Dominant SaaS commerce platform — Online Store + Hydrogen headless
vs. Open-source, GraphQL-first commerce for composable brands
Pricing tiers
Shopify
Starter
$5/mo. Sell via social/chat links. No checkout site. Basic.
$5/mo
Basic
$29/mo ($19 annual). Full store. 2.9% + 30¢ online. 2 staff.
$29/mo
Shopify
$79/mo ($49 annual). 2.7% online. 5 staff.
$79/mo
Advanced
$299/mo ($229 annual). 2.5% online. Custom reports. 15 staff.
$299/mo
Plus
$2,300/mo (starting). Enterprise features, checkout customization, unlimited staff.
$2300/mo
Enterprise
Custom. For $1M+ GMV merchants. Dedicated support, Checkout Extensibility.
Custom
Saleor
OSS (self-host)
$0. BSD-3-Clause. Self-host Saleor Core + Dashboard.
$0 base (usage-based)
Cloud — Development
$0. Dev tier for sandbox projects. Shared infra. Community.
$0 base (usage-based)
Cloud — Staging
$179/mo. Staging tier with dedicated env.
$179/mo
Cloud — Production
$1,999/mo. Production tier with SLA + support.
$1999/mo
Enterprise
Custom. Multi-region, SAML, dedicated clusters, PCI.
Custom
Free-tier quotas head-to-head
Comparing starter on Shopify vs oss on Saleor.
| Metric | Shopify | Saleor |
|---|---|---|
| No overlapping quota metrics for these tiers. | ||
Features
Shopify · 22 features
- Admin APIs — REST + GraphQL for management.
- App Store — 8,000+ apps.
- B2B (Plus) — Company accounts + catalogs.
- Checkout — Shopify-managed checkout (PCI-compliant).
- Checkout Extensibility — UI extensions in checkout (Plus).
- Collections — Manual + smart grouping.
- Customers — CRM-lite + B2B (Plus).
- Discounts — Automatic + code-based.
- Hydrogen — React/Remix headless framework.
- Inventory — Multi-location stock.
- Markets — Multi-region selling (currency, language).
- Online Store — Default Liquid-based storefront.
- Orders + Fulfillment — Multi-location fulfillment.
- Oxygen — Edge hosting for Hydrogen (Plus).
- Products + Variants — Full PIM.
- Shipping + Rates — Carrier integrations.
- Shopify Functions — Rust/WASM backend extensions.
- Shopify Payments — First-party payment processor.
- Shop Pay — Accelerated checkout with saved payment.
- Storefront API — GraphQL for custom storefronts.
- Theme Store — First-party + paid themes.
- Webhooks — Event subscriptions.
Saleor · 17 features
- Channels — Per-channel pricing/shipping/currency.
- Checkout — Multi-step checkout mutation set.
- Customers + B2B — Customer records + B2B permissions.
- Dashboard — Next.js admin dashboard.
- Gift Cards — First-class gift-card flow.
- Orders — Full lifecycle.
- Permissions + Roles — Granular RBAC.
- Pricing + Promotions — Rule-based promos, catalog pricing.
- Products + Attributes — Full PIM features.
- Saleor Apps — External extensions.
- Shipping Zones + Methods — Multi-zone shipping rules.
- Tax Providers — Pluggable tax (Avalara, etc.).
- Translations — Multi-language product content.
- Variants + Configurable — Deep variant system.
- Vouchers — Discount codes + gift cards.
- Warehouses + Stock — Multi-warehouse inventory.
- Webhooks — Async subscription to events.
Developer interfaces
| Kind | Shopify | Saleor |
|---|---|---|
| CLI | shopify CLI | saleor CLI |
| SDK | @shopify/admin-api-client, @shopify/hydrogen | @saleor/app-sdk, @saleor/sdk |
| REST | Admin REST API | — |
| GRAPHQL | Admin GraphQL API, Storefront API | Saleor GraphQL API |
| MCP | Shopify MCP (unofficial) | — |
| OTHER | Liquid Templates, Shopify Admin, Shopify Webhooks | Saleor App Store, Saleor Dashboard, Saleor Webhooks |
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