Ecwid by Lightspeed vs Vendure

Ecwid by Lightspeed

The REST API has 40 access scopes, a published limit of 600 requests a minute per token with Retry-After on a 429, field selection through responseFields, and Markdown docs with an llms.txt index. Tokens never expire, there is no test mode or idempotency key, API access needs a paid plan, and carts are built only in the browser.

Vendure

Full cart, coupon, shipping and payment flow in the GraphQL Shop API, with ErrorResult types an agent can branch on. No vendor-hosted API. Vendure Cloud is only partly available.

Ecwid by Lightspeed

1. Send the token as Authorization: Bearer to https://app.ecwid.com/api/v3/{storeId}. Tokens in the query string stopped working in March 2025
2. Use the secret token server-side only. The public token reads enabled products and places orders that are not marked paid
3. Add responseFields, for example total,items(id,name,price), to keep responses small, and page with offset and limit (maximum 100)
4. Stay under 600 requests a minute per token and wait the Retry-After seconds on a 429. Repeated calls with a bad token get the token and IP blocked for longer
5. Work in a separate test store. There is no test mode, and POST /orders writes a real order with no idempotency key
6. After changing an app's scopes, uninstall and reinstall it, then replace the stored tokens. The old ones stop working

Vendure

1. Keep the session token from the first Shop API response and send it on every call. It holds the active order
2. Check each mutation result's __typename and errorCode. Expected failures return 200 with an ErrorResult
3. Don't retry addItemToOrder blindly. Read the active order first, since a repeat adds the quantity again
4. For server-side work, enable api-key in authOptions.tokenMethod and give the key one role in one channel
5. Run 3.7.3 or later, and purge old job records, which may still hold session tokens