# Elastic Path API + MCP vs Vendure

> Vendure has a score of 71.4 (BB) against Elastic Path API + MCP's 50.4 (D). Both do commerce products. The largest gap is agent ergonomics, 35 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

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- Updated: 2026-10-05

Vendure has a score of 71.4 (BB) against Elastic Path API + MCP's 50.4 (D). Both do commerce products. The largest gap is agent ergonomics, 35 points.

- Elastic Path API + MCP: grade D, 50.4/100, rank #358 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/elastic-path.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/elastic-path.json
- Vendure: grade BB, 71.4/100, rank #84 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/vendure.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/vendure.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Elastic Path API + MCP for nothing in particular (no category where it leads by five points or more).

Pick Vendure for reliability (+21), schema & documentation (+25), agent ergonomics (+35), security & auth (+26), payments & pricing (+33), maintenance & community (+8), transparency & trust (+8).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Elastic Path API + MCP | Vendure | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 68 | 89 | Vendure +21 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 66 | 91 | Vendure +25 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 33 | 68 | Vendure +35 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 39 | 65 | Vendure +26 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 12 | 45 | Vendure +33 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 77 | 85 | Vendure +8 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 64 | 72 | Vendure +8 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -3 | |
| **Total** | | **50.4 · D** | **71.4 · BB** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Elastic Path API + MCP | Vendure |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Elastic Path | Vendure (Elevantiq GmbH) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://useast.api.elasticpath.com/v2` | `https://readonlydemo.vendure.io/shop-api` |
| Transports | HTTP, stdio | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Paid | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | none | GPL-3.0-or-later |
| Tools exposed | 95 | none |
| Context cost (tools/list) | n/a | n/a |
| p95 latency | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Availability (30d) | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-09-29 | 2026-09-02 |
| Popularity | 754 npm/wk | 8.5k stars, 30k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | 2/5 (2) | 3/5 (2) |

## Verdicts

**Elastic Path API + MCP.** Cart, promotion code, checkout and order endpoints cover the whole test flow. MCP server exposes 95 tools with full CRUD, no read-only mode and no public source or licence.

**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.

## Before you call either

### Elastic Path API + MCP

1. Use a client_credentials token server-side only. It has full CRUD on the store
2. Pick the base URL for the store's region (useast or euwest), or every call returns 401
3. Loading the MCP server costs 95 tool definitions, so enable it only for agents that need the back office
4. On a 429, wait a few seconds and retry. No Retry-After header is sent
5. Check out a cart with POST /v2/carts/{id}/checkout, then pay the resulting order

### 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

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