# Medusa API + MCP vs Vendure

> Vendure has a score of 71.4 (BB) against Medusa API + MCP's 63.6 (B). Both do commerce products. The largest gap is reliability, 34 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

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- Updated: 2026-10-04

Vendure has a score of 71.4 (BB) against Medusa API + MCP's 63.6 (B). Both do commerce products. The largest gap is reliability, 34 points.

- Medusa API + MCP: grade B, 63.6/100, rank #200 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/medusa.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/medusa.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 Medusa API + MCP for payments & pricing (+5), maintenance & community (+8).

Pick Vendure for reliability (+34), schema & documentation (+10), security & auth (+25).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Medusa API + MCP | Vendure | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 55 | 89 | Vendure +34 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 81 | 91 | Vendure +10 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 72 | 68 | Medusa API + MCP +4 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 40 | 65 | Vendure +25 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 50 | 45 | Medusa API + MCP +5 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 93 | 85 | Medusa API + MCP +8 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 73 | 72 | Medusa API + MCP +1 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -3 | |
| **Total** | | **63.6 · B** | **71.4 · BB** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Medusa API + MCP | Vendure |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Medusa | Vendure (Elevantiq GmbH) |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://readonlydemo.vendure.io/shop-api` |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT | GPL-3.0-or-later |
| Tools exposed | none | 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 | `com.medusajs/medusa-mcp` | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-09-28 | 2026-09-02 |
| Popularity | 37k stars, 203k npm/wk | 8.5k stars, 30k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | 2.5/5 (2) | 3/5 (2) |

## Verdicts

**Medusa API + MCP.** MIT core you can self-host, with Medusa Cloud running the same APIs and no GMV fee. The official MCP server is docs-only and limited to Cloud accounts.

**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

### Medusa API + MCP

1. Send x-publishable-api-key on every /store call. It decides which sales channels and products the agent sees
2. Ask for only the fields you need with `fields`. Store routes reject relations nested more than three deep since 2.20.0
3. Read the store's regions before creating a cart, since prices and shipping options depend on region
4. Place the order with POST /store/carts/{id}/complete after shipping and payment sessions are set
5. Read the release notes before upgrading a minor version. Breaking changes land there

### 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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