# Shopware vs Vendure

> Shopware and Vendure score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 71.4 (BB) and 70.9 (BB). Vendure leads on reliability and schema & documentation. Both do commerce products. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/shopware-vs-vendure
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/shopware-vs-vendure.md (~2,350 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/shopware-vs-vendure.min.md (~630 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/shopware-vs-vendure.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-08

Shopware and Vendure score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 71.4 (BB) and 70.9 (BB). Vendure leads on reliability and schema & documentation. Both do commerce products.

- Shopware: grade BB, 71.4/100, rank #107 of 629. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/shopware.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/shopware.json
- Vendure: grade BB, 70.9/100, rank #117 of 629. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/vendure.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/vendure.json

## Which one, for what

### Shopware (BB)

Good for: A merchant already on Shopware, or a team that wants an MIT PHP backend with a built-in MCP server for back-office work.

Ahead on:
- Agent ergonomics, 78 against 68
- Security & auth, 73 against 65
- Payments & pricing, 50 against 45
- Transparency & trust, 76 against 67

Watch for: The MCP server is marked experimental until 6.8, and 6.7.14.0 changed what tools/list returns on the Store API endpoint

### Vendure (BB)

Good for: TypeScript teams that want a typed GraphQL commerce server and will host it.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 89 against 83
- Schema & documentation, 91 against 85

Also in its favour:
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install

Watch for: No vendor-hosted API. Vendure Cloud is only partly available


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Shopware | Vendure | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 83 | 89 | Vendure +6 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 85 | 91 | Vendure +6 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 78 | 68 | Shopware +10 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 73 | 65 | Shopware +8 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 50 | 45 | Shopware +5 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 87 | 85 | Shopware +2 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 76 | 67 | Shopware +9 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -5 | -3 | |
| **Total** | | **71.4 · BB** | **70.9 · BB** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Shopware | Vendure |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | shopware AG | 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 for the Community Edition core. Paid plans add proprietary extensions under shopware AG's general terms | GPL-3.0-or-later |
| Tools exposed | 14 | none |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-02 | 2026-09-02 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-06-10 | no date given |
| Privacy policy last updated | couldn't be read | no date given |
| Customer content may train models | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 3.4k stars, 31k npm/wk | 8.5k stars, 30k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3/5 (2) |

## Verdicts

**Shopware.** MIT-licensed core with OpenAPI specs for both APIs and a built-in MCP server that advertises three discovery tools, previews writes by default and limits each integration to an allowlist. The MCP server is experimental until 6.8, and 20 security advisories were published between May and September 2026, four of them critical.

**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

### Shopware

1. Ask the merchant for an integration without --admin, tied to an ACL role and an MCP allowlist. Send sw-access-key and sw-secret-access-key headers to /api/_mcp
2. Call shopware-tool-search first, then shopware-toolset-enable, and keep the Mcp-Session-Id header. A fresh session lists only three tools
3. Pass dryRun=false to commit a write. shopware-media-upload has no dry run and uploads at once
4. For shopping, call the Store API over HTTP with the sales channel's sw-access-key and keep the sw-context-token. The Store API MCP endpoint has no cart tools in core
5. Send `includes` in search criteria to cut response size, and read the 429 body for the wait time

### 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

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Shopware or Vendure?

Shopware and Vendure score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 71.4 (BB) and 70.9 (BB). Vendure leads on reliability and schema & documentation.

### Do Shopware and Vendure need an API key?

Both take an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

### Can an agent call Shopware and Vendure without installing anything?

No hosted endpoint is listed for Shopware. Vendure has a hosted endpoint at https://readonlydemo.vendure.io/shop-api.

### Are Shopware and Vendure open source?

Yes. Shopware is open source (MIT for the Community Edition core. Paid plans add proprietary extensions under shopware AG's general terms). Vendure is open source (GPL-3.0-or-later).


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/shopware-vs-vendure.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/shopware-vs-vendure.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "shopware", "b": "vendure"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare shopware vendure`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/shopware.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/vendure.json

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