# Swell vs Vendure

> Vendure has a score of 71.4 (BB) against Swell's 55.1 (C). Both do commerce products. The largest gap is security & auth, 30 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

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- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/swell-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: 2026-10-04

Vendure has a score of 71.4 (BB) against Swell's 55.1 (C). Both do commerce products. The largest gap is security & auth, 30 points.

- Swell: grade C, 55.1/100, rank #317 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/swell.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/swell.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 Swell for nothing in particular (no category where it leads by five points or more).

Pick Vendure for reliability (+26), schema & documentation (+23), security & auth (+30), payments & pricing (+20), transparency & trust (+21).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Swell | Vendure | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 63 | 89 | Vendure +26 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 68 | 91 | Vendure +23 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 65 | 68 | Vendure +3 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 35 | 65 | Vendure +30 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 25 | 45 | Vendure +20 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 82 | 85 | Vendure +3 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 51 | 72 | Vendure +21 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -3 | |
| **Total** | | **55.1 · C** | **71.4 · BB** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Swell | Vendure |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Swell | Vendure (Elevantiq GmbH) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.swell.store` | `https://readonlydemo.vendure.io/shop-api` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Paid | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | none | 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 | no | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-09-30 | 2026-09-02 |
| Popularity | 4.5k npm/wk | 8.5k stars, 30k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | 2.5/5 (2) | 3/5 (2) |

## Verdicts

**Swell.** Live /:models schema with field types and descriptions for every store. One full-access secret key per environment, with no scoped or read-only key.

**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

### Swell

1. Call GET /:models once and cache it. It's the ground truth for custom fields
2. Check `result.errors` after every write. A failed validation still returns 200
3. Use `$set` to replace an array. A plain PUT merges arrays by element id and never shrinks them
4. Use an sk_test_ key while testing. A bare sk_ prefix is live
5. Keep `expand` and `include` small. Each level past the first three points adds rate-limit weight

### 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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