Medusa Cloud vs self-hosting Medusa: cost and trade-offs
- Type
- Applies to
- Medusa v2.x
- Updated
Short answer
Medusa is open source and free to self-host; a small production setup on a VPS costs about $29 to $59 per month plus engineering time for backups, monitoring, scaling and upgrades. Medusa Cloud is the managed option: Develop from $29, Launch from $99 and Scale from $299 per month, all with a 0% GMV fee. Both run the same codebase.
Medusa Cloud and self-hosting run the same open-source code
Medusa is an open-source commerce platform, so you can deploy it on any infrastructure for free. Medusa Cloud is Medusa's managed hosting platform for the same applications. It deploys your project from your GitHub repository, and the code stays yours, as described in the Cloud vs self-hosting guide.
The choice is therefore not about features of the commerce engine. It is about who runs the infrastructure and how much of your team's time that takes. Medusa is MIT licensed, except RBAC and SSO, which are Enterprise Edition features.
Medusa Cloud pricing by plan
Medusa Cloud pricing has four plans. Each includes everything in the plan before it, and every plan has a 0% GMV fee.
Plans include set amounts of compute hours, data transfer, database storage and build minutes. Usage beyond those amounts is billed at listed rates, such as $0.16 per extra compute hour on Launch and Scale.
What self-hosting Medusa actually costs
Self-hosting Medusa has no license or GMV fee, so the cash cost is infrastructure. A production deployment, per Medusa's deployment guide, needs PostgreSQL, Redis, and the application deployed in server mode and in worker mode. On DigitalOcean, that is about $29 per month on one server or about $59 per month with managed databases, as of October 2026.
The larger cost is engineering time. Medusa's comparison guide lists the work a self-hosting team owns:
- Configuring servers, databases, file storage, email and infrastructure modules.
- Building deployment pipelines, rollbacks and staging environments.
- Setting up autoscaling, load balancing and failover.
- Backups and tested restore procedures.
- Monitoring, logging and incident response.
- Applying Medusa upgrades and security patches.
If that work takes even a few engineer-hours a month, it usually costs more than the price gap between a VPS and a Medusa Cloud plan.
When to choose Medusa Cloud
Medusa Cloud fits when your team wants to spend its time on commerce features rather than infrastructure. It also fits when you want preview environments per pull request, managed Redis and caching, automatic backups, and Medusa's agent tooling (Cloud CLI, MCP server, Development Agent) without setting them up.
For a live store, Launch is the realistic entry point, because Develop has no custom storefront domains or automatic backups. Enterprise adds SLAs, compliance and data sovereignty options for regulated businesses.
When to self-host Medusa
Self-hosting fits when you already run infrastructure well and have DevOps capacity. It also fits when a policy requires infrastructure Medusa Cloud does not cover below the Enterprise plan (which offers BYOC), or for side projects where downtime is acceptable.
Some teams start self-hosted and move to Medusa Cloud as traffic grows, or the reverse. Because both run the same application from your repository, switching is a deployment change, not a rewrite.
Common questions
Is Medusa Cloud a different version of Medusa?
No. Medusa Cloud deploys your own Medusa application from your GitHub repository. The code is the same open-source Medusa you would self-host, and you keep full ownership of the code and data.
Does Medusa Cloud charge a percentage of sales?
No. Every Medusa Cloud plan has a 0% GMV platform fee and unlimited orders, products, sales channels, regions and Medusa Admin users. Usage beyond included compute, storage and data transfer is billed at the rates on the pricing page.
Can I move from Medusa Cloud to self-hosting later?
Yes. Your code lives in your own repository and Medusa Cloud lets you export data from your database, so you can deploy the same Medusa application on your own infrastructure.
Which Medusa Cloud plan do I need for a live store?
The Develop plan has no custom storefront domains or automatic backups, so Launch at $99 per month is the usual starting point for a live store. Scale at $299 per month adds a background worker and longer backup retention.