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7 Best Open-Source Marketplace Software Options (2026)
Open-source marketplace software is free to license, not free to run. The strongest options in 2026 are Mercur and Medusa for JavaScript teams, Bagisto for PHP shops, and Spree for Ruby. Each one needs developers, hosting, and upkeep, so a hosted route like Shopify plus Garnet often costs less over three years.
This roundup is about software you self-host to build your own marketplace, not the marketplaces where you list products to sell. If you came looking for a place to sell, this is the wrong list. Everyone still reading wants the code, the control, and the ownership that open source promises. The catch is what that ownership costs to keep running, which is where most guides go quiet and this one does not.
What "open source" actually means for a marketplace
An open source marketplace platform is software whose source code you can download, read, modify, and self-host, usually under a permissive license like MIT or BSD. You own the install. No vendor can raise your price, cut off an API, or take a slice of your sales.
Two things get sold as "open source" that are not, and it matters.
Source-available is not the same thing. CS-Cart and Sharetribe Go both let you see and edit the code, but their licenses restrict what you can do with it. Sharetribe changed Go from MIT to a source-available license in 2019 and no longer maintains it. That is the second trap: a project can be genuinely open source and still be abandoned. Downloading dead code is worse than paying for maintained software, because now the security patching is entirely your problem. Check the last commit date before you commit a business to any repo.
The projects below are the ones that are both truly open source and actively maintained as of July 2026.
The open-source marketplace platforms, compared
Here are the open-source multi-vendor marketplace platforms worth your time, side by side. Star counts come from each project's GitHub repository and are a rough proxy for community size and momentum, not quality. Verify the current license and last release before you build on any of them.
| Platform | Stack | License | GitHub stars | Multi-vendor | Real cost to run |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mercur | Node / TypeScript (on Medusa) | MIT | ~1.6k | Built in | Hosting + dev team |
| Medusa | Node / TypeScript | MIT | ~30k | Via custom modules | Hosting + dev team |
| Bagisto | PHP / Laravel | MIT | ~24.7k | Extension | Hosting + dev time |
| Spree Commerce | Ruby on Rails | BSD-3 | ~15k | Extension | Hosting + dev team |
| WooCommerce + Dokan | PHP / WordPress | GPL (Dokan Lite) | 24.7k (Woo) | Dokan plugin | WP hosting + Pro plan |
| CS-Cart Multi-Vendor | PHP | Source-available | Not on GitHub | Built in | License + hosting |
| Shopify + Garnet | Hosted app | Proprietary | n/a | Built in | Subscription only |
The last two columns are the honest ones. Every genuinely open-source row hides the same line item: someone has to run the server, and someone has to keep it patched. That labor is the whole story, and the true build-versus-buy cost breaks it down in dollars.
Mercur: the open-source B2B and B2C marketplace on Medusa
Mercur is the most complete open-source marketplace engine to appear in the last two years. It is MIT-licensed and built on top of MedusaJS, and it ships the pieces a marketplace actually needs: vendor onboarding, multi-vendor catalogs, per-seller commissions, an admin panel, a standalone vendor portal, and automated payouts. It works as an open source B2B marketplace platform and a B2C one, which is rare in this space.
The catch is architectural. Mercur is headless, so you build or adapt the storefront yourself, and payouts run through Stripe Connect only. You also inherit everything that comes with self-hosting a Node and PostgreSQL application: deployment, monitoring, scaling, and upgrades. Backed by the software house Rigby, the repo has roughly 1,600 stars and a steady release cadence, so it is a real project, not a weekend experiment. It is the right pick when you have a TypeScript team and want to own the roadmap.
Cost: Free to license. Real cost is hosting plus the engineering to build and run it.
Medusa: the headless core to build your own
Medusa is the commerce framework Mercur sits on, and plenty of teams use it directly. It is MIT-licensed, Node and TypeScript, and one of the most-starred commerce projects on GitHub. Out of the box Medusa is a single-merchant engine, so the multi-vendor layer is something you build with its modules or add through Mercur.
That is the trade. Medusa gives a strong technical team a clean, modular foundation and total flexibility, and asks for real development work in return. Choose Medusa over Mercur when you want to design the marketplace logic yourself rather than adopt someone else's conventions. Choose Mercur when you want the marketplace primitives already written.
Cost: Free to license. You are building the marketplace layer, so budget accordingly.
Bagisto: the most-starred open-source ecommerce marketplace
Bagisto is a free, MIT-licensed Laravel ecommerce framework with roughly 24.7k stars and very active development. For PHP teams it is the natural home. The core storefront and admin are mature, the documentation is solid, and the community is large enough that you rarely hit a problem nobody has solved.
Multi-vendor is a separate marketplace extension layered on the core, which turns a single store into a full open source ecommerce marketplace with seller dashboards, commissions, and product approval. Read the extension's setup and pricing before you plan around it, since the marketplace layer is not part of the base install. Bagisto fits a team that lives in Laravel and wants a proven base to extend.
Cost: Free core. Marketplace extension plus hosting and developer time.
Spree Commerce: the Ruby on Rails marketplace engine
Spree is the veteran of this list, a BSD-3-licensed Rails commerce platform with around 15k stars and a long production track record. Its 2026 releases added a TypeScript SDK and a Next.js storefront starter, so the headless story is current, not legacy.
The marketplace layer comes from the community spree_multi_vendor extension, which adds vendor management, order splitting, and a commission engine on top of the open-source core. Heavier marketplace and B2B features live in Spree's paid Enterprise Edition, so map your requirements against the free extension before assuming everything is included. Spree is the obvious pick for a Ruby shop and a reasonable one for any team that wants a battle-tested engine.
Cost: Free core and community extension. Enterprise modules are commercial.
WooCommerce plus Dokan: the WordPress route
If your world is WordPress, the open-source path is WooCommerce with the Dokan multivendor plugin. Dokan Lite is free and GPL-licensed, gives you unlimited vendors and a front-end vendor dashboard, and gets a basic marketplace live faster than any other option here. That low barrier is the reason so many first marketplaces start on WordPress.
Read the fine print on Pro. The features most marketplaces need quickly, like Stripe Connect split payouts and advanced commissions, sit behind Dokan Pro, which starts at $149 per year and caps the entry tier at 10 vendors. Grow past that and you jump to the $299 plan. It is still cheaper than a custom build, but "free" it is not once you count the Pro subscription, WordPress hosting, and the plugin maintenance WordPress is famous for. If you are weighing this route against a hosted store, our WooCommerce vs Shopify multi-vendor comparison runs Dokan and the Shopify apps side by side.
Cost: Dokan Lite free. Pro from $149/year, plus WordPress hosting and upkeep.
CS-Cart Multi-Vendor: powerful, but not actually open source
CS-Cart earns a place because it appears on nearly every "open source marketplace" list, and it should not. CS-Cart Multi-Vendor is a mature, feature-dense platform, but it is source-available under a commercial license, not open source. You buy a license, around $1,250 one-time for the entry edition, and you get the code, but you cannot freely redistribute or fork it the way MIT lets you.
If licensing purity does not matter to you and you want a self-hosted marketplace that works out of the box, CS-Cart is a legitimate choice with less assembly than the truly open-source options. Just do not choose it believing it is free or open source, because it is neither.
Cost: From about $1,250 for a one-time license, plus hosting and updates.
Shopify plus Garnet: the hosted alternative when you don't want to run servers
None of the options above remove the two costs that sink most self-hosted marketplaces: the build and the upkeep. If those are the parts you want gone, the honest answer is a hosted app instead of open source.
Garnet Marketplace, a Shopify multi-vendor marketplace app, adds the seller layer on top of a marketplace on Shopify: vendor accounts, catalog syncing, order splitting, per-vendor commissions, and automated payouts through Stripe, Mollie, PayPal, or Airwallex. There is no server to run and nothing to patch, because Shopify hosts the store and Garnet maintains the app. The differentiator is vendor sync: sellers who already run a Shopify, WooCommerce, or PrestaShop store connect their catalog and it flows in, while sellers without one upload through a portal or CSV.
Real stores show the range. France's The Bradery imported 1,000-plus vendors and 25,000 products in five months, and MadeIt in Australia runs 800-plus artisans with a team of two. The honest trade-off runs the other way: you do not get the source code, and you accept living inside Shopify. If full code ownership is non-negotiable, pick Mercur or Bagisto and staff the engineering. If shipping in days without a dev team matters more, this is the route.
Pricing: Garnet starts at $19/month on the Shopify App Store, plus your Shopify plan.
How much does open-source marketplace software really cost?
Here is the comparison the "free" label hides. This is a rough three-year model for a small marketplace, not a quote, and your numbers will move with scale and where you host.
| Cost line | Open-source self-hosted | Shopify + Garnet (hosted) |
|---|---|---|
| Software license | $0 (MIT / BSD) | App subscription from $19/mo |
| Hosting and infrastructure | $50 to $300+/mo | Included in Shopify plan |
| Build and launch | Weeks of developer time | Days, no code |
| Maintenance, security, updates | Ongoing developer time | Handled by the vendor |
| Payments | You integrate Stripe Connect | Stripe, Mollie, PayPal, Airwallex ready |
The license line is the only place open source is cheaper, and it is the smallest line. The expensive lines are build and maintenance, and they are labor, not license fees. A full breakdown of what a marketplace actually costs to build puts real ranges on that developer time. The short version: open source pays off when you already employ engineers who would run the infrastructure anyway, or when you reach a scale where a flat hosting bill beats a subscription. Below that line, hosted is usually cheaper for the first few years, which is the opposite of what "free software" suggests.
How we evaluated these open-source marketplace options
This roundup is written by the team behind Garnet, so weigh our own entry accordingly. We listed it as what it is, a hosted app, not an open-source project, and we put the genuinely open-source options first because for the reader who searched this term, they are the point.
We judged each open-source multi-vendor marketplace platform on five things: whether the license is genuinely open source or merely source-available, whether the project is actively maintained (last release and commit cadence), whether multi-vendor is built in or bolted on, the payment and payout options, and the honest total cost to run it over three years including hosting and developer time. Star counts and license details come from each project's own repository and site as of July 2026. Open-source projects move fast, so re-check the license and last release before you build.
For the wider picture, our best marketplace platforms roundup compares hosted and SaaS options alongside these, the multi-vendor platforms compared hub goes deeper on individual matchups like Mercur and CS-Cart, and if you are still narrowing the field, how to choose marketplace software turns these criteria into a scoring framework.
FAQ
Is open-source marketplace software really free?
The license is free; running it is not. Mercur, Medusa, Bagisto, and Spree cost nothing to download, but you pay for hosting, a developer to build and launch, and ongoing security patching. Over three years that labor usually outweighs a hosted subscription. Open source buys control, not zero cost.
What is the best open-source marketplace platform in 2026?
For a JavaScript team, Mercur (built on MedusaJS) is the most complete open-source multi-vendor platform, with vendor onboarding, commissions, and payouts included. PHP teams pick Bagisto, Ruby teams pick Spree, and WordPress shops use WooCommerce plus Dokan. All four need developers to run.
Is CS-Cart open source?
No. CS-Cart is source-available, not open source. You buy a license (around $1,250 one-time for Multi-Vendor) and get the source code, but the license restricts redistribution. Sharetribe Go is in the same category since 2019. Genuinely open-source options under MIT or BSD include Mercur, Medusa, Bagisto, and Spree.
Can I build a multi-vendor marketplace on open source without a developer?
Not realistically. Every open-source marketplace platform assumes you can deploy a server, connect a database, configure payments, and patch security over time. WooCommerce plus Dokan is the closest to no-code, but even that needs WordPress hosting and maintenance. If you have no developer, a hosted app is the honest choice.
Open source or a hosted Shopify app: which is cheaper?
For most operators, the hosted app is cheaper for the first few years because it removes build cost, hosting, and maintenance labor. Open source wins on cost only at large scale or when you already employ engineers who would run the infrastructure anyway. Model both over three years before deciding.