The open-source commerce framework, free forever

One coherent commerce backend in a public repository, built on TypeScript, NestJS and GraphQL. Core is released under GPLv3, and everything in it stays free: catalogue, orders, customers, payments, the dashboard, the APIs and the plugin model. The paid plans add capabilities on top. They take nothing out.

What free forever means in practice

GPLv3 cannot be revoked

A licence already granted cannot be withdrawn. The Core you run today stays free to use, fork and self-host whatever we do next.

The paid plans are additions

Nothing has been moved out of Core and behind a plan. The paid capabilities are new work built on top of it, not the good parts of a trial edition.

Your plugins stay yours

A plugin exception sits on top of GPLv3, so your own plugins and custom code are yours to license as you choose.

Built in public, on a cadence

Patch releases monthly, minors quarterly, with the issues, pull requests and roadmap public. You can watch a feature arrive and argue about it before it does.

What you get in Core, and keep

The whole framework, not a starter tier. A team can run a real commerce business on Core alone and never pay us anything.

The commerce fundamentals

Products, variants, stock, orders, customers, payments, shipping, promotions and tax, already built and wired together.

The admin dashboard

The full back-office application for catalogue, orders, customers and settings, extensible with your own routes, panels and actions.

A headless GraphQL API

Admin and Shop APIs, both introspectable, extensible and type-safe. No metered calls, no rate card, no gateway in front of them.

Multi-channel, multi-region, multi-currency

Channels, currencies, languages, tax zones and shipping regions are core concepts, not paid add-ons. Run several storefronts, brands or markets off one backend through channels.

Documentation, releases and community

Comprehensive docs, monthly patches, quarterly minors, and community support on Discord and GitHub. Paid plans add direct support from our team; they don't switch the free channels off.

The extension model

What you change, and how

Five primitives cover most of what a real commerce business needs to model and customise. Each is plain TypeScript, typed end to end, and lives next to the core rather than inside a fork you have to rebase.

Plugins as NestJS modules

A Vendure plugin is a TypeScript class with a decorator on a regular NestJS module. Services, resolvers, entities, event handlers, and scheduled tasks, all in one unit your engineers already know how to write.

Custom fields

First-class on every core entity. They propagate automatically into the GraphQL schema and the admin dashboard, with auto-rendered forms for each field type.

Events, lifecycle, and jobs

Subscribe to typed commerce events, hook into the NestJS lifecycle, and schedule background work on Vendure's job queue, processed on a worker you scale independently.

Customisations live next to the core, not inside it

Your customisations are your code, in your repo. The Vendure core is upgraded as a versioned dependency, the way your team upgrades anything else.

Day-to-day tooling

Predictable patterns, real type safety, and tools that behave like a modern backend stack.

Type safety, end to end

From entity to service to GraphQL to the admin UI. Autocomplete and refactors work as they do in the rest of your services.

A CLI that scaffolds the boring parts

vendure dev for local work, plus scaffolding for plugins and entities, codegen, and migration helpers.

Testing tools that look like your stack

The @vendure/testing package boots a real test server against a throwaway database with seeded data.

Self-host on your terms

Vendure runs on the building blocks your platform team already operates. No proprietary runtime, no exotic dependencies, no sidecar services to keep alive.

A scalable ecommerce platform

Stateless at the application layer, scaling behind any load balancer, with job processing on separate worker processes you scale independently.

Teams building complex commerce with Vendure

What engineering leads say about Core

What convinced me about Vendure is its fundamentally well-architected codebase. It's clear, intuitive, and easy to extend, making it adaptable to virtually any use case.

Where Core stops

Core is free because we don't sell it. The paid plans are the business, and they exist for the point where a business customer asks for a checkout specific to their needs.

Have you outgrown Vendure Core?

Core is all you need when

• Your customers place standard orders and pay by card
• One login per customer is enough
• Published prices apply to everyone

A paid plan starts to pay for itself when

• A customer wants one account for their whole business
• Buyers ask for a quote before they order
• Orders need approval

Pricing Plans

Starter

• $229/mo
• Company accounts, Quote requests

Growth

• $689/mo
• Organization hierarchy, Managed shopping lists

Scale

• $2,899/mo
• Contract pricing, Order approvals

FAQ

Will Vendure Core always be free?

Yes. Core is published under GPLv3.

How do we move to Vendure?

Start with the migration guides. Each one maps your current platform to Vendure step by step.

Can I get paid support while running Core?

Yes, and without moving to a plan. Vendure Professional Services offers support retainers to teams running Vendure Core in production.