Composable Commerce for B2B: Medusa vs. Saleor vs. Shopify Hydrogen

If you're building a B2B commerce platform in 2026, you've probably narrowed your options to three headless frameworks: Medusa, Saleor, and Shopify Hydrogen. Each one is a legitimate choice. None of them is universally "best." The right answer depends on your specific B2B requirements, team composition, and growth trajectory.

We've built production commerce platforms on all three. Here's an honest comparison based on what we've learned.

The B2B commerce problem

Before comparing platforms, let's be clear about what B2B commerce requires that B2C doesn't: customer-specific pricing (different prices for different accounts), bulk ordering and minimum order quantities, quote-based workflows with approval chains, purchase orders and net payment terms (not just credit cards), complex catalog management (account-specific product visibility), and deep system integrations (ERP, PIM, OMS, WMS).

No headless platform handles all of these out of the box. Every B2B implementation requires customization. The question is which platform gives you the best foundation to build from.

Medusa: maximum flexibility

Medusa is open-source, modular, and designed to be extended. Its plugin architecture means you can customize every aspect of the commerce workflow without fighting the framework.

Best for: teams that need maximum control over B2B-specific features. If your pricing logic is complex (negotiated contracts, volume tiers, geographic variations), Medusa gives you the flexibility to implement it your way.

Strengths: fully open-source with no licensing costs, module-based architecture that's easy to extend, active community and growing plugin ecosystem, first-class Next.js storefront support, and good developer experience.

Limitations: smaller ecosystem than Shopify, no built-in admin experience as polished as Saleor's, requires more engineering effort for features that Saleor includes by default.

Saleor: mature and GraphQL-first

Saleor is a GraphQL-first commerce platform with a polished admin interface and strong multi-channel support. It's more opinionated than Medusa, which means faster initial development but less flexibility for unusual requirements.

Best for: teams that want a mature platform with a strong admin experience. If your B2B use case is relatively standard (tiered pricing, multi-warehouse, permission-based catalogs), Saleor gets you there faster than Medusa.

Strengths: mature, production-tested platform, excellent admin dashboard out of the box, GraphQL-first API that's well-documented, strong multi-channel and multi-warehouse support, and built-in permission system.

Limitations: more opinionated architecture means less flexibility for unusual B2B workflows, GraphQL can be a learning curve for teams used to REST, and customization sometimes means working around framework conventions rather than with them.

Shopify Hydrogen: the ecosystem play

Hydrogen is Shopify's React-based framework for building custom storefronts on top of Shopify's commerce infrastructure. It gives you the flexibility of a custom frontend with the reliability of Shopify's backend.

Best for: companies already in the Shopify ecosystem, or B2B companies whose requirements don't exceed Shopify's B2B capabilities (which have expanded significantly). If your team uses Shopify for B2C and wants to add B2B, Hydrogen is the natural choice.

Strengths: backed by Shopify's infrastructure (payments, inventory, fulfillment), growing B2B features (company accounts, price lists, payment terms), largest ecosystem of apps and integrations, and Shopify's reliability and scale.

Limitations: platform lock-in (you're dependent on Shopify's roadmap), B2B features are still maturing compared to purpose-built platforms, transaction fees on top of platform costs, and less flexibility for complex custom workflows.

Our recommendation framework

Choose Medusa if: you need maximum flexibility, your B2B pricing or workflow logic is complex, you want full control over your commerce stack, and your team has strong Node.js developers.

Choose Saleor if: you want a mature platform with a great admin experience, your B2B requirements are standard to moderately complex, you prefer GraphQL, and you value development speed over maximum flexibility.

Choose Shopify Hydrogen if: you're already in the Shopify ecosystem, your B2B requirements fit within Shopify's capabilities, you value ecosystem breadth (apps, integrations, payments), and your team is comfortable with Shopify's platform.

There's no wrong answer among these three, only wrong fits. The decision should be driven by your specific B2B requirements, not by marketing materials or Hacker News opinions.

Related: SaaS MVP Development Guide → · Multi-Tenant Architecture → · Our Build practice → · Commerce industry →