The headless commerce backend and Admin Dashboard, shipped as one
Vendure is one coherent application: the headless commerce backend that runs your store, and the Admin Dashboard your team operates it from. Both are built to be extended at the core, so you start with a working system, not an assembly project.
Most 'headless' means handing you a kit
The DIY composable stack hands you best-of-breed primitives and a parts list. A catalogue service here, an order service there, a pricing API somewhere else. Every integration, release, and outage is yours to own, across as many vendors as you assembled.
Vendure ships the commerce domain as one application, with one data model. Orders know about customers. Customers know about prices. Prices know about taxes. The wiring is already there because it's the same codebase. The Admin Dashboard ships with it, built on the same model, not a separate product you bolt on later.
Every part of a real commerce backend, already wired
The domains a real merchant operates, modelled as first-class entities and APIs in one coherent backend, plus the Admin Dashboard your team uses to run it.
Extensibility is built into the same model the backend and dashboard share, so plugins extend both without separate wiring.
Catalogue, variants, facets, collections
Products, variants, options, assets, facets, and collections. Channels-aware out of the box. The catalogue layer your storefront and search index both read from, not three duplicated stores you have to keep in sync.
Customers, carts, orders, checkout
Anonymous and registered customers, durable carts, the full order lifecycle, and a checkout state machine. The buyer side of the database that every other service in your stack would otherwise have to invent.
Payments, shipping, taxes, fulfilment
Payment method strategies, shipping calculators, tax zones and rates, fulfilment handlers. Pluggable where they need to be, with defaults that work, so day one isn't a tax-engine integration project.
Promotions engine
Conditions, actions, stacking rules, coupon codes, customer-group eligibility. The promotions engine your merchandising team expects, not a hook that fires into your own discount service.
Admin API and Shop API
Two GraphQL surfaces over the same data model. The Admin API is role-permissioned for operators and integrations. The Shop API is scoped for buyer-side traffic. Same entities, different lenses.
Admin Dashboard, built in
A production admin UI for catalogue, orders, customers, promotions, and channels, shipped as part of Vendure. Custom fields and custom entities show up in it automatically, plugins extend it with their own views, and every screen respects role-scoped permissions. The operator interface your team works in every day, not a starter scaffold you're expected to rebuild.
Worker and job processing
Durable background jobs for inventory updates, email sends, search reindexing, and webhooks. A first-class job runner you scale separately from the API, not a cron file glued to the side.
Durable SQL storage
PostgreSQL, MySQL, or MariaDB. The database your ops team already runs, with the backup, replication, and observability story they already know.
One backend, one dashboard, one data model, one set of APIs
When pricing changes, the storefront sees it because the storefront is reading the same prices the admin set in the dashboard. When an order moves state, the warehouse integration sees it on the same event the dashboard reacts to.
Add a custom field once. It shows up in the GraphQL schema, the database, the TypeScript types, and the Admin Dashboard, without extra wiring.
One place to change something and have it propagate everywhere it matters.
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.
Daniel Biegler · CTO, Chimpify GmbHTrusted by complex B2B commerce and enterprise retail.
Two editions, two ways to run them
Vendure Core is the open-source edition: the headless commerce backend, the Admin Dashboard, and the extensibility model that ties them together. It's the complete foundation, and it's the right answer for teams who want a working backend and dashboard without a commercial layer on top.
Vendure Platform is the commercial edition built on that same foundation. It adds the enterprise plugins, a commercial licence with IP indemnification, and SLA-backed support. The edition decision is a scope decision: how much you want in the box.
How you run it is a separate decision. Self-host either edition on your own infrastructure, or hand the infrastructure to Vendure Cloud and let it handle deployments, scaling, and operations. Two decisions, not three. Which edition fits the scope of what you need, and whether you operate it or we do.
What teams ask before they commit
The questions that come up most often when a technical or commercial team is comparing Core against a composable stack or an established suite.
