Sylius, Shopware and Magento are three different kinds of product
This comparison is written against Sylius 2.2.7, Shopware 6.7.12.2 and Magento Open Source 2.4.9 — the current stable release of each as of July 2026. The three aren’t competing versions of the same product: one is a framework you assemble in code, one is a packaged platform you subscribe up a tier ladder, and one is a free suite whose enterprise features live in a separate paid product. Which model fits your team depends on Symfony capability and budget shape, not a feature-count table.
Sylius Community Edition is an MIT-licensed (opens in a new tab) Symfony framework, not a packaged commerce product. It ships example bundles and a basic storefront, but there’s no free “core edition” with a configurable admin the way Shopware and Magento each ship one. Comparing it feature-for-feature against a packaged cart misses the point — Sylius sells a coding surface, not a finished store.
Shopware Community Edition is also MIT-licensed and open on GitHub (opens in a new tab), but it’s a complete packaged platform: admin, storefront and checkout all install and run without writing PHP. Its B2B and AI features sit on that same codebase, gated behind paid subscription tiers. Magento Open Source is a free, complete packaged platform too, but its B2B workflows and Adobe’s AI/MCP tooling live only in Adobe Commerce — a separate, closed-source sibling product, not a paid tier of the same one.
Is Sylius better than Shopware? Neither is objectively better. Sylius suits a team that wants to write the commerce domain in code; Shopware suits a team that wants a packaged product it configures and subscribes up. Test three boundaries before shortlisting: Sylius needs in-house Symfony capability to reach turnkey at all; Shopware’s B2B/AI ceiling is a subscription price, not a technical one; Magento Open Source’s B2B ceiling is a product swap to Adobe Commerce, not a purchase inside the product you already run.
Which is easier to run without a large development team, Shopware or Magento? Shopware is closer to turnkey — its packaged admin and subscription tiers absorb work a small team would otherwise build itself. Magento Open Source ships free, but implementation, hosting, search infrastructure and specialist staffing make it the heavier operational lift of the two. w3techs (opens in a new tab) measures Magento at roughly 1.5% of tracked ecommerce systems, with Shopware (opens in a new tab) and Sylius (opens in a new tab) both under 0.2% — all three combined stay under roughly 1.5% of the tracked market as of July 2026. Read that as context for hiring and ecosystem depth, not as a quality signal.
graph TD
A[Pick an operating model] --> B{In-house Symfony capability?}
B -->|Yes, wants full code control| C[Sylius: MIT framework, build the domain in code]
B -->|No, wants a packaged product| D{Budget scales with B2B/AI needs?}
D -->|Yes, subscription is acceptable| E[Shopware: MIT core, B2B/AI behind paid tiers]
D -->|No, needs it free now| F[Magento Open Source: free core, B2B/AI only via Adobe Commerce]
You should now see: which operating model — build in code, subscribe up a tier ladder, or fork to a different product — matches your team, before the platform-specific detail below.
Match your team’s Symfony depth to the Sylius framework model
Sylius Community Edition is MIT-licensed with no source-available carve-out anywhere in the codebase. The commercial layer, Sylius Plus (opens in a new tab), is priced from €800/year based on the store’s gross merchandise volume (GMV) and sold either as a full bundle or as individually purchasable modules: B2B Suite, Marketplace Suite, RBAC, RMA, multi-source inventory, RFQ and others.
Sylius 2.2.x needs PHP 8.2 or newer with the gd, exif, fileinfo, intl and sodium extensions enabled, Node ^20 or ^22, and one of MySQL 8.0+, MariaDB 10.4.10+ or PostgreSQL 13.9+, all on a *nix-based OS — Windows only runs it via WSL, per Sylius’s own requirements page (opens in a new tab).
The exact composer constraints vary by release; the excerpt below reflects Sylius 2.2.7’s documented PHP, Symfony and extension floor rather than a verbatim copy of the file. Check composer.json in a fresh install for the exact current values.
{
"require": {
"php": "^8.2",
"ext-gd": "*",
"ext-exif": "*",
"ext-fileinfo": "*",
"ext-intl": "*",
"ext-sodium": "*",
"sylius/sylius": "^2.2",
"symfony/symfony": "^7.2"
}
}Do I need Symfony experience to use Sylius? Yes, for anything beyond the bundled example store. Sylius ships as Symfony components and bundles, not a configurable admin product, so custom domain modelling — a new product type, a custom checkout step — is a Symfony development task, not a settings screen.
Is Sylius headless? It’s API-oriented by design and commonly run headless, but it also ships a basic Symfony-rendered storefront out of the box. Headless is a deployment choice your team makes, not a constraint the framework imposes on you.
Sylius’s official mcp-server-plugin (opens in a new tab) exposes 14 tools for product search and checkout, but it operates in guest mode only. fetch_order, for example, returns data solely for orders with no associated customer account — it doesn’t yet support authenticated admin writes.
This research pass couldn’t reconfirm the plugin’s exact current version number: the addons.sylius.com (opens in a new tab) listing redirected during the check, and a version number seen elsewhere previously wasn’t re-verified against the new page. Confirm the installed version directly before depending on a specific tool count.
You should now see: whether your team’s Symfony and *nix hosting capability clears Sylius’s stack floor before you scope a build against it.
Find where Shopware gates B2B and AI features behind its subscription tiers
Shopware’s Community Edition core is MIT-licensed (opens in a new tab) and developed in the open on GitHub (opens in a new tab). Anyone can self-host the free core; the paid tiers layer on top of the same code rather than forking it.
Native B2B Components — rights and roles, budgets and approvals, a quote system — are absent from Community Edition and from Rise, the entry paid tier at €600/month excluding VAT. They first appear at Evolve, priced from €2,400/month excluding VAT, with Beyond above that at custom quote-based pricing. See Shopware’s pricing page (opens in a new tab) for the current tier structure.
Does Shopware Community Edition include B2B features? No. B2B Components require at minimum the Evolve subscription — two tiers above the free core, and four times Rise’s price.
Shopware pricing tiers (from shopware.com/en/pricing, prices excl. VAT)
Tier Price/mo B2B Components
Community Edition Free No
Rise EUR 600 No
Evolve EUR 2,400 Yes
Beyond Custom YesShopware’s current stable release is 6.7.12.2, released 2026-07-23, with a parallel 6.6.10.21 maintenance line published the same day for stores not yet moved to 6.7. Check Shopware’s release list (opens in a new tab) for whichever line applies to your deployment.
Shopware’s MCP server has shipped since release 6.7.11.0 as an experimental feature behind the MCP_SERVER flag, exposed at /api/_mcp, per Shopware’s developer docs (opens in a new tab). Every request enforces ACL checks against existing Shopware permissions, administrators can define per-agent tool allowlists, and it supports authenticated write operations — entity updates, order state changes, dry-run previews. That flag-gated MCP server ships in the open-source core; it isn’t part of the tier boundary above.
Shopware also sells a separate branded AI/agentic-commerce product line on top of that open MCP layer — see its Agentic Commerce product page (opens in a new tab) for current scope and tier. This comparison verifies only the flag-gated MCP server described above, not that commercial product’s own pricing.
You should now see: the exact monthly price and tier name where a Shopware B2B rollout becomes possible, before scoping a budget against it.
See why B2B and AI tooling for Magento Open Source live in Adobe Commerce instead
Magento Open Source is free to self-host under OSL 3.0, with AFL 3.0 covering some bundled libraries — see the LICENSE.txt (opens in a new tab) in the magento/magento2 repository (opens in a new tab). There’s no purchase step to run the core platform.
Is Magento Open Source really free? Yes, for the software itself. The cost that remains is implementation, hosting, search infrastructure and specialist staffing — not a licence fee.
Adobe Commerce B2B’s own installation documentation (opens in a new tab) lists only Adobe Commerce on cloud infrastructure and Adobe Commerce on-premises as supported platforms, and requires “Adobe Commerce, all supported versions.” Magento Open Source is not a supported B2B platform at all, under any purchase.
Adobe Commerce B2B — supported platforms
(experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/commerce-admin/b2b/install)
Supported:
- Adobe Commerce on cloud infrastructure
- Adobe Commerce on-premises
Stated requirement: "Adobe Commerce, all supported versions"
Not listed as a supported platform, at any tier:
- Magento Open SourceWhat’s the difference between Magento Open Source and Adobe Commerce? Adobe Commerce is a separate, closed-source, commercially licensed sibling product that adds B2B workflows and Adobe’s AI/MCP tooling on top of the same Magento foundation. It isn’t a tier or add-on inside Magento Open Source — it’s a different product you migrate to.
Magento Open Source 2.4.9, released 2026-05-15, requires PHP 8.4 or 8.5, Composer 2.10, MySQL 8.4 or MariaDB 12.3 and OpenSearch 3, per Adobe’s release notes (opens in a new tab). It also adds internal support for Symfony 7.4 LTS.
Magento Open Source 2.4.9 — system requirements
(Adobe release notes, 2-4-9)
Component Requirement
-------------------- ----------------------
PHP 8.4 or 8.5
Composer 2.10
MySQL 8.4
MariaDB 12.3
OpenSearch 3
Symfony (internal) 7.4 LTS (new in 2.4.9)Adobe published security bulletin APSB26-73 (opens in a new tab) on 2026-07-14, fixing 13 vulnerabilities — 8 rated critical — across Adobe Commerce and Magento Open Source. That set includes CVE-2026-48358, an unauthenticated remote-code-execution flaw in the webhooks component at the maximum CVSS score of 10.0. Patch it before anything else on this list.
No official Magento Open Source MCP server or first-party AI-agent tooling turned up during this research pass. That’s absence of evidence in the documentation checked, not confirmed evidence that none exists anywhere — check Adobe’s Commerce AI/agent extensibility docs (opens in a new tab) directly before relying on this.
graph TD
A[Magento foundation] --> B[Magento Open Source: free, self-hosted, OSL 3.0]
A --> C[Adobe Commerce: closed-source, commercially licensed]
B -->|No B2B code path| D[No B2B workflow at any price inside Open Source]
C --> E[B2B workflows: rights and roles, quoting, company accounts]
C --> F[Adobe AI / MCP and agent-extensibility tooling]
You should now see: exactly which product — Magento Open Source or Adobe Commerce — a given B2B or AI requirement forces you onto, and the current critical CVE to patch against before that decision.
Avoid the version-floor upgrade traps specific to each platform
A Magento 2.4.8-to-2.4.9 upgrade can fail partway through composer update with an unresolvable-requirements error. 2.4.9 raises the internal baseline to Symfony 7.4 LTS, and third-party extensions still pinned to older Symfony or Laminas versions can’t resolve against the new floor. Audit every installed extension’s composer.json constraints — or run a composer why-not check — before starting the upgrade, not after it fails.
Illustrative shape of the failure — package names vary by which
extensions are installed; this is not a captured transcript from a
real run.
Your requirements could not be resolved to an installable set of
packages.
Problem 1
- some-vendor/some-extension 1.4.2 requires symfony/framework-bundle ^7.1
-> found symfony/framework-bundle[7.2.0, ..., 7.2.x-dev] but
magento/product-community-edition 2.4.9 requires ^7.4, so
that version cannot be installed.A routine-looking Sylius minor bump from 2.1 to 2.2 can fail CI on a Symfony version-constraint error the headline changelog never mentions. Sylius documents the real change — a silent bump from ^7.1 to ^7.2 — only in the release’s UPGRADE-2.2.md file, not the top-line release notes. Read the specific upgrade file for your target minor version before touching composer.json.
UPGRADE-2.2.md (paraphrased summary — verify exact wording against
the file in the Sylius/Sylius repository for the release you are
upgrading to)
- The minimum supported Symfony version is raised from ^7.1 to ^7.2.
- Projects pinning symfony/* packages below ^7.2 in composer.json
must raise that constraint before running composer update.A Shopware deployment on 6.7.12.0 can be marked non-installable or break outright after what looks like a routine point-release upgrade. That tag shipped a breaking regression, fixed in 6.7.12.1 and further patched in 6.7.12.2 — pin to the exact patch, not the minor line. Separately, the 6.7 line’s PHPUnit 11 and Doctrine DBAL 4 bumps break older test suites and custom data-access code carried over from 6.6.x, independent of the 6.7.12.0 regression.
Shopware 6.7.12.0 / 6.7.12.1 / 6.7.12.2 changelog (paraphrased
summary — verify exact wording against the release notes at
github.com/shopware/shopware/releases)
- 6.7.12.0: shipped a regression that leaves some deployments
non-installable or broken after upgrade.
- 6.7.12.1: fixes the 6.7.12.0 regression.
- 6.7.12.2: further patch on top of 6.7.12.1.
Pin to 6.7.12.2. Do not deploy 6.7.12.0 directly.The lesson repeats across all three: read the per-release upgrade notes, not the headline changelog, and pin to the exact patch version — 6.7.12.2, not “6.7.12.x” — before an upgrade. 6.7.12.0 and 6.7.12.2 are not interchangeable, and neither are any two patch versions you haven’t individually checked.
sequenceDiagram
participant You
participant Changelog as Headline changelog
participant CI as composer / CI pipeline
participant UpgradeDoc as Per-release upgrade notes
You->>Changelog: Read before bumping the version
Changelog-->>You: No mention of the raised floor
You->>CI: Run composer update / CI pipeline
CI-->>You: Unresolvable requirements / failing build
You->>UpgradeDoc: Read UPGRADE-x.x.md or full release notes
UpgradeDoc-->>You: Floor bump was documented here all along
You should now see: the exact document to read before your next upgrade, and the specific error it would otherwise produce.
Test MCP and AI-agent support before you promise agentic checkout
Do Sylius, Shopware or Magento have official AI or MCP support? All three differ sharply. Shopware supports authenticated writes behind an experimental flag, Sylius supports guest-mode reads and checkout only, and no official Magento Open Source MCP server exists.
An AI-agent integration built against Sylius’s mcp-server-plugin (opens in a new tab) can search products and complete guest checkout, but it can’t apply a promotion, issue a refund or update stock through the same interface. The plugin is documented as guest-mode only — there’s no authenticated admin write path today.
Sylius mcp-server-plugin (github.com/Sylius/McpServerPlugin) —
confirmed facts only
- 14 tools total, scoped to product search and guest checkout
- Operates in guest mode only — no authenticated admin write path
- fetch_order: returns data only for orders with no associated
customer account (guest orders)
The full current tool list isn't reproduced here — this research
pass didn't verify all 14 names individually. Check the plugin's
repository for the exact list before scoping an integration.Shopware’s MCP server does support authenticated writes — entity updates, order state changes, dry-run previews — but it sits behind the experimental MCP_SERVER feature flag and isn’t enabled by default. It has to be deliberately turned on and access-scoped before an agent can touch it.
Shopware MCP request flow
(developer.shopware.com/docs/products/tools/mcp-server/)
1. Request arrives at /api/_mcp
2. MCP_SERVER feature flag is checked — off by default; the
request is rejected if the flag is disabled
3. Request is authenticated and checked against existing Shopware
ACL permissions for the calling user/agent
4. Request is checked against the per-agent tool allowlist an
administrator has configured
5. Allowed operations run, including authenticated writes: entity
updates, order state changes, dry-run previewsNo official Magento Open Source MCP server exists as of this research pass; any AI-agent integration on Magento Open Source today runs against its standard REST/GraphQL APIs, not first-party MCP tooling. Roughly ranked on agentic write access: Shopware (authenticated writes, behind a flag), ahead of Sylius (authenticated reads only, guest-mode writes), ahead of Magento Open Source (no first-party MCP layer found).
A feature table misses one thing: an MCP layer that only reaches guest-mode data still needs the same ACL and audit review as an authenticated one. A misconfigured agent can read or infer more from a guest session than intended, even with no write path available.
You should now see: which of the three platforms’ AI tooling, if any, supports the authenticated write your agent workflow actually needs, before building against it.
Compare all three platforms in one dated table and read the verdict
The table below lines up Sylius 2.2.7, Shopware 6.7.12.2 (2026-07-23) and Magento Open Source 2.4.9 (2026-05-15) on the same axes: licence boundary, price floor, stack floor and AI/MCP capability. Reconfirm every figure against the vendor’s current release notes and pricing page before you act on it — subscription prices and release numbers move faster than this article does.
Sylius 2.2.7 vs Shopware 6.7.12.2 (2026-07-23) vs
Magento Open Source 2.4.9 (2026-05-15)
Axis Sylius Shopware Magento Open Source
--------------- ------------------- ------------------- --------------------
Core licence MIT MIT OSL 3.0 / AFL 3.0
B2B price floor Sylius Plus, Evolve tier, No price — requires
EUR 800/yr (GMV) EUR 2,400/mo a switch to Adobe
Commerce
AI/MCP writes Guest-mode only Authenticated, No official MCP
behind MCP_SERVER server
flag
PHP floor 8.2+ 8.2 / 8.4 tested; 8.4 or 8.5
8.5 referenced,
not confirmed as
min for 6.7.12.2
Database floor MySQL 8.0+ / MySQL 8 / MySQL 8.4 /
MariaDB 10.4.10+/ MariaDB 11 MariaDB 12.3,
PostgreSQL 13.9+ OpenSearch 3
Current release 2.2.7 6.7.12.2 2.4.9
Release date (2.2.x line) 2026-07-23 2026-05-15
Market share (w3techs) Under 0.1% Under 0.2% Roughly 1.5%
of tracked of tracked of tracked
ecommerce ecommerce ecommerce
systems systems systemsSylius fits a team with in-house Symfony capability building a custom domain model that a packaged product would fight, and one that can absorb the cost of building or buying whatever commerce features Sylius doesn’t ship. Avoid it when nobody on the team writes Symfony and the store needs a turnkey admin and storefront on day one.
Shopware fits a team that wants a packaged, configurable platform and is willing to pay a subscription that scales with B2B and AI requirements as they show up. Avoid it when the roadmap needs B2B Components on a budget below Evolve’s €2,400/month floor — there’s no cheaper path to that feature set on this platform.
Magento Open Source fits a team that wants a free, complete packaged platform and either doesn’t need B2B or AI-agent features, or is prepared to move the whole store to Adobe Commerce if it does. Avoid it when B2B or Adobe’s AI/MCP tooling is a near-term requirement — no purchase inside Magento Open Source adds them, only a product change does.
graph TD
Q1{Need B2B workflows or authenticated AI writes now?}
Q1 -->|No| Q2{In-house Symfony capability?}
Q2 -->|Yes| S[Sylius: build it in code, MIT core]
Q2 -->|No| M[Magento Open Source: free packaged platform]
Q1 -->|Yes, budget allows EUR 2,400+/mo| SW[Shopware: Evolve tier or above]
Q1 -->|Yes, budget is fixed and low| A[Re-scope: no low-cost path on any of the three]
You should now see: one reference table and a best-for/avoid-when verdict per platform to take into your shortlisting decision.
State what this comparison did not test
This comparison didn’t include a completed installation of any of the three platforms, real checkout performance under load, or a B2B workflow built end to end on Shopware Evolve or Adobe Commerce. Every version and price figure above comes from vendor documentation and pricing pages, not from a running instance.
The Sylius mcp-server-plugin’s exact current version number wasn’t reconfirmed on the addons.sylius.com (opens in a new tab) listing after a redirect during this research pass. Treat the plugin version as unverified until you check it directly against the listing or the plugin’s own repository.
Shopware’s later 6.7.12.x release notes reference PHP 8.5 without stating a confirmed minimum PHP version for that specific patch. Confirm the exact PHP floor against the release notes for whichever patch you actually deploy, rather than assuming 8.2 or 8.4 still applies unchanged.
w3techs’ market-share figures are medium-confidence, third-party measurements of the wider web — not a verified count of active production stores on any of the three platforms. Use them for rough context, not as a decision input on their own.
Concrete next step: install the current stable release of your shortlisted platform, price the exact tier or module your roadmap’s B2B and AI requirements land on, and confirm every version floor and price in this comparison against the vendor’s own release notes and pricing page before committing budget.
You should now see: a specific list of facts to reconfirm and a proof-of-concept plan, rather than a verdict resting on unverified figures.
Limitations
This article compares licensing, pricing tiers, stack version floors and documented AI/MCP capability — it does not benchmark checkout performance, admin UX or hosting cost between the three platforms. It does not cover Sylius Plus, Shopware Evolve/Beyond or Adobe Commerce hands-on; those claims come from each vendor’s own pricing and documentation pages, not a licensed install.
Prices, release numbers and the CVE list above are a snapshot from July 2026 and will have moved by the time you read this. Reconfirm the Sylius mcp-server-plugin’s version, Shopware’s exact PHP floor for the deployed patch, and current pricing directly against each vendor before you act on any figure here.