OpenCartvs
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BigCommerce: Enterprise ecommerce platform for ambitious merchants
OpenCart
Self-hosted open source shopping cart written in PHP, released under the MIT licence
As of 30 August 2026, OpenCart is free to use. A genuinely open source cart you host yourself, with no platform cut on sales. Softwr lists it under E-Commerce. OpenCart is launched in 2009, available on Web.
Overview
What OpenCart does
OpenCart is a self-hosted e-commerce application written in PHP against a MySQL database, distributed under the MIT licence. You install it on your own hosting, you own the database, and there is no vendor sitting between you and your customers. It covers the standard shape of an online store, catalogue and categories, options and variants, orders, customers, discounts, tax rules and multiple currencies, and it is extended through a marketplace of third party modules and themes sold as one-off purchases rather than subscriptions. The distinguishing commercial fact is the fee structure, or the absence of one. There is no platform subscription, no transaction fee and no penalty for choosing your own payment gateway, which for a merchant doing meaningful volume is the largest single difference between self-hosting and SaaS. That does not make it free. The costs move rather than disappear, into hosting that you are responsible for sizing, into PCI scope that is now yours because card data touches your infrastructure, into paid extensions, and above all into a developer, because there is no support line to call at two in the morning when checkout stops working. It is chosen by merchants with technical help available and enough volume that percentage fees hurt, and by developers building stores for clients on a fixed budget. The real trade-off is customisation and upgrades. OpenCart modifies core behaviour through an XML patching system rather than through clean extension points, so several extensions that patch the same file will conflict, and diagnosing that is a developer task rather than a settings change. Major version transitions have historically broken extension compatibility, which turns an upgrade into a partial rebuild and a round of re-purchasing modules. Merchants who stay on an old version to avoid that end up running unpatched software, which is the worse of the two problems.
What people use it for
- A merchant with volume high enough that a percentage transaction fee costs more than a developer
- An agency building client stores where the client must own the code and the data outright
- A store with unusual catalogue or pricing logic that a hosted platform will not permit
- Selling in a market where the local payment gateway is not supported by the mainstream SaaS platforms
The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about OpenCart.
- Extensions modify core behaviour through an XML patching system, so two modules that patch the same file conflict in ways that surface as broken checkout rather than as an installation error, and resolving that requires a developer reading both patches.
- Major version upgrades have broken third party extension compatibility, so moving between them means re-purchasing or re-commissioning modules and effectively rebuilding parts of the store rather than clicking update.
- Hosting, patching, backups and PCI scope are all your responsibility, so a security update you postpone is a breach you own, and there is no vendor obligation to notify or protect you.
- Extension quality on the marketplace is uneven and modules are sold as one-off purchases with no guaranteed maintenance, so a module central to your store can simply stop being updated and leave you holding the code.
- The core project is maintained by a very small team relative to the platforms it competes with, so security fixes, compatibility with new PHP versions and feature work all arrive at a pace you cannot influence or pay to accelerate.
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of OpenCart
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
- OpenCartvsSquare
Square: Powering the economy
- OpenCartvsMagento
Magento: Open-source ecommerce platform for enterprise retail
- OpenCartvsShopkeep
Shopkeep: Cloud-based POS for small businesses
Pricing
What OpenCart costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Open Source
Free
- Core ecommerce features
- Free support
- Extensions available
- Multi-store support
Capabilities
Features
MIT licensed source
Genuinely open source with no paid edition holding features back
Self-hosted PHP and MySQL
Runs on ordinary LAMP hosting without a proprietary runtime
No transaction fees
Takes no cut of sales and does not penalise third party payment gateways
Multi-store
Runs several storefronts from one installation and one product catalogue
Extension marketplace
Third party modules and themes sold as one-off purchases rather than subscriptions
Multi-currency and multi-language
Supports several currencies and translated storefronts natively
OCMod modification system
Applies extension changes to core files through XML patches rather than editing source directly
Full data access
Direct database access for reporting, migration and bulk operations
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
Is OpenCart really free?
The software is MIT licensed with no paid edition. The costs are hosting, extensions, and a developer, and for a low volume store those can exceed a SaaS subscription.
Does it charge transaction fees?
No. There is no platform cut and no surcharge for using your own payment gateway, which is the main financial argument for self-hosting at volume.
How hard is customisation?
Theme changes are ordinary PHP templates and are approachable. Changing behaviour means the OCMod patching system, which conflicts between extensions and needs a developer.
What is the biggest hidden cost?
Upgrades. Version transitions have broken extension compatibility before, so budget for a partial rebuild rather than assuming updates are routine maintenance.
Behind it
Who makes OpenCart
- Company
- OpenCart
- Based in
- United Kingdom
Keep looking
Where to go from OpenCart
- OpenCart alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- OpenCart pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- OpenCart badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All E-Commerce softwareThe full category
- Best E-Commerce softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best E-Commerce software for
Compare OpenCart with
- Magento
- BigCommerce
- Square
- Shopkeep
- Poshmark
- 3dcart
- Shopware
- Amazon Shopping
- Temu
- AliExpress
- FastSpring
- Medusa
- Erply
- Instacart
- Printful
- SAP Commerce Cloud
- FastSpring
- Medusa
Other E-Commerce software
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Free plan10 researched notesAlibaba's cross-border retail marketplace, commonly used as a dropshipping supply source
Free plan13 researched notesMerchant-of-record commerce platform for global payments, subscriptions, and tax compliance
9 researched notesUS and Canada grocery delivery and pickup marketplace with a paid membership tier
Free plan10 researched notesMerchant-of-record commerce platform for global payments, subscriptions, and tax compliance
9 researched notes
Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for OpenCart, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
More on OpenCart
OpenCart alternatives
What people switch to, and what they give up
OpenCart pricing
Every tier, and where the cost actually lands
Compare OpenCart
Put it head to head with anything we hold
OpenCart badge
Its rating, and an embed for your own site
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