Commerce Layer

Commerce Layer is a cloud commerce platform built around a transactional REST API. It separates commerce services from the customer-facing interface, allowing teams to use custom websites, mobile applications, content systems and other digital channels.

The platform covers multi-market pricing, localized payments, inventory, checkout, promotions, orders, fulfillment and subscriptions. It also provides hosted commerce applications, SDKs, React components, a command-line interface and open-source implementation examples.

Commerce Layer targets international brands and development teams that need control over the frontend and commerce logic. Its architecture requires more technical implementation than a conventional hosted storefront builder.

Transactional commerce API: The Core API exposes more than 400 endpoints for products, SKUs, prices, carts, orders, payments, customers, inventory, shipments, returns and subscriptions.

International selling: Markets can define regional merchants, inventory models, price lists, currencies, tax settings, shipping methods and payment methods.

Checkout and payments: The platform supports hosted checkout components and payment gateways including Adyen, Braintree, Checkout.com, Klarna, PayPal and Stripe. External gateways are also supported.

Order and inventory management: Dashboard applications support orders, shipments, returns, stock transfers, inventory, customers and subscriptions. Enterprise plans can add the Distributed OMS.

Promotions: Commerce Layer supports promotion resources, coupons, fixed discounts, percentage discounts, free shipping, free gifts, buy-X-pay-Y offers and flexible rules. The advanced Rules Engine is documented as an enterprise feature.

Developer tools: The vendor provides JavaScript authentication, a JavaScript SDK, a CLI, React components, drop-in web components, OpenAPI resources, Postman collections and hosted micro frontends.

AI-agent commerce: Commerce Layer documents agentic commerce use cases and provides an MCP interface intended to let AI systems interact with commerce resources through existing schemas, permissions and authentication controls.

Integrations: The platform can work with Contentful, DatoCMS, Sanity, WordPress and other CMS products. Documentation also lists Zapier, Postman and external services for pricing, tax, payment and order validation.

Commerce Layer offers a free Developer plan rather than a time-limited trial. The plan includes one organization, two users, two markets, 1,000 SKUs, ten links, unlimited test orders and 100 live orders per month.

The Enterprise plan uses custom pricing. It adds unlimited organizations, users, markets, SKUs and links, custom order volumes, Metrics API and Provisioning API access, dedicated support, custom roles, identity-provider options and enterprise service-level agreements.

Distributed OMS, the Promotion Engine and the Metrics dashboard are listed as available add-ons. Payment gateway and other third-party service fees aren’t included in Commerce Layer pricing.

Pros

• Strong API coverage for international and multi-market commerce.
• Supports custom frontends, mobile channels, POS workflows and AI-agent interactions.
• Free Developer plan supports prototypes and early production use.
• Includes open-source SDKs, components, hosted applications and CLI tools.
• Supports external services for pricing, payments, taxes and validation.

Cons

• Custom storefront development requires engineering resources.
• Enterprise pricing and several advanced capabilities require sales engagement.
• Public independent review coverage is limited.
• The product is cloud-only and doesn’t offer an on-premise deployment.
• Third-party payment and service fees are billed separately.

commercetools is a comparable enterprise composable commerce platform with APIs and modular services. Elastic Path Commerce Cloud is another API-first option for custom commerce implementations.

Saleor and Medusa are developer-oriented alternatives for teams that prefer open-source or self-hosted commerce foundations. Shopify Plus is a broader hosted commerce alternative for organizations prioritizing a managed storefront and merchant tooling over maximum backend composability.

Is Commerce Layer a website builder?
Not primarily. It provides commerce infrastructure, APIs and hosted components. Teams usually build or connect the customer-facing frontend separately.

Does Commerce Layer offer a free trial?
It doesn’t offer a time-limited trial. The Developer plan is free on an ongoing basis, with stated usage limits.

Does Commerce Layer have an API?
Yes. Its Core API is a REST API with more than 400 documented endpoints. The company also offers Metrics and Provisioning APIs on Enterprise plans.

Which payment gateways does it support?
Documentation lists Adyen, Braintree, Checkout.com, Klarna, PayPal and Stripe. External gateways can also be connected.

Can Commerce Layer integrate with a CMS?
Yes. Official documentation references Contentful, DatoCMS, Sanity and WordPress, along with other CMS platforms.

Does Commerce Layer support subscriptions?
Yes. Subscription resources can generate recurring orders according to market-specific subscription models.

Does Commerce Layer provide order management?
Yes. Order, shipment, return, customer, inventory and stock-transfer applications are available. The Distributed OMS is listed as an add-on.