What is the difference between Magento Open Source and Adobe Commerce?

Magento Open Source and Adobe Commerce run on the exact same PHP codebase, so the difference is not about the underlying engine. It comes down to license cost, the commercial features Adobe layers on top, and who handles hosting and support. Open Source is free to license and self-hosted. Adobe Commerce is a paid annual license that adds native B2B tools, managed cloud hosting options, and direct vendor support.

Magento Open Source vs Adobe Commerce at a glance

What the Adobe Commerce license actually pays for

You are not paying Adobe for a faster checkout or better performance. Both editions share the same storefront, checkout, and module architecture. The license pays for three things: the commercial feature set, hosting infrastructure if you choose Adobe Commerce Cloud, and support directly from Adobe rather than a third party. The license fee is tied to your gross merchandise volume, so it increases at renewal as your store grows. A merchant who starts near $1 million GMV and scales to $10 million over a few years should expect the license cost to step up accordingly, not stay flat. Factor that trajectory into a multi-year cost comparison rather than judging Adobe Commerce on its year-one price alone.

Adobe Commerce as a Cloud Service (ACCS) is a newer SaaS-style deployment option that shifts more infrastructure management to Adobe. It is worth asking your Magento development partner about if you are evaluating enterprise-scale replatforming rather than a standard on-prem or PaaS setup.

Which one should you choose

The decision usually maps to a business situation more than a revenue number.

• Running a single-brand store with a competent in-house or agency development team and no B2B sales requirement: Magento Open Source is almost always the right call. You avoid the license fee entirely and keep full control over hosting and architecture.
• Selling wholesale or B2B alongside B2C, with a need for company accounts, negotiated pricing, or quote workflows: Adobe Commerce’s native B2B suite will save significant custom development time compared to building the same functionality on Open Source.
• Running multiple regional storefronts or brands that need centralized content staging and segmentation: Adobe Commerce’s built-in tooling covers this out of the box, where Open Source would need custom modules or third-party extensions.
• Operating under strict data residency requirements, such as EU or DACH region compliance rules that favor self-hosting: Open Source gives you direct control over where data lives, since you are not tied to Adobe’s managed infrastructure.

We have built and migrated stores on both editions, and the pattern holds across our Magento case studies: the license fee only pays for itself when the B2B features or managed hosting replace work you would otherwise have to build or staff yourself.

The short version: both editions are the same platform underneath, and the right choice depends on whether the commercial features and vendor support are worth the license fee for your specific business, not on which one is “better” in the abstract.