Magento Open Source vs Adobe Commerce vs Adobe Commerce as a Cloud Service

"Magento" now means at least three different things. There is Magento Open Source, the free, self-hosted platform whose code lives on GitHub. There is Adobe Commerce, the licensed edition built on the same core with extra features and Adobe support, which you can run on your own servers or on Adobe's managed cloud infrastructure. And there is Adobe Commerce as a Cloud Service, a newer software-as-a-service offering with a headless storefront and a different way of building customisations.

For a founder choosing a platform, or a developer asked to "quote for a Magento site", the differences matter far more than the shared name. They decide who hosts and patches the store, which features are available out of the box, how you extend it and how upgrades work.

This guide compares the options using Adobe's own documentation as of October 2026. It does not cover prices, which Adobe handles through its sales team and pricing pages, and it does not claim hands-on benchmarks.

The short version

	Magento Open Source	Adobe Commerce (on-premises or on Cloud infrastructure)	Adobe Commerce as a Cloud Service
Licence	Open Software License 3.0 (OSL-3.0), free	Commercial licence from Adobe	Commercial subscription from Adobe
Hosting	You choose and run it	Your own servers, or Adobe Commerce on cloud infrastructure (AWS or Azure regions)	Run by Adobe as a cloud-native service
Upgrades	You apply them with Composer	You apply them (Composer, or the Cloud tooling)	Applied by Adobe, with a 30-day evaluation window in sandboxes
B2B features	Not included	Available through the B2B extension	Part of the Adobe Commerce feature set (check with Adobe)
Storefront	Luma theme or any headless front end	Luma theme or headless	Commerce Storefront on Edge Delivery Services; Luma not supported
Customisation	PHP modules, plugins, observers	PHP modules, plus App Builder and other out-of-process tools	Out-of-process: App Builder, events, webhooks, API Mesh, Admin UI SDK
Vendor support	Community	Adobe support under the lifecycle policy	Adobe

Magento Open Source: free code, your responsibility

Magento Open Source is published in the magento/magento2 repository on GitHub under the Open Software License 3.0. The current release is 2.4.9, tagged on 12 May 2026. You download it with Composer as magento/product-community-edition, host it wherever you like and change whatever you need.

The trade-off is that everything operational is yours: servers, PHP, the database, OpenSearch, the cache, backups, security patching and upgrades. Adobe publishes the same system requirements and release notes for Open Source, and each release line receives security patches alongside Adobe Commerce, but there is no Adobe support contract behind it. Help comes from the community, agencies and your own team.

Open Source fits merchants with a capable development partner, a catalog and checkout that the core features cover, and a budget that favours hosting and development costs over licence fees. It is also the natural starting point for developers learning the platform.

Adobe Commerce: the same core with more features and support

Adobe Commerce is installed as magento/product-enterprise-edition. Adobe's upgrade guide even documents moving from one to the other: remove the Open Source metapackage and require the Adobe Commerce one. Version numbers and release dates match the Open Source releases.

What you pay for falls into three groups:

• Features. The B2B extension adds company accounts with roles and permissions, company credit ("Pay on Account"), shared catalogs with company-specific pricing, Quick Order by SKU, negotiable quotes, purchase-order approval rules and requisition lists. Adobe's cron documentation also lists features such as private sales as Adobe Commerce only.
• Support and lifecycle. Adobe's lifecycle policy gives each release three years of standard support from general availability, with quality fixes, security patches and on-call support. For example, 2.4.8 is supported until 31 May 2028 and 2.4.9 until 31 May 2029. Older lines such as 2.4.6 and 2.4.7 get a further year of extended support at no extra cost.
• Hosting choice. You can run Adobe Commerce on-premises (on any infrastructure you control) or on Adobe Commerce on cloud infrastructure.

Adobe Commerce on cloud infrastructure

This is a managed platform-as-a-service for the same application. Adobe describes it as pre-provisioned infrastructure including PHP, MariaDB, Redis or Valkey, a message queue (RabbitMQ or ActiveMQ) and a supported search engine, with a Git-based workflow that builds and deploys automatically when you push. It runs in AWS and Azure regions; Adobe notes that it is not available in China or Russia, where only on-premises deployments are supported.

On cloud infrastructure you still own the application upgrades. Adobe has also announced an enforced upgrade policy: from 1 June 2027 it will no longer maintain Cloud environments running unsupported Commerce versions and may suspend traffic to them. Plan upgrades accordingly.

Adobe Commerce as a Cloud Service: a SaaS model

Adobe Commerce as a Cloud Service is a different product, not just different hosting. Adobe's overview describes four parts: a Commerce Storefront powered by Edge Delivery Services, merchandising services (Live Search, Product Recommendations, Catalog Service and Payment Services), Product Visuals powered by AEM Assets, and a developer platform built around App Builder.

The main differences from the PHP application you may know:

• No manual upgrades. Adobe applies feature and security updates. You get in-app notifications and a 30-day period to evaluate changes in sandbox instances before they reach production. Adobe states that updates are backward compatible for customisations that follow its API-first extensibility model.
• Headless storefront. The storefront is decoupled and gets its data through a GraphQL layer. Adobe states plainly that Luma storefronts are not supported, so existing themes do not carry over.
• Out-of-process customisation. Instead of PHP modules running inside the application, you build with App Builder, Adobe I/O Events, webhooks, API Mesh and the Admin UI SDK. Adobe's App Development Comparison maps the old patterns to new ones: controllers become App Builder actions, plugins and observers become event handlers, cron jobs become I/O Runtime alarms, and Composer packages become npm packages.
• Self-service provisioning. Sandbox and production instances are created through the Commerce Cloud Manager portal, with merchandising services and App Builder already connected.

Adobe also lists 99.9% availability and automatic scaling among the business benefits on its overview page; check the exact service level in your contract rather than relying on marketing copy.

How customisation differs in practice

On Open Source and on Adobe Commerce, a typical customisation is a PHP module in app/code or a Composer package: a plugin intercepts a core method, an observer reacts to an event, a cron job runs every few minutes. This in-process model is powerful, but Adobe's developer documentation lists its costs: more maintenance, lower stability and extra load on the Commerce server, because every extension runs inside the same application and must be retested on every upgrade.

The out-of-process model moves custom logic to separate services that talk to Commerce through APIs and events. That makes upgrades safer and lets teams use JavaScript and Node.js tooling, but it also means some deep changes you could make with a plugin are harder or impossible. Before you commit to the SaaS product, list your must-have customisations and check that each one can be built with the out-of-process tools.

Which option fits which business

Situation	Usually a good fit
Small or mid-size B2C store, experienced developer or agency, cost-sensitive	Magento Open Source on managed hosting
B2B selling with company accounts, quotes and approvals	Adobe Commerce with the B2B extension
Large existing Magento codebase with many custom modules	Adobe Commerce on-premises or on cloud infrastructure, while planning a gradual move to out-of-process extensions
New build, wants no upgrade projects and accepts a headless storefront	Adobe Commerce as a Cloud Service
Operations in China or Russia	On-premises deployment (Adobe's cloud infrastructure is not offered there)

For very small shops with simple catalogs, it is worth asking whether any Magento edition is necessary. Magento rewards teams that can manage PHP, a database, OpenSearch and caching; a hosted platform such as Shopify may be simpler if you do not need that control.

Questions to ask before you choose

• Who will apply security patches, and how quickly? Adobe releases patches for all supported lines on the same day; in 2026 that included 10 March and 12 May.
• Which features do you need on day one, and are any of them Adobe Commerce only (B2B, private sales)?
• Can your theme and integrations survive a move to a headless storefront and out-of-process extensions?
• Where must your data be hosted, and is a suitable cloud region available?
• Which support window do you need? Check the lifecycle table on Experience League for the line you plan to launch on.

Summary

Magento Open Source gives you the full core for free, with every operational duty on your side. Adobe Commerce adds B2B and other features, a three-year support policy and an optional managed cloud, while keeping the familiar PHP extension model. Adobe Commerce as a Cloud Service removes upgrades and infrastructure work in exchange for a headless storefront and an out-of-process development model. Start from your requirements, your team's skills and your appetite for operations, and confirm current details with Adobe's documentation and sales team before you sign.