Adobe Commerce vs Magento Open Source: 2026 Comparison

Adobe Commerce and Magento Open Source share the same Magento core. They also produce very different three-year cost structures, very different operating burdens on your team, and very different B2B feature sets out of the box. The choice between them is rarely about features. It is about who runs the platform day to day, how complex your B2B requirements are, and whether your annual GMV justifies the license.

The scandiweb Adobe Commerce team has run Magento (Adobe Commerce) projects since 2003 and is an Adobe Gold Solution Partner with 894+ certifications across 600+ Magento experts. We have shipped 2,100+ eCommerce projects on both editions for clients including the New York Times, Reuters, JYSK, PUMA, BUFF, Airthings, Macron, and Läderach. This guide is the framework we walk those clients through.

Overview

• Adobe Commerce is the paid enterprise edition of the Magento eCommerce platform with built-in B2B features, AI personalization via Adobe Sensei, managed cloud hosting on AWS, dedicated 24/7 support, and a 99.99% SLA. Magento Open Source is the free, self-hosted edition. Both share the same core platform.
• Adobe Commerce 2026 published license tiers run from approximately $22,000/year on-prem for $1–5 million GMV up to $125,000+/year for $25M+ GMV, the Cloud edition runs roughly 1.8 to 2.2× the on-prem license (mgt-commerce 2026 pricing analysis). Total cost of ownership including hosting, development, extensions, and maintenance typically runs 2 to 3× the license fee – realistic annual all-in costs of $122,000 to $450,000+.
• Magento (Adobe Commerce) holds approximately 8% of the global eCommerce platform market in 2026, with 162,787 live websites and roughly $173 billion in annual GMV across the installed base (Meetanshi 2026, BuiltWith trends). Concentration is at the upper traffic tiers – roughly 9% of the top 1 million sites and 7% of the top 10,000.

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

Adobe Commerce is the paid enterprise edition of the Magento eCommerce platform, bundling B2B features, AI-driven personalization via Adobe Sensei, managed cloud hosting on AWS, 24/7 support, and a 99.99% SLA. Magento Open Source is the free, self-hosted edition of the same core platform. Both run on the same PHP architecture, Elasticsearch / OpenSearch, MySQL or MariaDB. Adobe Commerce adds enterprise capability and a service contract on top.

The shorthand most eCommerce founders need: same platform, different operating model. Open Source gives you the engine. Adobe Commerce gives you the engine plus the service contract.

Adobe acquired Magento in 2018 and renamed Magento Commerce to Adobe Commerce in 2021. Magento Open Source kept its name. The two share a near-identical core today, and Adobe periodically merges Adobe Commerce features back into Open Source – though premium B2B features and Adobe Sensei AI stay paid-tier.

Adobe Commerce vs Magento Open Source: 2026 feature comparison

Both editions share the same core platform. The differences cluster in four areas: B2B functionality, AI and personalization, hosting and scalability, and support.

The single most important row for most decisions is Best for. Everything else is a derivative.

Magento Open Source

Magento Open Source is a self-hosted platform that lets you build an online store with the full Magento commerce core: catalog management, integrated checkout / payment / shipping, instant purchase, mobile-optimized shopping, global selling, WYSIWYG Page Builder, and access to extensions via Adobe Commerce (Magento) Marketplace.

Being open source, the platform is free to use and has a very active community that develops it. A global community of developers works together to respond to use cases and business needs, enabling an eCommerce ecosystem that powers approximately 162,787 live websites worldwide in 2026.

Setup and installation

The first step to installing Magento Open Source is setting up your server and hosting. Any hosting service works as long as the server meets the Magento system requirements. Once you create a database on your host, you proceed to install Magento and start configuring your store.

You can use the default Magento theme or customize it. Purchasing a third-party theme – including modern Hyvä themes for the storefront frontend – speeds up the setup, building a theme from scratch is also a valid path. Read our take on Hyvä going open source for the most-deployed 2026 starting point.

Associated costs

While the platform itself is free, running Magento Open Source carries real costs: hosting ($400 to $3,000+/month on dedicated infrastructure), premium extensions ($500 to $5,000+/year combined), security and PCI compliance work, and a development retainer (20 to 60 hours/month minimum even at steady state).

Many free extensions are available on Adobe Commerce (Magento) Marketplace, a welcome benefit if you want to add functionality without additional investment. Most companies, however, pay for premium extensions to get more features, better functionality, regular updates, and reliable support. Extensions are commonly bought to extend payment processing, content management, customer support, marketing, site security, and performance optimization.

Mobile commerce

Magento Open Source has strong features for mobile commerce: mobile-friendly checkout, mobile-optimized shopping support, and themes built on responsive web design. Then there is PWA (Progressive Web App) – a web application that gives you both an eCommerce website and an app-like mobile experience from the same codebase.

Worth mentioning here is ScandiPWA, scandiweb’s open-source Magento PWA theme used by 500+ leading brands including Adidas, Levi’s, Shure, PUMA, Monin, and BUFF. Without requiring middleware, ScandiPWA supports 350+ Magento features and conventional extensions available on the Marketplace. With readymage – the first PWA-focused hosting for Adobe Commerce and Magento 2 – you can spin up development and production environments in under 15 minutes.

Maintenance

Maintaining a Magento Open Source store falls on you if you have an internal team. Or you can hire a third-party Magento development agency to take care of site maintenance. Either way, Magento Open Source receives regular core updates and security patches, so your team or agency needs to keep pace with the release cadence. The Magento Community is available for help, but it is not a substitute for a dedicated support contract.

Scalability

Magento Open Source has all the basic functionality to run a successful eCommerce store, but scalability is a real constraint. If your business is growing fast – particularly across multiple stores, regions, or aggressive promotional traffic spikes – you can outgrow self-hosted Open Source. The platform supports a single database system, which means your site can slow down under multi-store load without significant infrastructure investment. This is the most common reason Open Source customers eventually move to Adobe Commerce Cloud.

Adobe Commerce

Adobe Commerce is an eCommerce solution that has all the features available to Magento Open Source plus:

• Advanced marketing tools
• Native B2B functionality (company accounts, custom catalogs, contract pricing, quote management)
• Customer loyalty tools
• Live Search (AI semantic search)
• Business intelligence dashboards (Adobe Commerce Intelligence)
• Visual merchandising
• Customer segmentation
• Gift cards

The following Page Builder functionalities are only available to Adobe Commerce:

• Content staging and preview
• Dynamic blocks
• Native integration with product recommendations

Adobe Commerce on cloud infrastructure is a fully managed platform that bundles cloud onboarding support, performance monitoring tools, enhanced security via Fastly WAF and DDoS services, cloud availability SLA up to 99.99%, streamlined updates and testing, a Customer Success Manager, technical support, and global availability.

Adobe Experience Cloud

Adobe Commerce is offered as part of Adobe Experience Cloud, a collection of solutions designed to help businesses make informed decisions and deliver enhanced customer experiences based on insights and data.

Adobe Experience Cloud products include applications and services covering content and commerce, data and audiences, customer journeys, marketing workflow, and digital enrollment. Adobe Commerce is the layer where the commerce experience is unified across channels. It has integrations with Adobe Experience Manager, Adobe Analytics, and Adobe Target. Through Adobe Commerce, merchants gain access to Adobe’s business intelligence services and the machine-learning and personalization capabilities powered by Adobe Sensei.

Cloud infrastructure

Adobe Commerce Cloud is a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) hosted on AWS, with Fastly CDN, WAF, and DDoS protection bundled, New Relic application monitoring, automated patching with merchant-controlled QA windows, and a 99.99% uptime SLA. It is the operating model most enterprise retailers move to once they outgrow the in-house DevOps, hosting, and security stack.

The bundled services that matter for most enterprise decisions:

• Fastly CDN with image optimization and edge caching, origin cloaking included
• Web Application Firewall with managed rules for OWASP top 10
• DDoS protection at the Fastly edge
• PCI Level 1 infrastructure certification
• Auto-scaling for traffic spikes (Black Friday, product launches) – pay for what you provision but with elastic ceiling
• Performance dashboards via New Relic with full APM coverage
• Streamlined updates – Adobe applies platform patches, you control the QA and deploy window
• Adobe Commerce Cloud SLA – 99.99% with credits for missed availability

The main reasons eCommerce companies choose Adobe Commerce on cloud infrastructure include decreased ongoing maintenance costs, reduced capital expenses, better time-to-market, improved scalability, and enhanced security. As a PaaS hosted on AWS, Adobe Commerce on cloud infrastructure lets businesses rapidly deploy secure, scalable, and customizable eCommerce stores without operating the underlying hosting stack themselves.

Security

Included in the Adobe Commerce Cloud subscription are Fastly services that keep content delivery operations secure and optimized:

• Content Delivery Network (CDN)
• Web Application Firewall (WAF)
• DDoS protection
• SSL / TLS certificates
• Origin cloaking
• Image optimization

Adobe Commerce is a pre-certified PCI Level 1 infrastructure. It also comes with integrated payment gateways that allow merchants to securely transmit credit card data, making Payment Card Industry compliance easier than reproducing the equivalent on self-hosted Open Source.

Integrated features

Page Builder lets you create content with drag-and-drop tools – add text and images wherever you need them on the page and reposition them on the fly. Existing Magento functionalities like widgets, blocks, and media gallery are still fully supported, so you can reuse content in many ways.

Inventory and order management tools maintain accurate inventory at all times. This is crucial for multi-store and multi-warehouse retailers building toward omnichannel retail – real-time product inventory visibility lets you provide consistent customer experiences across online and physical store channels.

B2B capabilities integrated with Adobe Commerce make wholesale and enterprise buying experiences as frictionless as possible: customer-specific catalogs and pricing, quick-order forms, order and quote tracking, and self-service customer portals. For B2B-heavy retailers, this is the row that justifies the license by itself – read our B2B Magento 2 migration case for the implementation pattern.

Business intelligence from Adobe Commerce comes with powerful report-creation tools and rich visualization. View customer lifetime value, retention rates, average order value, and other key metrics on a dashboard – monitor business performance without complicated reports. Insightful data about sales and customer behavior informs strategic planning and marketing-campaign decisions.

AI-powered functionality

Adobe Sensei is Adobe’s AI engine that underpins the Adobe Experience Cloud. It works with Adobe’s cloud services to bring AI and machine learning to search, product recommendations, and merchandising.

• Adobe Commerce Live Search delivers optimized results based on each user’s profile and previous behavior by combining Adobe Sensei with catalog data.
• Product recommendations powered by Adobe Sensei generate and serve “frequently bought together”, “you might also like”, and category-page personalized rails without manual rule-writing.
• Visual merchandising ranks products on category pages by performance metrics, with merchandiser override.

Adobe Target is Adobe’s solution for testing, automation, and personalization. Adobe Target lets merchants and marketers personalize and experiment with content and experiences to improve revenue, conversions, and customer outcomes across different touchpoints. Adobe Sensei powers many of Adobe Target’s most useful features, including automated personalization, auto-allocate, personalized insights reports, auto-target, and personalized recommendations.

For brands not on Adobe Commerce, the same capability is achievable via dedicated personalization tools – see our website personalization tools comparison – typically Klevu or Algolia for search plus Insider or Dynamic Yield for personalization. The integrated Adobe Commerce stack is faster to deploy, best-of-breed combinations are more flexible.

Adobe Commerce pricing in 2026

Adobe Commerce 2026 published license tiers scale by annual Gross Merchandise Value (GMV). Public ranges across multiple 2026 pricing analyses (mgt-commerce, Meetanshi, Swell, Folio3) cluster around the same tier structure. Exact contract pricing is negotiated directly with Adobe sales or through a certified Adobe Solution Partner.

Total cost of ownership typically runs 2 to 3× the license fee. With hosting, development, extensions, and maintenance included, realistic annual all-in costs land between $122,000 and $450,000+ (mgt-commerce TCO analysis).

What’s next in Adobe Commerce

Adobe continues to invest in Adobe Commerce around three vectors in 2026: composable and AI-driven architecture (reducing technical debt and enabling headless deployments), B2B feature expansion (account hierarchies, contract pricing automation), and tighter Adobe Experience Cloud integration (analytics, Target, AEM). For brands evaluating the platform’s trajectory, scandiweb’s own explainer video on the key differences between Adobe Commerce and Magento Open Source – cited by Google’s AI Overview for this query in May 2026 – covers the recent platform direction:

When to choose Magento Open Source

Magento Open Source is the right choice when you have in-house development capacity (or an agency on retainer), prefer full control over hosting and architecture, and your scale does not justify the Adobe Commerce license. Most stores under ~$5M GMV with a competent dev team are best served here.

Use Magento Open Source if:

• You have in-house developers or a long-term agency partner. The platform requires regular maintenance – security patches, version upgrades, infrastructure tuning. You need someone who owns the operational side.
• You want full architectural control. Custom modules, bespoke integrations, headless storefronts – Open Source gives you the entire codebase to modify.
• Your B2B requirements are simple. If you do not need company accounts, contract pricing, multi-tier approvals, or quote management out of the box, extensions can fill most B2B gaps for less than the license-cost difference.
• You are below ~$5M GMV with a healthy growth trajectory. Pay for the platform when you outgrow it, not before.

When to choose Adobe Commerce

Adobe Commerce is the right choice when your GMV justifies the license, you have real B2B complexity, you operate in regulated industries where PCI Level 1 is required, or you want to remove infrastructure and security as ongoing concerns. Most stores above ~$10M GMV with growth or complexity drivers belong here.

Use Adobe Commerce if:

• You have meaningful B2B operations. Native company accounts, contract pricing, quote management, purchase orders, and credit limits are the strongest reason to upgrade.
• You need managed cloud and SLA. Commerce Cloud removes server management, scaling concerns, and PCI infrastructure from your team’s plate. The 99.99% SLA is real value for high-traffic retail.
• You operate in regulated industries. Pre-certified PCI Level 1 is hard to replicate self-hosted at the same cost.
• You want Adobe Sensei AI and Adobe Target personalization. Not strictly required for eCommerce success, but they meaningfully accelerate personalization for the right teams.
• You are already on Adobe Experience Cloud. If you run Adobe Analytics, Target, AEM, Audience Manager, or Marketo, the Commerce integration becomes a force multiplier.

The business value of upgrading to Adobe Commerce

A 2022 research conducted by International Data Corporation (IDC) for Adobe looked at the value organizations received from upgrading to Adobe Commerce from Magento Open Source. The study involved 11 organizations with 1 to 17,000 employees and annual revenue of $800,000 to $17 billion. The organizations had upgraded from Magento Open Source to Adobe Commerce across retail / wholesale, automotive / transportation, financial services, professional services, and manufacturing.

IDC found:

• Average annual benefit of $45,000 per 10,000 transactions
• 516% ROI in three years
• +18% customer-satisfaction scores
• +18% average order values
• +15% customer-conversion rates
• 70% reduction in risk compared to Magento Open Source

Treat these numbers as directional – the sample is small and selection-biased toward successful migrations. The honest read, mirrored across the migrations scandiweb has run: organizations that migrate with a clear B2B or scale driver tend to see strong outcomes. Organizations that migrate for the brand badge without a structural need rarely realize the ROI.

A 2026-era scandiweb client comparison point: BUFF replatformed to Adobe Commerce on cloud infrastructure for B2B and multi-region reasons – read the BUFF replatform case for the full before / after.

Why trust this comparison?

scandiweb has run Magento and Adobe Commerce projects since 2003. We have delivered 2,100+ eCommerce projects on both editions for 700+ active clients across 30+ countries, processing $4 billion+ in client GMV every year. Named clients include the New York Times, Reuters, JYSK, PUMA, BUFF, Airthings, Macron, Läderach, and Sportland.

scandiweb is an Adobe Gold Solution Partner, Hyvä Platinum Partner, Pimcore Platinum Partner, and Google Premier Partner 2026, with 894+ Adobe Commerce and Analytics certifications across 600+ Magento experts. The team is ISO 27001, ISO 27017, ISO 9001, and PCI DSS certified. scandiweb is also the official host of Meet Magento New York, Baltics, and Canada.

This guide is reviewed by senior engineers and project leads with hands-on experience on both editions. Where we cite numbers, we link sources. Where we do not have data, we say so.

Frequently asked questions

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

Adobe Commerce is the paid enterprise edition with built-in B2B features, AI personalization via Adobe Sensei, managed cloud hosting on AWS, dedicated 24/7 support, and a 99.99% SLA. Magento Open Source is the free, self-hosted edition of the same core platform. Both share the same Magento architecture, Adobe Commerce adds enterprise capability and a service contract on top.

Is Magento Open Source still being developed?

Yes. Adobe continues to maintain Magento Open Source with security patches and feature updates. Many Adobe Commerce features have been merged back into Open Source over time. The platform powers approximately 162,787 live websites worldwide as of 2026.

How much does Adobe Commerce cost per year?

Adobe Commerce 2026 published tiers run approximately $22,000/year on-prem at $1–5M GMV up to $125,000+/year for $25M+ GMV. The Cloud edition runs 1.8 to 2.2× the on-prem license. Exact pricing is quoted individually by Adobe or by a certified Solution Partner based on annual GMV, Average Order Value, hosting model, and contract length. Total cost of ownership typically runs 2 to 3× the license.

Can I migrate from Magento Open Source to Adobe Commerce?

Yes. Because both editions share the same core platform, migration preserves your data, code, customizations, and theme. Typical migration projects run 8 to 16 weeks depending on B2B complexity and integration depth. Technical risk is much lower than a cross-platform replatform.

Does Magento Open Source have B2B features?

Magento Open Source has basic catalog and pricing tools that can support simple B2B scenarios. Advanced B2B features – company accounts, contract pricing, quote management, purchase orders, credit limits – require third-party extensions or custom development on Open Source. Adobe Commerce includes these natively.

Is Adobe Commerce the same as Magento Commerce?

Yes. Adobe renamed Magento Commerce to Adobe Commerce in 2021. The underlying platform is the same product, now delivered as Adobe Commerce Cloud (PaaS on AWS) or Adobe Commerce on-prem.

Which is better for a small business, Magento Open Source or Adobe Commerce?

For most small businesses (under ~$2M GMV) Magento Open Source plus a competent agency or developer is the right answer. The license-cost difference is significant at that scale, and the B2B and AI features rarely justify themselves until you outgrow basic catalog and store operations.

Can Adobe Commerce be self-hosted (not in the cloud)?

Yes. Adobe Commerce is offered as Adobe Commerce on-prem (self-hosted) and Adobe Commerce Cloud (Adobe-managed on AWS). Most new deployments choose the Cloud edition, on-prem is typically chosen for compliance or data-locality reasons.

What is Adobe Sensei in Adobe Commerce?

Adobe Sensei is Adobe’s AI / ML engine. In Adobe Commerce it powers Live Search (semantic, personalized search), Product Recommendations (frequently-bought-together, related products), Visual Merchandising (AI ranking of category-page products), and audience segmentation. Sensei is not available on Magento Open Source.

How long does an Adobe Commerce implementation take?

A typical greenfield Adobe Commerce Cloud build runs 3 to 6 months for a mid-complexity B2C retailer, 6 to 12 months for a complex B2B or multi-region deployment. A migration from Magento Open Source typically runs 8 to 16 weeks because data and code carry over.

About this guide

This guide is maintained by scandiweb’s Adobe Commerce team, drawing on 2,100+ live implementations since 2003, public Adobe Commerce and Magento Open Source documentation, the 2022 IDC study of Adobe Commerce ROI (treated as directional), 2026 third-party pricing analyses, BuiltWith market share data, and our own benchmark data from client migrations.

Reviewed by scandiweb’s Adobe Commerce delivery lead.

Related reading from the scandiweb blog:

• Complete guide to Magento (Adobe Commerce)
• Magento eCommerce essentials
• BUFF replatform case
• B2B Magento 2 migration case
• Magento vs Shopify comparison
• commercetools vs Adobe Commerce
• Is Magento dying?
• Hyvä goes open source

Whether you are choosing between Adobe Commerce and Magento Open Source for a new build, or evaluating an upgrade from Open Source, scandiweb provides full Magento consulting, custom development, Magento SEO services, and Hyvä theme development. Reach out for a platform-fit assessment – we will model the total cost of ownership for both editions against your real GMV and B2B requirements.

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