What Is Magento? Adobe Commerce And Magento Open Source Explained (2026)

Magento is one of the few ecommerce platforms that has stayed relevant for close to two decades. It powers stores for global brands, mid-market manufacturers and B2B distributors, and it still attracts merchants who need more control than a hosted SaaS builder allows. It also confuses people, because the name now covers two products, a community fork and a SaaS edition, all under Adobe’s umbrella or orbiting it.

So what is Magento in 2026? In short, it is an open source PHP ecommerce platform, owned by Adobe since 2018, sold in a free edition called Magento Open Source and a licensed edition called Adobe Commerce. The current release line is 2.4.x, with 2.4.9 as the newest version.

This guide covers where Magento came from, how the editions differ, how the platform works under the hood, what it costs to run, who it suits, and whether it is still a sensible choice for a new build this year.

What Is Magento?

The Magento platform is ecommerce software written in PHP that you install on your own servers (or a host’s servers) and customize through code, extensions and themes. Unlike Shopify or BigCommerce, it does not hide the application from you. You get the full source code, the database and the server stack, which is why developers like it and why it demands more technical ownership than a SaaS tool.

The core code is released under the Open Software License (OSL 3.0). That license is what makes Magento Open Source free to download and modify. Adobe builds its paid edition, Adobe Commerce, on top of the same core and adds enterprise features, cloud hosting options and support.

When people ask “what is Adobe Commerce,” the simplest answer is that it is the commercial version of Magento. It was called Magento Commerce (and before that Magento Enterprise Edition) until Adobe renamed it in April 2021.

A Short History Of Magento

Magento’s ownership has changed hands several times, and each change shaped the product.

• 2007 to 2008: Varien, a US development agency, started building the platform in early 2007. A public beta followed in August 2007, and the first general availability release shipped on March 31, 2008.
• 2010 to 2011: eBay took a 49% stake, then announced in June 2011 that it would buy the rest of the company.
• 2015: After eBay split from PayPal, it sold Magento to private equity firm Permira in November 2015. Magento 2 reached its stable release later that same month.
• 2018: Adobe announced in May 2018 that it would acquire Magento for about $1.68 billion. The deal closed in June 2018.
• 2020: Magento 1 reached end of life on June 30, 2020, which pushed the remaining 1.x stores to upgrade or replatform.
• 2021: Adobe rebranded Magento Commerce as Adobe Commerce in April 2021. The free edition kept the Magento Open Source name.
• 2023: The community launched the first Mage-OS distribution, a community-run build of Magento Open Source.
• 2025: Adobe launched Adobe Commerce as a Cloud Service, a fully managed SaaS edition, and the popular Hyvä theme became free and open source.

So, who owns Magento today? Adobe owns the Magento trademark, the Magento Open Source project and Adobe Commerce. Mage-OS is a separate, community-owned project that builds on the open source code.

Magento Editions Explained

There are now four ways to run something called Magento. The table below summarizes them.

Edition	Cost	Hosting	Who Maintains It	Best Fit
Magento Open Source	Free license	Self-hosted or any host	Adobe releases the code; you run it	SMB and mid-market stores with in-house or agency developers
Adobe Commerce (on-premises)	Annual license, quoted by Adobe	Your own servers or cloud account	You run it with Adobe support	Larger merchants that want enterprise features but control their infrastructure
Adobe Commerce on Cloud	Annual license including managed cloud	Adobe’s cloud infrastructure (PaaS)	Adobe runs infrastructure; you run the application	Enterprise and B2B brands that want an Adobe-managed stack
Adobe Commerce as a Cloud Service	Subscription	Fully managed SaaS	Adobe	Brands in the Adobe ecosystem that want fewer upgrades
Mage-OS	Free	Self-hosted	Mage-OS Association (community)	Teams that want a community-governed Magento distribution

Magento Open Source

Magento Open Source is the free edition. It includes the catalog, checkout, multi-store support, customer accounts, promotions, layered navigation, a REST and GraphQL API, and the admin panel. Merchants pay for hosting, development, extensions and maintenance rather than a license. For most small and mid-sized businesses asking “is Magento free,” this is the edition they mean.

Adobe Commerce

Adobe Commerce adds features that Open Source lacks out of the box, including B2B modules (company accounts, shared catalogs, quotes, requisition lists), customer segments, content staging and scheduling, advanced reporting, and Adobe support. It can run on your own infrastructure or on Adobe Commerce on Cloud, which bundles Fastly CDN, New Relic monitoring and a web application firewall in production. For a full feature breakdown, read our comparison of Adobe Commerce and Magento Open Source.

Adobe Commerce As A Cloud Service

Adobe presented its SaaS edition at Adobe Summit 2025 and made it generally available in mid-2025. It is versionless, meaning Adobe applies updates for you, and it pairs with an edge-delivered storefront. It trades some of the deep code-level control that made Magento famous for lower upgrade overhead.

Mage-OS

Mage-OS is a community distribution of Magento Open Source run by the nonprofit Mage-OS Association. Its first release shipped in October 2023. As of October 2026, its current version is Mage-OS 3.6.0, a security release built on Magento 2.4.9. It stays compatible with Magento extensions and ports Adobe’s security fixes, while adding its own improvements. The project states that it is not affiliated with Adobe.

How Magento Works

Magento is a large, modular PHP application. Understanding its main parts helps explain both its flexibility and its reputation for complexity.

The Technology Stack

A Magento store runs on Linux with PHP, a web server (nginx in Adobe’s current requirements), a MySQL or MariaDB database, OpenSearch for catalog search, Valkey (a Redis-compatible store) for cache and sessions, Varnish for full page caching, and optionally RabbitMQ for message queues. Composer manages the code and its dependencies. Our Magento hosting guide lists the exact versions Adobe supports for 2.4.9.

Modules And Extensions

Everything in Magento is a module, including core features such as the catalog and checkout. Third-party extensions plug into the same system, which is why the platform can be bent to fit unusual business models. The Adobe Commerce Marketplace lists thousands of extensions for payments, shipping, ERP connectors, search, SEO and more. The tradeoff is that every extension adds code you have to keep compatible through upgrades.

Themes: Luma Versus Hyvä

Magento ships with a default theme called Luma, built on RequireJS, Knockout.js and LESS. Luma works, but it loads a lot of JavaScript and is hard to make fast on mobile.

Hyvä is a replacement frontend built on Alpine.js and Tailwind CSS that removes most of that JavaScript weight. It became the go-to choice for new builds, and in November 2025 the Hyvä theme itself became free and open source. Hyvä still sells paid add-ons such as Hyvä Checkout and Hyvä Commerce. For a new Magento store in 2026, Hyvä or a headless frontend is usually the better starting point than Luma.

Headless And APIs

Magento exposes REST and GraphQL APIs, so teams can run it as a headless backend behind a React, Vue or other custom storefront. This approach adds flexibility but also adds a second application to build and maintain.

Multi-Store Architecture

A single Magento installation can run multiple websites, stores and store views, each with its own catalog, pricing, currency or language. This is one of the platform’s strongest features for brands that sell in several countries or run several brands from one backend.

Current Version And Support Lifecycle

Magento 2.4.9 reached general availability on May 12, 2026, and it is the latest release line. Adobe gives each 2.4.x release three years of standard support from its release date. Here are the key dates from Adobe’s lifecycle policy for Adobe Commerce:

Version	Release Date	End Of Standard Support
2.4.9	May 12, 2026	May 31, 2029
2.4.8	April 8, 2025	May 31, 2028
2.4.7	April 9, 2024	May 31, 2027 (extended support to May 31, 2028)
2.4.6	March 14, 2023	August 11, 2026 (extended support to August 31, 2027)

Adobe’s extended support year applies to Adobe Commerce. Magento Open Source users should plan upgrades around the standard dates, because once a version is out of support it stops receiving security patches.

Patching matters more than ever. In September 2026 a critical remote code execution flaw nicknamed StyleSmuggler (CVE-2026-75650) was exploited in the wild against Adobe Commerce and Magento Open Source stores before Adobe shipped a hotfix. Stores that patched quickly and rotated credentials avoided the worst outcomes. If you run Magento, a patching routine is not optional, and many merchants hand it to a dedicated Magento support and maintenance partner.

Who Uses Magento?

Magento’s sweet spot is merchants with complex catalogs or processes, for example:

• B2B manufacturers and distributors that need customer-specific pricing, quotes and large catalogs
• Multi-brand or multi-country retailers running many store views from one admin
• Merchants with custom fulfillment, configurators or ERP-driven workflows
• Brands already invested in Adobe Experience Cloud tools

Market data providers count Magento stores in the low six figures. StoreLeads data cited in early 2026 put the number of live Magento stores at about 111,000. That is far fewer than Shopify or WooCommerce, but Magento stores skew toward larger catalogs and higher revenue.

How Much Does Magento Cost?

The license is only part of the picture. Here is what drives total cost of ownership.

• License: Magento Open Source is free. Adobe does not publish Adobe Commerce prices; licenses are quoted based on gross merchandise value (GMV) and deployment. Partner estimates published in 2026 put on-premises licenses in the low tens of thousands of dollars per year for stores under $1 million GMV, with cloud licenses higher because they include hosting.
• Hosting: Self-hosted Magento Open Source can run on a VPS for a small store, but a production store usually needs managed hosting or a properly sized cloud setup. Our hosting guide (linked above) covers current price ranges.
• Development: Most stores need an agency or in-house developers for the build, integrations and theme. Builds range from tens of thousands of dollars for a straightforward store to six figures or more for complex B2B or multi-store projects.
• Extensions: Many quality extensions cost in the low hundreds of dollars each, some with annual fees.
• Maintenance: Security patches, version upgrades, monitoring and extension updates are ongoing costs. Budget for them from day one.

Pros And Cons Of Magento

Pros

• Full code ownership and no platform transaction fees on Open Source
• Deep customization of catalog, checkout, pricing and workflows
• Native multi-store, multi-language and multi-currency support
• Strong B2B feature set in Adobe Commerce
• Large extension ecosystem and an experienced global developer pool
• Good SEO control at the URL, meta and template level (see our Magento SEO guide)

Cons

• Higher hosting and development cost than SaaS platforms
• Steep learning curve for developers new to its architecture
• Upgrades and security patches require real engineering time
• Luma storefront performance is weak without significant work
• Adobe Commerce licensing is opaque and expensive for smaller merchants

Magento Alternatives

If Magento feels like more platform than you need, these are the usual alternatives:

• Shopify and Shopify Plus: Hosted SaaS with fast setup, a large app store and less technical overhead. Compare them in our Magento vs Shopify breakdown, which also covers Shopify Plus at the enterprise level.
• BigCommerce: SaaS with stronger built-in B2B and API features than Shopify’s base plans. See our three-way Magento vs Shopify vs BigCommerce comparison.
• WooCommerce: Free WordPress plugin that suits content-heavy stores and smaller catalogs. Read Magento vs WooCommerce.
• Shopware, commercetools and other composable platforms: Popular in Europe and with enterprise teams building API-first stacks.

Is Magento Still Worth Choosing In 2026?

Magento is still a strong choice when your requirements are complex enough to justify the cost. It makes sense if you need custom B2B logic, run many store views, must host data in a specific region, or want to own your code and infrastructure without paying a percentage of revenue to a SaaS vendor.

It is a weaker choice for a simple direct-to-consumer brand with a few hundred products and no developers. Those merchants usually get to market faster and cheaper on Shopify or BigCommerce.

A few 2026 developments help the case for Magento. Hyvä is now free, which removes a cost barrier to fast storefronts. The 2.4.9 release carries standard support into 2029. Mage-OS gives the open source community a governance option outside Adobe. On the other side, the StyleSmuggler incident is a reminder that self-managed Magento demands disciplined patching.

Who To Hire For Magento Work

Most Magento projects succeed or fail on the team behind them. If you are planning a build, replatform or rescue, start with these curated lists:

• Top Magento developers to hire in 2026 for builds, custom development, B2B features and migrations
• Top Adobe Commerce agencies for licensed, enterprise and Adobe Commerce on Cloud projects

Frequently Asked Questions

What Is Magento Used For?

Magento is used to build and run online stores, especially stores with large catalogs, complex pricing, multiple brands or regions, or B2B buying workflows. It handles the catalog, cart, checkout, customer accounts, promotions and order management.

Is Magento Free?

Magento Open Source is free to download and use under the OSL 3.0 license. You still pay for hosting, development, extensions and maintenance. Adobe Commerce, the paid edition, requires an annual license.

Who Owns Magento?

Adobe owns Magento. It acquired the company in 2018 for about $1.68 billion. Mage-OS, a community distribution built on the open source code, is run independently by the Mage-OS Association.

What Is The Difference Between Magento And Adobe Commerce?

Adobe Commerce is the licensed edition of Magento, formerly called Magento Commerce. It adds B2B features, content staging, customer segments, Adobe support and an optional managed cloud. Magento Open Source is the free core edition.

What Is The Latest Version Of Magento?

The latest release line is Magento 2.4.9, which reached general availability on May 12, 2026. Adobe ships patch releases within each line, so check the latest patch number before upgrading.

Is Magento Hard To Use?

The admin panel is manageable for store staff after some training. Development, hosting and upgrades are where Magento is demanding, so most merchants rely on an experienced agency or in-house team.

Is Magento Good For SEO?

Yes. Magento gives you control over URLs, canonical tags, meta data, sitemaps and templates. It does need careful setup to avoid duplicate content from layered navigation and store views. Our Magento SEO guide, linked above, walks through the setup.

Conclusion

Magento is an open source PHP ecommerce platform owned by Adobe, offered as free Magento Open Source and licensed Adobe Commerce, with a SaaS edition and a community distribution alongside them. Its strengths are control, customization, multi-store support and B2B depth. Its costs are hosting, development and the ongoing work of patching and upgrading.

If your business needs those strengths, Magento remains a solid platform in 2026, especially with free Hyvä storefronts and 2.4.9 support running to 2029. If it does not, a SaaS platform will usually be cheaper and faster. Either way, choose the platform based on your requirements and the team you can hire to run it.