Core · Guide
AtroPIM vs Pimcore vs Akeneo Community Edition: Which Open Source PIM in 2026?
Last updated: 3 November 2026.
AtroPIM, Pimcore and Akeneo Community Edition are the three open source routes that come up most when a team wants to run its own PIM. Choose AtroPIM if you want a GPLv3 product data hub whose entities and relations you configure rather than code. Choose Pimcore if product data is one part of a wider platform with MDM, DAM and content, and its Pimcore Open Core License fits your revenue and budget. Choose Akeneo Community Edition if you want a product-centric PIM with a standard model, under an OSI license, and you accept community-only support.
Vendors publish their own comparisons of this trio, and each one reads as you would expect. This page takes license facts only from each project's LICENSE file, release notes and pricing page, with the date we checked them, and says where we could not verify something. For the wider field, including Ergonode and Odoo, see open source PIM systems compared.
Which open source PIM should I choose?
Start with the decision, then check the details in the table below.
Choose AtroPIM if you need a product and master data hub with your own entities, attributes and relations, set up through the interface. It suits European B2B and industrial companies that want GPLv3 without a revenue threshold, a self-hosted start with the option of AtroCore's SaaS later, and module, support and integration prices you can read before the first call. You still need a developer or integrator for hosting, upgrades and connectors.
Choose Pimcore if product data is one domain among several. Pimcore puts PIM, MDM, DAM, a DXP/CMS, a customer data platform and a commerce framework on one data model, so it fits mid-market and enterprise teams consolidating several systems. Budget for a paid edition once your revenue is above €5 million, or once you need features reserved for Enterprise. Plan on an implementation partner.
Choose Akeneo Community Edition if you want a mature, product-centric PIM (families, attributes, variants) for a single brand or catalog team, under OSL-3.0, and you are comfortable hosting it and relying on the community and partners for support. It also fits teams that may later move to Akeneo's SaaS Product Cloud, which is a separate commercial product.
If none of these fits because you have no developers, an open source PIM is the wrong model. Look at SaaS options in our best PIM software guide.
How do AtroPIM, Pimcore and Akeneo Community Edition compare?
All cells come from the vendors' own pages listed under Sources, checked on 3 November 2026. "Implementation effort" is our qualitative assessment, not a measured figure.
| AtroPIM (AtroCore) | Pimcore | Akeneo Community Edition | |
|---|---|---|---|
| License | GPLv3 (LICENSE file in the atropim repository) | Pimcore Open Core License (POCL), LICENSE.md on the 2026.x branch, last updated June 2025. GPLv3 up to version 2024.4 | Open Software License 3.0 (OSL-3.0), LICENCE.txt in pim-community-dev |
| Edition model | Free modules under GPLv3, premium modules under a commercial license. Open-Source Edition, SaaS Edition and SaaS Premium Edition | Community, Professional, Enterprise and Enterprise PaaS, all on POCL for the core | One free edition. The paid offer is the separate SaaS Product Cloud (Growth, Advanced, Premium) |
| Free in production | Yes, no revenue limit. AtroPIM, Import and Export modules "with no user limits and no feature restrictions" | Only for organizations with total global revenue up to €5 million a year, and qualifying non-profit and educational organizations | Yes, no revenue limit in the license |
| What is paid | Premium modules, integrations, support packages, SaaS, implementation and other services | Professional ($9,900 a year), Enterprise ($29,900 a year), PaaS on quote. Copilot, Workflow Automation, Datahub Simple REST, webhooks and the E-Commerce Framework are Enterprise modules | Nothing within CE. Product Cloud packages: Advanced and Premium on quote |
| Hosting | Self-hosted, or AtroCore SaaS with hosting included | Community and Professional self-hosted; Enterprise on premises or private cloud; Enterprise PaaS managed by Pimcore | Self-hosted only. Akeneo's SaaS is the Product Cloud |
| Data model | Entities, attributes, relations and layouts are configuration, not code | Classes built in the visual class editor in Pimcore Studio, with inheritance, variants and a classification store | Families of attributes, family variants and product models for variants |
| API | REST API covering the full system, with an OpenAPI specification | GraphQL through Datahub in Community; Simple REST, webhooks and file export are Enterprise modules | REST API, used for connectors and extensions. Per-edition API coverage not documented on the pages we checked |
| Stack | PHP with Symfony and Laminas components; PostgreSQL, MySQL or MariaDB | PHP and Symfony | PHP 8.3, MySQL 8.0 or 8.4 LTS, Elasticsearch 8.17 |
| Latest release (3 Nov 2026) | atropim 1.16.11 on 21 October 2026 (1.17.0-beta2 on 2 November) | 2026.3.3.1 on 22 October 2026 | v2026.5 on 30 October 2026 |
| Implementation effort (our view) | Moderate: configuration covers much of the model, connectors are bought or built | Highest of the three: broad platform, usually partner-led | Moderate for a standard catalog; upgrades and hosting are fully yours |
| Who it fits | B2B, industrial and distribution companies that want a configurable hub and transparent pricing | Mid-market and enterprise teams consolidating PIM, DAM, MDM and content | Brands and retailers with a product-centric catalog and a technical team |
What is really free, and what do you pay for?
The word "free" means something different in each project.
AtroPIM. The software, the free modules and hosting on your own servers cost nothing from AtroCore. AtroCore publishes the paid items: support from €240 a month (Bronze), premium modules at €20 to €90 a month each in SaaS or a one-off €500 to €2,250 each on premises, integrations from €1,900 for ERPs and from €3,900 for e-commerce platforms, and the SaaS Edition from €400 a month. Those are AtroCore's own prices from its pricing page, checked on 3 November 2026.
Pimcore. The Community Edition is free for non-production use and, in production, for organizations with total global revenue up to €5 million a year. Above that, the license requires a paid commercial license. Pimcore's pricing page lists Professional at $9,900 and Enterprise at $29,900 a year, and the PaaS on quote. Its editions page reserves modules such as Copilot, Workflow Automation, Datahub Simple REST, webhooks and the E-Commerce Framework for Enterprise. Check which of those you need before you treat Community as your starting point.
Akeneo Community Edition. The whole edition is free under OSL-3.0 and has no paid tier of its own. Akeneo's commercial offer is the SaaS Product Cloud. Its package page shows Growth "starting at $0 annually" with a trial, and Advanced and Premium on quote. Moving from CE to the Product Cloud is a move to a different, vendor-hosted product, not an upgrade of your server.
In all three cases the license is the smallest line in the budget. Hosting, implementation, integrations, upgrades and the people who run the system decide the total. Ranges by company size are in PIM costs compared, and you can model your own case in the cost calculator.
Which license obligations should you check?
Each license asks something different of you, and the difference matters most if you modify the code or offer the system to others.
| License | What to check |
|---|---|
| GPLv3 (AtroPIM) | A copyleft license. If you distribute a modified version, you distribute it under GPLv3 with the source. Premium modules are under AtroCore's commercial license, so check their terms separately |
| POCL (Pimcore) | The revenue threshold of €5 million, the rule that POCL software may not be used alongside GPLv3-licensed Pimcore software, the ban on reverting to GPLv3, and the need for a commercial OEM license to offer the Pimcore core as SaaS |
| OSL-3.0 (Akeneo CE) | Copies and derivative works you distribute must stay under OSL-3.0, and "External Deployment" (letting anyone other than you use the work, for example over a network) counts as distribution |
If you plan to resell the system as a service or share changes with partners, have someone with legal knowledge read the license. This page summarizes the texts; it is not legal advice.
Is Akeneo Community Edition being discontinued?
You will read that Akeneo is sunsetting its Community Edition. The primary sources do not show that on 3 November 2026. The pim-community-dev repository moved to calendar versioning and published v2026.3 (30 March), v2026.4 "Community Edition Tech Refresh" (28 August) and v2026.5 (30 October 2026). Akeneo's supported-versions page states that the Community Edition is continuously supported.
What did end is the paid self-hosted route. The same page lists 30 September 2026 as the end of support for version 7 of Akeneo's on-premise and PaaS editions. So if you want Akeneo self-hosted, the free CE is the remaining option, with community and partner support rather than vendor support. Check the release page again before you commit, because a release cadence can change.
Does ownership change the choice?
For open-core projects, ownership is part of the diligence. Pimcore announced on 27 August 2026 that Nordwind Growth is selling its majority stake to Tenzing, a London investor in European B2B software, subject to antitrust approvals. Pimcore says open core stays open, cloud, on-premise and PaaS stay the customer's choice, and leadership and roadmap stay. We found no closing announcement by 3 November 2026. What to ask your partner after a deal like this is in what Tenzing buying Pimcore changes in the diligence checklist.
AtroPIM comes from AtroCore UG (haftungsbeschränkt) in Regensburg, Germany. Akeneo is a French company that sells its commercial product as SaaS. For any of the three, ask who decides the license, what happens to the free edition if packaging changes, and how you would exit with your data.
How to test the three before you choose
- Write down your scope. Catalog size, languages, channels, the systems the PIM must connect to, and whether you need domains beyond product data.
- Check the license against your situation. Revenue against the POCL threshold, distribution plans against GPLv3 or OSL-3.0.
- Install each candidate or ask for a sandbox. Model one real product family with all its variants.
- Import a real supplier file and export to one channel. Use the API you would use in production (REST or GraphQL), not a demo connector.
- Price five years. License or edition, modules, hosting, support, partner work and upgrades. Compare the result with SaaS alternatives.
The PIM Scan and how to select the right PIM cover the rest of the selection. For a two-way view with sources per row, see Akeneo vs Pimcore.
Related pages
- AtroPIM profile and AtroPIM alternatives
- Pimcore profile and Pimcore alternatives
- Akeneo profile and Akeneo alternatives
- On-premise versus SaaS
How we evaluated
We compared the three projects on license, edition model, what is free and what is paid, hosting, data model, API, stack and release activity. License facts come only from each project's LICENSE file on GitHub, its release or tag pages and its own pricing or editions pages, all opened on 3 November 2026. Capability cells come from the vendors' own documentation and READMEs. Where a vendor page did not state something, we wrote "not documented" or described it qualitatively, and the implementation effort row is our own assessment. Fit statements draw on our vendor profiles. We did not use any vendor's comparison page as a source for facts about another vendor.
PIMvendors is an independent PIM selection platform. We do not rank these three, and the order in the table is alphabetical.
Sources
- AtroPIM repository and LICENSE (GPLv3): github.com/atrocore/atropim, checked 3 November 2026
- AtroPIM tags: github.com/atrocore/atropim/tags, checked 3 November 2026
- AtroCore platform repository: github.com/atrocore/atrocore, checked 3 November 2026
- AtroPIM pricing: atropim.com/en/pricing, checked 3 November 2026
- Pimcore LICENSE.md (POCL), 2026.x branch: github.com/pimcore/pimcore/blob/2026.x/LICENSE.md, checked 3 November 2026
- Pimcore releases: github.com/pimcore/pimcore/releases, checked 3 November 2026
- Pimcore editions: docs.pimcore.com, Pimcore Editions, checked 3 November 2026
- Pimcore data objects: docs.pimcore.com, Objects, checked 3 November 2026
- Pimcore pricing: pimcore.com/en/pricing, checked 3 November 2026
- Pimcore on the move from GPLv3 to POCL: pimcore.com blog, published 29 April 2025
- Pimcore on Tenzing: pimcore.com blog, published 27 August 2026
- Akeneo pim-community-dev repository: github.com/akeneo/pim-community-dev, checked 3 November 2026
- Akeneo LICENCE.txt (OSL-3.0): pim-community-dev LICENCE.txt, checked 3 November 2026
- Akeneo CE releases: github.com/akeneo/pim-community-dev/releases, checked 3 November 2026
- Akeneo supported versions: help.akeneo.com, checked 3 November 2026
- Akeneo Community Edition: akeneo.com, checked 3 November 2026
- Akeneo packages: akeneo.com/compare-packages, checked 3 November 2026
- Akeneo products with variants: api.akeneo.com, checked 3 November 2026
- Open Software License 3.0: opensource.org, checked 3 November 2026
Frequently asked questions
Which open source PIM should I choose, AtroPIM, Pimcore or Akeneo Community Edition?
Choose AtroPIM for a GPLv3 product data hub whose data model you configure in the interface, with published module and support prices. Choose Pimcore when PIM is one part of a wider platform with MDM, DAM and CMS, and you can live with its own open-core license (POCL). Choose Akeneo Community Edition for a classic product-centric PIM under the OSL-3.0 license with community support only. All three assume developers, in house or at a partner.
Is Pimcore still open source?
Pimcore calls itself open core. Version 2024.4 was its last release under GPLv3. From version 2025.1 the core is licensed under the Pimcore Open Core License (POCL), which allows free production use for organizations with total global revenue up to €5 million a year, and for qualifying non-profit and educational organizations. Above that you need a paid edition.
Is Akeneo Community Edition discontinued?
Not according to Akeneo's own sources on 3 November 2026. The pim-community-dev repository published v2026.4 on 28 August 2026 and v2026.5 on 30 October 2026, and Akeneo's supported-versions page says the Community Edition is continuously supported. What ended is support for the paid on-premise and PaaS version 7, listed until 30 September 2026.
Which of the three has no revenue limit on the free version?
AtroPIM (GPLv3) and Akeneo Community Edition (OSL-3.0) carry no revenue or company-size threshold in their licenses. Pimcore's POCL limits free production use to organizations with total global revenue up to €5 million a year.
Can I get AtroPIM, Pimcore or Akeneo as SaaS instead of self-hosting?
Yes, but not always as the same product. AtroCore sells AtroPIM as a SaaS Edition from €400 a month. Pimcore sells a managed Enterprise PaaS on quote. Akeneo's SaaS is the Product Cloud, a commercial product sold in Growth, Advanced and Premium packages; the Community Edition itself is self-hosted only.
Which open source PIM is cheapest to run?
The license is the smallest part of the bill. Hosting, implementation, integrations, upgrades and the developers who know the system decide the total. Compare all three over three to five years with your own catalog, and use our PIM cost ranges and cost calculator for the non-license items.
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