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ERP · head to head

ADempiere vs Litmus Edge

ADempiere logo

ADempiere

ERP

Community-run open source ERP forked from Compiere, with no vendor behind it

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Litmus Edge logo

Litmus Edge

Manufacturing

Industrial edge platform that collects, normalises and forwards OT data to cloud and enterprise systems

From
$1500/month
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Only ADempiere has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
  • Each has a real cost: ADempiere there is no company behind it, so there is no support contract to buy, no SLA, no escalation path and no roadmap commitment; if your implementation partner leaves the market you own the problem entirely.; Litmus Edge pricing is by site and data point, so a large tag count at one plant can cost more than a modest tag count spread over several, which is the opposite of how most manufacturers plan a rollout.
  • They diverge on capability: ADempiere covers Application dictionary, Litmus Edge covers Prebuilt driver library.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 1 September 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which ADempiere and Litmus Edge actually diverge.

Attributes where ADempiere and Litmus Edge differ
AttributeADempiereLitmus Edge
Starting priceFree$1500/month
Pricing modelOpen source, no licence feePer site by data point count
Free tierYesNo
PlatformsWeb, Windows, macOS, Linux, Self-hostedLinux, Docker, Kubernetes, Cloud, On-premise
CategoryERPManufacturing

Identical on both: user rating (Not yet rated).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in ADempiere

  • Application dictionary
  • Financial accounting
  • Order to cash and procure to pay
  • Inventory and warehouse
  • Manufacturing
  • Point of sale
  • Workflow engine
  • Java and PostgreSQL stack

Only in Litmus Edge

  • Prebuilt driver library
  • Unified data model
  • Litmus Edge Manager
  • Edge applications
  • Store and forward
  • Cloud and broker outputs

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

ADempiere

  • A manufacturer in Latin America with an existing ADempiere consulting partner that needs localised tax and accounting behaviour a global vendor will not buildnot Litmus Edge
  • A company that wants to modify ERP screens and document workflows without a vendor change request, using the application dictionary rather than codenot Litmus Edge
  • An organisation with a hard requirement to keep financial data on its own servers under its own control with no cloud dependencynot Litmus Edge
  • A systems integrator building a vertical ERP product on a permissive base it can fork and ship without paying a licence feenot Litmus Edge

Litmus Edge

  • A manufacturer with twenty plants and five PLC brands that needs one data acquisition standard rather than twenty bespoke integrationsnot ADempiere
  • Feeding a cloud data warehouse or lakehouse with normalised production data without asking the controls team to write cloud connectorsnot ADempiere
  • Retrofitting data collection onto old CNC machines and robots where the protocol support is the hard part, not the analyticsnot ADempiere
  • Adding local buffering and computation at sites with unreliable WAN links so cloud outages do not create gaps in production historynot ADempiere

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

ADempiere

  • There is no company behind it, so there is no support contract to buy, no SLA, no escalation path and no roadmap commitment; if your implementation partner leaves the market you own the problem entirely.
  • The official website adempiere.net does not resolve, which strands most of the historic documentation and tutorials that search engines still point at and makes onboarding a new developer considerably harder.
  • The last conventional stable release, 3.9.4, is from January 2023, so despite ongoing GitHub activity a buyer evaluating on release cadence sees a project moving slowly.
  • iDempiere, a later fork of the same codebase, absorbed much of the developer community, so ADempiere competes for contributors with its own descendant and is the smaller of the two ecosystems.
  • The interface and the Java Swing heritage feel dated, and staff coming from a modern cloud ERP will need training and will complain; expect resistance from finance and warehouse users during rollout.

Litmus Edge

  • Pricing is by site and data point, so a large tag count at one plant can cost more than a modest tag count spread over several, which is the opposite of how most manufacturers plan a rollout.
  • The entry package sits around $1,500 per month, an awkward number for a single-site pilot given that the product is infrastructure with no visible output of its own until something downstream consumes it.
  • Litmus does no analytics, so the business case always depends on a second purchase; the platform on its own produces no result a plant manager can see.
  • Full pricing beyond the entry tier is not published and the Growth and Scale packages are quoted, so scaling costs are unknown at the point you commit to the architecture.
  • A capable controls team can approximate a single-site deployment with an open-source broker and a driver gateway for a fraction of the cost, so the value case depends entirely on how many sites you are managing centrally.

Pricing, plan by plan

ADempiere

Free
  • Community editionFree
    • GPL v2 licensed, no licence fee
    • Full ERP, CRM, supply chain and POS modules
    • Self-hosted on your own infrastructure

Litmus Edge

$1500/month
  • Foundation$1500/month
    • Entry package sized by site count and data points
    • Core driver library and edge runtime
    • Store and forward to cloud and brokers
  • Growth$undefined/month
    • Larger site and data point allowance
    • Litmus Edge Manager fleet management
    • Priced on application
  • Scale$undefined/month
    • Enterprise multi-site deployment
    • Higher data point ceilings and support tier
    • Priced on application

Which should you pick?

Choose ADempiere if

  • You need application dictionary.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Web, Windows, macOS, Linux, Self-hosted.
  • You also want financial accounting.
ADempiere review

Choose Litmus Edge if

  • You need prebuilt driver library.
  • You work on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Cloud, On-premise.
  • You also want unified data model.
Litmus Edge review

Questions people ask

Is ADempiere or Litmus Edge better?
Neither clearly leads. ADempiere starts at Free and Litmus Edge at $1500/month, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, ADempiere or Litmus Edge?
ADempiere has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at Free for ADempiere and $1500/month for Litmus Edge.
Does ADempiere or Litmus Edge run on more platforms?
ADempiere runs on Web, Windows, macOS, Linux, Self-hosted. Litmus Edge runs on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Cloud, On-premise.
Can I use ADempiere for free?
Yes. ADempiere has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Litmus Edge starts at $1500/month.
What is ADempiere best used for?
ADempiere is most often used for a manufacturer in latin america with an existing adempiere consulting partner that needs localised tax and accounting behaviour a global vendor will not build, a company that wants to modify erp screens and document workflows without a vendor change request, using the application dictionary rather than code, an organisation with a hard requirement to keep financial data on its own servers under its own control with no cloud dependency, a systems integrator building a vertical erp product on a permissive base it can fork and ship without paying a licence fee. Of those, a manufacturer in latin america with an existing adempiere consulting partner that needs localised tax and accounting behaviour a global vendor will not build and a company that wants to modify erp screens and document workflows without a vendor change request, using the application dictionary rather than code are not what Litmus Edge is typically brought in for.
What can ADempiere do that Litmus Edge cannot?
ADempiere covers Application dictionary, Financial accounting, Order to cash and procure to pay, Inventory and warehouse. Litmus Edge covers Prebuilt driver library, Unified data model, Litmus Edge Manager, Edge applications.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

ADempiere: Should I choose ADempiere or iDempiere?

Look at iDempiere first. It is a later fork of the same codebase with a more active community and a modular OSGi architecture. Choose ADempiere if a specific partner or localisation you need only exists there.

Litmus Edge: Does Litmus Edge do analytics or dashboards?

Only lightweight edge computation and basic visualisation. It is a data acquisition and normalisation layer; the analysis happens in whatever you send the data to.

ADempiere: Is ADempiere free?

The software is GPL licensed with no licence fee. The cost is implementation, customisation and permanent in-house maintenance, which for a real deployment is substantial.

Litmus Edge: How is it priced?

By number of sites and number of data points, in packages. The entry package starts around $1,500 per month; larger tiers are quoted.

ADempiere: Is the project still alive?

Development continues on GitHub with commits into 2026, but the official website is down and the last stable release is from January 2023. Treat it as maintained rather than actively advancing.

Litmus Edge: Can it replace my historian?

No. It buffers and forwards but is not a long-term historian. Most deployments send data into a historian, warehouse or lakehouse.

ADempiere: What is the application dictionary?

It is the metadata layer inherited from Compiere that stores the definition of every window, field and validation rule as data, so you can change the application without touching source code.

Litmus Edge: Does it need Litmus hardware?

No. It runs on standard industrial PCs, virtual machines or containers; there is no proprietary appliance requirement.

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