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ADempiere
Community-run open source ERP forked from Compiere, with no vendor behind it
As of 31 August 2026, ADempiere is free to use. A GPL ERP and CRM suite maintained by volunteers since a 2006 fork from Compiere. Softwr lists it under ERP. ADempiere is made by ADempiere community project, available on Web, Windows, macOS, Linux.
Overview
What ADempiere does
ADempiere is an open source ERP, CRM and supply chain suite covering general ledger, receivables and payables, inventory, purchasing, sales orders, manufacturing and a point of sale. It was forked from Compiere in 2006 after the community split from Compiere Inc over commercial direction, and it inherits Compieres data-dictionary architecture, in which the application model is stored as data so screens, fields and workflows can be changed without recompiling. That architecture is genuinely unusual and is the reason people still deploy it. The honest state of the project is the fact a buyer needs. There is no vendor. Development happens on GitHub under the adempiere organisation, with modern components such as a gRPC API layer, a Kafka connector and a Vue-based UI receiving commits through 2026, but the last conventional stable release, 3.9.4, dates from January 2023, and the historic documentation site adempiere.net does not resolve. Meanwhile iDempiere, a later fork of the same codebase onto OSGi, has attracted much of the developer activity. Choosing ADempiere over iDempiere in 2026 is a decision you should make deliberately rather than by finding ADempiere first. Buyers are firms with in-house Java and PostgreSQL capability, or with a local implementation partner, most commonly in Latin America and parts of Asia where an ADempiere consulting community persists. There is no licence fee and no support contract from a vendor, so the cost is entirely people: an implementation partner, a developer who can read the data dictionary, and someone to own upgrades indefinitely. If you cannot staff that, this is not a saving, it is a liability.
What people use it 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
Related searches
The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about 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.
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of ADempiere
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
- ADempierevsOdoo
Odoo: If you want open source foundations plus a commercial edition with support and a large partner network
- ADempierevsMetasfresh
Metasfresh: If you want a maintained descendant of the same Compiere lineage with a company behind it
Pricing
What ADempiere costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Community edition
Free
- GPL v2 licensed, no licence fee
- Full ERP, CRM, supply chain and POS modules
- Self-hosted on your own infrastructure
- Support only from the community or a paid implementation partner
- No vendor SLA and no commercial edition
Capabilities
Features
Application dictionary
Screens, fields, validation and workflows defined as data, changeable without recompiling the application
Financial accounting
Multi-organisation, multi-currency general ledger with accounting schemas per entity
Order to cash and procure to pay
Sales orders, invoices, purchase orders and matched receipts
Inventory and warehouse
Multi-warehouse stock, attribute sets, lot and serial tracking
Manufacturing
Bills of material, routings and production orders via the libero manufacturing module
Point of sale
Retail POS module included in the core distribution
Workflow engine
Document approval routing configured rather than coded
Java and PostgreSQL stack
Runs on standard open infrastructure with no proprietary runtime
gRPC and REST services
Newer API layers for integrating the ERP with modern front ends
Multi-tenant client model
Several legal entities in one installation with separated data
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Keep looking
Where to go from ADempiere
- ADempiere alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- ADempiere pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- ADempiere badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All ERP softwareThe full category
- Best ERP softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best ERP software for
Compare ADempiere with
- Metasfresh
- Odoo
- Dolibarr
- Tryton
- iDempiere
- Apache OFBiz
- Axelor
- QAD Adaptive ERP
- SYSPRO
- DEAR Systems
- Fishbowl
- NetSuite
- Sage X3
- Aptean
- Apache OFBiz
- QAD
- SYSPRO
- QAD Adaptive ERP
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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for ADempiere, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
More on ADempiere
ADempiere alternatives
What people switch to, and what they give up
ADempiere pricing
Every tier, and where the cost actually lands
Compare ADempiere
Put it head to head with anything we hold
ADempiere badge
Its rating, and an embed for your own site
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quote
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