OpenJDK Providers Comparison

As a follow-up on my previous post about changes to Oracle Java, I am providing a quick comparison of OpenJDK providers. The goal is to give you a rough idea of what to expect in terms of alternatives to Oracle JDK: LTS, pricing, features etc. The list is likely incomplete and some details might change over time. I will do my best to keep it up-to-date.

Provider	Free Builds from Source	Free Binary Distributions	Extended Updates*	Commercial Support
AdoptOpenJDK	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Azul	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
IBM	No	No	Yes	Yes
Mercurial	Yes	Yes	No	No
Oracle	No	Yes	No**	Yes
RedHat	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
SapMachine	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Amazon – Corretto	Yes	Yes	Yes	No

* By “Extended Updates” I mean Public Updates beyond the 6-month release lifecycle.

** Oracle provides extended updates (and support) to paying customers, i.e. Oracle JDK only

AdoptOpenJDK

website: https://adoptopenjdk.net

free binary distributions: HotSpot, Eclipse OpenJ9
build your own JDK from sources
LTS releases of Java 8 to at least September 2023
LTS releases of Java 11 to at least September 2022
no paid support, but binaries are well tested and TCK-compliant
support details

Azul

website: https://www.azul.com

free binary distributions: Zulu (certified OpenJDK builds)
commercial distribution with improved performance: Zing
commercial support of Java 8 and other legacy releases
LTS much longer than Oracle’s, see their roadmap for direct comparison

Pricing:

annual subscription based on the number of systems (virtual or physical servers)
standard: $13k+ for 25 systems, up to $280k+ (unlimited)
premium: $38k for 100 systems, up to $340k+ (unlimited)
pricing details

IBM

website: https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/jdk

paid support for Eclipse OpenJ9 releases provided by AdoptOpenJDK
IBM SDK: used with IBM products
LTS of Java 8 until September 2022
LTS of Java 11 until September 2022
support details
details about public updates (IBM SDK only)

Mercurial

website: https://hg.openjdk.java.net

repository used by OpenJDK contributors
binaries, source files and change history

Oracle

website: http://jdk.java.net

free binary distributions: Oracle OpenJDK
LTS releases of Java 8 to January 2019 (December 2020 for personal use)
no LTS releases of Java 11
support details

Pricing:

Oracle charges per named user or processor – see definitions in the detailed price list (PDF)
per named user: $2.5 for up to 999 users, $1.25 for up to 49.999 users
per processor: $25 for up to 99 items, $12.50 for up to 19.999 items

RedHat

website: https://developers.redhat.com/products/openjdk/overview

free binary distributions (OpenJDK)
build your own from sources
LTS of Java 8 until June 2023
LTS of Java 11 until October 2024
support details

SapMachine

website: https://sap.github.io/SapMachine

free binary distributions: SAP flavour of OpenJDK
build your own from sources
differences and additional features in comparison to OpenJDK
no exact dates for LTS, see their development process for more details

Amazon

website: https://aws.amazon.com/corretto

latest addition – announced on 14 Nov 2018
free binary distributions: Amazon Corretto
build your own from sources
LTS
- performance and security fixes every quarter at no-cost
- Java 8 until at least June 2023
- Java 11 until at least August 2024
in developer preview (as of time of this writing)

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