Verdict
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A team file library billed as a flat monthly fee with unlimited users, aimed at organisations where most people only need to download an approved file a few times a month.
An open-licence, self-hosted DAM for teams with in-house server admin capability, trading a free licence for the time to run upgrades, tune dependencies and troubleshoot it themselves.
Price published
No
No
Yes
No
Billed on
Cloud service: billed by storage capacity (GB) plus which optional modules you select; user accounts are unlimited/uncapped. No public price list — pricing is obtained via a configurator/calculator or by requesting a quote. On-premise/hosted deployments use Free, Standard, and Enterprise license editions (feature-gated), also quote-only. A non-commercial Free Edition exists with no disclosed price.
No public price list; sales quote required for both packages (Prime and Ultimate). Adobe's own on-premise product description sheet lists separate license metrics per component — AEM Assets itself is licensed 'Per Instance', 'Users' are licensed 'Per User', Brand Portal is licensed 'Per Brand Portal User', and Dynamic Media/Personalized Media are licensed by 'Page Views per month' — so billing is multi-metric and only available via custom quote, not a single flat per-user or per-GB rate.
Flat price per account — users are not a billing unit
Self-hosted: no licence fee. Hosted: a user ceiling per tier
Deployment
Cloud, On-premise
Cloud, On-premise
Cloud
Cloud, On-premise
Free plan
No
No
No
Yes
Free trial
No
No
Yes
No
Transparency index
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70%
60%
Most common complaint
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Storage ceilings are modest next to enterprise platforms, so large video libraries outgrow the tiers quickly
The free route is genuinely free of licence fees but moves hosting, upgrades and support onto you