Verdict
A free, self-hosted GPLv3 DAM used by French public-sector, cultural and broadcast institutions with in-house technical staff, now being sunset by its vendor in favor of a paid successor, Phrasea.
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 enterprise DAM module within Adobe Experience Manager, for large organizations managing thousands to millions of brand assets across marketing channels.
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
Yes
Yes
No
No
Billed on
No licence fee; implementation and support services may be paid
Flat price per account — users are not a billing unit
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.
Self-hosted: no licence fee. Hosted: a user ceiling per tier
Deployment
On-premise
Cloud
Cloud, On-premise
Cloud, On-premise
Free plan
Yes
No
No
Yes
Free trial
No
Yes
No
No
Transparency index
90%
70%
Not checked
60%
Most common complaint
The product is mid-generation: Phrasea is announced to replace Phraseanet in 2026
Storage ceilings are modest next to enterprise platforms, so large video libraries outgrow the tiers quickly
Not checked
The free route is genuinely free of licence fees but moves hosting, upgrades and support onto you