A neutral comparison of eight OpenJDK distributions for production use: upstream OpenJDK, Eclipse Temurin, Liberica JDK, Azul Zulu, Amazon Corretto, IBM Semeru, Red Hat OpenJDK, SapMachine, and Microsoft Build of OpenJDK. All share the same codebase and TCK verification, but differ in support ownership, lifecycle length, platform alignment, and additional tooling. Platform-aligned teams (AWS, RHEL, SAP, IBM, Azure) have a natural default. For teams without platform constraints, BellSoft and Azul stand out as Java-focused vendors with longer support windows and deeper toolchains. Temurin remains viable where community governance and third-party support are acceptable.
Table of contents
TLDRIntroOpenJDKEclipse TemurinLiberica JDKAzul ZuluAmazon CorrettoIBM Semeru RuntimesRed Hat OpenJDKSapMachineMicrosoft Build of OpenJDKMaking the CallSort: