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Introducing Nexus Repository Community Edition: Enhanced features for growing teams

Introducing Nexus Repository Community Edition: Enhanced features for growing teams
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Over the past decade, Nexus Repository has evolved from a simple accelerator for small development teams into an essential foundation for some of the world's most complex software ecosystems. Our goal has always been to support this diversity of users — from open-source enthusiasts and boutique consultancies to global enterprises running mission-critical workloads. However, in recent years, two realities have grown increasingly clear.

First, our reliance on multiple database backends has become unsustainable. OrientDB, which we historically used for enterprise-scale deployments, is no longer supported by its vendor. Meanwhile, the H2 database — wonderful for small teams — cannot reliably meet the heavy traffic demands of enterprise-level usage.

We needed to refine our architectural approach to maintain world-class reliability, security, and scalability. Over the last several years, we have developed and hardened a PostgreSQL integration, primarily for our enterprise customers. This modernized persistence layer has proven itself robust, future-proof, and well-suited for container-based deployments such as Kubernetes. It made sense to consolidate our efforts around PostgreSQL rather than continue maintaining multiple aging database options.

Second, we realized that many un-supported heavy users of the free version encounter operational risks. By the time they seek our help, their repositories are already overwhelmed, or their self-managed support strategies are struggling to keep pace with business-critical needs. We want to assist these users proactively before small concerns escalate into major crises. This means providing a support structure that matches their scale and features to ensure their success.

With these issues in mind, we are making a significant yet ultimately beneficial change to our product lineup. We will introduce a new tier, Nexus Repository Community Edition, which will include free access to our PostgreSQL persistence option. This addresses a key challenge for mid-sized teams and small organizations that have outgrown H2 but aren't yet at an enterprise usage level. 

Community Edition will also include support for Cargo (Rust), Conan V2, Composer (PHP), and Hugging Face repositories — formats that were previously available only to paying customers. By folding these and future formats into a free tier, we aim to empower a broad user base to run Nexus Repository in modern environments (such as Kubernetes).

To maintain the quality, stability, and ongoing evolution of Nexus Repository, however, we will be introducing usage limits for Community Edition. These limits target only the largest-scale operations — teams handling more than 200,000 requests or 100,000 components. We chose these limits as they affect only the largest 5% of instances. Above those thresholds, we will ask users to upgrade to our Pro tier, which includes advanced enterprise features like high availability, replication, single sign-on, cleanup policies, and (most importantly) immediate access to our trained support and engineering teams. We believe this model not only helps us provide a sustainable service for everyone but also ensures that mission-critical systems are proactively cared for, reducing the risk of last-minute firefighting.

It's important to note that our open source EPL core (OSS) is not and has not changed. You can still benefit from the exact same core functionality and formats (apt, Maven, raw) that have been available for more than a decade. Most free users will likely transition to the more feature-rich Community Edition, but those who prefer to use the OSS tier are welcome to do so. We simply want to provide a clear path to additional capabilities and a greater degree of reliability for those seeking it.

We understand that change can be unsettling, particularly when it touches on how you store and manage your components. That's why we're offering a 45-day grace period after you upgrade, giving you time to understand your usage data (already visible in Nexus Repository) and decide whether Community Edition or Pro is the right choice. Our goal is to ensure a smooth transition for everyone, large and small alike.

In the end, these updates allow us to focus our resources on delivering a secure, modern, and future-facing repository solution that caters to teams at every stage of growth. We're excited to offer more valuable features in the free Community Edition tier, eliminate outdated database dependencies, and provide a clearer, more direct support model for our largest customers. Above all, we remain committed to making Nexus Repository the most reliable, flexible, and community-friendly platform for software innovation.

If you have any questions about these changes or need help navigating your options, our team is here to support you. Thank you for continuing to be part of the Nexus community — we're grateful for your trust, and we look forward to powering your software development efforts for years to come.

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Written by Brian Fox

Brian Fox, CTO and co-founder of Sonatype, is a Governing Board Member for the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF), a Governing Board Member for the Fintech Open Source Foundation (FINOS), a member of the Monetary Authority of Singapore Cyber and Technology Resilience Experts (CTREX) Panel, a ...