Amazon Corretto

Definition

Amazon Corretto is a free, production-ready distribution of OpenJDK built and supported by Amazon Web Services, providing long-term support for critical security patches and performance updates. It is used internally to run many of Amazon's own Java-based services and is offered publicly as a no-cost, multi-platform JDK for anyone running Java applications, whether on AWS or elsewhere, with no license fee attached to production use.

Overview

Amazon Corretto was created so that Amazon could standardize the Java runtime powering its own vast internal service fleet on a build it controlled and patched itself, rather than depending on a third party's release cadence for the security fixes and performance tuning that matter at Amazon's operational scale. AWS then made that same distribution freely available to the public, positioning it as a no-cost alternative to Oracle's commercially licensed JDK for organizations that want long-term support without a paid contract. Like other OpenJDK distributions, Corretto is built from the same upstream OpenJDK source code, compiled and tested by AWS across Linux, Windows, and macOS on both x86 and ARM processors, including Amazon's own Graviton ARM-based server chips. AWS backports performance and security patches to Corretto's long-term support versions on its own schedule, aligned with the requirements of running Java at the scale of Amazon's internal infrastructure, and publishes the resulting binaries under an open-source license with no usage fees. Within the field of OpenJDK distributions, Corretto sits alongside Eclipse Temurin, Azul Zulu, BellSoft Liberica, and SapMachine as another build of the same underlying Java SE implementation, distinguished mainly by Amazon's backing, its close integration and testing with AWS services, and its free long-term support commitment. It differs from Oracle's own JDK primarily in licensing: Corretto carries no commercial license fee, whereas certain Oracle JDK usage scenarios historically required a paid subscription. In practice, Corretto is a common default JDK choice for Java workloads running on AWS, including Lambda functions, Elastic Beanstalk applications, and EC2-hosted services, since it is tested and tuned specifically against AWS infrastructure, but it is fully usable outside AWS as a general-purpose, no-cost OpenJDK distribution for any Java application. The main consideration for adopters outside the AWS ecosystem is that Corretto's roadmap and patch priorities are driven by Amazon's own operational needs, which generally align well with mainstream Java usage but mean support commitments and version availability follow AWS's schedule rather than an independent standards body, a trade-off shared by every vendor-backed OpenJDK distribution rather than one unique to Corretto. Teams should also weigh how closely their own workloads resemble Amazon's internal usage patterns, since a distribution's testing emphasis naturally reflects the environments its maintainer runs it in most heavily, and unusual deployment targets outside that emphasis may see comparatively less validation before a given release ships. This does not typically translate into a meaningful reliability gap for common server and cloud workloads, but it is a reasonable factor for teams running Java in genuinely unusual configurations to weigh before standardizing.

Key Features

• Built and maintained by Amazon Web Services from OpenJDK source
• Provides free long-term support with no commercial licensing fee
• Tested across Linux, Windows, and macOS on x86 and ARM architectures
• Optimized and validated for AWS's Graviton ARM-based processors
• Runs many of Amazon's own internal Java-based production services
• Offered as a drop-in alternative to commercially licensed Oracle JDK
• Integrated with AWS services such as Lambda and Elastic Beanstalk
• Distributed under an open-source license for use anywhere

Use Cases

Alternatives

Frequently Asked Questions

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