What is the difference between Core Components, Foundation Components, and Edge Delivery Service Components?

[Khushwant_Singh]

AEM Forms supports 3 types of form components: Core Components, Foundation Components, and Edge Delivery Service Components? What is difference between these and when to use which components? 

[Pranay_M · Accepted solution]

Hi @Khushwant_Singh,

Please find below the details.

1. Core Components for Adaptive Forms

• What they are:
  Core Components are the modern, extensible, and open-source set of form components built on the AEM Sites Core Components framework. Adobe has been actively investing in them since AEM 6.5 SP15 and AEM as a Cloud Service.

• Key features:

  • Clean, modern codebase (HTL/Sling models, no legacy JSPs).

  • Standardized across AEM Sites and Forms.

  • Easy to customize and extend (less technical debt).

  • Accessible, responsive, and aligned with industry standards.

  • Recommended for new Adaptive Forms.

• When to use: Use Core Components whenever you are building new Adaptive Forms or migrating existing forms to a modern foundation. They are the future-proof choice.

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2. Foundation Components

• What they are:
  The original set of Adaptive Form components (pre-Core era). They have been around since the early days of AEM Forms (JSP-based, heavier, and not aligned with Sites Core Components).

• Key features:

  • Full feature coverage (some capabilities still only exist here).

  • Stable and widely used in existing customer implementations.

  • Not actively enhanced — maintenance mode only.

  • More complex to customize compared to Core Components.

• When to use: Use Foundation Components if:

  • You have existing Adaptive Forms built on them and want to continue maintaining rather than re-developing.

  • You need features that are not yet fully available in Core Components.

Long-term strategy: Plan to migrate to Core Components because Foundation is legacy.

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3. Edge Delivery Service (EDS) Form Components

• What they are:
  A new generation of form components for Edge Delivery Service (part of Adobe’s new headless, edge-first architecture). These components allow you to author and deliver forms with extreme performance and scale, optimized for low-latency, global delivery.

• Key features:

  • Built for Edge Delivery Service (not traditional AEM publish).

  • Very lightweight and fast — ideal for high-traffic, global sites.

  • Authorable using familiar document-based workflows (Docs/Sheets → Edge Delivery).

  • Currently focused on simpler form use cases (contact forms, lead-gen forms, surveys).

• When to use: Use Edge Delivery Service Components if:

  • You are building high-performance forms on Edge Delivery Sites.

  • You want maximum speed and scale with minimal AEM overhead.

  • Use cases are lightweight data capture (not deep transactional workflows yet).

Thanks