RISE with SAP and GROW with SAP explained

Written by an SAP Finance & Treasury practitioner working with SAP since 2008 · how the guides are written · Updated 10 October 2026

RISE with SAP and GROW with SAP are SAP's two ERP subscription bundles: one contract for the software, its cloud infrastructure, the operations behind it and BTP credits. RISE mostly moves existing customers to SAP Cloud ERP Private (SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition); GROW brings new, mostly midsize companies onto SAP Cloud ERP (SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition).

What did SAP rename the cloud ERP editions?

Since 2025 SAP has marketed its two cloud ERP offerings under new names. SAP Cloud ERP is built on SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, the multi-tenant system GROW is built around; SAP Cloud ERP Private is built on SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition, the dedicated system most RISE contracts carry. The application names have not gone away — release notes, documentation, contracts and job adverts still use them — so expect to hear "Cloud ERP Private", "S/4HANA private cloud" and "RISE" for what is, on a project, the same system. Searching for roles, use both sets of names.

What is inside the bundles?

The mechanism is the same in both: instead of buying a perpetual licence and arranging hosting, hardware and system operations separately, the customer signs one subscription with SAP that includes several layers.

• The ERP itself — in SAP Cloud ERP Private under RISE, where the customer keeps a dedicated system, its own upgrade timing within limits and more room for custom code; in SAP Cloud ERP under GROW, where the system is multi-tenant, upgraded on SAP's cadence and extended only through clean-core mechanisms.
• The infrastructure — the underlying cloud is provided through one of the large hyperscalers, with SAP holding the contract rather than the customer holding it directly. Under RISE the customer chooses the hyperscaler and the region for its dedicated system; under GROW the public edition runs on infrastructure SAP operates, and that choice is not the customer's to make.
• Operations as a service — the technical running of the system: installation, patching, backup, monitoring, system copies, availability commitments. What an in-house Basis team or a hosting partner used to do becomes part of what SAP delivers.
• Platform credits — an allowance for BTP services, so that extensions, integration and analytics can be built beside the core rather than inside it.
• Tools and enablement — process-analysis and migration tooling under RISE; adoption services, learning content and preconfigured processes under GROW, which is built around the idea that a new adopter starts from the standard and stays close to it.

How do RISE and GROW differ?

By who they are for, and therefore by how much of the old system comes along. RISE is open to new customers too, but its typical buyer has a long-lived installation, custom code and integrations that must survive the move — SAP markets it explicitly as the route off ECC (SAP's ECC migration page); SAP Cloud ERP Private exists to make that survivable, and a RISE project is often a conversion of the kind the platform-shift guide describes, with cloud operations added. GROW assumes there is nothing to bring along, or nothing worth bringing; SAP Cloud ERP exists to get a company live on standard processes quickly, and a GROW project is a fit-to-standard implementation from the first workshop (SAP's GROW page). The two editions also differ in freedom: private cloud tolerates more custom code and more control over timing; public cloud offers less freedom and in exchange removes most of the upgrade burden.

What is GROW with SAP premium?

GROW with SAP is sold in editions. Since July 2024 the premium edition has included access to SAP Sales Cloud and SAP Concur Expense on top of the public cloud ERP and the rest of the bundle (SAP News Center, 15 July 2024). Beside the editions SAP sells add-on packages for GROW, announced in April 2024: a Digital Banking package for bank connectivity, an Advanced Treasury and Risk Management package, an Advanced Compliance Automation package built on SAP Document and Reporting Compliance and SAP Risk and Assurance Management, and a Core HR add-on that brings in SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central (SAP News Center, 16 April 2024).

For a consultant the edition and the packages set the scope before the first workshop: a premium customer has sales and expense processes to fit to standard as well as finance and logistics, and each add-on brings its own specialist onto the team. What an edition contains changes with SAP's price list, so read the customer's order form, not a summary. As of October 2026 these are the latest announcements on SAP's News Center.

What do the bundles change for consultants?

• Project shapes. More conversions-to-private-cloud and more public-cloud greenfields; fewer on-premise builds. Both follow the Activate methodology closely, because the bundles are sold with it, and public-cloud projects in particular run on fit-to-standard rather than open-ended design.
• Partner roles. The implementation partner still does the functional design, configuration, data migration, testing and change management; SAP holds the operational contract and the system. That splits responsibilities that used to sit with one integrator, and adds a new kind of work — managing the boundary between the partner, the customer and SAP's operations team.
• Cloud operations. The Basis role moves from doing the operations to governing them: raising requests, reviewing what SAP did, owning the landscape design, the integration connectivity and the platform accounts that remain the customer's. Service management skills matter more; hands-on server work matters less.
• Extension discipline.Clean core stops being advice and becomes a contract term, especially in public cloud. Developers who know the released-API rules and the platform side get the work; modification-first habits do not.
• Commercial literacy. Consultants close to the sale — architects, engagement managers, presales — need to understand what is and is not in the subscription, because a great deal of scoping friction on these projects comes from the customer assuming the bundle covers something it does not.

What do the bundles not change?

The business processes. A company still has to decide how it sells, buys, makes, pays and closes its books, and someone still has to turn those decisions into configuration, migrate the data, test the result and teach people to use it. The functional consultant's week is recognisably the same under RISE, under GROW and on a classic installation; the difference is how much of the design is negotiated against a standard that cannot be changed. Integration still has to be built, master data still has to be governed, authorisations still have to be designed, and the employer map is the same set of integrators, boutiques, in-house teams and freelancers — with SAP's own services organisation somewhat more present than before.

How should you position for it?

Learn the vocabulary, because interviews and project kick-offs use it: which edition, which hyperscaler, what is in the subscription, where the platform credits go. Then position by track. Functional people gain from real fit-to-standard experience, which public-cloud projects supply in abundance. Technical people gain from clean-core extension work and from the platform. Basis people gain from moving toward landscape governance and cloud connectivity, which the Basis interview questions on cloud operations now probe. Whichever track, name the edition on every project you list — public or private, greenfield or conversion — because the two produce different experience and staffing managers filter on the difference.