RISE with SAP and GROW with SAP are SAP's two commercial packages for moving customers to S/4HANA Cloud, and confusion between them remains one of the most common questions from both customers and consultants. Broadly, GROW with SAP targets new, smaller, or less complex organizations adopting S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition for the first time, while RISE with SAP targets existing customers — typically those converting from ECC — who need a broader bundle including infrastructure, migration tooling, and business process transformation services. Both have evolved since their introduction, so here is where things stand.
1GROW with SAP: Built for Speed
GROW with SAP bundles S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition with SAP's preconfigured 'best practice' processes, guided implementation tooling, and a learning journey through SAP Learning. The intent is to get a net-new customer live in a matter of months rather than years, using standard processes with minimal customization.
The tradeoff is configurability: GROW is explicitly designed around the principle of adopting standard SAP processes rather than replicating existing custom workflows. Organizations that need significant deviation from standard processes typically find GROW too rigid and are steered toward RISE or a Private Edition path instead.
2RISE with SAP: Built for Conversion
RISE with SAP remains the primary path for existing ECC customers converting to S/4HANA. It bundles the S/4HANA Cloud subscription with infrastructure (hyperscaler compute, managed by SAP or a partner), business process intelligence tooling to analyze current-state processes, and a defined transformation methodology.
One of the more consequential changes over the past year is how SAP scopes 'included' versus 'additional cost' services within the RISE bundle — particularly around extended data volumes, sandbox systems, and business network access. Consultants scoping a RISE deal should not assume prior-year bundle inclusions still apply; the commercial packaging is revised regularly and needs to be re-verified against the current contract terms for each deal.
3Licensing: FUE Remains the Common Thread
Both RISE and GROW use the Full Use Equivalent (FUE) metric to calculate user-based licensing costs, aggregating Professional, Functional, and Productivity user types into a blended unit. This remains one of the most common sources of budgeting surprises during a deal, because FUE consumption is difficult to forecast accurately before go-live, particularly for organizations with highly variable user populations (seasonal staff, contractor-heavy teams, multiple business units with different usage patterns).
Practical advice for anyone involved in a business case: request a conservative FUE estimate from SAP or your partner, model at least one downside scenario where consumption runs 15–20% above forecast, and revisit the estimate after the business process discovery phase — not before it.
- GROW with SAP — best for net-new, standard-process adoption, faster time to value
- RISE with SAP — best for ECC conversions and organizations needing process transformation support
- Both rely on FUE licensing — forecast conservatively, not optimistically
- Bundle inclusions change frequently — always verify current contract terms, not last year's
4Where Private Edition Still Fits
Neither RISE nor GROW's public cloud model suits every organization. S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition remains available (and, per SAP's own recent messaging, is explicitly supported for the long term) for customers with heavy customization, industry-specific requirements, or regulatory constraints that the standard public cloud processes cannot accommodate.
The decision between these three paths is less about company size and more about process standardization tolerance: organizations willing to adopt standard processes move faster and cheaper on GROW or public-edition RISE; organizations that cannot standardize core processes need Private Edition, regardless of how much SAP's commercial messaging emphasizes the public cloud.
Key Takeaway
RISE and GROW are not simply 'the cloud version of SAP' — they are two distinct commercial and technical paths built for different starting points. Understanding which bundle fits which customer profile, and staying current on how the included services change from deal to deal, is now a core skill for anyone advising on an S/4HANA project, not just a sales consideration.