ASP.NET Zero is a base solution for building multi-tenant web applications on the .NET Platform.

It provides common application requirements of a multi-tenant application in the form of pre-built functionalities in a Visual Studio solution.

ASP.NET Boilerplate (ABP) is an open source web application framework. It provides a strong architectural model based on Domain Driven Design, with all the best practices in mind. It has extensive documentation.

ASP.NET Boilerplate (ABP) is at the heart of ASP.NET Zero framework and provides core functionality to ASP.NET Zero.

In the business context, ASP.NET Zero is a licensed , enterprise level production-ready SaaS application development framework that is used for creating Multi-tenant applications. Whereas, ASP.NET Boilerplate is an open source , base solution for web applications with a strong architectural model . Everything in ABP can be directly used in ASP.NET Zero. ABP works with the latest ASP.NET Core & EF Core but also supports ASP.NET MVC 5.x & EF 6.x as well.

ASP.NET Boilerplate provides free start-up templates to start building your applications.

ASP.NET Zero is a production-ready enterprise-level application base. Since ASP.NET Zero is built on top of ASP.NET Boilerplate, it provides following core functionality :

• Validation
• Unit Testing architecture
• Logging
• Exception handling
• Caching
• Application Services
• Dependency injection
• Data transfer objects (DTO’s)
• Unit Of Work
• API
• Repository pattern
• Based on SOLID principles
• Automatic audit/security logging
• Pre-configured to deploy as Docker containers
• Real time push notification system (with SignalR integration)
• Chat system (with SignalR integration)

Following table lists differences between ASP.NET Zero and ASP.NET Boilerplate.