What Is the Difference Between WordPress.com and WordPress.org?

WordPress.org is a self-hosted platform, it is a Content Management System (CMS). Started as a blogging platform it evolved into a powerful publishing platform. Now it is an open-source software available to anyone. It allows using plugins and custom themes while WordPress.com doesn’t.

WordPress.com is a blog hosting solution. It has some limitations. It uses open-source WordPress.org platform for the website it hosts. But it doesn’t allow using any custom themes or plugins without paying high rates. Mostly people use it at the beginnning and then migrate to WordPress.org when they need more functionality.

Despite they have the same name, WordPress.org and WordPress.com aren’t related.