Engine Support & Differences

ColdBox engine support — BoxLang vs Adobe ColdFusion vs Lucee, feature differences, and runtime notes.

ColdBox runs on three engines. BoxLang is the recommended runtime — it's developed by the same team as ColdBox and gets every feature first.

BoxLang 1+

Adobe CF 2023+

Lucee 5+

Status

✅ First-class

✅ Supported

Language

BoxLang (.bx/.bxm) + CFML

CFML

ColdBox pre-compiled edition (bx-coldbox)

✅

—

BoxLang Prime (native CacheBox/LogBox/WireBox)

✅

—

AI features (bx-ai, toAi(), toMCP(), toAiGateway())

✅

—

Server-Sent Events (event.sse(), toSSE())

✅

—

cbMCP live introspection

✅

—

Virtual thread executors

✅

—

Desktop applications

✅

—

Full null support (enableNullSupport)

✅

⚠️ partial

🚀 Features marked BoxLang-only are tagged BoxLang Exclusive throughout these docs.

BoxLang Notes

Enable enableNullSupport in your Application.bx for full null handling — ColdBox 8.2+ runs cleanly with it on
Prefer bx-coldbox (box install bx-coldbox) for the pre-compiled, engine-installed edition
Use BoxLang classes and closures in application code: () => {} shorthand everywhere

Requires CF 2023 or newer; CF 2021 support was dropped in ColdBox 8
Some Java engine quirks require defensive guards ColdBox already applies; keep the engine patched
Async/parallel constructs are limited compared to BoxLang — ColdBox abstracts what it can

Lucee 5+ supported; Lucee 6/7 recommended
Same async caveats as Adobe — the abstractions work, native constructs are fewer