Appian’s trial and Community Edition terms are the public licences under which a person or organization can use the Appian Platform without buying a subscription. There are two. The Appian Cloud Trial is governed by the Appian Trial Edition Terms and Conditions, headed “Last revised July 8, 2020”, and the Community Edition by the Appian Community Edition License Agreement, which shows no revision date.[1][2] Both are accepted by ticking an “I ACCEPT” checkbox in the ordering process. Both are separate from the Cloud Subscription Agreement and Master On Premise Agreement that govern paid use.
Editions
Appian Cloud Trial
The trial agreement governs “the Appian Cloud subscription service, associated applications and documentation” accessed through the Appian Cloud Trial Site.[1] During the term, Appian grants a reasonable number of Users a non-transferable, nonexclusive licence to access the Service with a username and password over the internet, and the licences are provided for evaluation purposes only.[1] The agreement continues as long as the customer has access to the Service, and either party may terminate it with written notice.[1] The catalog rows are Appian Cloud Trial service and the programme Appian Cloud Trial.
Community Edition
The Community Edition is free. The agreement grants up to 15 Users a non-transferable, nonexclusive licence, without right of sublicense, to access the cloud-based elements of the Service and to install and use the locally installed elements of the RPA software (the Appian RPA integrated development environment and RPA Agents).[2] The licence may be used for internal business purposes, “which may include evaluation or production purposes”.[2] The Community Edition guide describes it as free and unlimited-time access to the Appian platform in a shared environment, with each member given a dedicated workspace, and says it allows learning, evaluation and limited development for production purposes within the licence parameters.[3] The catalog rows are Appian Community Edition and Appian Community Edition programme.
Metrics
Both agreements define a User as the individual, or for a corporate entity its employees, contractors or subcontractors, “to the extent having a user account” in the Service that allows authentication.[1][2] The catalog records this as User account (trial and Community Edition). The Community Edition guide adds a daily unit, Process instance per day (Community Edition): up to 250 process instances per day, where each execution of an Appian process model counts as one.[3] The licence agreement points to the guide for the numeric limits and says they can be updated by Appian from time to time.[2]
Counting and floors
Trial user accounts
The trial agreement allows only the User accounts “necessary to perform an evaluation of the Service”. Accounts may not be shared among individuals or used to give access to anyone other than the individual associated with the account.[1] The Community Edition agreement repeats the no-sharing rule.[2] The cap of 15 Users in the Community Edition is the only fixed numeric limit in the licence text itself.
Community Edition limits
The Community Edition guide lists the following allowances and restrictions, which the agreement incorporates by reference:[3]
| Item | Limit stated in the guide |
|---|---|
| Workspaces | One per Community user; no registration in more than one region |
| Deployments | One deployment per day from the app catalog |
| Synced record rows | 25,000 per record |
| RPA | One robot; unlimited robotic tasks; 50 robotic task executions per day |
| Process instances | 250 per day |
| AI skills | 30 document extractions and classifications and 30 email classifications per day; generative AI based skills disabled |
| Disk space | Up to 15 GB of allocated disk space, excluding base installation |
| Portals | Can be configured but cannot be published |
| Inactivity | A workspace inactive or underutilized for 28 days may be lost, with its objects and applications |
The agreement’s own schedule of restrictions adds that only one hosted environment is provided, so separate testing, development and production environments are not available; DevOps features, linking of multiple environments, import and export through Appian Designer and the Admin Console, external CI/CD tools and single sign-on through LDAP and SAML are disabled; and applications developed on a paid version or any other environment may not be imported.[2] The guide adds that the Admin Console is not available, so features such as creating users, API keys and service accounts, and deploying plug-ins, cannot be used.[3]
The rule on imports is the one most likely to matter to a licence manager. A Community Edition environment is a one-way route in: work can be created there and, according to the guide, carried into a paid production version on upgrade, but applications cannot be imported from a paid environment into the Community Edition.[2][3] The relevant rows are Applications from a paid environment may not be imported into Community Edition and Community Edition provides one hosted environment only.
Use restrictions
Evaluation and production
The trial agreement says the licences are for evaluation purposes only: the Service may not be used in a production environment, and the Data may not be customer data. Uploading sensitive, confidential, personally identifiable or protected health information, personal data under GDPR, payment card information or other regulated information is prohibited, and any such upload is a material breach.[1] The Community Edition is different: production use is allowed within the limits, but data restrictions remain, since the agreement prohibits uploading protected health information or payment card information.[2]
Competitors and identity
Both agreements restrict competitors. The trial terms say the customer may not use the Appian Cloud Trial Site or the Service “if it is a competitor of Appian or to provide information about the Service to a competitor of Appian”, and that neither the customer nor its users may mask their identity when using the Service.[1] The Community Edition agreement has the same two prohibitions, phrased in the first person.[2] The rows are Competitors may not use the trial and users may not mask their identity and the case article Appian v. Pegasystems describes litigation in which Appian alleged that a competitor had obtained access to its platform under false identities.
Other restrictions
Both agreements forbid reverse engineering, operating the Service for third parties or on a service-bureau basis, and modifying, copying or creating derivatives. Both bar use where failure could lead to death, personal injury or severe physical or environmental damage.[1][2] Appian owns all feedback that Community Edition users provide, even if designated confidential.[2] In both agreements the Service is provided “as is”, Appian excludes liability for direct and consequential damages, and the customer indemnifies Appian against third-party claims that the Data infringes rights.[1][2]
Governing law and disputes
The trial agreement is governed by the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia, and disputes are resolved in the courts having original jurisdiction over Fairfax County, Virginia.[1] The Community Edition agreement sets the law and forum by the user’s location. In the United States, Canada and Latin America it applies Virginia law with arbitration in Fairfax County under the Rules of the American Arbitration Association; in Europe, the Middle East and Africa it applies the law of England and Wales with arbitration in London under the International Centre for Dispute Resolution rules; in Australia, New Zealand and East or Southeast Asia it applies the law of New South Wales with arbitration in Sydney under the ACICA rules.[2]
Virtualization and cloud
The Community Edition RPA software may be used only on one of the customer’s local or virtual computers, and processing is limited to the number of robotic processes per day stated in the guide.[2] The cloud elements of both services are hosted by Appian, so no bring-your-own-licence rules apply to them.
Programs and upgrade
The guide says Community Edition offers a path to a full version of the platform, including the ability to keep what was built when upgrading to a paid production version, and that restrictions are removed on upgrade.[3] The paid tiers are described in Appian Platform tiers and user licensing. Their pricing basis is per user, per month, per app.[4] The guide also lists Appian Cloud services that need Appian Solution Engineering and are therefore not included in Community Edition, such as custom domains, custom email servers, VPN tunnel configuration and the MyAppian console, and it states that the Community Edition is provided as is with no guaranteed uptime or service level agreement.[3]
Out of scope
This article does not cover paid subscriptions, the Cloud Subscription Agreement, the Master On Premise Agreement or order forms. It does not cover the Case Management Studio trial offered inside the Community Edition trial environment beyond noting that the guide describes a free 28-day trial of it.[3] Limits quoted from the Community Edition guide may have changed since 2026-10-07.