Bentley Systems licensing is the set of terms under which Bentley Systems sells its infrastructure engineering software: design applications such as MicroStation, OpenRoads Designer and OpenPlant Modeler, analysis applications such as STAAD.Pro and AutoPIPE, the ProjectWise and Bentley Infrastructure Cloud collaboration services, and SYNCHRO construction software. The base layer is a perpetual licence under the End User License Agreement (EULA). The EULA states that Bentley’s default licensing term is perpetual unless otherwise identified, and that each licence allows one copy for Production Use in the country where the software was first obtained.[1] Bentley publishes three commercial models on top of that base: Virtuoso, SELECT and Enterprise 365 (E365), with a public-sector variant of E365 called EPS-365.[6][11]
For a software asset manager the practical consequence is that the same MicroStation installation can be counted in four different ways. Under the bare EULA it is one licence per Device. Under SELECT it is a pooled licence measured as peak unique machines per Site, with overuse billed quarterly as term licences. Under E365 it is charged per unique user or machine per day. Under Virtuoso it is a named user. Which count applies depends on the customer’s program agreement, not on the product. For the general families see concurrent and device licensing, named user licensing and subscription and consumption licensing.
Editions
Bentley does not publish editions in the sense of one product sold at several tiers under one name. Its catalog is made of separate products and feature levels, some of which are sold in tiers on bentley.com. The three commercial models are compared on Bentley’s licensing page as follows.[6]
| Model | How access works (vendor description) | Billing | Deeper article |
|---|---|---|---|
| Virtuoso | Access “assigned to individual users”, auto-renewing annual subscription with training Keys | One 12-month upfront payment, no usage fees | Bentley CONNECT licensing and term licenses |
| SELECT | Shared access across users and locations, with admin usage monitoring and alerts | Perpetual licence plus annual SELECT; term licences for peaks | Bentley SELECT Program licensing |
| Enterprise 365 | Usage tracked at the account level across Bentley products | Billed quarterly for what is used, no contract end date | Bentley Enterprise 365 licensing |
Virtuoso subscriptions are priced per product on bentley.com. On retrieval the MicroStation page showed a 12-month Virtuoso subscription “Starting at” EUR 3,382.00, including one licence and two Keys for training or services. Keys “do not represent number of licenses”.[12] The displayed currency and price depend on the visitor’s country. The catalog records eleven such offers as SKUs without part numbers, for example the MicroStation Virtuoso subscription and the STAAD.Pro Virtuoso subscription. Bentley publishes no price list for SELECT or E365. E365 usage is priced from an Enterprise 365 Price List that the program terms reference but that is not public.[3]
Not every product can be used under every program. The Licensing Program Eligibility list, dated July 6th, 2026, marks each product for Pooled Licensing, No-Charge Licenses, Evaluation, Subscription Licensing, Visa, Portfolio Balancing, SELECT Open Access, the Enterprise License Subscription and an E365 Category. It states that without a specific designation of eligibility a product is not eligible.[5] MicroStation, OpenRoads Designer, OpenPlant Modeler and STAAD.Pro, for example, are eligible for pooling, Portfolio Balancing and SELECT Open Access and are E365 Category A.[5] Catalog proof: Products are ineligible for a program unless the eligibility list designates them.
Metrics
Bentley’s metrics come from four documents: the EULA, the SELECT Program Terms, the E365 Program Terms and the term licence guidance.
| Metric | Source | Unit counted |
|---|---|---|
| Device (Production Use) | EULA Article 1 | Each Device with a Production Use copy |
| User CAL, Device CAL | EULA Article 2 | Each User or Device accessing Server Software |
| Per Processor, Per Server | EULA Article 2 | Licensed processors, or all processors in one Server |
| External Connector | EULA Article 2 | One Server Software copy used by External Users |
| Pooled Usage | SELECT Program Terms §4.1 | Unique Devices using a Product per Site per interval |
| Term license peak usage | Term License Fact Sheet | Peak unique machines in any 10-minute interval in the quarter |
| CAL (Product Subscription License) | SELECT Program Terms §5.4 | Named Users accessing a Server Product in three months |
| E365 Category A to Category E | E365 Program Terms §4 | User or machine per day or quarter, fixed fee, processing units, peak storage |
| Practitioner License (Virtuoso) | Licensing and subscriptions page | Each assigned named user |
Counting / floors
Per Device by default. The SELECT Program Terms restate the base position: unless the agreement says otherwise, Bentley Products are licensed on a per Device basis as set out in the end user licence.[2] The EULA adds that multiplexing or pooling front ends do not reduce the number of licences required. The count equals the number of distinct inputs to the front end.[1] Catalog proof: One copy per licence for Production Use in the country first obtained; Multiplexing or pooling front ends do not reduce licences required.
Pooling and peaks under SELECT. SELECT coverage converts owned licences into a pool. Bentley measures the number of unique Devices using each Product per Site per interval, and the subscriber is entitled to that Pooled Usage up to its licensed copies at the Site.[2] Use above the owned count is Excess Use, invoiced quarterly as Term Licenses for the peak per Site and Product.[2] The Term License Fact Sheet sets the interval at ten minutes, measured in UTC.[7] A single ten-minute overlap in a quarter can therefore create a term licence charge. Catalog proof: Pooled Usage entitlement equals licences owned at each Site; Excess Use is invoiced as Term Licenses for the quarterly peak per Site and Product; First partial 10-minute interval of use is not counted.
Floors. SELECT and Virtuoso publish no minimum quantity. An E365 Order Form may set a Quarterly Floor that is charged when the quarter’s usage value is lower.[3] EPS-365 is sold for an annual fee paid in advance, adjusted only when usage moves by more than 10% and then by no more than 20%.[4] Catalog proof: E365 Quarterly Floor is charged when usage value is lower; EPS-365 fee adjustments trigger at 10% usage change and are capped at 20%.
Access is not blocked. Bentley’s licensing technology is designed to let users keep working above entitlement and bill for it afterwards. The Term License Fact Sheet says a SELECT licence allows the use of an unlimited number of licences for owned titles, and that Bentley chose “a license management technology model designed to ensure that our users can continue to use software under any circumstance”.[7] Licensing Configuration likewise states that all users have unrestricted access to licensing and recommends alerts that warn users they may incur term licence usage.[8] Catalog proof: SELECT users have unrestricted access; alerts warn before term licence usage.
Virtualization & partitioning
The program agreements allow Production Use in a Virtualized Environment, meaning a system that provides remote access to applications for one or more users. The subscriber must use SES so that each session started in the environment requires its own licence.[2] Only environments certified by Bentley keep warranty and support. The right to use products in a Virtualized Environment ends when the program agreement ends, even for perpetual licences.[2] There is no processor, core or host-based alternative for desktop products, and no hard or soft partitioning policy of the kind described in virtualization and partitioning. Server Software licensed Per Processor counts physical or virtual processors within the designated Server.[1] Catalog proof: Each session in a Virtualized Environment needs its own licence; Virtualized Environment rights end with the program agreement.
Cloud / BYOL
Bentley’s own hosted services are Cloud Offerings, defined as Bentley products and services made available to the subscriber and accessed by Users via the internet, under the Cloud Offering Terms of each program agreement. Use beyond the limits in the Offering Document may be invoiced as additional Cloud Offering Fees.[2] Availability and credits are set by a separate Service Level Agreement. The retrieved documents contain no bring-your-own-licence rule for running Bentley desktop software on a public cloud. Such deployments fall under the Virtualized Environment and Site rules above. A Site is bounded by a single Country, so cloud regions outside the licensing country are a question for the Offering Document.[2] Catalog proof: A Site is bounded by a single Country.
Programs
- SELECT Program. A subscription that must cover all Bentley licences the subscriber holds. It adds Pooled Licensing, Term Licenses, SELECT Open Access, Portfolio Balancing, No-Charge Licenses, evaluations and Product Subscription Licenses. It runs for twelve months and renews automatically unless notice is given 30 days before expiry.[2] See Bentley SELECT Program licensing.
- Enterprise 365. Rights to use E365 Products without limitation on the number of Users, with usage funded from a Cloud Services Subscription. Participation requires SES for licence administration.[3] The public-sector EPS-365 replaces quarterly usage billing with an annual fee.[4] See Bentley Enterprise 365 licensing.
- Virtuoso Subscription. A 12-month auto-renewing practitioner licence bought online, with Keys for training and services. Virtuoso users receive unlimited access to the eligible products, so SES access controls and threshold alerting are disabled for them.[6]
- Enterprise License Subscription. An annual subscription that resets on the previous year’s actual usage, counted by calendar day.[7] It appears in the eligibility list as the BaseELS and AEP designations but has no public program terms.[5]
- Academic Software and Test Software. The EULA limits academic editions to classroom instruction and research. Test Software is licensed for evaluation only.[1]
Licence technology and usage data
Current CONNECT Edition applications license through the Subscription Entitlement Service (SES). Users sign in to activate their applications, which eliminates activation keys. SES versions carry “CL” in the product version name.[9] SES records, among other data, the user ID, product ID and version, organization, Windows machine name, Windows account user name, usage type and application start and end times. Older versions use SELECTserver, either hosted by Bentley or deployed on premises.[9] This data is the basis of term licence and E365 invoices. The Bentley Analytics Program statement lists licence compliance among the uses of usage data.[13] See Bentley CONNECT licensing and term licenses. Catalog proof: SES replaces activation keys with user sign-in; Usage data is used for licence compliance activities.
Audits and compliance
Both the EULA and the program agreements require records of licences acquired, the hardware on which each copy is used and the users to whom licences are assigned. Bentley may request a written report and then inspect those records, itself or through a third-party auditor, on seven days’ written notice.[1][2] Under the program agreements the trigger is framed around telemetry: Bentley may ask for the report if it suspects Usage Data is incomplete, inaccurate or indicative of non-compliance.[2] The EULA also permits an anti-piracy mechanism that detects illegal copies and transmits data about them.[1] Catalog proof: Records of licences, hardware and users; inspection on seven days notice (EULA); Audit can follow suspect Usage Data; inspection on seven days notice (program agreements); Software may detect and report illegal copies (anti-piracy).
Bentley enforces unlicensed use in court. In a 2026 summary judgment the High Court of Delhi decreed a permanent injunction and costs against an engineering company whose unlicensed use of STAAD and SACS had been detected by Bentley’s “Phone Home Technology”. See Bentley Systems v. Oiltech Engineering.[14] For the general discipline see software license audit.
Lifecycle and lapsed subscriptions
The Bentley Lifecycle Policy sets out what a licence is worth without a subscription. With an active SELECT, E365 or EPS subscription (or a subscription-only licence) the user may obtain the latest version, license the software on at least one machine and request support. A perpetual licence with no active subscription gives the last version covered by the previous subscription, subject to availability, on a single machine with no pooling.[10] Licensing Configuration puts it the same way for customers who never had SELECT: a perpetual licence covers a single user on a single machine.[8] V8i SELECTseries 10 reached end of support on 2021-12-31.[10] Catalog proof: Without an active subscription, perpetual licences get the last covered version and no pooling; Perpetual licence without SELECT is limited to a single user on a single machine; V8i and earlier versions are out of support since 2021-12-31.
Out of scope
- Seequent products (Leapfrog, GeoStudio, PLAXIS, OpenGround), which have their own Seequent Product Terms, and Cesium. See the Seequent directory profile.
- Signed Offering Documents, E365 Order Forms, the Enterprise 365 Price List, Enterprise License Subscription exhibits and channel partner terms, which are not public.
- Professional services, training Keys and Credits, beyond their licensing effect.
- Bentley’s AI Product-Specific Terms and Cloud Services Terms of Service, beyond the rules recorded in the catalog.