Harness licensing is the set of terms under which Harness Inc. sells its software delivery platform. Harness describes the platform as an “AI native software delivery platform” made up of products it calls Modules, including Continuous Integration (CI), Continuous Delivery and GitOps (CD), Feature Flags and Feature Management and Experimentation (FME), Cloud and AI Cost Management (CACM), Security Testing Orchestration (STO), Service Reliability Management (SRM), Resilience Testing, Infrastructure as Code Management (IaCM), Supply Chain Security (SCS), Internal Developer Portal (IDP), Database DevOps and Artifact Registry.[1][2] Use of a Module “is subject to specific license metric and quantity limitations documented in the applicable Order Form”, which the agreement calls a License Unit.[1]
Two things make Harness licensing distinctive. First, the common unit is the Developer, defined by a unique email address, with a fixed set of per-module consumption entitlements attached to each Developer.[2][4] Second, several modules use their own consumption unit instead of, or as well as, the Developer: services and service instances for CD, Cloud Credits for CI on Harness Cloud, Security Scans for STO, Monthly Tracked Keys for feature flags, and a percentage of cloud spend for CACM.[2]
Editions
Harness’ pricing page lists three plans.[3]
| Plan | What Harness says | Deeper article |
|---|---|---|
| Free | For individual developers and small teams; Harness Open Source and Litmus Chaos included; community support[3] | Harness Open Source and editions |
| Essentials | An all-in-one DevOps bundle of CI, CD, IaCM and security, with standard support; not sold separately and cannot be extended with other modules[3] | Harness Developer 360 and License Units |
| Enterprise | Choose any modules, mix and match, with premier support and a dedicated account manager[3] | same |
The documentation does not use these names consistently. The Developer 360 page says the model “offers two plans: Free and Enterprise”, the CI documentation lists tiers called Free, Startup and Enterprise, the Feature Flags documentation lists Free, Team and Enterprise, and the CACM documentation lists Free Forever and Enterprise.[4][10] Licence managers should therefore identify the plan from the Order Form and the account’s Subscriptions page rather than from a plan name alone. Catalog rows: Free plan, Essentials plan, Enterprise plan.
A newer alternative, Flex Pricing, replaces module-by-module licences with a pool of Harness Subscription Units (HSUs). It is described as being in “limited availability” and being “rolled out gradually”.[5] See Harness Cloud credits, Flex Pricing and overage.
Metrics
| Unit | Where it applies | Catalog row |
|---|---|---|
| Developer | CI, CODE, IDP, AIDI and the base for entitlements of most other modules[2][4] | Developer |
| CD Service and Service Instance | Continuous Delivery and GitOps; one service licence per 20 instances[2] | CD Service, Service Instance |
| Cloud Credit | Harness Cloud compute for CI, STO and IaCM[2] | Cloud Credit |
| Security Scan | STO[2] | Security Scan |
| Monthly Tracked Key | Feature Flags and FME[2] | Monthly Tracked Key |
| Total Tracked Cloud Spend | CACM, charged as a percentage[2] | Total Tracked Cloud Spend |
| Harness Subscription Unit | Flex Pricing across modules[5] | Harness Subscription Unit |
Other units are catalogued for Resilience Testing services, IaCM executions, supply chain executions, database instances, Artifact Registry storage, Code Repository limits and API calls. They are described in Harness Developer 360 and License Units.
Counting / floors
Developer. A Developer is “each person, identified by a specific, unique email address” who is an employee, agent or contractor of the customer or its Affiliate and who accesses the Software or Platform, or contributes to technical activities on code managed with Harness, “across all production and non-production environments”. A person is counted once even if they do several of these things.[2] Bots or robotic process automation require Harness’ “prior written consent”.[2]
Entitlements. Under Developer 360, each Developer licence carries entitlements such as one CD, SRM and Chaos service for every three Developers, 120 IaCM executions a year, and 100 Security Scans and 100 supply chain executions a month. Additional entitlements can be bought.[4]
Excess use. If a customer exceeds its License Units, the customer “will be invoiced for such excess usage at the then current License Unit rate(s)” and must sign a new Order Form, either co-terminous or for a new term.[1] A Suspension Event includes exceeding the permitted License Units “for 30 or more days”.[1]
Virtualization & partitioning
Harness does not license by processor, core or host. Where a deployment target matters, the unit is the deployed service or instance: for CD, one service licence per 20 service instances, with the 95th percentile of hourly samples over 30 days used so that short spikes are not counted.[2] Virtual machines, Kubernetes workloads and serverless functions are all treated as kinds of service or target resource, as described in Harness CD service licensing. The general guidance in virtualization and partitioning therefore applies only in the sense that virtual machines are counted as services.
Cloud / BYOL
Most modules are offered as software as a service. Harness Cloud provides Harness-managed infrastructure for builds, security tests and infrastructure provisioning, consumed in Cloud Credits, while execution on customer-owned infrastructure is excluded from cloud compute minutes.[2][10] Harness also offers Self-Managed Enterprise Edition, an on-premises installation that needs “a valid Harness license key”, with separate Next Generation and Looker licences. The pricing page lists Self Managed Platform as an add-on.[3][11] The DevOps Essentials package states there is no on-premises support.[3]
Programs
- Developer 360 subscription model. Developer licences with included consumption entitlements.[4]
- Flex Pricing and Free plan monthly HSUs and cloud credits. HSU pools at USD 0.00, 0.75 and 1.25 per unit by tier, and 1,000 free HSUs a month on Free.[5]
- Excess use and overage billing. Invoicing of use above the Order Form.[1]
- Harness Open Source and retired Community Edition. Harness Open Source is released under the Apache License 2.0, and the CD Community Edition is retired.[6][7][12]
- Standard and premier support. Business-hours standard support and premier support with different availability targets.[8]
Audits and compliance
The Subscription Terms give Harness a verification right rather than a formal audit clause: Harness “may verify Customer’s usage by requiring that Customer provide reasonable documentation evidencing current usage, which Harness may confirm using usage data from the Platform”.[1] The Subscriptions page in the Harness account shows licence counts and usage, and CD documentation says deployments are not blocked when a licensed count is exceeded.[4] Reconciliation therefore compares the Order Form License Units with the Subscriptions page, and with module-specific counting rules such as the 30-day active service window.
Out of scope
- Prices of the plans and modules. Harness publishes no price list; only HSU tier prices, DevOps Essentials overage rates and the CACM percentages are public.[5][9]
- Signed Order Forms, enterprise agreements and statements of work for professional services.
- Third-party products used with Harness, which carry their own licences.
- Traceable-based API security modules, Codecov and the Qwiet-based SAST and SCA modules, which have their own unit definitions listed in the Products & License Unit Definitions page.[2]