Notion licensing is the set of terms under which Notion Labs, Inc. sells Notion, a cloud workspace for documents, wikis, databases and projects, together with Notion AI, Notion Sites and related add-ons. Notion is offered on four plans: Free, Plus, Business and Enterprise.[1] Paid plans charge a fee per member, while guests are free but can only open the pages they are invited to.[1] Plans apply to a single workspace, so an organization with several paid workspaces holds several subscriptions.[5]
Two contracts sit underneath the plans. The Master Subscription Agreement (MSA) governs subscriptions for organizations, and the Personal Use Terms of Service govern personal use.[5] Notion updated the MSA effective 2026-08-17.[2] The Notion AI and Notion Credit Supplementary Terms, last updated 2026-07-27, form part of both contracts and govern Notion AI, Notion credits and the legacy Notion AI add-on.[3] Catalog proof: Personal Use Terms cover individuals; organizations use the MSA; Order Form prevails over DPA, Supplementary Terms, MSA and Documentation.
The licence is a subscription right to use a hosted service. Under the MSA, Notion grants a “worldwide, non-exclusive, non-transferable” and non-sublicensable right during the Subscription Term to use the Services solely in connection with the customer’s business operations.[2] There is no installable perpetual licence; the desktop and mobile applications are part of the Services.
Editions
Notion sells four plans, plus free academic variants. Notion AI is included only in Business and Enterprise.[7]
| Plan | Who it is for (vendor wording, paraphrased) | Price on the pricing page | Notion AI | Guests |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | Individuals organizing personal projects | 0 | Limited trial | 10 external guests |
| Plus | Small teams and professionals | EUR 9.50 per member per month billed yearly; USD 12 monthly or USD 120 per year in the page’s price records | Limited trial | Unlimited |
| Business | Growing businesses | EUR 19.50 per member per month billed yearly; USD 24 monthly or USD 240 per year | Included, within a usage allowance | Unlimited |
| Enterprise | Organizations needing scale, control and security | “Custom pricing”; self-serve USD records of 35 monthly or 336 per year | Included, with zero data retention at LLM providers | Unlimited |
The pricing page shows prices in the visitor’s currency. On retrieval it displayed EUR, and the page source held USD and EUR price records for each plan and billing interval.[1] Organizations with fewer than 100 employees can upgrade to Enterprise from their settings; larger organizations contract through Notion’s sales team.[5] Catalog proof: Embedded USD price records for self-serve plans; Enterprise is self-serve only under 100 employees.
The Education Plan gives individual students and teachers a free one-member workspace, and approved student organizations a free workspace with unlimited members.[14] A 30-day Business Plan trial is available to new teams on a professional email domain.[13] The plan line-up, user types and offers are covered in Notion plans, members and guests.
Metrics
Notion licenses people, not devices. The catalog records eight Notion metrics:
- Member (paid seat). Notion describes a paid seat as “a license for one member to use your Notion workspace”.[1] One seat is assigned to each member, and seats are counted per workspace.[4]
- Guest. People outside the organization invited page by page. Guests are free, and the Free plan limits a workspace to 10 of them.[1][6]
- Restricted member. A member limited to the teamspaces and pages it is added to, billed like a member.[6]
- Temporary member. An approved Notion Marketplace consultant with time-limited access that does not use a paid seat.[6]
- Notion credit. The usage unit for Custom Agents, Workers, premium AI models and Notion AI use beyond the allowance.[3][8]
- Worker run, AI response and Custom domain cover Workers, the free AI trial and the Notion Sites domain add-on.
Counting / floors
Seat counting follows a few published rules, all recorded as catalog rules:
- Fee per member. Every member of a paid workspace is charged; guests are not.[1] Catalog proof: Paid plans charge a fee per member.
- Per workspace. Multiple paid workspaces are billed separately on their own member counts, “even if the same people are in multiple workspaces”.[4] Catalog proof: Each paid workspace is billed separately.
- Seat reuse. A new member uses an existing open paid seat if there is one; otherwise the seat count rises by one and a prorated charge follows.[1] Catalog proof: New members fill open paid seats before new seats are added.
- Renewal reset. At the start of each monthly or annual billing period the paid seat count is synchronized so it “exactly matches” the number of members.[1] Catalog proof: Seat count resets to actual members at each renewal.
- Internal staff are members. For Plus and Business, Notion states that guests can be agencies, vendors, partners or contractors, but “Anyone who is part of your internal team should be added as a paid member.”[9] Catalog proof: Internal team members must be paid members, not guests.
Free has no seat charge, but a workspace with two or more people is limited to 1,000 blocks.[6] Notion publishes no minimum seat count for Plus or Business. For organization customers the MSA adds a contractual floor: the customer “may not downgrade” its plan “or reduce the number of Users during any Subscription Term”, and must give 60 days’ written notice to reduce for the next term.[2] Catalog proof: No downgrade or user reduction during a Subscription Term. How these rules interact with proration, monthly invoices and the self-serve billing screens is covered in Notion seat billing and true-ups.
Notion AI and Notion credits
Notion AI is available on Business and Enterprise. Free and Plus users receive a limited number of complimentary AI responses.[7] Business and Enterprise include a usage allowance measured in a six-hour window and a monthly window. Custom Agents, Workers and premium models sit outside the allowance and use Notion credits.[11] Catalog proof: Notion AI is included only in Business and Enterprise; Notion AI usage allowance in six-hour and monthly windows.
Notion credits are “an add-on for Business and Enterprise plans” and are shared across a workspace. Monthly credits cost USD 10 per 1,000 and reset each month. Annual credits cost USD 13 per 1,000 and expire at subscription renewal.[8] Under the supplementary terms, credits are consumed Monthly first, then Annual, then On-Demand where available. They are not transferable or refundable once used, and Notion may change how many credits an action consumes.[3] The detail is in Notion AI and Notion credits.
Virtualization & partitioning
Not applicable. Notion is a multi-tenant software-as-a-service product. The licence is not tied to hosts, processors or virtual machines, and Notion publishes no virtualization or partitioning rules. The workspace is the only partition that matters for counting, because plans and seats are scoped to it.[5]
Cloud / BYOL
Notion is delivered only as Notion’s own cloud service. There is no bring-your-own-licence route onto a hyperscaler. Third-party integrations, including MCP connectors, are “Non-Notion Services” governed by the customer’s agreement with their provider.[2] Notion Sites can publish pages under a customer’s own domain through a paid add-on of USD 10 per domain per month, or USD 8 per month billed annually.[15] Catalog proof: Custom domains cost USD 10 per month or USD 8 per month billed annually.
Programs
| Program | What it does | Catalog row |
|---|---|---|
| Order Form subscription | Contracted plan, seats, credits and term under the MSA; auto-renews; no mid-term reduction | Order Form subscription (MSA) |
| Business Plan trial | 30 days of Business features for new teams on a professional domain | Business Plan trial |
| Notion for Startups | 1 to 6 months of Business for new, non-paying companies under 100 employees | Notion for Startups |
| Education Plan | Free plans for students, teachers and student organizations | Notion Education Plan |
| On-Demand Notion Credits | Credits billed quarterly in arrears once the credit limit is reached | On-Demand Notion Credits |
| Auto Adjust | Automatic credit top-ups that permanently raise the monthly amount | Auto Adjust for Notion credits |
| Workspace credit allocation | Per-workspace credit caps on multi-workspace Enterprise contracts | Workspace credit allocation |
| Reseller purchases | Fees paid to a Notion Reseller under a Reseller Agreement | Notion Reseller purchases |
The MSA FAQ, which Notion says is informational and not part of the contract, describes the Order Form as setting “price, seats, Notion Credits, subscription length, subscription plan”.[12] The contract terms are covered in Notion Master Subscription Agreement and terms.
Compliance considerations
The MSA gives Notion two levers that matter for licence reviews. First, certain plans “may require monitoring of Account Information” to reconcile the number of Users and usage with the plan.[2] Second, if use exceeds plan limits and continues after notice, Notion may require an Order Form or a purchase of additional usage and may narrowly suspend access.[2] The MSA does not contain a separate audit clause of the kind found in on-premises licence agreements. Instead, compliance is enforced through the seat count that Notion itself measures. Catalog proof: Notion may monitor account data to reconcile users; Excess usage must be bought after notice.
Common sources of over-licensing that follow from the published rules are:
- duplicate paid workspaces holding the same people, each billed separately;
- members who could be guests because they only need a few pages and are not part of the internal team;
- invite links and allowed email domains, through which anyone who joins becomes a paid member;[16]
- Enterprise domain management claims of employee-created workspaces, which under MSA s.4.5 bring their additional Users onto the customer’s bill.[2]
Each of these is a reading of the cited rules, not a statement by Notion.
Out of scope
This article does not cover Notion Calendar or Notion Mail as separate products, Notion’s developer platform terms (Developer Terms), Notion Marketplace and template sales, professional services under the Professional Services Addendum, data protection terms (Data Processing Addendum, Business Associate Agreement), sales tax, or mobile app store subscriptions, which Apple and Google bill and refund. Notion was not found to be a party to a court case about software licensing, so this wiki has no Notion litigation article.