Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) platform and infrastructure services are sold under the Oracle PaaS and IaaS Universal Credits Service Descriptions. This document defines the cloud metrics, the payment models and the terms under which customers may run Bring Your Own License (BYOL) versions of services using on-premises licenses they already hold.[1] The version described here (UCM v092326) took effect on 23 September 2026. Under BYOL, a service is billed at a lower BYOL rate, provided the customer holds enough supported on-premises licenses to meet the conversion ratio set for that service. Those licenses are then treated as deployed in the cloud. Oracle’s BYOL FAQ summarises the high-level mapping as “one Oracle Processor License maps to two OCPUs” and refers readers to the service descriptions for detail.[3]
OCI is licensed differently from Oracle software on third-party clouds. Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud are covered by the Authorized Cloud Environments policy, which counts vCPUs against on-premises Processor licenses.[4] OCI BYOL services instead state their own requirements in OCPU or ECPU terms, service by service.
Commercial models
The service descriptions set out four ways of paying for eligible IaaS and PaaS services:[1]
| Model | Commitment | Unused amounts | Catalog |
|---|---|---|---|
| Annual Universal Credit | An amount committed for a Services Period, split into yearly Credit Periods (typically 12 months) | Expire at the end of each yearly Credit Period; non-refundable | Annual Universal Credit |
| Monthly Universal Credit | Minimum monthly consumption over a 12-month Services Period, subject to Oracle approval | Expire monthly; any shortfall is charged | Monthly Universal Credit |
| Pay as You Go | None; actual usage is billed monthly in arrears | Not applicable | Pay as You Go |
| Funded Allocation Model | Annual funded amount; limited availability, subject to Oracle authorization | Per order | Funded Allocation Model |
Under an Annual Universal Credit order, the prepaid balance is drawn down each month at the rate-card prices. Usage above the credit in any month is invoiced at the Overage Unit Net Price (Annual Universal Credits expire at the end of each Credit Period). At the end of the Services Period Oracle converts the account to Pay as You Go unless the credit is replenished (Conversion to Pay as You Go at the end of the Services Period). Customers who want neither renewal nor conversion may end the service by written request. A new order that increases the credit brings in its own rate card for the rest of the Services Period, which may carry a higher discount.[1]
Under a Monthly Universal Credit, a month in which consumption falls below the commitment is still charged: Oracle “will decrement Your account for the credit shortfall for that month” (Monthly Universal Credit shortfall is charged). Pay as You Go prices may change without prior notice, and Pay as You Go may not be available for every service.[1] Oracle’s FAQ states that Universal Credits can be consumed by both license-included services and BYOL services.[3]
Metrics
OCI services are metered on cloud units, not on-premises license metrics:[1]
- OCPU Per Hour. An OCPU “provides CPU capacity equivalent of one physical core of a processor with hyper-threading enabled” and corresponds to two hardware execution threads (vCPUs).
- ECPU Per Hour. An ECPU “is based on the number of cores per hour elastically allocated from a pool of compute and storage servers”. For Autonomous AI Database, Exadata Database Service and Base Database Service it is described as a platform-independent measure of the work done per hour by the database service.
BYOL requirements are expressed in the on-premises metrics, Processor and Named User Plus, converted to OCPUs or ECPUs by service-specific ratios.
Counting / floors
BYOL eligibility
A BYOL version of a service may be activated where one exists, “provided that You have sufficient Oracle supported on premise licenses”. Eligible license types are Full Use, Limited Use, Application Specific Full Use and Proprietary Hosting (subject to an ISV Amendment). Term licenses are eligible while the term is in effect. Embedded Software Licenses are not eligible, and a license keeps its type when applied to BYOL. The customer remains responsible for the restrictions of the on-premises license, including its metric.[1]
A BYOL instance must have enough supported licenses at all times. If it does not, the customer must either stop the instance and redeploy the license-included service, or acquire more licenses. Some services allow part of an instance to be billed at BYOL rates and part at license-included rates. In that case the whole instance is subject to the BYOL requirements (BYOL instances need sufficient supported licenses at all times).[1] Oracle’s older FAQ answers “No” to mixing license-included PaaS and BYOL in the same instance.[3] The contractual service descriptions now describe mixed billing for the services that support it.
Transition period
Licenses applied to a BYOL service “are deemed deployed and in use (i.e., You may not also use these licenses on premise) and may be verified in an audit”. Oracle allows up to 100 days from activation to move off the on-premises deployment. After that, the same license cannot be applied to a different BYOL service.[1] The existing catalog program BYOL to PaaS records these terms from the previous edition.
Database conversion ratios
The UCM v092326 ratios for the principal database BYOL services are shown below (BYOL Enterprise Edition: 1 Processor or 25 NUP per 8 ECPUs; BYOL Standard Edition: 1 Processor per 16 ECPUs, 32 ECPU cap):[1]
| Service (part number) | Enterprise Edition | Standard Edition programs | Catalog SKU |
|---|---|---|---|
| Base Database Service - BYOL - x86 - ECPU (B112728) | 1 Processor or 25 NUP = up to 8 ECPUs or 2 OCPUs | 1 Processor (occupied socket) = up to 16 ECPUs or 4 OCPUs; 10 NUP = 8 ECPUs or 2 OCPUs; at least 10 NUP per SE2 database; no more than 32 ECPUs or 8 OCPUs per SE2 database or BYOL instance | Oracle Base Database Service BYOL x86 ECPU |
| Exadata Database ECPU - Dedicated Infrastructure - BYOL (B110632) | 1 Processor or 25 NUP = up to 8 ECPUs | Not listed | Exadata Database ECPU Dedicated Infrastructure BYOL |
| Exadata Additional OCPU - BYOL (B88847) | 1 Processor or 25 NUP = up to 2 OCPUs | Not listed | Exadata Database Additional OCPU BYOL |
As an illustration, a Base Database Service instance of 32 ECPUs running Enterprise Edition needs 4 supported Enterprise Edition Processor licenses, or 100 Named User Plus licenses, plus a matching license for each option used. The same 32 ECPUs running Standard Edition 2 need 2 supported Standard Edition 2 Processor licenses, and 32 ECPUs is the maximum for a single SE2 database.[1]
Options and included features
When Enterprise Edition runs in a BYOL database service, the customer must bring Enterprise Edition plus a license for each eligible option or management pack used in the service. The listed options include Active Data Guard, Advanced Compression, Advanced Security, Database In-Memory, Database Lifecycle Management Pack, Database Vault, Label Security, Multitenant, OLAP, Partitioning, Real Application Clusters and Spatial and Graph. Data Masking and Subsetting Pack, Diagnostics Pack, Tuning Pack, Real Application Testing, the DDL logging function of Database Lifecycle Management Pack and Transparent Data Encryption may be used within the BYOL service without a supported license (BYOL database services: which options need licenses).[1] The Oracle AI Database licensing manual records matching special license rights. Standard Edition 2 BYOL on Base Database Service adds Oracle Data Safe (one million audit records per database per month) and Transparent Data Encryption. Enterprise Edition BYOL on Exadata Database Service or Base Database Service adds the packs above, Data Safe and, on Exadata, Exadata System Software (BYOL to OCI database services grants additional features).[2] The FAQ adds that these pack entitlements apply to BYOL to PaaS, not to BYOL to IaaS.[3]
Autonomous AI Database
For Autonomous AI Database BYOL, one supported Enterprise Edition Processor license or 25 Named User Plus licenses covers every 8 BYOL ECPUs or 2 BYOL OCPUs, including auto-scaled capacity. A single instance of more than 64 ECPUs (or 16 OCPUs) also requires Real Application Clusters licenses at the same ratio. If Autonomous Data Guard standbys are used for query or reporting, Active Data Guard licenses are required for the primary and standby ECPUs (Autonomous BYOL over 64 ECPUs requires RAC licenses).[1] The service descriptions give a worked example: an 80-ECPU instance with a BYOL limit of 40 ECPUs needs 5 Enterprise Edition and 5 Real Application Clusters Processor licenses for the 40 BYOL ECPUs. Where Standard Edition Processor licenses are used, the maximum Autonomous AI Transaction Processing instance is 32 ECPUs.[1] For elastic pools, licenses are counted against the pool compute capacity, which is four times the pool compute size.
Virtualization & partitioning
The Oracle Partitioning Policy does not apply to OCI BYOL services. Their license requirement is set by the conversion ratio for each service, measured in OCPUs or ECPUs. See Oracle Partitioning Policy for on-premises virtualization.
Cloud / BYOL
For comparison, the Authorized Cloud Environments policy as of 4 September 2026 counts two vCPUs as one Processor license on Amazon EC2 and RDS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform when multi-threading is enabled. It caps Standard Edition 2 at eight vCPUs and Standard Edition at 16 vCPUs per instance (ACE vCPU to Processor; ACE policy 2026: Standard Edition caps and Oracle Linux counting).[4] The Release 26 licensing manual adds that other public clouds, and environments treated as extensions of non-authorized clouds, are not Authorized Cloud Environments (Extensions of non-authorized clouds are not Authorized Cloud Environments).[2]
Programs
- Unlimited license agreements. Oracle’s FAQ answers “No” to whether ULA customers can certify licenses deployed in BYOL services to Oracle Cloud.[3] The Authorized Cloud Environments policy likewise excludes ACE deployments from ULA certification (ULA licenses in ACE).[4] See Oracle ULA and PULA.
- Technical support. On-premises licenses used for BYOL must stay under support. The FAQ answers “Yes” to whether annual support fees continue.[3] Support is subject to the license set and matching service level rules of the Oracle Software Technical Support Policies (Matching service levels within a license set).[5]
Out of scope
- Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications (SaaS) subscriptions.
- Oracle Database@Azure and other multicloud offerings, beyond noting that the service descriptions include a section on Oracle Database Service for Azure.
- Per-service list rates, which Oracle publishes on its cloud price list and which may change for Pay as You Go without notice.
- BYOL ratios for middleware, analytics and integration services. The catalog records two examples from the previous edition of the service descriptions.