Oracle licensing is the set of contracts, metric definitions, price lists and policy documents under which Oracle Corporation licenses its on-premises software: Oracle Database and its options, Fusion Middleware such as WebLogic Server, Java SE, and the applications families E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and Siebel. Programs are licensed per program and per metric. The metrics are defined in the Oracle License Definitions and Rules booklet, the most common being Processor and Named User Plus for technology products and Application User and Employee for applications.[1] Oracle publishes separate global price lists for technology, Java, each applications family and its cloud services.[21]
Three documents shape most on-premises counting. The Processor Core Factor Table converts physical cores into Processor licenses.[3] The Partitioning Policy says which virtualization technologies may limit the cores to be licensed.[4] The cloud licensing policy sets how vCPUs are counted on Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.[5] Technical support is bought separately, per license set, under the Oracle Software Technical Support Policies,[6] and compliance is verified by Oracle License Management Services (LMS).[16]
Editions
Oracle sells its on-premises software as separately priced programs grouped into product families. The table summarises how each family is licensed in the current price lists and links to the deeper article where one exists.
| Family | Main editions or programs | Metrics in the price list | Deeper article |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oracle Database | Standard Edition 2, Enterprise Edition, Personal Edition; Enterprise Edition options (for example Multitenant, Real Application Clusters, Active Data Guard, Partitioning) and management packs (for example Diagnostics Pack, Tuning Pack)[2] | Named User Plus and Processor[2] | Oracle Database licensing, options and management packs |
| Fusion Middleware | WebLogic Server Standard Edition, WebLogic Server Enterprise Edition, WebLogic Suite, Web Tier and others[2] | Named User Plus and Processor[2] | Oracle WebLogic Server licensing |
| Java SE | Java SE Universal Subscription; no-fee Oracle JDK licenses[8][10] | Employee for Java SE Universal Subscription[8] | Oracle Java SE licensing |
| E-Business Suite | Component programs such as Order Management, Treasury, Human Resources[11] | Application User, Employee and transaction metrics, each with a minimum[11] | None yet |
| PeopleSoft | Component programs such as Human Resources, Payroll, eProcurement[12] | Employee (minimum “All Employees”) and Application User[12] | None yet |
| JD Edwards | EnterpriseOne component programs such as Payroll and One View Reporting[13] | Application User, Employee and Connected Device[13] | None yet |
| Siebel CRM | Industry and horizontal CRM programs[14] | Application User; Registered User for partner modules[14] | None yet |
| Oracle VM VirtualBox | Base package, Extension Pack and Enterprise program | See the deeper article | Oracle VM VirtualBox licensing |
In December 2004 Oracle announced a definitive agreement to acquire PeopleSoft, Inc. for about USD 10.3 billion. The announcement stated Oracle’s intent to develop further PeopleSoft and JD Edwards releases and to extend support for existing JD Edwards and PeopleSoft customers.[20] Oracle’s other acquisitions, such as Siebel, BEA Systems and Sun Microsystems, are listed in the Product History section of the Oracle vendor page.
As a point of scale, the Technology Global Price List dated 15 September 2026 lists Database Enterprise Edition at USD 47,500 per Processor or USD 950 per Named User Plus, and Standard Edition 2 at USD 17,500 per Processor or USD 350 per Named User Plus. First-year Software Update License & Support is shown beside each price, for example USD 10,450 for one Enterprise Edition Processor license.[2]
Metrics
Oracle metrics are defined in the License Definitions and Rules booklet effective 15 June 2024.[1] The catalog keeps each one as its own row.
| Metric | Vendor definition, in short | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
| Processor | All processors where the programs are installed and/or running; cores multiplied by the core factor, fractions rounded up. Processor-licensed programs may be accessed by internal and third-party users.[1] | Database, Middleware |
| Named User Plus | An individual authorized to use the programs, whether or not actively using them; non-human-operated devices that can access the programs also count, and use through multiplexing is counted at the front end.[1] | Database, Middleware |
| Standard Edition 2 Processor | For Standard Edition 2, Standard Edition One and Standard Edition programs, a processor is counted as an occupied socket.[1] | Database SE2 |
| Application User | An individual authorized to use the licensed application programs, whether or not actively using them.[1] | E-Business Suite, JD Edwards, Siebel, PeopleSoft |
| Employee | All full-time, part-time and temporary employees plus agents, contractors and consultants who access, use or are tracked by the programs, including staff of outsourcers in scope; counted by population, not by users.[1] | HR and payroll modules |
| Employee for Java SE Universal Subscription | All full-time, part-time and temporary employees, plus those of agents, contractors, outsourcers and consultants that support internal business operations.[8] | Java SE |
The booklet also defines many industry and transaction metrics, such as Concurrent User, Named Workstation User and Socket.[1] The Oracle Cloud metrics, such as OCPU Per Hour and ECPU Per Hour, are covered in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure BYOL and Universal Credits.
Counting / floors
Core factor. Processor licenses equal the total cores multiplied by the factor for the chip in the Oracle Processor Core Factor Table, with fractions rounded up.[1] The table, effective 16 March 2009 and last updated 28 January 2026, gives 0.5 for current Intel Xeon and AMD EPYC chips, 0.25 for Ampere Altra, AltraMax and AmpereOne, 1.0 for IBM POWER8, POWER9 and POWER10, and 1.0 for all other multicore chips.[3] For example, 6 cores at a factor of 0.25 need 2 Processor licenses.[1]
Named User Plus minimums. Customers licensing by Named User Plus must maintain the per-Processor minimums, and all actual users must be licensed. The booklet sets 25 Named Users Plus per Processor for Database Enterprise Edition and 10 per Processor for WebLogic Server Standard Edition, WebLogic Server Enterprise Edition and WebLogic Suite, among many others.[1]
Standard Edition 2. Database Standard Edition 2 may only be licensed on servers with a maximum capacity of 2 sockets, each database may use at most 16 CPU threads, and Named User Plus licensing needs a minimum of 10 per server.[1]
Failover. A licensed customer may run the programs on an unlicensed spare computer in a clustered failover environment for up to ten separate 24-hour periods in a calendar year. Beyond that the failover node must be licensed. Options on a failover environment must match the licenses of the associated database, and the same metric must be used for production and failover nodes.[1]
Applications minimums. Applications price lists state a minimum per program. For example, the E-Business Suite list has Order Management at a minimum of 5 Application Users and Human Resources at a minimum of 100 Employees.[11] PeopleSoft and JD Edwards human resources and payroll programs are priced per Employee with a minimum of “All Employees”.[12][13]
Virtualization & partitioning
The Oracle Partitioning Policy is an educational document, not a contract, with policies in effect as of 14 February 2022. It classifies technologies as soft partitioning, hard partitioning or Oracle Trusted Partitions, and sets when a sub-capacity of physical cores may be licensed as an exception to the Processor definition.[4]
- Soft partitioning, which includes Oracle VM and VMware among the listed examples, is not permitted as a means to limit the licenses required for a server or cluster.[4]
- Hard partitioning is limited to listed technologies, such as Physical Domains, capped Solaris Zones, IBM LPAR and capped Micro-Partitions, and Oracle Linux KVM or Oracle VM Server when cores are allocated per Oracle’s documents. IBM PowerVM Live Partition Mobility is not approved.[4]
- Trusted Partitions on approved Oracle Engineered Systems count two vCPUs as one physical core, licensed in increments of two cores at the high-water mark.[4]
- Capacity on Demand lets customers license only the cores activated when the server ships. Oracle does not offer special terms for pay-per-use models.[4]
- Containers and Kubernetes. Once a container image with Oracle programs has been pulled to a host or Kubernetes node, that host or node must be licensed for its processors.[4]
Details are in Oracle Partitioning Policy.
Cloud / BYOL
Authorized Cloud Environments. Oracle’s cloud licensing policy, an educational document with policies in effect as of 4 September 2026, names Amazon EC2 and RDS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform as Authorized Cloud Environments. On each, two vCPUs count as one Processor license when multi-threading is enabled, and one vCPU counts as one license when it is not. The Core Factor Table does not apply.[5] For Standard Edition programs, instances of up to four vCPUs count as one socket, and every further four vCPUs (rounded up) as another. Standard Edition 2 may only be licensed on instances of up to eight vCPUs.[5]
Oracle Cloud. When perpetual or term licenses are deployed in Oracle Cloud, including Compute Cloud@Customer, one Processor license covers two OCPUs on x86 and four OCPUs on Ampere. Named User Plus minimums apply per two x86 OCPUs.[3] Oracle’s BYOL FAQ states that, at a high level, one Oracle Processor License maps to two OCPUs for BYOL to PaaS.[15] Universal Credits, Pay as You Go and ECPU conversions are covered in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure BYOL and Universal Credits. The cross-vendor picture is in Cloud BYOL.
Programs
Technical support
Technical support fees are payable annually in advance, and an order for support cannot be cancelled.[6] Support is ordered by license set, which consists of all licenses of a program, including its options and management packs. All licenses in a license set must be under the same service level, where “unsupported” is itself one of the levels named.[6] If support lapses, or was never bought, reinstatement costs 150% of the last annual fee (or of the fee that would have applied), prorated back to the lapse or the original order date.[6] If some licenses on an order are terminated or the support level is reduced, support for the remaining licenses is repriced at the current list price minus the standard discount. The new price will not exceed the previous fees paid plus any country annual adjustments, and will not fall below the previous fees paid for the licenses that remain supported.[6]
Under Lifetime Support, Premier Support runs for five years from a release’s general availability. Extended Support, where offered, adds up to three years for an extra fee, and Sustaining Support continues for as long as support fees are paid.[6] The Lifetime Support Policy for technology products dated 11 September 2026 lists Oracle Database 19c Premier Support to December 2029 and Extended Support to December 2032.[7] See Oracle technical support and Lifetime Support policies and the catalog programs Software Update License & Support, Extended Support and Sustaining Support.
Unlimited License Agreements
An Unlimited License Agreement (ULA) is a commercial overlay on the metrics above, not a metric of its own. Oracle describes the ULA as letting customers deploy as much Oracle software as needed across on-premises, cloud and multicloud environments.[19] The cloud policy allows licenses acquired under a ULA to be used in Authorized Cloud Environments, but says those licenses may not be counted in the certification at the end of the ULA term.[5] The ULA and its perpetual variant (PULA) are covered in Oracle ULA and PULA licensing.
Java SE Universal Subscription
Java SE Universal Subscription is a term subscription priced per month under the Employee for Java SE Universal Subscription metric. The price list dated 1 March 2023 runs from USD 15.00 for 1 to 999 employees down to USD 5.25 for 40,000 to 49,999. The licensed quantity must be at least the employee count at the order date, and use is limited to 50,000 Processors, excluding desktops and laptops.[8] The standard term is one year.[9] See Oracle Java SE licensing.
Audit and compliance
Oracle License Management Services describes itself as the sole Oracle licensing authority that can verify a customer’s licensing requirements. It offers two services: the customer-led Assurance Service and the Audit Service.[16] Only LMS can start the Audit Service. It compares the customer’s deployed Oracle estate with its contractual entitlements.[17] LMS says it sends an official audit letter on Oracle letterhead, signed by an LMS consultant, and collects data with the Oracle Collection Tool, the Global Deployment Matrix or verified third-party tools.[18] Engagements follow four phases: kickoff, assessment, reporting and close.[16]
According to the LMS FAQ, a compliance shortfall may be corrected by buying licenses and support, and backdated support may be charged for the period of unlicensed use. Remedies listed if no business resolution is reached include full list price for the extra licenses, support fees for the unlicensed period, suspension of support, and termination of the license agreement.[18] Litigation involving Oracle’s licensing and support terms, such as Oracle USA, Inc. v. Rimini Street, Inc., is listed in the Litigation section of the vendor page. The cross-vendor process is described in Software license audit.
Recent licensing changes
- Java. The Java SE Universal Subscription replaced the legacy Java SE Subscription and Java SE Desktop Subscription on 23 January 2023.[9] Oracle JDK 21 and later are available under the Oracle No-Fee Terms and Conditions License. Oracle JDK 8, 11 and 17 updates are available to customers through My Oracle Support and under the OTN License Agreement for Java SE, which permits personal, development and some other limited uses at no cost. Oracle plans to move JDK 21 updates from the NFTC to the OTN License after September 2026.[10]
- Core factors. The 28 January 2026 update added further Intel Xeon models at a factor of 0.5 and clarified the AMD EPYC and Opteron entries.[3]
- Database releases. The Lifetime Support Policy lists Oracle Database 26ai Enterprise Edition as a Long Term Support release, generally available in October 2025 with Premier Support to December 2031.[7]
- Support policies. The Technical Support Policies were reissued with an effective date of 17 August 2026.[6]
Guides
The Oracle articles in this wiki, in reading order:
- Oracle Database licensing: editions, Processor and Named User Plus, floors, SE2 limits.
- Oracle Database options and management packs: separately priced Enterprise Edition add-ons.
- Oracle Java SE licensing: Universal Subscription and no-fee JDK licenses.
- Oracle WebLogic Server licensing: WebLogic editions and minimums.
- Oracle Partitioning Policy: soft, hard and trusted partitioning, containers.
- Oracle Cloud Infrastructure BYOL and Universal Credits: OCI buying models and BYOL ratios.
- Oracle technical support and Lifetime Support policies: license sets, reinstatement and repricing.
- Oracle ULA and PULA licensing: unlimited license agreements and certification.
- Oracle VM VirtualBox licensing: base package, Extension Pack and Enterprise program.
Court cases: Oracle USA, Inc. v. Rimini Street, Inc., Oracle Corp. v. SAP AG, Oracle America, Inc. v. Terix and v. Hewlett Packard Enterprise, UsedSoft GmbH v Oracle International Corp, Google LLC v. Oracle America, Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co. v. Oracle Corp. (Itanium).
Out of scope
- Oracle Cloud Applications (Fusion, NetSuite) and other SaaS subscriptions. These are sold under separate cloud price lists and service descriptions and are not covered here.[21]
- Contract clauses of individual agreements. Audit notice periods, ULA certification mechanics and negotiated discounts depend on each customer’s master agreement and ordering documents, which Oracle does not publish in a general form.
- Oracle Linux, MySQL, Exadata and hardware. They have their own price lists[21] and are not covered in this overview.
- Detailed applications licensing. E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and Siebel have no deeper article yet. Their price lists are cited above as sources.