Salesforce licensing covers the terms under which Salesforce sells its cloud services: the CRM clouds (Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Experience Cloud and the Salesforce Platform), Agentforce and Data 360, and the separately branded products it has acquired, chiefly Tableau, Slack and MuleSoft. All of them are subscriptions to services Salesforce hosts or, for Tableau Server and self-hosted Mule runtimes, subscriptions to software the customer runs. The contractual base is the Main Services Agreement (MSA), last updated on 2026-09-01, read together with the Order Form, product-specific terms and the Documentation.[1]
Salesforce’s licensing has three layers that a software asset manager needs to keep apart. The first is the edition and add-on a customer buys; Trailhead describes these as product licenses, as opposed to the settings licenses an administrator assigns.[2] The second is the user license each user holds: every user has exactly one, and permission set licenses add features on top.[3] The third is a growing set of consumption units, such as Flex Credits and Data 360 credits, which are not tied to users at all.[4] Tableau, Slack and MuleSoft each add a metric of their own. The guides listed at the end of this article cover each family in detail.
Product families and how they are licensed
| Family | Main unit | Commercial model | Guide |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Salesforce Platform | User, by edition (Starter, Professional, Enterprise, Unlimited) | Per-user subscriptions; PSLs as overlays | Salesforce User and consumption licensing |
| Experience Cloud (communities and portals) | Member-based user or daily unique login | Seat or login pools | Salesforce User and consumption licensing |
| Agentforce and generative AI | Flex Credits; Einstein Requests; per-user add-ons | Consumption, hybrid or per user | Salesforce User and consumption licensing |
| Data 360 (formerly Data Cloud) | Data Services Credits or Flex Credits per usage type | Consumption, no rollover | Salesforce Data 360 credit consumption |
| Tableau Server, Tableau Cloud | Creator, Explorer, Viewer (and Display); or cores on Tableau Server | Term subscriptions by license edition | Tableau Creator, Explorer and Viewer licensing |
| Slack | Active member | Per-member plans billed under the Fair Billing Policy | Slack active-member licensing and Fair Billing Policy |
| MuleSoft Anypoint Platform | vCores and Cores; flows, messages and throughput; Mule Credits | Capacity, usage-based packages or credits | MuleSoft Anypoint capacity and usage-based licensing |
Editions
Salesforce’s Product and Packaging Guide names the editions Starter, Professional, Enterprise, Unlimited and Suites, and says add-ons “extend the capabilities of the core products”. It describes four pricing models: priced per user, priced as a percentage of contract value, priced per planned consumption, and flat fee per org.[5] Editions also carry functional limits. The Contractual Restrictions document for Sales Cloud and Service Cloud, for example, caps custom objects per User at 100 in Enterprise and 200 in Unlimited.[6] Salesforce publishes list prices on marketing pages, but the catalog records units and rules, not prices.
User licenses and permission set licenses
Help states that each user has exactly one user license, and that permission set licenses and feature licenses are added on top of it.[3] User licenses are either member or seat based, with one license per user and unlimited logins, or login based, where users draw from a pool of daily unique logins.[7] The standard internal types include the full Salesforce license for CRM users, Salesforce Platform for custom applications without standard CRM, Salesforce Integration for API-only access, Identity Only and several single-app types.[8] A Permission Set License grants features that are not in the user’s user license; a user can hold any number of them, but a PSL never replaces the required user license.[9] Salesforce publishes no conversion between users and PSLs.
External users on Experience Cloud sites are licensed as Customer Community, Customer Community Plus, Partner Community, External Apps or Channel Account, either as members or by login. For login-based licenses, one monthly login purchased provisions 20 login licenses, and a user who logs in several times on the same day consumes one daily unique login.[10] The newer Salesforce Platform Login license brings the same login model to internal users: each purchase gives 10,000 credits, and each unique login consumes 50.[11]
Consumption units
Salesforce increasingly sells capacity rather than seats. Flex Credits are a single unit of payment that can be spent across Salesforce consumption services, at a multiplier for each usage type, and must be used before the Order End Date with no rollover.[12][4] Einstein Requests measure calls through the LLM gateway, with a size factor based on tokens and a model multiplier.[13] Data 360 is metered in credits calculated as the data processed divided by the unit and multiplied by the usage type’s multiplier, paid either in Data Services Credits or in Flex Credits.[14][15]
Tableau
Tableau Server and Tableau Cloud are sold as term (subscription) licenses; if the subscription expires, the software stops working.[16] Under the role-based model each user is licensed as a Creator, Explorer or Viewer, and on Tableau Server a core-based model caps processor cores instead of users. License editions (Standard, Enterprise, Tableau Cloud+, Tableau+ Bundle and Tableau Server+) cannot be mixed within a deployment.[16] On Tableau Cloud a user consumes one license per tenant, set by their highest site role.[17]
Slack
Paid Slack plans are billed on active members, not on provisioned accounts. Under the Fair Billing Policy, a member who has not used Slack for more than 28 days is treated as inactive and the unused part of the billing period is credited.[18] For invoiced customers, Slack counts a member as active if they take any action within a 28-day period, a definition applied to new orders and renewals from 2023-12-14.[19] Slack contracts under the Salesforce MSA together with the Slack Supplemental Terms.[20]
MuleSoft
MuleSoft Anypoint Platform is sold in Gold, Platinum and Titanium editions under a Subscription Plans document for purchases made on or after 2025-06-27. Runtime capacity is bought as CloudHub vCores and as Cores for runtimes the customer hosts, counted on the logical or allocated cores visible to Mule.[21] Organizations on a usage-based pricing package are instead entitled to Mule flows, Mule messages and data throughput, and vCores are no longer the purchased unit.[22] Current packages also include Mule Credits, bought as Pre-Purchase, Pre-Commit or Unlimited.[23]
Purchasing programs and agreements
The Order Form is where quantities, terms and usage limits live. Under the MSA, subscriptions can be added during a term at the same pricing as the underlying subscription, prorated for the rest of the term, and added subscriptions end on the same date as the underlying ones.[1] Fees are based on the subscriptions purchased, not on actual usage; payment obligations are non-cancellable; and quantities purchased cannot be decreased during the subscription term.[1]
Salesforce’s documented buying models for consumption services are pay-as-you-go, pre-commit and pre-purchase. For pay-as-you-go there are no overages because all usage is charged at list price; for pre-commit and pre-purchase, overages are charged at the contracted rate.[12] The Agentic Enterprise License Agreement (AELA) is a fixed-price, fixed-term agreement with unlimited access to Salesforce consumption services, no overages and no usage-based billing.[12] Eligible nonprofit and educational organizations can receive ten free User subscriptions for certain services under the Power of Us Program (P-10).[24] Product-level programs include the Tableau Updatable Subscription License, the Slack Fair Billing Policy and the Mule Credits models.[16][18][23]
Renewal. Unless the Order Form says otherwise, subscriptions renew automatically for additional one-year terms unless either party gives written notice at least 30 days before the end of the term. Promotional or one-time prices renew at the list price in effect at renewal, and any renewal that reduces subscription volume or length is re-priced “without regard to the prior term’s per-unit pricing”.[1] A reduction at renewal can therefore raise the unit price of the remaining subscriptions.
Support and maintenance
Salesforce services are updated by Salesforce, so there is no maintenance fee in the on-premises sense. The MSA commits Salesforce to provide its standard support for Purchased Services at no additional charge, and upgraded support if purchased.[1] Salesforce sells upgraded support as Success Plans: the Standard Success Plan is included in all licenses, the Premier Success Plan is priced at 30% of net license fees, and pricing for the Signature Success Plan is available from Salesforce.[25] Because Premier is a percentage of net license fees, every added license also raises the support cost. MuleSoft editions carry their own support levels; for Titanium purchases or renewals on or after 2026-06-29, the Premier Success Plan replaces Titanium level support.[21]
Audit and compliance
The MSA has no classic on-site audit clause. Compliance rests on three contractual mechanisms and on the usage data Salesforce itself holds:
- Usage limits and true-up. Services are subject to usage limits in Order Forms and Documentation. If a customer exceeds a contractual usage limit and cannot or will not reduce its usage, it “will execute an Order Form for additional quantities of the applicable Services promptly upon SFDC’s request, and/or pay any invoice for excess usage”.[1] This is a contractual true-up.
- Usage restrictions. A customer may not make any Service available to anyone other than itself or its Users, or use it for the benefit of anyone other than itself or its Affiliates, unless an Order Form or the Documentation allows it, and may not resell or sublicense it.[1]
- Contractual, not technical, limits. Some edition restrictions are contractual rather than enforced by the software, so a customer can exceed them without the service stopping it.[6] MuleSoft’s Subscription Plans likewise state that included API limits are contractual and that Salesforce may review use at any time.[21]
Because Salesforce meters logins, credits and consumption itself, the practical compliance task is to reconcile Setup license counts, PSL assignments and consumption reports against the Order Form, rather than to prepare for an external audit (see software license audit).
Cloud, virtualization and BYOL
The CRM clouds, Slack, Tableau Cloud and Data 360 are hosted services, with no processor, host or hypervisor metric. Two products do count hardware. A core-based Tableau Server license counts all the cores of every computer, physical or virtual, that runs at least one licensed process.[16] Self-hosted Mule runtimes are counted on the cores visible to the Java virtual machine in each VM or container, not on the host’s physical cores, and fractional cores round up; on Amazon EC2 each vCPU counts as one core.[21] Salesforce publishes no general bring-your-own-license path onto a third-party cloud for its hosted services.
Recent licensing changes
- MSA update. The Main Services Agreement was last updated on 2026-09-01.[1]
- Flex Credits rate card. The rate card updated on 2026-08-31 sets tiered Data 360 multipliers that reset monthly and lists Slackbot actions as Flex Credit usage types.[4]
- Data Cloud renamed Data 360. Salesforce’s newer documents use Data 360, while rate cards still say Data Cloud.[14][15]
- Slack plan changes. In June 2025 Slack raised Business+ from USD 12.50 to USD 15 per user per month, added core AI features to Pro and introduced an Enterprise+ plan.[26]
- Tableau add-ons. From 2024-09-16, Advanced Management and Data Management are no longer sold as independent add-ons and are available through Tableau Enterprise, Tableau Cloud+, Tableau+ Bundle or Tableau Server+.[16]
- MuleSoft plans. A new Subscription Plans document applies to purchases from Salesforce on or after 2025-06-27.[21]
- Informatica. Salesforce completed its acquisition of Informatica on 2025-11-18 and said its services would come to the Salesforce platform.[27] Salesforce’s other deals, including Tableau, Slack and MuleSoft, are listed on the acquisitions page.
Guides
The Salesforce articles in this wiki:
- Salesforce User and consumption licensing: the MSA User, editions, Setup user license types, permission set licenses, Experience Cloud login pools, Flex Credits, Einstein Requests, Conversations, AELA and Power of Us.
- Salesforce Data 360 credit consumption: the credit formula, Data Services Credits and Flex Credits rate cards, monthly tiers and sandbox rates.
- Tableau Creator, Explorer and Viewer licensing: role-based and core-based licensing, license editions, site roles and feature licenses.
- Slack active-member licensing and Fair Billing Policy: active and inactive members, proration, guests and the 28-day definition for invoiced customers.
- MuleSoft Anypoint capacity and usage-based licensing: editions, vCores and Cores, usage-based packages, API entitlements, Automation Credits and Mule Credits.
Out of scope
- List prices and discounts shown on Salesforce, Tableau, Slack and MuleSoft pricing pages.
- Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud and Heroku licensing, which have no guide yet. Trailhead notes that Heroku creates platform licenses but no user licenses.[2]
- Industry clouds and AppExchange partner applications, which are licensed under their own terms.
- The full Product Terms Directory, which the guides cite only where a product is covered.