Slack active-member licensing is how Salesforce bills the paid plans of Slack, its workplace messaging service. The unit is the active member: a person who is actually using the workspace, rather than every account that has been provisioned. The rules are set out in Slack’s Fair Billing Policy, which applies to plans and add-ons bought on the Slack website and paid by credit card or self-serve invoicing.[1] Customers who buy through an Order Form contract under the same active-member concept, and Slack changed its definition of “active” for them at renewals on or after 14 December 2023.[3] Slack now contracts under the Salesforce Main Services Agreement together with the Slack Supplemental Terms.[5]
This contrasts with most Salesforce CRM products, where fees are based on the subscriptions purchased, not on actual use (see Salesforce User and consumption licensing).
Editions
Slack Help compares four plans: Free, Pro, Business+ and Enterprise+. They differ in message history, huddles, external collaboration, AI features, automation and security controls.[6] The paid plans are catalogued as SKUs that all use the active-member metric: Slack Pro, Slack Business+ and Slack Enterprise+. Guest accounts are available only on paid plans.[2] The Free plan keeps 90 days of message history, and content older than one year is deleted.[6]
Slack’s pricing page shows prices per user per month, localized to the visitor’s region. The catalog does not record those marketing prices as license facts.
Metrics
- Active member. On paid plans, a workspace is billed for all members who are actively using Slack. Some member types are paid and others are free (rule).[1]
- Multi-Channel Guest. Has access only to the channels specified, can be added to any number of channels, and is billed as a regular member.[2]
- Single-Channel Guest. Free, and limited to one channel.[2]
| Account type | Billing under the Fair Billing Policy |
|---|---|
| Workspace Owner | Paid |
| Workspace Admin | Paid |
| Full member | Paid |
| Multi-Channel Guest | Paid |
| Single-Channel Guest | Free (up to 5 per paid active member) |
| Bot | Free |
Source: Fair Billing Policy[1] and guest roles article.[2]
Counting / floors
Active and inactive
Under the Fair Billing Policy, buying a paid plan means being billed for all active members. Changes in the number of active members appear on the next billing statement. If every member becomes inactive, the workspace is still billed for one member unless it downgrades to the free version (rule).[1] An invited member becomes billable on the day they accept the invitation.
A member who has not used Slack in over 28 days is inactive. Slack detects this automatically and deposits a credit for the unused part of the billing period. When the member starts using Slack again, the remaining days are charged pro rata (rule).[1] The policy treats deactivation differently from inactivity. An inactive member keeps access to the workspace and to paid features, and is billed again only on becoming active. A deactivated member loses access, and must be reactivated before they can be billed again. Slack recommends deactivation for anyone the customer no longer wants to pay for.[4] When a Workspace Owner or Admin deactivates a member, the credit is deposited the next day.[1]
Proration
Members added partway through a billing period are charged only for the time remaining. Slack’s worked example on the Pro plan, paid monthly at US$8.75 per member, adds a member with 20 days left in the period: $8.75 ÷ 30 days × 20 days = $5.83. A member deactivated with 15 days left earns a credit of $8.75 ÷ 30 × 15 = $4.38. Slack add-ons are prorated in the same way.[1]
How the charge is collected depends on the payment method. Monthly card payers are billed the following month. Annual card payers are billed at the end of the month for the rest of the year. Annual payers by invoice whose workspace grows beyond the paid quantity receive an invoice once per calendar quarter to settle the balance (rule).[1] This is the Slack equivalent of a true-up.
Credits earned under the policy have no currency or exchange value. They cannot be transferred or refunded, and they expire when the paid Slack plan ends (rule).[1]
Invoiced customers and the 28-day definition
On 9 October 2023 Slack announced a change to how it calculates active users for invoiced customers. From 14 December 2023, a member who takes any action in Slack at any time within a 28-day period counts as active (rule). Slack said the old definition could leave out people who used Slack periodically through the month. The new calculation applies to new orders and to renewals on or after that date, with no change mid-contract. Customers paying by card or self-serve invoice had moved to the new definition on 10 July 2023.[3]
The Primary Owner, or the Org Primary Owner on Enterprise plans, can download a Billable Members Report. It covers a chosen end date and the 27 days before it, and includes billable monthly active members from any workspaces linked for billing.[3] This report is the practical source for reconciling an invoiced subscription.
Guests
For every paid active member a workspace can add up to five Single-Channel Guests, so ten members allow up to fifty (rule). A Multi-Channel Guest with a time limit is still billed like a regular member, with prorated credits if they are active for only part of the billing cycle.[2] Slack points out that inviting guests makes the host company responsible for paying for their accounts. It suggests Slack Connect, which links two separate organizations, when the outside person already uses Slack at their own company.[2]
Virtualization & partitioning
Not applicable. Slack is a hosted service billed per member, with no server, core or hypervisor metric.
Cloud / BYOL
Slack is delivered only as a cloud service. The Slack Supplemental Terms state that the Salesforce MSA and the Supplemental Terms together form the “Slack Terms”, and that the MSA takes precedence over the Documentation (rule).[5] For Slack plans bought on the Slack website, the contracting Salesforce entity, the governing law and the courts depend on where the customer is domiciled.[5]
Slackbot consumption
AI agent actions in Slack can also consume Salesforce Flex Credits, separately from member billing. The Flex Credits Rate Card updated on 31 August 2026 lists a Slackbot Standard Action at a multiplier of 40 and a Slackbot Advanced Action at 200, applied per Slack workspace (rule).[7] How Flex Credits are bought is covered in Salesforce User and consumption licensing.
Programs
- Slack Fair Billing Policy. Covers active-member billing, proration, credits for inactive and deactivated members, and quarterly invoices for annual invoiced plans.[1]
- Slack Connect is a collaboration feature, not a licensing program. It lets two organizations share channels, and each side pays for its own members.[2]
Out of scope
- List prices and promotional discounts shown on the Slack pricing page.
- The Salesforce Unified Employee license, a Salesforce user license that gives access to employee agents in Slack. It does not count toward Slack billable members; see Salesforce User and consumption licensing.
- Slack Enterprise+ organization-level contract terms beyond what the Help Center publishes.
- Slack Marketplace apps from third parties, which are licensed by their own publishers.