ServiceNow licensing covers the terms under which ServiceNow sells subscriptions to its hosted ServiceNow AI Platform (formerly the Now Platform) and the workflow products built on it, such as IT Service Management (ITSM), HR Service Delivery, Customer Service Management (CSM), IT Operations Management (ITOM), IT Asset Management and App Engine. Every product subscription is “measured according to a meter”, and ServiceNow names five subscription types: per-user, capacity, unrestricted user, unlimited and display only.[1][2] What a customer may use is set by the product and its tier; how much is set by the meter and the quantity on the Order Form.[3]
For a software asset manager, ServiceNow is unusual in two ways. First, per-user licensing follows the platform’s role model: users consume entitlements through the measured roles they hold, not by being named on a contract.[4] Second, the platform measures its own consumption in Subscription Management, so the instance itself reports allocation, over-allocation and capacity use against purchased subscriptions.[2] The contract and its legal schedules still decide the ratios and quantities that the instance measures against. The guides listed at the end of this article cover each topic in detail.
Product families and how they are licensed
| Family | Main meter | Guide |
|---|---|---|
| ITSM, HR Service Delivery, CSM and other workflow products | Fulfiller User and Business Stakeholder User, or Unrestricted User | ServiceNow user roles and per-user subscriptions |
| IT Operations Management (Visibility, Discovery, AIOps, Health Log Analytics, Cloud Accelerate and others) | Subscription Units derived from CI counts | ServiceNow ITOM subscription units |
| Hardware Asset Management and Digital End-User Experience | Subscription Units at published asset or device ratios | ServiceNow user and subscription-unit licensing |
| App Engine, App Engine Studio, Creator Studio | Custom Table capacity; per-user roles for app users | ServiceNow App Engine and custom table licensing |
| Now Assist (ServiceNow Otto) generative AI | Assists; Creator User and Creator Plus | ServiceNow Now Assist licensing |
| Integration Hub and Workflow Data Fabric | Transactions; Workflow Data Fabric credits | ServiceNow user and subscription-unit licensing |
| Packages across all product lines | Foundation, Advanced and Prime tiers | ServiceNow product tiers and packages |
Product tiers
In the current scheme each product line is offered in up to three tiers, Foundation, Advanced and Prime, each of which “builds progressively on the previous one with additional AI capabilities, agents, and governance tools”.[3] Configuring out-of-the-box AI skills and agents is available at every tier, while building net-new custom skills and agents is a Prime capability.[3] Not every line is sold at every tier; the CSM package page, for example, lists only Advanced and Prime.[5] ServiceNow publishes no list prices and offers custom quotes only.[6] Earlier package names, Professional and Enterprise with “Plus” variants for generative AI, still appear in documentation, for example in the AI Skill Kit field of use, and ServiceNow publishes no mapping from those packages to the new tiers.[7]
Fulfillers, stakeholders and requesters
Per-user subscriptions use rights-based meters. Users with fulfiller-type access are tracked with a Fulfiller User meter, users “who have fewer access rights than fulfiller users” with a Business Stakeholder User meter, and holders of the now.assist.creator role with a Creator User meter.[8] Several role rules affect the count. Fulfillers may approve within the product they are subscribed to without extra entitlement, but approving in another product needs an additional approval entitlement; the approver_user role carries a fee; and users who hold only the bare user role “are counted as licensed fulfillers”.[9] Requesters, who only submit and follow their own requests, are not a meter type in ServiceNow’s list of subscription types.[1]
Some subscriptions instead use the Unrestricted User meter, an “Instance-wide measure of all active users” regardless of role, where an active user is any user record with a User ID and the Active flag set to true.[1] Under that meter, requesters count as well.
Subscription units and capacity
Capacity subscriptions automatically track measured units such as devices, transactions or Subscription Units.[1] In ITOM, a Subscription Unit “may cover a different number of resources, depending on the resource CI category”, and the customer contract determines both the CI categories and the CI-per-unit ratios.[10] Consumption is the average of 90 daily CI counts, converted at the contracted ratio.[11] When ITOM applications are bought as a bundle, each covered application receives the same number of units, and the bundle’s consumption is set by the highest-using product.[12] Where a bundle and an a la carte subscription cover the same application, the bundle is consumed first.[13]
Two families publish their ratios in product documentation. Hardware Asset Management counts asset records by category, for example four end-user computers or one server per Subscription Unit.[14] Digital End-User Experience uses a ratio of one Subscription Unit to four end-user computing devices.[15]
Custom tables and App Engine
A custom table is “a table that you create on the ServiceNow AI Platform that isn’t provided by ServiceNow”, and every subscription comes with custom table entitlements whose number depends on the subscription.[16] Custom applications and tables on the production instance must be mapped to a valid subscription; on non-production instances mapping is recommended but not required.[16] Exempted tables do not count, and grandfathered tables preserve earlier entitlements through a one-time migration that cannot be transferred or reused.[17] The development tools carry their own entitlements: an App Engine Studio subscription is required to install it on a production or non-production instance.[18]
Generative AI and consumption units
Now Assist, which ServiceNow is renaming ServiceNow Otto, is consumed from an account-level pool of assists. Subscription Management multiplies the number of actions for each skill by that skill’s assist ratio, and excludes assists used in demo instances.[19] AI-assisted development is sold per user as Creator Plus, and a user allocated on more than one instance counts only once.[20] From version 28.4.3 of ServiceNow Otto for Creator, most of its AI capabilities no longer require the now.assist.creator role that defines the Creator User meter.[21] Integration and data capabilities are metered in Workflow Data Fabric credits, each of which “represents a unit of consumption under a unified meter”.[22]
Purchasing programs and agreements
ServiceNow’s customer agreement is the Direct and Indirect Customer Agreement, version 2026-02-06, listed with the other legal schedules on ServiceNow’s legal schedules page.[23][24] Customers order through Order Forms, which identify the offerings that make up the Subscription Service. A customer may also buy through an Authorized Reseller, in which case references to an Order Form are replaced by a Use Authorization, a document specifying the Subscription Service purchased and “the term and scope of its authorized use”.[23] The agreement lets a customer give its Affiliates access to the Subscription Service in the Order Form, as Affiliate Users for whose compliance the customer is wholly responsible.[23]
The product-level rules sit in entitlement supplements: the Custom Table Guide, the Integration Hub and Automation Engine overview, the Subscription Unit Overviews for ITOM, HAM and other families, the ServiceNow Otto Overview and an Overage Fee Schedule.[25] The catalog records two ServiceNow programs: the product tiers (Foundation, Advanced, Prime) and ITOM bundle and a la carte subscriptions.[3][26] In the instance, the Subscription form records the Product Code, which is “the product SKU shown on your subscription order form”.[27]
Support and maintenance
Support is included in the subscription. During the Subscription Term, ServiceNow provides Customer Support, Availability, and Upgrades and Updates as described in the Customer Support Addendum (CSA).[23] The CSA, effective 2025-03-12, limits support to resolving defects that cause the service not to conform to the Documentation, and excludes implementation, configuration and customization work, training, immaterial defects and defects caused by modifications made by others.[28] It sets target response times by priority, for example 60 minutes for a P1 defect that makes an instance inaccessible to authorized users.[28] Upgrades (new releases and Release Families) and Updates (patches and hotfixes) are applied to customer instances at no additional fee during the Subscription Term, and support excludes instances that do not conform to the CSA’s upgrade section.[28] ServiceNow may also offer supplemental support services for an additional fee.[28]
Audit and compliance
The customer agreement does not describe a formal audit procedure. Its restrictions clause forbids using the Subscription Service “in excess of contractual use limits (including as stated in an Order Form)”, or in a way that circumvents use limits or technical access controls, and forbids reselling or otherwise making it available to third parties unless the agreement or an Order Form allows it.[23] In practice, compliance is measured in Subscription Management. The overview reports each subscription’s status as Compliant, Near capacity, Even or Over-allocated, and over-allocation means more users hold an entitlement than the customer has purchased.[2][4] Organizations that have never allocated manually are assigned automatically to “the lowest-cost subscription that meets the access needs of their roles”.[29] Allocation details for user-based subscriptions are hidden from the overview to avoid inaccuracy when allocations are incomplete, and customers are directed to their account team for them.[2]
Per-user allocation totals exclude users who have not logged in within 365 days, users with web service access only and users with no User ID; the Unrestricted User meter applies no such login filter.[8][1] ServiceNow’s Now Assist documentation suggests buying more entitlements “to stay in compliance” when usage keeps growing.[19] An Overage Fee Schedule is listed among the entitlement supplements.[25] See software license audit for the general practice.
Cloud, virtualization and BYOL
ServiceNow subscriptions are for a hosted service, so there is no processor, core or hypervisor metric for its own products.[1] Virtual machines, containers and cloud resources discovered or monitored by ITOM are counted as configuration items in categories such as Servers, Containers, PaaS or FaaS, each at its contracted ratio.[10] ITOM Cloud Accelerate needs an additional Integration Hub Enterprise bundle entitlement, and Cloud Account Management requires the Cloud Governance Suite SKU.[26] The legal schedules page also lists a Self-Hosted Software License Agreement and a Restricted and Self-Hosted Usage Policy, separate from the hosted Subscription Service terms.[24] Governance of AI assets outside ServiceNow requires the separate AI Control Tower for Enterprise AI license at any tier.[3]
Recent licensing changes
- AI-native tiers. Foundation, Advanced and Prime are now the packaging for all supported product lines, alongside earlier Professional and Enterprise names that still appear in documentation, and their rollout “is independent of your organization’s upgrade cycle”.[3]
- Now Assist becomes ServiceNow Otto. The legal schedule is listed as the ServiceNow Otto Overview, formerly the Now Assist Overview.[25]
- Creator role relaxed. From ServiceNow Otto for Creator 28.4.3, most AI capabilities no longer require the now.assist.creator role.[21]
- Workflow Data Fabric credits. Integration and data capabilities are metered in a unified credit whose consumption is set by the Workflow Data Fabric license terms.[22]
- Customer agreement. The Direct and Indirect Customer Agreement was reissued as version 2026-02-06.[23]
Guides
The ServiceNow articles in this wiki, from the most general to the most specific:
- ServiceNow user and subscription-unit licensing: the five subscription types, per-user and capacity meters, HAM ratios, custom tables, Workflow Data Fabric tokens and portal visits.
- ServiceNow product tiers and packages: Foundation, Advanced and Prime, package contents by product line, and the earlier Professional and Enterprise names.
- ServiceNow user roles and per-user subscriptions: fulfillers, business stakeholders, approvers and requesters, and how users are allocated to subscriptions.
- ServiceNow ITOM subscription units: CI categories, the 90-day average, bundles and a la carte subscriptions.
- ServiceNow Now Assist licensing: assists and assist ratios, Creator Plus and AI Skill Kit field of use.
- ServiceNow App Engine and custom table licensing: what counts as a custom table, mapping obligations, and App Engine and Creator Studio entitlements.
Out of scope
- List prices, which ServiceNow does not publish.
- The contractual CI-per-unit ratios for ITOM and the per-skill assist ratios, which are in the legal schedules and the Order Form.
- Security Operations, Strategic Portfolio Management and industry solutions, which have no guide yet.
- The Self-Hosted Software License Agreement, which is named here but not summarised.