ServiceNow user roles and per-user subscriptions describes how ServiceNow ties its per-user licensing to the platform’s role model. ServiceNow does not license named people directly. It licenses access, and access is granted through roles. “Roles that require a subscription are considered measured roles”, and measured roles are “categorized by the level of access they provide”.[3] Subscription Management tracks the resulting entitlements on per-user subscriptions. Fulfiller-type access is tracked with a Fulfiller User meter. Users “who have fewer access rights than fulfiller users” are tracked with a Business Stakeholder User meter. The now.assist.creator role is tracked with a Creator User meter.[2] Requesters, the employees who only submit and follow their own requests, do not appear as a meter type in ServiceNow’s list of subscription types.[9]
Editions
The role model is the same across ServiceNow’s packages. What changes by package is which applications’ roles are measured under a given subscription (see ServiceNow product tiers and packages). The personas that recur in ServiceNow documentation are:
| Persona | How ServiceNow describes it | Typical meter |
|---|---|---|
| Fulfiller | Works on records in a product. For apps built in Creator Studio, “Users with the agent role are fulfillers”[8] | Fulfiller User[2] |
| Business stakeholder | Views and approves records. In ITSM the business_stakeholder role lets users “view and approve records within all products of ITSM”[5] | Business Stakeholder User[2] |
| Approver | approver_user can modify approval requests routed to the user and has “all the capabilities of requesters”[1] | Fee-bearing role; the meter is not named on the role page |
| Requester | “Someone requesting something, like a piece of equipment or permission to do something”[8] | No meter type published |
| Creator | Holds now.assist.creator for ServiceNow Otto for Creator skills | Creator User[2] |
Some subscriptions use the Unrestricted User meter instead. It is described as an “Instance-wide measure of all active users”, applied regardless of role, where an active user is any sys_user record with a User ID and the Active field set to true.[9] Under that meter, the distinction between fulfiller, stakeholder and requester does not change the count.
Metrics
The per-user meters are Fulfiller User, Business Stakeholder User, Unrestricted User and Creator User. Their definitions and the 365-day active-user filter are covered in ServiceNow user and subscription-unit licensing.
Counting / floors
Fulfillers and approval
The Base system roles page, as updated on 2026-09-10, sets out three rules for approvals. Fulfillers may approve within the product they are subscribed to, such as an ITSM fulfiller approving within ITSM, with no additional entitlement. Approving in another product, for example Procurement or GRC, “would need an additional approval entitlement for the user”.[1] The approver_user role itself carries a charge: “There’s a fee associated with this role. Don’t assign it to users without confirming your organization has the appropriate entitlement” (The approver_user role carries a fee).[1] The bare user role “has no functionality”, yet “Users with this role are counted as licensed fulfillers”.[1]
Business stakeholders in ITSM
The Business Stakeholder plugin (com.snc.business_stakeholder) installs a single business_stakeholder role that is reused “across all ITSM applications including Change Management and Request Management” (The business_stakeholder role views and approves records across all ITSM products).[5] The role contains the read roles for incident, problem, change and request (sn_incident_read, sn_problem_read, sn_change_read, sn_request_read) and approver_user.[5][6] ServiceNow warns that sn_request_read should not be assigned to users without the business_stakeholder role, because future updates to it are expected (sn_request_read should only be assigned together with business_stakeholder).[6] The ITSM Roles plugin that supplies these granular roles is present by default in new instances, and instances upgraded from Madrid or earlier must request it.[6]
Business stakeholders in CSM
For Customer Service Management, “Customers who have purchased the Customer Service Management Subscription product may provide Business Stakeholder users” with four kinds of rights: creating cases on behalf of a customer or service organization, viewing cases, case tasks and customer data, viewing and drilling through reports, and approving requests (CSM subscribers may give Business Stakeholder users case, reporting and approval rights).[7] Each right maps to named roles, for example sn_customerservice.account_contributor for creating cases for any account, sn_customerservice.case_viewer for read-only case access and pa_viewer for reports. Some roles in the table depend on other subscriptions: the order approver role “requires subscription to Order Management”.[7] One role in the stakeholder list is not a stakeholder entitlement on its own. A case authorized contributor needs “at least one fulfiller license (such as csm_agent, sn_customerservice_agent, or sn.customerservice.svc_location_agent) in addition to this role” (CSM case authorized contributor tasks require a fulfiller license).[7]
CSM also allows fulfillment by people outside the customer’s own organization. With External Organization as a fulfiller, “external location agents having svc_location_agent and snc_external roles can access the platform to create and resolve cases, similar to internal location agents”.[11] The fulfiller-license examples quoted above include sn.customerservice.svc_location_agent, the agent role such partner staff hold.
Requesters
ServiceNow’s subscription types page lists no requester meter.[9] The approver_user description treats requester capabilities as a baseline that approvers extend.[1] Creator Studio documentation says that by default “all users on the production instance get access to forms built in Creator Studio”, while fulfilling requests needs the app’s agent role (Creator Studio app agent role holders are fulfillers).[8] Under an Unrestricted User subscription every active user counts, requesters included.[9]
How users are assigned to subscriptions
Allocation happens through groups. “You allocate subscriptions by adding one or more groups with measured roles to a product subscription.”[3] Organizations that have never allocated manually are assigned automatically. Subscription Management “evaluates user roles and assigns users the lowest-cost subscription that meets the access needs of their roles” (Automatic assignment gives the lowest-cost subscription that meets role access needs).[4] Custom and customized roles are classified “according to the Access Control Lists (ACLs) each role contains”. Users with such roles receive entitlements “based on access granted to tables within a subscription product” (Custom and customized roles are classified by the ACLs they contain).[4]
Only active users count toward allocation totals. The active count excludes users who have not logged in within 365 days, users with web service access only, and users with an empty User ID.[2] The overview reports a status for each subscription: Compliant, Near capacity (90 percent by default), Even or Over-allocated. Allocation details for user-based subscriptions are hidden from the overview “to help prevent inaccuracy when allocations are incomplete”, and customers are directed to their account executive for them.[10]
Creators
From version 28.4.3 of ServiceNow Otto for Creator, “most ServiceNow Otto for Creator AI capabilities don’t require the now.assist.creator role” (Most ServiceNow Otto for Creator capabilities no longer require now.assist.creator from version 28.4.3).[12] Because the Creator User meter follows that role, fewer users may hold it after the upgrade. The page does not say how this affects existing Creator Plus allocations.
Virtualization & partitioning
Not applicable. Per-user subscriptions count user records on a ServiceNow instance, not hardware.
Cloud / BYOL
Not applicable. The subscriptions are for the ServiceNow-hosted service.
Programs
No program is specific to user roles. Package tiers are described in ServiceNow product tiers and packages.
Out of scope
- A free or paid requester SKU (not published).
- The per-product list of measured roles, which ServiceNow keeps in Now Support knowledge articles and in the instance.
- The conversion between approver_user entitlements and Business Stakeholder User entitlements (not published).
- HR Service Delivery role-to-meter mapping. The HR documents reviewed here do not state it.