Snyk contributing developers and test limits are the units of measure on Snyk’s Free and Team plans and on enterprise capabilities sold at a fixed price. The Terms of Service define the Subscription Allocation as the limits on use, “including test limits and any other limits concerning the number of Contributing Developers, Credits or Code Assets”.[2] A customer’s allocation is therefore a combination of a developer count, per-product test limits and, for some products, asset counts. Credit-based enterprise licences use different units, covered in Snyk Platform Subscription credits and rate card.
Editions
The units apply differently by plan.
| Plan | Developer limit | Projects | Test limits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | None stated | 5 | All four products limited[4] |
| Team | Up to 10 developers | 100 | Snyk Code 1,000 tests per month; limits on Code and Open Source only[3][4] |
| Enterprise (fixed price) | Contracted number | Contract | Code and Open Source only, set by contract[1][4] |
| Credit-based licences | Not applicable | Not applicable | Do not apply[4] |
On Enterprise plans, the Your Plan page shows the contracted metric for each capability. “For capabilities licensed on a fixed-price model, Snyk displays the contracted number, for example, the number of contributing developers.” Capabilities on the consumption model show Credits instead.[8] Catalog proof: Enterprise Your Plan page shows the contracted metric per capability.
Metrics
Contributing developer
The contract definition of a Contributing Developer is broad. It covers “an employee, independent contractor, or other individual acting for or on your behalf who has contributed to the Code Asset during a 90-day rolling period by modifying, programming, or testing the Code Asset”.[2] Catalog proof: Contributing Developer is anyone contributing in a rolling 90 days.
The product documentation describes how the count is taken. Snyk defines contributing developers “as developers having made a commit to a private repo monitored by Snyk in the last 90 days”.[1] The pricing page FAQ gives the same definition.[3] The contract wording (“modifying, programming, or testing”) is wider than the documented measurement (a commit), so the contract is the reference point in a dispute.
Test
A Test is either recurring or manual. Recurring tests “are triggered by the Snyk application, based on the customer’s configurations, and occur at a set cadence (e.g. daily or weekly)”. Manual tests are started by the customer through the API, CLI, IDE, pull request checks, push events or the Web UI.[4]
Project and Managed Billable Asset
The Free and Team plans also cap the number of Projects, at 5 and 100.[3] Snyk Essentials counts Managed Billable Assets, described as “the resources, assets, and configuration files accessed through or managed by the customer in Snyk Essentials”.[6]
Counting / floors
How contributing developers are counted
- Private repositories only. “Snyk does not count contributions to public (open-source) repos because the pricing model is based on the number of contributing developers to private repositories.”[1] Catalog proof: Public repository contributions are not counted.
- Default branch. “The developer count is the number of developers who have contributed to the default branch of any private repository connected to an integration.”[1] Catalog proof: Only the default branch is counted.
- Unique across the account. “Contributing developers are only counted once, even if they have contributed to multiple integrations or multiple repositories.”[1]
- Identity is the commit email. “A contributor is recognized through the author email field, set in the local Git settings.”[1] Catalog proof: Each contributor counted once across integrations.
Because identity comes from the Git author email, one person who commits with two different email addresses can appear as two contributors. The documentation does not describe merging for the developer-based plans. The credit plan rules, by contrast, set out explicit username de-duplication. Under those rules a personal email address still counts as a separate contributor.[9]
The Usage page shows the count at Organization and Group level. It gives the “Total unique contributors across all integrations” and a breakdown by integration.[1] Before buying, the count can be estimated with Snyk’s open tool snyk-scm-contributors-count. It “counts and prints a summary of the contributors count for the last 90 days” for Azure DevOps, Bitbucket, GitHub and GitLab. For Bitbucket and Azure, it can also show the licence consumption of an existing account. The tool does not count emails ending in “noreply.github.com”.[5] Catalog proof: Contributor counts can be estimated before onboarding.
How tests are counted
Tests are counted per product.[4] Catalog proof: Tests are counted per manifest file, repository, container file or IaC file.
| Product | One test is |
|---|---|
| Snyk Open Source | One manifest file in scope; “one repository can have many manifest files” |
| Snyk Code | One repository scanned |
| Snyk Container | One Dockerfile, other container file or container image scanned |
| Snyk IaC | One Terraform or other IaC file scanned |
Source for the table: What counts as a test?[4]
Two scope rules limit what counts. First, “The applicable test limits apply to private repositories only.” Second, on Team and Enterprise plans, “test limits only apply to Snyk Code and Snyk Open Source”, and “Tests executed via Snyk’s IDE plugin do not count towards test limits.”[4] Catalog proof: Test limits apply to private repositories, and on Team and Enterprise only to Code and Open Source. On Free, test limits apply to all four products.[4]
The weekly retest cadence has one detail that affects counts. If a manual test runs before the week ends, the next recurring test is scheduled a week after the manual test.[4] A customer that reaches its test limit, or wants more frequent retests, is directed to upgrade.[4]
Free plan figures
The pricing page FAQ states: “If you sign up with our ‘Free’ plan, the limits are: Open Source, 200 tests; Code, 100 tests; IaC, 300 tests; Container, 100 tests.”[3] The Usage settings page gives the same figures, except that it gives 400 tests for Open Source.[1] Catalog proof: Free plan test limits are published per product. That page also notes that on an Enterprise plan “your limits are set by your contract rather than published here”.[1]
Snyk Essentials assets
Repository assets are counted as the total number of source code repositories. Container image assets are counted by globally unique identifiers such as image IDs and SHA. Snyk “may monitor customer billable asset volumes on a daily basis and actively review customer utilization on a rolling thirty (30) day period”. It may raise an overage at 20% over the allocation for a rolling 90 days, or 100% over for 30 days.[6] Catalog proof: Essentials asset overage triggers an expansion invoice, not retroactive billing.
Overage and verification
Snyk “verifies its customers’ use of the Services to ensure compliance with the Subscription Allocation”. Use above the allocation may be invoiced in arrears at Snyk’s then current rates as On-Demand Consumption.[2] Catalog proof: Snyk verifies usage against the Subscription Allocation. The customer cannot reduce the allocation during the term: “You may not downgrade your Subscription Allocation or move to a lower tier of any Service Plan during the term of this Agreement.”[2] Catalog proof: No downgrade during the term. For Essentials assets, Snyk says it will not normally invoice retroactively, and instead offers an expansion invoice.[6]
Virtualization & partitioning
None of these units is tied to hardware. Developer counts are taken from source control history and test counts from scan activity, so virtualization has no effect on them.[1][4]
Cloud / BYOL
Not applicable. The units apply in the same way whichever source code manager or cloud hosts the repositories, and there is no bring-your-own-licence right.[1]
Programs
Legacy Snyk Platform Access tests
Snyk Platform Access was an earlier credit plan that billed per test. “Customers can no longer purchase or enroll in this plan.”[10] Under it, “Monitored tests are billable events”. These are tests whose results are stored on the platform, such as SCM imports, recurring tests, snyk monitor, manual retests and push events. “Unmonitored tests are not billable”. These are IDE tests, snyk test in the CLI and pull request tests.[7] Catalog proof: Unmonitored tests are not billable on Platform Access.
The Platform Access rate card gives the number of monitored tests per credit: 10 for Snyk Open Source, 1 for Snyk Code, 10 for Snyk Container and 10 for Snyk IaC.[7] A customer that runs out of credits “agrees to engage in good faith negotiations with Snyk to purchase additional credits and otherwise true-up Customer’s consumption”.[7] Catalog proof: Legacy Platform Access requires good-faith credit true-up.
Which rules apply
The test documentation says it does not apply to credit-based licences. It sends customers who bought credit licences on or before 31 December 2025 to the Platform Access policy, and those who bought on or after 1 January 2026 to the credit-based billing policy.[4] An estate with both kinds of contract therefore needs two counting methods.
Out of scope
This article does not cover the credit units of the Snyk Platform Subscription (Active Contributor, Monitored Image, Provisioned Target, Active Machine, Assessment), which are in Snyk Platform Subscription credits and rate card. It does not cover Snyk API & Web scan limits or support entitlements.