Tungsten Automation sells three further product families that a licence manager often meets alongside TotalAgility and Power PDF. Tungsten RPA, documented as Kofax RPA up to version 11.5, is a robotic process automation platform built on RoboServers, a Management Console and the Design Studio development tool.[1] Tungsten Capture, formerly Kofax Capture, is a batch document capture system.[3] ReadSoft Invoices is an invoice processing product that depends on the Tungsten License Server.[4] All three are licensed under the Tungsten EULA and a Sales Order, which sets term, volume and concurrency limits.[5]
Editions
Tungsten RPA can be licensed in two ways. Concurrent Robot Execution (CRE) licensing “centers around a Kofax RPA Robot license”. Capacity-based pricing uses Kofax RPA Compute Units (KCUs). Both are available “on a perpetual or annual term basis”.[1] Management Console holds the licence and also serves Design Studio seats. Its license server settings separate production and non-production CREs: “productionCreReserved” and “nonProductionCreReserved”.[1]
Tungsten Capture is offered as standalone, network and Enterprise configurations. High availability support and the Backup Licensing Option belong to Tungsten Capture Enterprise.[3] No public prices exist for RPA or Capture.
Metrics
| Metric | Vendor definition | Catalog row |
|---|---|---|
| Concurrent Robot Execution (CRE) | “the Kofax RPA Robot license controls how many robots can execute on a Kofax RPA RoboServer concurrently”[1] | RPA Concurrent Robot Execution (CRE) |
| Kofax RPA Compute Unit (KCU) | “a unit of measure for how many operations (or steps) a Kofax RPA RoboServer can perform in one second”[1] | RPA Compute Unit (KCU) |
| Design Studio seat | The license server “must be running and have available Design Studio seats”[1] | RPA Design Studio seat |
| Capture station license | “Station licenses apply to the session rather than the computer.”[3] | Capture station license |
Counting / floors
RPA: CRE
A CRE licence limits how many robots run at once, not how many exist. In the guide’s example, “if an organization is licensed for five Kofax RPA Robots, then five robots can be executed concurrently”. “There is no limit to the number of robots that can be designed and deployed into production.”[1] CREs are assigned to RoboServer clusters in Management Console, and one of two distribution modes then applies.[1]
- Static mode. CREs are spread evenly across the online RoboServers and “a CRE license cannot be split”. With 9 CREs and two RoboServers, each server runs four robots, so one CRE goes unused. If a cluster has fewer CREs than RoboServers, “the cluster is disabled”.[1] An administrator can override the even split by assigning a number of licence units to each RoboServer.[2]
- Dynamic mode. RoboServers request licences from the cluster as needed. This mode “can not be applied to a high availability setup”.[1]
Catalog proof: RPA licences limit concurrent robots, not the number of robots designed; In static mode RPA CREs are whole units per RoboServer; too few disable the cluster.
RPA: KCU
“One KCU represents a total of 5000 KCU points per second.” Steps cost different numbers of points.[1]
| Step group | Cost in KCU points | Guide’s example with 4 KCUs |
|---|---|---|
| I/O and JavaScript together | 10,000 | 2 page loads per second |
| I/O or JavaScript, not both | 1,000 | 20 Call REST Web Service steps per second |
| Extraction and transformation | 1 | 40,000 extract or assign steps per second |
| Call Robot | 5,000 | |
| Loop iteration | 5,000 per iteration |
Design Studio lists the full table under Help, Show KCU Information. The debugger summary shows the KCUs a robot used.[1] Catalog proof: One RPA KCU equals 5,000 KCU points per second.
RPA: Design Studio
“The central license server (Management Console) administers the license for all Design Studio users.” A Design Studio that has been shut down “for more than four days” must authenticate again.[1] In multi-tenant deployments, “maxUsers” and “maxDesignStudioSeats” can cap an instance “to prevent overuse”.[1] Catalog proof: RPA Design Studio needs a free seat on the license server and re-authentication after four days offline.
Capture
Tungsten Capture “supports a centralized license management scheme”. Licences are activated with the Tungsten serial number and product code, or with a hardware key. Licences “must be activated before you can use Tungsten Capture permanently”. If activation fails during installation, the purchased options work “for a period of three days” until the License Utility activates them.[3] Catalog proof: Tungsten Capture runs three days without activation; activation uses serial number and product code.
Virtualization & partitioning
RPA. “Kofax RPA licensing is independent of the target hardware environment and physical CPUs, and a robot license is not tied to a physical desktop or virtual machine.” KCUs work the same way, “without the need to control the number of allocated CPUs”.[1] The guide also warns that the number of robots a RoboServer can actually run depends on available CPU and response times.[2] Catalog proof: RPA licences are perpetual or annual and independent of hardware, CPUs and virtual machines.
Capture. On Terminal Services or Citrix, licensed modules in one session share a station licence. However, “licensed applications running within different sessions do not share the same station license”. Recognition Server, Validation and Quality Control running in three separate sessions on one computer therefore need three station licences. Services run in the console session, and Citrix does not support the Scan module.[3] Catalog proof: Capture modules in separate Terminal Services or Citrix sessions each need a station licence.
The following is commentary. For Capture, session count is the unit to measure, so a terminal server farm can need more station licences than it has physical servers. For RPA, peak concurrent robots or KCU capacity is the unit, whatever the number of virtual machines.
Cloud / BYOL
Because RPA licences are hardware-independent, they may run in cloud-based or on-premise, virtualized or physical CPU environments.[1] The Management Console can also take its licence from a TotalAgility instance as license server, using a license API key generated in TotalAgility.[1]
Tungsten License Server
The on-premise Tungsten License Server (KofaxLicenseServer 6.6.1) is shared by several products. ReadSoft Invoices 2025.1 uses it as its only licence type: “ReadSoft Invoices 2025.1 only support the Tungsten License Server.” Older ReadSoft licence types must be upgraded first, or the application stops working. The new licence arrives with “the serial number and product code required for license activation”. A second License Server can be installed as a backup.[4] Catalog proof: ReadSoft Invoices 2025.1 works only with Tungsten License Server.
High availability
Capture “Backup license keys (used with High Availability Support) are available by contractual agreement”.[3] RPA’s Dynamic mode cannot be used with high availability, so RPA high availability needs Static distribution.[1] Catalog proof: Capture backup licence keys for high availability are contractual.
Programs
Term licences and Software Maintenance and Support renew in three-year terms under the EULA. Audits use telemetry or server access, with overuse charged at list price.[5] See Term license renewal, Software Maintenance and Support and Tungsten Automation licensing.
Out of scope
- RPA versions after 11.5 and the Desktop Automation and attended automation features, whose licensing was not reviewed.
- Capture modules’ individual licence options (such as Recognition Server or Web Capture) and VRS Elite, apart from station licensing.
- ReadSoft Online and other cloud services.
- Prices, which are not public.