Licence Compliance Calculator
Count what you owe under Oracle, Microsoft, VMware and IBM published rules, find the exposure you did not know about, and see the optimisation levers in order of what they return.
Count what you actually owe under each vendor's published rules, find the exposure you did not know you had, and see the optimisation levers in order of what they return. Covers Oracle, Microsoft, VMware by Broadcom, IBM and Oracle-on-cloud. Runs entirely in your browser: nothing about your estate is uploaded.
It applies each vendor's published counting rules to the numbers you enter, and every rule is cited with its source underneath the result. It prices only what vendors publish a price for, which is why some findings come back as a licence count or a risk multiplier rather than a figure. Anything else would be a guess dressed as an estimate, and a licensing guess is the expensive kind. Not legal or contractual advice: your signed agreement governs.
Which of these do you run?
Your estate
Oracle Java is priced per employee, not per user, so this is a licensing input even if only four people touch Java.
The number you believe. Whether Oracle agrees depends on the next question more than on this one.
This single answer moves Oracle exposure more than anything else on this page.
Optional. Used to show what the default uplift does over a renewal cycle.
Microsoft, in full
CALs, Terminal Server, virtualisation rights, Azure Hybrid Benefit, Microsoft 365 and the agreement itself. Most Microsoft overspend is here rather than in the server core count.
Include indirect access. Pooling connections through a web app or a middle tier does not reduce this, which is the multiplexing rule and the most commonly misunderstood clause in Microsoft licensing.
Shift-worker terminals, kiosks, shop floor PCs. Leave blank if everyone has their own device.
Available from the Microsoft 365 admin centre usage reports. The gap between purchased and used is the most reliably recoverable money in the whole estate.
Environments beyond production
This is where most recoverable spend sits, and where the vendors differ most. Answer these even if you are unsure: the rules are not what most teams assume.
Not Developer Edition. If you are unsure, assume all of them: that is the usual answer.
Why licence compliance is the pain point it is
Almost nobody is non-compliant on purpose. The exposure builds because the counting rules are not the rules a competent engineer would guess, and because several of them changed after the architecture was designed.
Three mechanics cause most of what we find:
- The metric is not what you use. Oracle Java is priced per employee, not per user or per installation. A company of 1,200 people running Java on three servers pays for 1,200 people, and a hiring round raises a technology bill.
- Capability counts, not usage. Where an Oracle VM could run matters more than where it does. A cluster with no host pinning is, in Oracle's reading, a cluster where every host may need licensing.
- The discount is conditional and the condition is a tool. IBM sub-capacity licensing is only available if IBM License Metric Tool is deployed and reporting. Without it the charge reverts to full capacity, on every activated core in the server.
The optimisation levers, in the order they usually pay
- Pin and evidence. Host affinity for Oracle workloads, with the configuration and the change history retained. This is the single largest reduction available in most estates and it costs engineering time rather than money.
- Deploy the metering tool you were already required to deploy. ILMT is free with the entitlement. Not running it converts a sub-capacity licence into a full-capacity bill.
- Build the deployment inventory before anyone asks for it. It is the audit defence and the migration scope at the same time: one artifact, two jobs.
- Right-size before you renew, not after. Every metric here counts allocated capacity, so an over-provisioned VM is a licence you are buying for headroom nobody uses.
- Model the per-employee metrics against your headcount plan. If you are hiring, some of your licence costs rise whether or not usage does.
- Price the exit while you still have leverage. The moment to know what leaving costs is before a renewal or an audit, not during one.
What we would want to see before advising you
A deployment inventory, the signed agreements including any negotiated amendments, the virtualisation topology with its affinity rules, and the last two renewal quotes. Most of the answer is in those four things, and none of it is in a product datasheet.
It runs entirely in your browser and nothing you type is transmitted or stored. The output is indicative and derived from your own inputs, so it is only as good as they are. It is educational material, not professional, financial, legal or tax advice, and it is not an audit, a quote or a substitute for review by someone who can see your actual environment.