MySQL Enterprise Edition price in 2026. $5,350 a server, whatever the core count.

MySQL Enterprise Edition costs $5,350 a year per server with 1 to 4 sockets and $10,700 with 5 or more, whatever the core count. Your bill depends on how many servers carry MySQL, so the server inventory is what to fix before renewal.

How much does MySQL Enterprise Edition cost per server?

MySQL Enterprise Edition lists at $5,350 a year for a server with 1 to 4 sockets and $10,700 a year for a server with 5 or more sockets. The number of cores inside those sockets plays no part in either price.

Standard, Enterprise and Cluster CGE share the two socket bands, and MySQL AI, covered below, is the exception. The grid below is the MySQL Global Price List dated September 11, 2025, which we cross check against our MySQL Enterprise Edition per server pricing breakdown. Anything in the 5 or more socket band is quote only through the MySQL Sales Team.

What counts as a socket, and what counts as a server?

Oracle's price list footnote defines a socket as a slot housing a chip or multichip module that contains one or more cores. However many cores the chip carries, it counts as one socket. A two socket server with 4 cores and a two socket server with 128 cores therefore sit in the same band at the same price.

A Server is the computer on which the programs are installed, and a Server license permits use on one specified computer. Every occupied socket on which MySQL is installed or running must be licensed. In practice you license the machine, whatever workload it carries.

Why is there no separate support line on a MySQL quote?

The Annual Subscription bundles the right to use the software with Oracle Software Update License and Support, and Oracle Premier Support for MySQL is included at no extra cost. There is no 22 percent support line to negotiate, as there is on Oracle Database, and no unsupported license to fall back on.

That shows up at renewal. You cannot keep MySQL Enterprise Backup or Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) and drop support, and you cannot buy either feature on its own. A team that only wants backup still pays the full Enterprise rate of $445.83 per server per month, and the familiar renewal tactic of dropping support on shelfware is not available.

What does the MySQL price list leave out?

Read the grid for what is missing. None of these variables change the price of a MySQL server:

• Cores. A 16 core server and a 256 core server in the same two socket chassis both pay $5,350 on Enterprise Edition.
• Memory. There is no memory ceiling in any band.
• Users. No user count and no named user minimum.
• Instances and schemas. No instance limit, so one schema or forty on the same server costs the same.
• Support percentage. Support is inside the subscription rate.

Your MySQL cost model therefore reduces to one integer: how many physical machines have MySQL installed.

A second consequence is easy to miss. Because the metric ignores consumption, Oracle earns nothing more inside MySQL as your workload grows. Its growth revenue has to come from edition upsell (Standard to Enterprise to Cluster CGE), from server sprawl on your side, or from a new metric.

How does MySQL pricing compare with Oracle Database Enterprise Edition?

On a dense server the gap is roughly 285 to 1. A two socket Intel server with 64 cores needs 32 Oracle Database Enterprise Edition Processor licenses at $47,500 each, about $1.52M at list. The same machine running MySQL Enterprise Edition costs $5,350 a year with Premier Support included.

On Oracle's Technology Global Price List effective April 16, 2026, Database Enterprise Edition costs $47,500 per Processor, where Processor means cores multiplied by the core factor. The alternative is $950 per Named User Plus, with a minimum of 25 NUP per Processor. Intel x86 carries a 0.5 core factor, which is how 64 cores become 32 Processors.

The comparison mixes a one time license with an annual subscription, so it is fair to extend it over time. Across ten years, MySQL Enterprise Edition on the 64 core server totals $53,500. The Oracle Database license plus ten years of support at 22 percent comes to $4,864,000 for the same box.

How much do Oracle Database options add?

Options widen the gap. Partitioning lists at $11,500 per Processor and RAC at $23,000 per Processor on top of the base rate, and a heavily optioned Enterprise Edition Processor reaches $122,000 with $26,840 a year in support. MySQL Enterprise Edition includes backup, TDE, audit, monitoring and the firewall inside its single server rate.

The only relative elsewhere in Oracle's database catalog is Standard Edition 2 at $17,500 per occupied socket, also blind to cores, but capped at two sockets per server. MySQL Enterprise Edition is the only product in the catalog where a 128 core socket costs nothing extra for the 127 cores past the first.

Why does the account team steer MySQL buyers elsewhere?

The gap above is the strongest single argument in any workload placement business case. It also explains why Oracle sales compensation pushes toward the flagship database and toward HeatWave, because a MySQL server renewal carries very little revenue. Expect those products to come up whenever a MySQL deal is on the table, and judge them on your own numbers.

Why should server count, rather than cores, drive MySQL workload placement?

Because the price is per machine, every decision that removes a server is rewarded and every decision that adds one is penalized. That reverses the habits most database teams learned on core based metrics.

Under Oracle Database licensing the sensible discipline is compute control: pin the instance, cap the cores, hard partition the VM, and keep the licensable footprint as small as you can support in an audit. Under the MySQL server metric that effort buys nothing. Savings come from fewer, denser, better used machines, each paying $5,350 whatever it runs.

Where we disagree with the usual advice to cap cores

The usual guidance for Oracle database products is to shrink the footprint with fewer cores, hard partitions and smaller machines. For MySQL we think that advice wastes effort and can cost money, because teams that spread MySQL across many small hosts multiply the server count.

Put MySQL on fewer, larger two socket servers and spend audit preparation on the inventory. Core caps on a MySQL host only matter if the same machine also runs a core licensed Oracle product, and that case is better solved by separating the two.

Why do replicas and quorum nodes cost the full rate?

Resilience adds servers, and the metric charges every one of them in full. Three node groups, cross site replicas and quorum arbitrators each need a subscription however little work they do. A read replica idling at 3 percent CPU costs exactly what the primary costs.

Design reviews should therefore price each extra node at $5,350 before it is built. A replica that exists only because a template created it is the easiest server to take off the list.

Trimming a MySQL server from 32 cores to 8 saves nothing, while taking that server off the list saves $5,350 a year.

Where does the MySQL server metric cost more than you modeled?

The price per server is low, but far more servers need one than most budgets assume. Oracle's edition comparison states that all installations of Enterprise Edition, Standard Edition and Cluster Carrier Grade Edition need an appropriate commercial agreement, and it names production, development, testing, backup and disaster recovery. That includes staging, QA and standby.

There is no free non production allowance of the kind buyers assume from other vendors, and the price list footnotes contain no cold DR exemption.

How much does non production add?

Across our Oracle licensing work, the ratio we see most often is about one non production or standby instance per production instance, sometimes two. So 20 production servers at Enterprise list cost $107,000 a year, and the same deployment with dev, test and DR at three times the footprint costs $321,000.

Why does a fifth socket double the price?

The band counts all occupied sockets on which the program is installed or running. A lightly used four socket box stays in the low band. Populate a fifth socket and that server jumps to $10,700, quote only, with no change in what MySQL does for you.

What pushes a Standard Edition server up to Enterprise?

Enterprise features do. Standard Edition covers the server, replication, connectors and Workbench, but not Enterprise Backup, TDE, the audit log, the firewall, the thread pool or Enterprise Monitor. Install any of them on a Standard server and that server needs Enterprise, a jump of $3,210 a year per server.

Say a security team enables the audit log plugin on 8 Standard servers to meet a logging requirement. The subscription rises from $17,120 to $42,800 a year, an increase of $25,680 that was never in the budget. Check with SHOW PLUGINS before any such change goes live.

Why do installed but idle copies count?

Your true socket count is what Oracle's audit script finds installed, which is often more than your CMDB shows. Occupied sockets on machines where MySQL is installed but not running are licensable. That catches hosts that were decommissioned but never wiped, golden images, and containers built onto hypervisor hosts with several sockets.

Run the inventory yourself before renewal, and remove the software rather than argue about it. Our Oracle MySQL enterprise licensing guide walks through the boundary cases where an install that is not used still counts as a licensable server.

What is a clean inventory worth in a worked example?

Take a hypothetical company whose own inventory finds MySQL Enterprise Edition installed on 60 servers, all in the 1 to 4 socket band.

The saving is $112,350 a year at list, before any negotiation, and it comes from inventory work alone. Oracle publishes no non production discount for MySQL. A bundled uplift on a consolidated server count is routinely available at renewal, though, because Oracle prefers volume to disputes over single instances.

How do you check your own MySQL server and socket count?

Build the count from the machines themselves. These checks cover most Linux and Windows deployments, and they mirror what Oracle looks for, as described in our note on how Oracle checks MySQL commercial use.

• Edition on each running instance. Run SELECT @@version, @@version_comment. Commercial builds identify themselves as MySQL Enterprise Server in the version comment.
• Installs where the service is stopped. On RPM based Linux, rpm -qa piped through grep for mysql lists every MySQL package, and commercial packages carry the word commercial in their names. This finds the idle installs that a database query cannot.
• Sockets per host. On Linux, lscpu prints a Socket(s) line. On Windows, Get-CimInstance Win32_Processor returns one entry per populated socket. On a VM, both show the topology the hypervisor presents.
• Enterprise features in use. SHOW PLUGINS reveals the audit log, firewall and thread pool plugins, and a mysqlbackup binary on the host shows MySQL Enterprise Backup is present. Our list of MySQL Enterprise tools that trigger a subscription covers the rest.
• Replication topology. SHOW REPLICAS on a source, or the replication_group_members table in performance_schema for Group Replication, lists every node that belongs in the count.

Record edition, version, socket count, environment and owner for each host in one sheet. That sheet becomes the server schedule you hand Oracle, and it shows at the same time whether any Standard server is running Enterprise features.

What does a MySQL 8.0 renewal buy in 2026?

It buys access to tickets and existing documentation, but no new security fixes. Oracle's end of life notice places MySQL 8.0 under Oracle Sustaining Support as of April 21, 2026, the Extended Support term closed on April 30, 2026, and Oracle has named 8.0.46 the final 8.0 release.

Oracle's own wording is that no new server vulnerabilities will be fixed, regardless of severity. The subscription rate does not drop. You pay the same $5,350 per Enterprise server for a thinner service than you bought in 2024, which gives you the clearest price for value argument of the whole cycle.

Should you move to MySQL 8.4 LTS or 9.7 LTS?

Choose 9.7 if your team can absorb the jump. Each LTS release gets 5 years of Premier Support and 3 years of Extended Support, so 8.4 leaves you less than three years of Premier and puts you back at this table in 2029.

Innovation releases ship quarterly and are supported only until the next one arrives. They suit nothing you want to leave alone for 90 days.

What about MySQL NDB Cluster subscriptions?

The NDB track has its own deadline and renews on a separate line item. NDB Cluster 7.6 moved to Sustaining Support on May 31, 2026, and NDB Cluster Manager 8.0 is retired in favor of 8.4. If you pay $10,700 per low band server for Cluster CGE, confirm in writing which NDB stream your subscription covers before you sign.

How do you put the migration cost into the renewal?

Price it before you sign. Count the engineering days for the 8.0 to 9.7 upgrade, connector and query compatibility testing, and any NDB Manager rework, then present that figure as the cost Oracle's lifecycle decision transferred to you.

In our experience that argument supports a multi year discount or a fixed price commitment. It pairs well with the consolidation numbers in our MySQL Enterprise Edition pricing analysis. If the upgrade also reopens the question of staying on MySQL at all, our MySQL versus MariaDB and Postgres migration cost comparison sets out the other side.

Do you need a MySQL subscription on AWS, Azure or Google Cloud?

Not for managed services. Amazon RDS for MySQL, Azure Database for MySQL, Google Cloud SQL and Oracle's HeatWave MySQL service include the license in the hourly rate, so there is no separate Oracle subscription to buy. Our HeatWave cost model and RDS MySQL versus Aurora comparison cover those costs.

Installing MySQL Enterprise Edition yourself on an EC2, Azure or Compute Engine VM is bring your own license. The server metric then applies exactly as it does on physical hardware: the license attaches to the computer on which the programs are installed, and every occupied socket where they are installed or running must be licensed.

How does VM size change the socket band?

The band follows the instance topology as the provider presents it. A small or mid size VM sits in the 1 to 4 socket band at $5,350 a year for Enterprise Edition. Move the same database to a very large instance that exposes more than four sockets and the rate doubles to $10,700, quote only, for no functional gain.

In our experience the surprise almost always follows a resize for memory by an infrastructure team, made without MySQL licensing in mind. Check lscpu on the VM after every resize and before every renewal.

When should cloud migrations land relative to the renewal?

Before the quote is built, never in the quarter after you sign. Every workload moved to a managed service permanently removes a countable server, and Oracle prices from the server list you hand over. Hand over the post migration list, and reconcile each BYOL VM against its instance topology first, using the boundaries in our MySQL licensing guide linked above.

How is MySQL AI priced, and why does its metric matter?

MySQL AI lists at $625 per Processor with a minimum of 8 Processors per server, a floor of about $5,000 per server. The metric name matters more than the number. Processor is the Oracle Database metric, cores multiplied by core factor, which MySQL buyers have never had to count.

The 8 Processor minimum only sets a floor. On a two socket, 64 core Intel server the count is 32 Processors, roughly $20,000 per server for a chassis that carries $5,350 of Enterprise Edition. The hypothetical below applies the list rate to ten identical two socket Intel servers at the 0.5 core factor.

Treat MySQL AI as a repricing attempt more than a feature release. It is how core based economics enter MySQL, one workload at a time. Once a per Processor SKU is normal in your MySQL contract, the case for keeping the per server bands on everything else gets weaker at every renewal.

What have we seen in recent MySQL renewals?

Most deployments we review carry 15 to 40 percent more licensed MySQL servers than the architecture requires. Almost all of the excess is legacy replicas, hosts decommissioned but still installed, and development boxes never removed from the count. Four patterns repeat across our renewal and audit defense work, and each traces back to a question left unasked.

1. Stale server lists. The renewal is built from a list drafted three years earlier, long after consolidation happened. Because cores are free, the buyer never had a reason to recount. Ask who verified this year that each listed server still exists.
2. Full price for one feature. Buyers pay the Enterprise rate for MySQL Enterprise Backup or TDE alone, because Oracle will not sell either separately. That should be a deliberate choice, tested against what it would cost to replace the one feature with open source tooling.
3. Term length misread. Standard Edition in the low socket band lists at $2,140 for one year and $6,420 for three, the same rate per year. The list offers no term discount, so any multi year reduction has to be negotiated and written into the order.
4. MySQL 8.0 renewed unchanged. The costliest pattern in 2026 is 8.0 renewed at full rate with no adjustment requested. Ask what the subscription delivers over the next 12 months beyond access to the download portal, and why the price is the same.

Read the version and topology questions together with our note on when free MySQL becomes a paid Oracle subscription, because the same server inventory drives both conversations.

What will Oracle's account team say, and how should you reply?

MySQL renewals tend to run through a short list of lines. These are the ones we hear most, with the reply that holds up.

• "Every non production server needs a subscription." Agree on scope, then price it as volume. Ask for a consolidated server count with an uplift instead of list price on every development box.
• "MySQL 8.0 renews on the same terms as last year." The service shrank on April 21, 2026. Ask for a reduced rate on 8.0 servers, or funded help with the upgrade to 8.4 or 9.7, written into the order.
• "MySQL AI is a small addition at $625." Ask for the price at your real Processor count on every server it would touch, and for written confirmation that the per server bands stay on everything else.
• "Your Standard servers are running Enterprise features, so they convert to Enterprise." Check which servers actually have the plugin or tool installed. Remove it where it is not needed, and accept conversion only for the servers that keep it.
• "HeatWave will lower your total cost." Test the claim. Compare HeatWave's hourly cost for the same workloads with your cleaned up server count at $5,350, and ignore any comparison built on today's inflated list.

What contract terms should you ask for on a MySQL renewal?

Ask for terms that fix the server count and the metric, since those two decide your cost for the whole term.

• A server schedule with reduction rights. List every licensed server by hostname and socket band, with the right to drop servers at each anniversary. Without it, a decommissioned box stays on the invoice.
• A multi year price hold. Fix the per server rate in each band for the full term. List pricing is flat per year, so the hold is your only protection against increases.
• Environment scope in writing. Oracle publishes no cold standby exemption. If your account team agrees to treat a cold DR server differently, put it in the order document, because a verbal assurance carries no weight in an audit.
• Metric protection. A clause stating that servers under the agreement stay on the per server metric, whatever new SKUs Oracle adds.
• Version coverage. For 8.0 servers, a written statement of what support covers after April 21, 2026, and an upgrade window at the same rate.
• Audit method. A minimum notice period and an agreed method for counting installs, so your own inventory is part of the evidence.

When should you start preparing for a MySQL renewal?

What to do next

1. Count servers and sockets before Oracle does. Build one inventory covering production, development, test, QA and DR, because Oracle's terms require every installation of Enterprise, Standard or Cluster CGE to be licensed, and non production is where unbudgeted servers usually surface.
2. Test every deployment against the two price boundaries. Check each server's socket count against the 1 to 4 band, and check every Standard Edition server for Enterprise plugins and tools.
3. Consolidate and decommission before you request a quote. Each server removed takes $5,350 to $10,700 off the annual subscription, and cores are free inside the band, so dense two socket hardware is the right target.
4. Price the 8.0 support position into the renewal. Ask for funded migration help to a current LTS release, or a discount that reflects a support service delivering no new fixes.
5. Move managed service workloads first. Land migrations to RDS, Azure, Cloud SQL or HeatWave before the quote, so those servers leave the count.
6. Treat any MySQL AI or HeatWave proposal as a metric change. Model MySQL AI at a minimum of 8 Processors per server across your full server count before you sign anything.

Frequently asked questions