OBIEE licensing for on premises Oracle BI. What you own, where audits find money, and what to do now.

OBIEE and BI Suite EE Plus carry the highest audit exposure per license dollar in Oracle's catalog, and Extended Support for OBIEE 12c has ended. Your bill turns on the metric, the enabled options, the VMware boundary and the user count.

If you run Oracle Business Intelligence on premises, you hold one of the most audit prone and least understood parts of any Oracle contract. The products are old, the entitlements are often misread, and several separately priced options ship inside the installer.

This guide covers the on premises stack: Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE), Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition Plus (BI Suite EE Plus), BI Foundation Suite and BI Publisher. Oracle Analytics Cloud and Oracle Analytics Server have their own guides. Your entitlement was fixed once, often years ago, and usage has drifted from it in four ways:

• Options. Essbase, Scorecard and other extras were enabled without a matching license.
• Users. Headcount grew, and portals added people who were never counted.
• Virtualization. BI servers moved onto shared VMware clusters.
• Installer choices. A technician ticked a box during an install or upgrade, and procurement never heard about it.

In 25 years of negotiating with Oracle, I have watched BI deployments that cost a few hundred thousand dollars at purchase turn into audit claims in the seven figures. The causes repeat, so they can be found and fixed before Oracle finds them.

The timing adds pressure. Extended Support for OBIEE 12c has ended, so Oracle now has a compliance claim and a migration pitch aimed at the same system. Know what you own, where the gaps are and what each alternative costs before the first call with the account team.

How is OBIEE licensed: Named User Plus or Processor?

OBIEE and BI Suite EE Plus are licensed by Named User Plus (NUP) or by Processor, and that choice is your largest cost decision on the product. NUP counts every individual, and every non human operated device, authorized to use the software, whether or not they log in. Processor counts physical cores on the BI servers times the core factor.

What rules apply to Named User Plus?

• A floor of 10 NUP per processor. Oracle requires at least 10 Named User Plus licenses for every processor on the servers running OBIEE or BI Suite EE Plus. A small team on a large server can still produce a large count.
• Authorized users count. Everyone who can reach the content counts, including people who arrive through portals or embedded dashboards.
• Devices as well as people. Non human operated devices that access the software are counted alongside named individuals.

Where does the breakeven between the two metrics sit?

Divide the Processor price by the NUP price for your product. On the September 2017 list for BI Foundation Suite, one Processor license ($324,000) equals about 82 NUP at $3,969 each. On Oracle's current list, one Oracle Analytics Server Processor license costs as much as about 111 NUP, using the prices in the list price section below.

Our older rule of thumb of roughly 50 NUP per Processor license understates that ratio. It holds per physical x86 core instead, because at the 0.5 core factor the list ratios come to about 41 to 55 NUP per core. Below that user density NUP tends to be cheaper. Above it, Processor wins and ends the user counting.

For a stable internal team with a known headcount, NUP is usually right. For broad or external use you cannot bound, Processor is the safer choice.

Worked example: one BI Foundation Suite deployment priced both ways

Say you run BI Foundation Suite on two Intel servers with 8 cores each, for 150 named internal users. The table uses September 2017 list prices. An equal discount on both metrics changes the totals, not the cheaper metric. We go further into the decision in our breakdown of OBIEE Named User Plus versus Processor at your scale.

On these prices NUP stays cheaper up to about 653 authorized users, which is $2,592,000 divided by $3,969. Buyers most often miss the portal row. The Processor figure does not move, while the NUP figure grows to about two and a half times the Processor cost.

How does Oracle count processors for OBIEE?

Oracle licenses every physical core on the machine running the BI software, then applies the multiplier from its Core Factor Table. It does not license per socket or per server. For most Intel and AMD x86 processors the factor is 0.5, so an 8 core Intel server running OBIEE needs 8 times 0.5, or 4 Processor licenses.

Other chip families carry other factors, and some carry 1.0, which doubles the requirement against the x86 assumption most buyers carry in their heads. Check the current values in our Oracle core factor guide before you model any hardware change.

What happens to the count on a hardware refresh?

A refresh can raise the count with no change in use. Replace two 8 core servers with two 32 core servers and a Processor deployment goes from 8 licenses to 32 at a 0.5 factor. Size replacement hardware for the BI load, or cap the cores available to it with one of the hard partitioning methods Oracle approves.

The factor applies to the cores where the software runs, and Oracle reads that phrase widely. A Processor count is a count of every physical core Oracle can argue the software could run on. That argument is where most BI money is won or lost, and it is why virtualization has its own section below.

How is BI Publisher licensed differently from OBIEE?

BI Publisher, now sold as Oracle Analytics Publisher, breaks three rules that apply to the rest of the stack. Each difference is worth money if you plan around it, and each can cost money if you ignore it.

No Named User Plus minimum

A standalone full use Publisher license has no minimum NUP requirement, where the rest of the BI products impose 10 NUP per processor. With five reporting users you license five NUP. Few Oracle products allow that, which makes Publisher a low cost option for narrow, report only footprints.

At the September 2017 list, standalone Publisher was $49,680 per Processor with $10,929.60 annual support, or $497 per Named User Plus with $109.34 support. Five users therefore cost $2,485 in licenses and $546.70 a year in support at list. Oracle starts from these figures in a true up, so have them ready.

The restricted use WebLogic Server

A standalone Publisher license includes a restricted use WebLogic Server Standard Edition to run it, so you do not license WebLogic separately. Oracle's licensing documentation restricts that WebLogic to Publisher, and if you want clustering you must buy or supply WebLogic Server Enterprise Edition.

Deploy another application onto the same WebLogic instance and the grant no longer covers it, so you owe full WebLogic licensing. This gap opens slowly: someone reuses a convenient server that is already running, and an audit finds it years later. Our WebLogic licensing guide shows how Oracle prices the full product.

Publisher embedded in Oracle applications

Publisher is embedded in many Oracle applications, and those embedded rights are narrow. Using an embedded Publisher to build reports beyond the scope of its host application is a common and expensive finding. We separate the standalone, bundled and embedded cases in our Oracle BI Publisher licensing breakdown, because the Publisher you see is often not the Publisher you own.

What is included in BI Suite EE Plus and BI Foundation Suite?

BI Suite EE Plus covers the OBIEE platform, BI Publisher and the Hyperion reporting tools. BI Foundation Suite, the fuller package Oracle sells to new customers, adds Essbase, Scorecard and Strategy Management, BI Mobile and Essbase Analytics Link. Most BI audit findings start in the gap between the two.

Why is Essbase the most common OBIEE finding?

Essbase is not part of the base OBIEE Plus license; it comes with BI Foundation Suite. The OBIEE installer, however, offers Essbase as an option next to OBIEE, Real-Time Decisions and BI Publisher. A technical team installing OBIEE Plus can tick that box and create exposure for a product the company never bought.

Oracle's audit scripts record enabled options regardless of intent, and intent is not a defense under the license grant. For standalone Essbase terms, see our Essbase licensing comparison.

How does Scorecard and Strategy Management get switched on?

Oracle's documentation says that if your organization licensed Scorecard and Strategy Management and you hold the right privileges, you can use it in a default installation with no extra configuration. From the buyer's chair, that means the function is live wherever the privileges exist, licensed or not. Unlicensed use is easy and hard to prevent.

If you license Scorecard by NUP, it carries a minimum of 20 NUP per customer. Its prerequisites are BI Foundation Suite or BI Suite EE Plus (or the Oracle Applications editions), plus Essbase or Hyperion Planning entitlements.

We map each bundled option, and how it shows up in audit data, in our guide to the BI Suite EE Plus option packs. The pattern matches the Oracle Database options and packs accidental use trap: separately licensed features that ship enabled or one click away, then become the largest line in the audit finding.

How many administrator licenses are included?

One per suite license. Oracle's Fusion Middleware licensing documentation includes one Named User Plus license to Oracle Business Intelligence Server Administrator with each license to BI Server EE, BI Suite Extended Edition and BI Suite Foundation Edition. It covers the minimum needed to configure and administer metadata, and Oracle states it is not one per NUP or per Processor.

Exposure appears when several administrators work on the repository under that single seat. BI Server Administrator listed at $6,264 per Named User Plus in the 2017 price list. A team of four administrators with one included seat therefore owes three more licenses, or $18,792 at list, so count your administrators and license the difference before Oracle does.

Can you add users to BI Suite Enterprise Edition?

No. Oracle's BI documentation says existing BI Suite Enterprise Edition customers may not license incremental users or processors of the base suite. They must buy BI Suite EE Plus users or processors instead, so any growth lands on the Plus tier at its price.

The rule matters twice. Adding users opens a new EE Plus purchase with its own pricing and support base. In an audit, Oracle treats extra usage on a base EE deployment as an EE Plus obligation priced at the Plus tier. Terms you won on EE years ago do not carry over, so budget growth at EE Plus prices.

Does an OBIEE license include the Oracle Database underneath it?

Only for narrow supporting uses. Most OBIEE deployments sit on an Oracle Database that holds the repository, the scheduler tables in the BI Platform schema and the other schemas created by the Repository Creation Utility (RCU). Some of this runs under restricted use rights bundled with the BI license, and some does not.

The restricted use grant covers only the specific schemas the BI stack needs. A DBA who sees a running Oracle Database and adds a data mart, an application schema or an ETL staging area has taken that instance outside the grant. It then needs full Database licensing, often with costly options attached.

How can you see what else lives in the BI database?

List the schemas in the instance from DBA_USERS and compare them with the RCU set for your domain prefix, such as the BIPLATFORM, MDS and STB schemas. Anything else needs an owner and a license answer. Oracle's database audit and its BI audit find different things, and both bills arrive.

Our analysis of the restricted use Oracle Database under the OBIEE stack sets out which schemas the grant covers and which it does not.

Why is VMware the largest audit exposure for OBIEE?

Oracle does not accept VMware as a boundary for counting licenses. It classes VMware as soft partitioning, so Processor licensing must cover every physical core where the software could run. With vMotion, DRS or shared storage, Oracle argues that means every host in the cluster, and sometimes every cluster sharing the storage.

A BI instance sized for 4 Processor licenses on a small VM can, under that reading, produce a claim for every physical core in the vSphere environment it touches. We have seen this one argument multiply a BI license requirement by ten or more, and the core factor then applies on top.

Worked example: one VM in a four host cluster

Say you licensed OBIEE on BI Suite EE Plus for 4 Processor licenses, matching 8 Intel cores at 0.5. The VM now runs in a vSphere cluster of four hosts, each with two 12 core processors. Prices are the September 2017 list.

Oracle's reading produces 12 times the licensed position before any back support is added. The same logic governs public cloud placement, which we cover in our guide to Oracle BYOL on Azure and AWS.

How do you contain the VMware exposure?

• Dedicated hardware. Move Oracle BI onto dedicated hosts or a separate cluster sized for it, as described in our containment design for a dedicated Oracle cluster.
• vMotion and DRS rules. Keep migration inside that cluster and write the rules down; this is how Oracle uses vMotion and DRS in an audit.
• Storage. Separate the datastores so no other cluster can mount the BI virtual machines, because storage vMotion widens the scope.
• Dated evidence. Keep monthly exports of cluster membership and host configuration, so you can show the boundary for any period Oracle asks about.

Where isolation is impractical, your negotiating position depends on dealing with the issue before Oracle raises it. The response discipline in our Oracle license optimization guide was written for databases, and its virtualization principles carry across to BI unchanged.

How do you count external and anonymous OBIEE users?

Every external person who can see BI content is a user, and under NUP each one must be licensed. OBIEE deployments that feed partner portals, customer dashboards or public analytics create a count most buyers have never settled. Anonymous access does not help, because Oracle's definition of an authorized user does not disappear when you skip issuing a named account.

A deployment sized for 200 internal analysts may serve thousands of external users through embedded dashboards, and Oracle's NUP count will reflect the larger group. That is often the reason to revisit the metric, because Processor licensing removes the external counting problem in exchange for a larger fixed license base.

How do you build the user count from your own systems?

Count who can reach the content, not who logged in. The users and groups defined in WebLogic Server, or the LDAP and single sign on groups it reads, show who is authorized. Usage Tracking tables such as S_NQ_ACCT show who ran queries, which helps you remove stale accounts but does not set the NUP number.

We work through the rules, including anonymous and pooled access, in our guide to counting external and anonymous users in OBIEE portals. If your BI reaches beyond employees, put this review near the top of the list, and reconcile the user list the way Oracle will, as set out in our NUP evidence guide.

Is OBIEE still supported by Oracle?

Only under Sustaining Support, which brings no new fixes. OBIEE 11g left Premier Support at the end of 2018. OBIEE 12c left Premier Support in 2025, and its Extended Support ended in August 2025 with no 14c release, so the product line stops at 12c.

A common misreading needs correcting. The wider Fusion Middleware 12c release, 12.2.1.4, has Premier and Extended Support dates that run further out, but OBIEE does not follow that runway. If your team assumed it did, you are already in Sustaining Support. Keep a dated copy of Oracle's Lifetime Support Policy page for your exact release in the file.

What does Sustaining Support mean in practice?

• Oracle will generally still take a support call and give access to fixes already released.
• No new bug fixes are produced.
• No new certifications against newer database or operating system versions.
• No security patches for newly discovered vulnerabilities.

That is an operational and security risk, and it weakens your hand. Oracle knows you cannot patch, which gives it pressure in any renewal or migration discussion, while your annual support fee stays where it was.

What are your options now that OBIEE support has ended?

You have four, and Oracle will volunteer only one of them. Price every option before the account team frames the choice for you.

Oracle Analytics Server: check your entitlement before any quote

OAS is the on premises successor to OBIEE, and Oracle's OBIEE page states there is no additional cost for OBIEE customers moving to it. Oracle's OAS FAQ ties that right to being current on maintenance and support. Customers who are not current are sent to their sales representative, which is where new license quotes begin.

The most common error we see is a purchase of new OAS licenses for software the customer was already entitled to run. Before you accept any OAS quote, match each OBIEE line in your ordering documents to its OAS equivalent. Costs and edition details are in our Oracle Analytics Server licensing guide.

If your OBIEE support is current, the on premises successor is already paid for. Every OAS conversation should start from that fact.

Why we would not rush an OBIEE system to Oracle Analytics Cloud

The standard advice, from Oracle and many partners, is that an out of support OBIEE system should move to Oracle Analytics Cloud now. We disagree with the timing. OAS closes the support gap at no extra license cost for customers on support, so the cloud decision can wait until you choose to make it.

Oracle writes its cloud offer knowing the system is stranded, and moving to OAC does not reset your licensing costs in your favor by default. Stabilize on OAS or third party support first, then price Oracle Analytics Cloud with its bring your own license credit against real alternatives.

Leaving Oracle BI

Moving to a competing platform becomes a rational choice when the OBIEE system is stranded on Sustaining Support and Oracle is pushing an expensive cloud migration. The rebuild cost is real, so compare it on paper with the other routes. We quantify each of them in our OBIEE end of life migration cost comparison.

Third party support

Moving OBIEE to a third party support provider stops the 22 percent annual fee paid to Oracle while the software keeps running. It also removes Oracle's ability to tie a support renewal to a migration demand. You give up future Oracle patches, which matters less than usual for a product line that ends at 12c.

Weigh one cost carefully. Leaving Oracle support ends the OAS right that comes with it, and returning later brings Oracle's reinstatement terms. For an end of life product with no successor version, the case is still stronger than for almost any other Oracle product, as our analysis of OBIEE on third party support sets out.

What do OBIEE and BI Suite licenses cost at list price?

Oracle starts every true up and every migration quote from list price, so know the figures. From the September 2017 Oracle price list, BI Suite Enterprise Edition Plus was $238,950 per Processor with $52,569 annual support. BI Foundation Suite was $324,000 per Processor ($71,280 support) or $3,969 per Named User Plus ($873.18 support).

Prices have moved over time. Oracle once cut BI Suite EE Plus from $295,000 to $221,250, and Scorecard and Strategy Management from $149,250 to $89,550. Check the current price list before relying on any quote from a decade ago.

For current benchmarking, Oracle's Technology Global Price List (March 2023 edition) lists Oracle Analytics Server at $2,000 per Named User Plus with $440 support, and $221,250 per Processor with $48,675 support. That Processor price is the figure Oracle's earlier cut brought BI Suite EE Plus down to.

Our earlier guidance put an OBIEE or OAS Named User Plus at around $950, the Oracle Database Enterprise Edition NUP price, which is too low for BI. Multiply $2,000 by your authorized users, portal users included, and compare with the Processor cost. Support adds Oracle's standard 22 percent of net license fees each year, the cost third party support targets.

How do you check your own OBIEE license position?

You can build most of the picture from your own records and consoles before Oracle asks for anything. Work through these sources and keep the output with a date on it, because that file is your evidence if an audit follows. Our guide to running an internal Oracle license review covers the wider method.

What have we seen in OBIEE audits and renewals?

The seven figure BI claims mentioned at the top of this guide came, almost always, from the same short list of causes. None depended on unusual technology. Each began as an ordinary decision by a technical team that no one checked against the license grant.

Common mistakes and how to avoid them

• Treating the VMware cluster as someone else's problem. This was the largest multiplier we saw. Fix the boundary before an audit fixes it against you.
• Installing Essbase with OBIEE Plus. The installer made it easy. Remove it or license it, and keep the removal record.
• Running several administrators on one included seat. Each extra person is a separate, priced finding.
• Adding a data mart to the BI database. One schema can pull a whole instance into full Database licensing.
• Leaving portal users out of a NUP count. External users are users, whether or not they hold named accounts.
• Accepting the first audit number. An audit claim is an opening position, not a verdict, and BI claims usually rest on the soft partitioning and enabled option arguments above.

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

Expect a small set of lines once OBIEE is out of support. Each has a precise answer, and each answer is stronger when your records from the section above are already in hand.

• "OBIEE is out of support, so the answer is Oracle Analytics Cloud." Reply: our support is current, and your own OAS FAQ says that entitles us to OAS. Quote OAC against that baseline and show the bring your own license credit line by line.
• "Your OAS deployment needs new licenses." Reply: show us which line in our ordering documents has no OAS equivalent, because your FAQ maps our suite to the same functionality in OAS.
• "Every host in the vSphere cluster needs a Processor license." Reply: show us the clause in our signed agreement that excludes VMware as a boundary. The partitioning policy is a separate Oracle document, and here are our cluster and storage records for the period.
• "Upgrade to BI Foundation Suite and the Essbase finding goes away." Reply: price the finding on its own first. We will compare it with removing Essbase and with a standalone license, then decide on the numbers.
• "Leave Oracle support and you lose your upgrade path." Reply: we know the OAS right depends on support, which is why we are pricing OAS first. Put the support cost for our next renewal term in writing so we can compare it with third party support.

Which contract terms should you ask for in an OBIEE or OAS deal?

Most BI disputes come from definitions that were never written down. These are the terms we ask Oracle to put in the ordering document or a signed side letter, and why each matters.

1. OAS mapping. List each OBIEE license with its OAS equivalent and confirm no new license fee applies, so the entitlement survives staff changes on both sides.
2. Licensed environment. For Processor licenses, name the hosts or dedicated cluster covered, so the boundary is agreed in advance.
3. Portal users. State how external and anonymous portal users are counted, or license that deployment by Processor and say so.
4. Administrator count. Record the number of BI Server Administrator licenses you hold beyond the included seats.
5. Support after a reduction. Oracle's support policies can reprice the licenses you keep when you drop others, so get the post reduction support fee in writing first. Our support renewal checklist covers the clauses.
6. Audit scope. Limit any review to the products and period in question, with written notice, using the redlines in our audit clause guide.

What to do next

1. Pull your entitlements. Confirm which suite, which metric and how many licenses you own, and whether your OBIEE support is current enough to cover OAS.
2. Inventory the installed options. Check whether Essbase, Real-Time Decisions, Scorecard and Strategy Management or BI Publisher are enabled beyond what you licensed, and fix it before Oracle looks.
3. Map the virtualization boundary. If OBIEE runs on VMware, list every physical core Oracle could argue it runs on, and decide whether to isolate the workload now.
4. Count every user. Include external, portal and anonymous access, then rerun the NUP versus Processor comparison at current list prices.
5. Check the supporting database. Confirm the restricted use boundary and move any other workload off that instance.
6. Decide the end of support route. Price OAS, a platform exit and third party support side by side, before Oracle frames the migration for you.
7. If an audit letter arrives, slow it down. Treat the claim as an opening position and use our guides on challenging Oracle audit findings and the 22 Oracle license audit secrets every CIO should know.

Frequently asked questions