Contents
Key takeawaysHow OAC is licensedNamed user or OCPUWhere the metrics crossProfessional or EnterpriseLegacy OBIEE licensesOAC next to FusionWhat we have seenOracle's lines and your repliesChecking your own usageWhat to do nextFAQOracle Analytics Cloud is billed per named user or per OCPU, in Professional or Enterprise edition. Every viewer counts as a user and changing metric later means renegotiating, so choose for the audience you expect three years out.
- Two metrics, two editions. OAC is billed per named user per month or per OCPU per hour, in Professional or Enterprise, one of each per instance.
- List prices. $16 or $80 per user per month with a 10 user minimum, or $1.0753 and $2.1506 per OCPU hour.
- Every viewer is a user. Partners, portal visitors and embedded dashboard viewers all count, with no free viewer tier.
- Find the crossover first. Divide the monthly cost of an always on OCPU by the per user rate, remembering that production starts at 2 OCPUs.
- Split by edition. Run visualization teams on Professional and keep only migrated corporate BI on Enterprise.
- Price legacy BI before you trade it. Supported OBIEE licenses keep Oracle Analytics Server, BYOL and surrender open, and a support lapse closes the first two.
Almost every expensive Oracle Analytics Cloud problem we review was set on the order form, before anyone logged in. Four decisions set the bill: the metric, the edition, what happens to your existing Oracle BI licenses, and whether you need OAC at all next to Fusion. For on premises OBIEE, see our Oracle analytics and OBIEE licensing guide.
How is Oracle Analytics Cloud licensed?
OAC is billed per named user per month or per OCPU per hour, and both metrics come in a Professional and an Enterprise edition. Each instance carries one metric and one edition. These are Oracle's public pay as you go rates.
| Edition | Per named user per month | Per OCPU per hour | BYOL per OCPU per hour |
|---|---|---|---|
| Professional | $16, minimum 10 users | $1.0753 | $0.3226 |
| Enterprise | $80, minimum 10 users | $2.1506 | $0.3226 |
The Enterprise user rate is exactly five times Professional, and BYOL is sold on the OCPU metric only. Reference rates for the on premises BI products behind BYOL are in the Oracle technology price list.
OAC is usually consumed through the same Universal Credits commitment as the rest of OCI, so commitment sizing, discount and expiry rules apply here too. Our cloud commitment negotiation guide covers them.
What does a named user count?
A named user is a specific person authorized to use the service, whatever the number of concurrent sessions. Every human who views content is countable, and OAC has no free viewer tier. That includes:
- Staff who build, view or receive content, even once a year.
- Contractors and partners with a login to the instance.
- Indirect viewers who reach OAC content through another application, such as a portal or an embedded dashboard.
You can reassign a license when someone leaves. You cannot run the licenses as a shared pool that floats between people day to day.
What does the OCPU metric bill?
The OCPU metric bills the instance for every hour it runs, however many people log in. An always on instance bills 744 hours per OCPU in a 31 day month, and 720 in a 30 day month.
Production instances start at 2 OCPUs and step up through 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 16, 24, 36 and 52. The 1 OCPU size is limited to test, development and training, and Oracle describes instances sized by users as typically running from 10 to 3,000 users.
The Negotiation, and the Baseline That Ends It
Should you buy OAC per named user or per OCPU?
Buy per named user only when the audience is small, stable and nameable. Put everything else on OCPU. The shape of the audience decides it: who the people are, how often they look, and whether the count will grow.
| Audience shape | Right metric | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Fixed analyst team of a few dozen | Named user | Cheapest at small counts, and the ten user floor applies |
| Embedded in a portal or product | OCPU | Every viewer counts as a user, and portals multiply viewers |
| External or anonymous audience | OCPU | The user metric requires identifiable named users |
| Seasonal, such as budgeting or year end | OCPU | Capacity scales for the peak, while occasional users count in full |
| Growing user base | OCPU | The user count at purchase is the smallest it will ever be |
| Holding legacy BI entitlements | OCPU | BYOL pricing exists only on the OCPU metric |
The metric is chosen per instance. Moving an established audience to the other metric is a commercial renegotiation with Oracle, since it means a new order line and usually a new instance with the content migrated.
Why embedding makes the user metric expensive
Embedding makes every portal user billable. A partner who opens one dashboard a quarter costs the same $80 a month on Enterprise as an analyst who uses OAC daily. Portals add viewers with no natural ceiling. Our note on counting external users in partner portals covers the same issue for OBIEE.
The advice to start per user and switch later
Account teams often suggest starting on the user metric, which is cheap at small counts, and moving to OCPU once the audience grows. We disagree. You end up negotiating that switch when Oracle knows you need it and you have no alternative on the table.
Model the audience three years out and choose the metric that is cheapest at that size. If the result is close, get a contractual right to change metric at the anniversary before you sign.
Oracle Analytics Licensing Brief
The metric crossover, edition split and legacy BI options in one guide. Read it free.
Get the white paper →Where do the two OAC metrics cross over?
Divide the monthly cost of one always on OCPU by the per user rate for the same edition. The result is the audience size, per OCPU of required capacity, at which both metrics cost the same. Oracle's quote will not show you this number.
At an illustrative $2 per OCPU hour against $80 per Enterprise user, one always on OCPU bills $1,488 a month, which puts the crossover near 19 users per OCPU. At list prices it works out like this:
| Edition | Monthly cost per OCPU | Per user rate | Crossover per OCPU | Crossover at 2 OCPUs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Enterprise | $1,600 | $80 | 20 users | 40 users |
| Professional | $800 | $16 | 50 users | 100 users |
| Enterprise, BYOL | $240 plus support on the licenses | $80 | 3 users | 6 users |
Read the last column first. Because production starts at 2 OCPUs, an Enterprise audience below about 40 people is cheaper per user at list, and a Professional audience below about 100. Above that, the answer depends on how many OCPUs a sizing test on your own content needs.
Worked example: a small team and a partner portal
Take two hypothetical buyers at list. The first has 25 Enterprise analysts and no external audience: 25 times $80 is $2,000 a month, against $3,200 for the smallest production OCPU instance, so per user saves $1,200 a month.
The second has 60 analysts and publishes dashboards to 1,500 partners, growing to 2,500 by year three. Assume sizing tests show 4 OCPUs carry year one and 6 carry year three.
| Year | Users | Per named user | Per OCPU |
|---|---|---|---|
| One | 1,560 | 1,560 x $80 = $124,800 | 4 x $1,600 = $6,400 |
| Three | 2,560 | 2,560 x $80 = $204,800 | 6 x $1,600 = $9,600 |
The sizing is an assumption and real quotes carry discounts, but no realistic discount on the user metric closes a gap that wide.
Do you need OAC Enterprise edition, or is Professional enough?
Buy Enterprise only for the people who need the enterprise semantic model or migrated OBIEE content. Professional covers self service visualization and data preparation at a fifth of the Enterprise user rate.
| Capability | Professional | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|
| Self service visualization and data preparation | Yes | Yes |
| Enterprise semantic model | No | Yes |
| Migrated OBIEE dashboards and answers | No | Yes |
| Enterprise reporting and distribution | No | Yes, verify against the current service description |
Splitting one deployment into two instances
Editions are chosen per instance, so a mixed deployment should run a Professional instance for the visualization teams and an Enterprise instance for migrated corporate BI. The common overspend is putting everyone on Enterprise because one department needed the semantic model.
Picture 200 licensed users on Enterprise, 150 of whom only build and view visualizations. At list, the two layouts compare like this:
- All on Enterprise: 200 times $80, or $16,000 a month.
- Split: 150 times $16 plus 50 times $80, or $6,400 a month.
The $9,600 difference is a premium for 150 people who never touch the semantic model. The split removes it without taking capability from anyone, though it has two costs of its own:
- Administration. Two sets of security roles, snapshots and upgrade windows to run.
- Overlap. Anyone who needs content on both instances needs a license on both, and the second instance should carry the first one's discount, which you ask for in the original order.
What are your OBIEE and BI Foundation licenses worth in an OAC deal?
More than the account team will volunteer. Holding them effectively settles the metric question, because BYOL rates exist only on OCPU. A perpetual Oracle Business Intelligence license with active support keeps three routes open.
| Route | What you get | What it depends on |
|---|---|---|
| Oracle Analytics Server on premises | The successor to OBIEE, on your own hardware | Active support |
| BYOL on OAC | OAC at the BYOL OCPU rate, in the edition your licenses qualify for | Active support and the OCPU metric |
| Surrender | Support payments end as part of a subscription trade | Nothing, but the trade is irreversible |
Two of the three routes close if support lapses. Reopening them means reinstatement, which Oracle's support policies price at 150 percent of the last annual support fee, prorated back to the lapse date. Our guide to dropping Oracle support and reinstatement has the detail.
Price all three routes before any conversion conversation. The on premises route is costed in our Oracle Analytics Server licensing guide, and the general rules are in our Oracle BYOL guide.
Do you need OAC if you already run Oracle Fusion?
Often not for Fusion reporting. OTBI ships inside Fusion SaaS subscriptions at no extra charge, and Fusion Data Intelligence covers more Fusion reporting than most buyers assume, with its own associated OAC instance.
Confirm what you already hold before buying OAC to report on Fusion, or you can end up paying twice for the same reports. The applications side is in our Fusion applications guide.
What have we seen in recent Oracle Analytics Cloud licensing reviews?
Across 15 to 25 OAC licensing positions we reviewed in 2024 and 2025, the cost problems were set at purchase, and three patterns kept returning:
- Portal audiences on the user metric. Occasional viewers paid the full rate of a daily analyst. This was the most expensive recurring mistake in our file.
- Enterprise for everyone. Whole deployments paid five times the Professional user rate when only the migrated OBIEE content needed Enterprise.
- Legacy licenses traded away. OBIEE and BI Foundation entitlements were surrendered in subscription deals without anyone pricing the routes that closed.
The user count on the day you sign is the smallest it will ever be.
Each was avoidable with work done before sizing. Our other Oracle guidance is in the Oracle knowledge hub.
What will Oracle's account team say, and how should you answer?
These are the lines we hear most in OAC negotiations.
- "Named users are easier to budget." They are easier only at purchase. Ask for your year three audience priced on both metrics in the same quote.
- "You can switch to OCPU once you grow." Then ask for that right in the order, with the unused value of the user subscription credited to the new line.
- "Enterprise everywhere keeps it simple." Ask for a second quote with two instances at the same discount and compare totals.
- "Convert your OBIEE support to cloud for a better rate." Ask for all three routes valued side by side before you agree to end support on anything.
- Metric change right at each anniversary, with credit for the unused term, so a later switch is an option you hold.
- Second instance pricing at the same discount for either edition, so splitting does not cost you the deal rate.
- Price hold on users and OCPUs added mid term.
- A written definition of how people reached through embedded content are counted, to avoid a dispute at true up.
How do you check what your OAC deployment actually uses?
Start with the instance, then the people, then the bill.
- Instance details page in the OCI Console: edition, capacity type and size, and license type, BYOL or license included.
- Identity domain: the users and groups mapped to OAC application roles, which is the population the user metric counts.
- Usage Tracking: user level query records written to a database you choose, which give distinct users by month.
- Cost Analysis: OCPU hours billed per instance, including test instances left running all month.
Under the user metric, monitor distinct access monthly so you know how many different people touched the service. Reconcile that number against the licensed count quarterly, before Oracle does it for you.
What to do next
- Before the first quote. List every audience, from analysts to partners and embedded users, and project each one three years out.
- Run the crossover at your own quoted rates, per edition, including the 2 OCPU production minimum.
- Split by edition. Put only semantic model and migrated OBIEE users on Enterprise.
- Price your legacy BI licenses across all three routes, and keep support current while you negotiate.
- Check Fusion coverage in OTBI and Fusion Data Intelligence before adding OAC for Fusion reporting.
- Write the terms into the order before signature, then count distinct users monthly after go live. Our Oracle practice can run the sizing with you.
Frequently asked questions
Should we buy Oracle Analytics Cloud per OCPU or per named user?
Per named user when the audience is a small, stable team you can name. Per OCPU when it is embedded, external, seasonal or growing, and whenever you hold legacy BI licenses, since BYOL exists only on OCPU. Decide on the year three audience, because the choice is painful to reverse.
How do you find the crossover between the two OAC metrics?
Multiply your quoted OCPU hourly rate by the hours the instance runs, then divide by your quoted per user rate. Do it for each edition separately. If the two metrics carry different discounts on your quote, the crossover shifts, so never rely on list prices alone.
What does the OAC named user metric actually count?
People with access, including contractors, partners and anyone reaching content through another application. A shared login does not reduce the count, because the metric counts people rather than accounts. A license can pass to a new person when someone leaves.
Why is embedding expensive on the OAC user metric?
Each person who sees an embedded dashboard is a named user at the full monthly rate, and Oracle's sizing guide puts user based services at typically 10 to 3,000 users. On an OCPU instance, extra viewers cost nothing until the workload needs more capacity.
When is OAC Enterprise edition actually needed?
For the enterprise semantic model, migrated OBIEE dashboards and analyses, and enterprise reporting and distribution. Everyone else can sit on a separate Professional instance. People who need content on both instances need a license on each, so keep the Enterprise group small.
What are OBIEE and BI Foundation licenses worth when moving to OAC?
With active support they give you Oracle Analytics Server, BYOL on OAC, or a surrender credit. At list the BYOL rate is about 85 percent below the Enterprise OCPU rate, though you keep paying support on the licenses. Value all three before you trade anything.
Do we need Oracle Analytics Cloud if we already run Fusion?
Often not for Fusion reporting alone. OTBI is included with Fusion SaaS, and Fusion Data Intelligence has its own associated OAC instance. Buy separate OAC for Fusion only against a named reporting gap, and ask the account team to put that gap in writing.