Oracle Database 23ai licensing in 2026. Same license model, new costs around the edges.

Oracle Database 23ai, now shipped as Oracle AI Database 26ai, uses the same metrics, minimums, core factor and option catalog as 19c. Current support gives you the upgrade. The costs sit in included features, a retiring OLAP option and the support calendar.

Does Oracle Database 23ai need a new license?

No. Moving to 23ai is an upgrade you are already paying for, because the right to new releases comes with a current Oracle support contract on the licenses you own. There is no 23ai SKU, no conversion fee and no new order form.

Everything that sets the price carried forward from 19c: the Processor and Named User Plus metrics, the user minimums, the core factor table, the priced option catalog and the 22 percent support rate. Four things did change.

• Included features. AI Vector Search and the other 23ai additions ship inside the editions, with no price of their own.
• A retiring option. Oracle OLAP reached its final release.
• The support calendar. The 19c dates, more than any feature, set the timing of the upgrade.
• A renamed free edition. Express Edition became Oracle Database Free.

The right to upgrade lasts only as long as support does. If you let support lapse, or moved your databases to third party maintenance, your licenses stay on the release you had when support stopped. You cannot legally install 23ai on them.

Does Oracle AI Database 26ai change the picture?

Not for licensing. In October 2025 Oracle replaced 23ai with Oracle AI Database 26ai, which is the same code line delivered as release update 23.26.0. A 23ai database reaches 26ai by applying that quarterly update, and 19c or 21c databases can upgrade to it directly.

Oracle states that the 23ai long term support policy carries over to 26ai, and the current Licensing Information manual is published under the 26ai name. Everything on this page applies to both names. Oracle's support chart shows 26ai Premier Support running to December 2031, with Extended Support dates still to be announced.

What changed in Oracle Database 23ai licensing, and when?

Two of the changes buyers most often credit to 23ai happened years earlier, and one option is on its way out. The table sets each item against the date it actually moved, which is the date your cost model should use.

Why does the 2019 date matter for your cost model?

Oracle made Spatial and Graph and Oracle Machine Learning free in all editions in December 2019, while 19c was the current release. We still see migration business cases that book those two options as a saving arriving with 23ai.

If yours does, the budget has carried phantom costs for years. The more useful check is the support invoice. Any line still charging for Spatial and Graph or Advanced Analytics is paying for something Oracle now gives away, and it belongs on the agenda before the next renewal.

What is the real status of Oracle OLAP?

Oracle OLAP is in its final release. Oracle announced its deprecation alongside 21c, took it off the Technology Price List on June 1, 2024, and has said support for the option ends with 23ai Premier Support. The 26ai documentation repeats that OLAP will not be supported past the current release's Premier Support term.

OLAP still installs on 23ai, but it has no successor. If it sits on your order as a priced option, you pay 22 percent of its original net fee every year for a capability with no future release. Oracle's repricing rules apply when you drop one line from a support order, so treat it as a negotiation item.

How are the metrics, minimums and prices set for 23ai?

They work exactly as they did on 19c. The rules below come from the Oracle Technology Global Price List and its definitions, and none of them changed with the release.

• Processor. On Enterprise Edition, physical cores multiplied by the core factor and rounded up, with Intel and AMD at 0.5 and IBM POWER at 1.0. The rules and traps sit in our core factor analysis.
• Standard Edition 2 counting. A Processor on SE2 is an occupied socket, whatever the core count, and SE2 may only run on servers with a maximum capacity of two sockets.
• Named User Plus minimums. 25 per Processor on Enterprise Edition. On Standard Edition 2 the minimum is 10 per server, not per Processor, a distinction we see misquoted in proposals.
• List prices. Enterprise Edition at $47,500 per Processor or $950 per Named User Plus. Standard Edition 2 at $17,500 or $350. Confirm against the Oracle Technology Global Price List in force on your order date.
• The edition boundary. SE2 keeps its 16 thread runtime cap and still carries no options at all. Moving a workload up means Enterprise Edition at 2.7 times the SE2 unit price, and the gap per server is usually far wider.

What does the same server cost on each edition?

The per unit ratio understates the gap, because the two editions count processors differently. Take a hypothetical two socket Intel server with 16 cores per socket, licensed at list price.

A feature that only runs on Enterprise Edition can turn a $35,000 SE2 server into a $760,000 one. 23ai adds one more included capability to the EE price, which slightly strengthens the case for keeping real EE workloads there. It changes nothing for workloads that never needed EE; see our EE versus SE2 analysis.

Where does Oracle Database Free fit?

Oracle Database Free is capped at 2 CPUs, 2 GB of RAM and 12 GB of user data. It is a useful way to prototype AI Vector Search without a purchase order.

Oracle does not restrict where Free is deployed, but it gets no support and no patches, including security patches. A prototype that becomes a production dependency, outgrows the caps or needs patching has to move to a licensed edition, and that move should be budgeted before the pilot starts.

What does AI Vector Search actually cost?

The license line is $0. Oracle includes AI Vector Search at no additional charge, with no vector count and no embedding metric. The spending comes through the infrastructure and options a production vector workload pulls in.

• Memory. Vector indexes live in the vector pool, a part of the SGA sized with the VECTOR_MEMORY_SIZE parameter. An HNSW index sits there in full, and Oracle's sizing guide estimates it at 1.3 x vectors x dimensions x bytes per dimension. On a server already at its memory ceiling, that becomes a hardware conversation, and new hardware changes core counts.
• Storage and Partitioning. Embeddings grow with the corpus. A table large enough to need Partitioning brings in an option listed at $11,500 per Processor.
• Multitenant. A vector workload that wants its own pluggable database hits the three PDB limit. The fourth PDB in a container needs Multitenant at $17,500 per Processor, licensed on every Processor the database runs on, not only the pilot's share.
• Edition. A feature Standard Edition 2 does not carry resolves to a full Enterprise Edition license, because SE2 cannot add options.

How can a free feature add half a million dollars?

Take a hypothetical Enterprise Edition database on a 16 core Intel server (8 Processors) that adds retrieval over 20 million document chunks, embedded at 768 dimensions in FLOAT32. The HNSW index needs about 1.3 x 20,000,000 x 768 x 4 bytes, roughly 80 GB of SGA. The raw vectors add about 61 GB to the table.

None of these lines is certain. An IVF index keeps only its centroids in the vector pool, which can remove the memory problem, and a vector schema can often live inside an existing PDB. The point of the exercise is to make those design choices while they are cheap, before the pilot becomes a service.

How do you check your own position?

Run these checks before the first vector workload reaches production, and again before any Oracle renewal or audit.

• DBA_FEATURE_USAGE_STATISTICS. Shows which features each database has used and when. Read it the way Oracle will, as our guide to the feature usage report explains.
• CDB_PDBS or V$PDBS. Counts user created PDBs per container, so you see a fourth PDB before an auditor does.
• DBA_PART_TABLES. Lists partitioned tables, including any created by a developer testing embeddings.
• V$VECTOR_MEMORY_POOL. Shows how much of the vector pool is allocated, which feeds the hardware discussion.
• The OLAP and Spatial lines on your support order. Match them against what the feature usage data says you actually run.

When does Oracle Database 19c support end?

As published today, Premier Support for 19c runs to December 2029 and Extended Support to December 2032. Those dates replaced an earlier schedule that ended Premier Support on 30 April 2024 and ran Extended Support to 2027. Oracle also changed how Extended Support was charged before it moved both dates in November 2024.

Because the dates have changed before, check the Lifetime Support Policy for Oracle Technology and My Oracle Support Doc ID 742060.1 before any date goes into a board paper. The longer runway also means the calendar no longer forces a 23ai decision this year, whatever urgency the account team attaches to it.

What else should the migration window be used for?

An upgrade project is the cheapest time to fix placement. Workloads sitting on Enterprise Edition that only need SE2 features can move down while they are being retested anyway.

It is also the time to check the counting rules for wherever the databases land: BYOL to a cloud provider, Azure, or a virtualized cluster where Oracle's partitioning policy decides how many cores you pay for. Decide on third party support deliberately, because it closes the 23ai door for the licenses it covers.

Should you upgrade to 23ai early because AI Vector Search is free?

No. Upgrade when your applications are tested on 23ai, and use the free capability in the renewal instead. Included AI features make Enterprise Edition support look like better value at the point many buyers are questioning it, and that timing is deliberate on Oracle's part.

Put a number on what you are being given, name it in the renewal as value already delivered, and hold your support position against it. In one renewal we advised, a global insurer set its Enterprise Edition renewal against the AI Vector Search capability it was receiving and its real option usage, and took 18 percent off the renewal.

Why we do not treat free AI features as a reason to upgrade early

The common advice is to upgrade quickly so the business can start using the new AI features. We disagree. Once the features are in use and were never raised at renewal, Oracle treats them as already paid for by the support you renewed.

An upgrade driven by the feature also tends to pull a vector pilot into production before its memory, Partitioning and PDB costs are priced. Raise the included features at renewal first, then upgrade when your application testing says you are ready.

The upgrade is covered by the support you already pay. Everything Oracle bundles with it is a separate purchase and deserves a separate price.

What will the account team say, and what should you say back?

• "You need to move off 19c now, support is ending." Point to the 19c dates on Oracle's own Lifetime Support chart, and say that you will set the upgrade date.
• "23ai is the AI database, so it makes sense to align your licensing with it." Ask which metric, minimum or price changes. The answer is none, so there is nothing to align.
• "AI workloads belong on Enterprise Edition with Multitenant and Partitioning." Ask for the design that needs each option in writing, then test whether a schema in an existing PDB or an IVF index removes the need.
• "Bundle the upgrade with a cloud commitment and we can improve the discount." Ask for both priced separately. The upgrade already costs nothing, so any discount belongs to the cloud deal alone.

What contract wording should you ask for?

1. A cap on support increases. A written ceiling on the annual uplift for the next renewal terms stops the included features being used to justify a price rise.
2. Named treatment for OLAP. If you drop the OLAP line, get Oracle's repricing of the remaining order in writing before you sign the termination.
3. Confirmation of included features. A line in the order or a letter stating that AI Vector Search, Spatial and Graph and Oracle Machine Learning are covered by your current licenses leaves less room for a future audit argument.
4. Separate pricing for bundled items. Any cloud credit, ULA or option added to an upgrade discussion should carry its own price and its own exit terms.

What have we seen in recent Oracle 23ai negotiations?

Across the 45 Oracle engagements I led in 2024 and 2025, the 23ai conversation almost never started with a DBA or a support deadline. It came from the account team, attached to something else: a cloud commitment, a ULA renewal, or an option purchase unrelated to the release, usually framed as urgent.

We separate those items from the upgrade before anything else is discussed. Two numbers from the same work shape how we approach the rest.

• A 3.1x audit gap. The median Oracle audit finding ran at 3.1 times the customer's own internal estimate, a measure of how far self assessed positions sit from Oracle's counting.
• A 27 percent ULA exit saving. The median saving on certified entitlements where the customer certified at a realistic production footprint instead of the maximum measured deployment.

The ULA pitch follows the same pattern as the upgrade pitch: consolidate on an Unlimited License Agreement to simplify licensing and lock in pricing. In roughly six out of nine Oracle ULA customers we advised, certifying at the maximum measured deployment left them paying perpetual support on entitlements never used in production.

We advise certifying at a realistic production footprint plus a growth band you can justify. Certification is the one event in a Database contract's life that sets your support base for good, and maximum certification rarely beats realistic certification over that horizon. The sequence is in our ULA certification checklist.

What to do next

1. Confirm the entitlement first. Check that every database you plan to upgrade is on current Oracle support; licenses on third party maintenance stay on their current release.
2. Put the deprecation list next to the order form. Find any OLAP line still charging 22 percent a year and plan its exit with a written repricing.
3. Clean the cost model. Remove the Spatial and Graph and Advanced Analytics savings from the 23ai case, since they arrived in 2019.
4. Price the vector workload before production. Size the vector pool, then check memory headroom, Partitioning, the PDB count and the SE2 to EE boundary.
5. Check the support dates yourself. Read Doc ID 742060.1 and the Lifetime Support Policy, and set the upgrade date on your own plan.
6. Name the included features at renewal. Set them against the support fee and hold your position on price. Our Oracle practice can run that renewal with you.

Frequently asked questions