SAP Knowledge Hub 2026
The complete SAP licensing guide.
S/4HANA conversions. RISE with SAP economics. BTP credits. Digital and indirect access. Named user metrics. Audit defense. Selected, current, and 100 percent buyer side.
S/4HANA conversions. RISE with SAP economics. BTP credits. Digital and indirect access. Named user metrics. Audit defense. Selected, current, and 100 percent buyer side.
25 minute call. No follow up sales pressure unless you ask for one. We will tell you what we would do next on your S/4HANA conversion, RISE renewal, or audit.
The SAP commercial cycle in 2026 is fundamentally different from the one most procurement teams trained on. The 2027 ECC mainstream maintenance end has pulled forward every S/4HANA conversation, RISE with SAP is now the default route SAP proposes for any conversion, BTP credits are being bundled into renewal proposals with two year ramps, and Digital Access remains the largest unbudgeted line item across the global SAP base. Buyers who treat SAP the way they treated SAP in 2019 will pay materially more for materially less optionality.
This hub is the full library of SAP licensing intelligence we publish for global enterprises. Every guide, white paper, calculator, and case study sits here. Use it to brief your team on SAP's current commercial posture, model the RISE versus on premise economics, defend audits, and plan the S/4HANA conversion with the buyer side discipline that an SAP account executive will not bring to the table.
The SAP hub is organized around the seven decision points that drive value in every enterprise SAP estate. They are the S/4HANA conversion path, the RISE with SAP evaluation, the BTP commitment, the digital and indirect access posture, the audit defense, the named user reclassification, and the lines of business stack covering Ariba, Concur, SuccessFactors, and Analytics Cloud. Every SAP topic on the site, from HANA database licensing to Fieldglass to the 2027 ECC maintenance end, sits inside one of these clusters.
There are roughly 120 SAP links on this page. Nobody reads 120. Seven of them change a number in a live proposal, and they change it in a particular order, because the FUE count you build feeds the conversion you negotiate and the measurement you defend. All seven were re-read against SAP's published maintenance dates and the 2026 price positions on 26 July 2026. Everything below them is reference you pull when a specific question lands, organized by topic rather than by date.
| Order | Read this | The decision it settles | Read it when |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2027 ECC end of maintenance strategy | Stay, extend, or convert | You have not costed 2028 to 2030 |
| 2 | SAP FUE licensing explained | What your FUE count actually is | Before SAP builds it from your user master |
| 3 | SAP named user license types | Which users are misclassified today | 90 days before any renewal or conversion |
| 4 | RISE with SAP pillar 2026 | Private or public edition, and what the cap clause has to say | A RISE proposal is on the desk |
| 5 | SAP Digital Access complete guide | Whether you have a document liability, and how big | Before you answer a measurement request |
| 6 | SAP audit defense | How to answer a USMM measurement notice | The notice has arrived |
| 7 | SAP BTP licensing strategy | How much credit to commit, and what lapses | BTP credits are bundled into the proposal |
SAP S/4HANA is now the single largest commercial conversation in most enterprise SAP estates. The 2027 mainstream maintenance end on ECC has compressed every buyer timeline, and SAP's account teams are leading with RISE with SAP as the conversion route by default. The right buyer side response is to evaluate the deployment model on its merits, map the ECC license stack to the S/4HANA equivalent before SAP does it for you, and price the conversion credit against a defensible counterfactual.
The hub covers the full S/4HANA reference, including the S/4HANA licensing guide, the guide to bundling SAP modules for discounts, the deployment models guide, and the user license types explainer, and the S/4HANA embedded features licensing guide. For the migration path, see the licensing migration paths article, the legacy license mapping guide, and the ECC to S/4HANA migration playbook. For the cost framing, read the on premise versus cloud TCO comparison and how to negotiate conversion discounts and migration credits. The 2027 deadline is decoded in the 2027 ECC end of maintenance strategy and the extended maintenance versus third party comparison.
Every SAP account plan in the market leans on 2027 and almost no buyer has costed it. Here is the arithmetic, and all of it comes off published rates. SAP's published maintenance strategy ends mainstream maintenance for SAP Business Suite 7 on 31 December 2027, runs extended maintenance from 2028 to the end of 2030 at 2 percentage points on top of your existing maintenance basis, and carries S/4HANA to the end of 2040. SAP Enterprise Support lists at 22 percent of net license value and SAP Standard Support at 19 percent, list and pre-discount. Take an estate carrying $40,000,000 of net license value and multiply.
| Route past 2027 | Rate applied | Annual on a $40,000,000 net license base | 2028 to 2030 total | What it costs beyond money |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SAP Enterprise Support on ECC, through 31 December 2027 | 22% of net license value | $8,800,000 | Not available after 2027 | Nothing. This is your baseline. |
| SAP extended maintenance, 2028 to 2030 | 22% plus 2 points = 24% | $9,600,000 | $28,800,000 | Nothing, but it buys three years, not a destination |
| SAP customer-specific maintenance, from 2031 | Continues on your prevailing basis | SAP does not fix this in advance; get it quoted before you rely on it | Not applicable | New fixes, legal and regulatory change deliveries, and any roadmap |
| Third-party support, 2028 onward | 50% of the SAP fee, per Rimini Street's published pricing position | $4,400,000 | $13,200,000 | New SAP fixes, legal change deliveries, portal access, and the maintenance stream SAP credits into a conversion |
Percentages are SAP list, pre-discount. Dollar figures are those percentages applied to a $40,000,000 net license base. Substitute your own base and the ratios hold.
Read the table twice. The two extra points of extended maintenance are $800,000 a year on this base and $2,400,000 across 2028 to 2030, a 9 percent increase on the $8,800,000 you already pay, and the least interesting number here. The interesting number is the $5,200,000 a year sitting between extended maintenance at $9,600,000 and third party support at $4,400,000, which is 54 percent below the SAP line and $15,600,000 across the same three years. That gap is what SAP's account team is defending when it tells you 2027 leaves no time to evaluate anything else.
Three things the third party column costs you, and price all three before you put it on the table: SAP stops shipping new fixes and legal or regulatory change deliveries, you lose support portal access, and you give up the maintenance stream SAP credits back to you in a contract conversion to S/4HANA. That last item is why third party support is more often a credible threat than a plan. It is also why buyers who never model it hand SAP the whole 2028 to 2030 window for free.
The mechanical saving almost nobody takes: where the contract permits the downgrade, moving from Enterprise Support at 22 percent to Standard Support at 19 percent is $1,200,000 a year on this base, close to 14 percent of the annual fee. Pull your own ticket volume against the Enterprise extras before you renew either one.
RISE with SAP is the bundle SAP wraps around the S/4HANA private or public cloud edition, hyperscaler infrastructure, BTP credits, and ABAP application services into one consumption commitment. The math is not unfavorable in every case. It is unfavorable when the buyer signs without modeling the renewal cap, the BTP credit consumption profile, or the ramp economics across years two and three. The renewal is where it bites, and it rarely arrives as a stated uplift percentage you could argue with. SAP reprices the subscription against then current terms and reapplies a discount, so what lands on your desk is a new discount rate rather than an increase you can compare against last year. If the Order Form does not carry an explicit cap on the renewal subscription fee, expressed as a percentage of the prior term fee, you do not have a ceiling. You have a negotiation you will run from behind, on SAP's calendar.
The hub covers the RISE with SAP comprehensive pillar, the buyer side explainer, the hidden costs guide, and the is RISE right for you decision guide. Compare the deployment options in the private versus public cloud comparison, the RISE versus traditional on premise economics, and the HEC versus RISE framing. For private cloud edition see the private cloud edition licensing guide and the HEC reference guide.
GROW with SAP is the packaged route onto S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition. It is priced in the same unit as RISE, the Full Use Equivalent, and it is aimed at buyers with no perpetual estate to convert. That last clause is the whole story for a large enterprise. If you hold a perpetual ECC base, the credit for that base rides on the RISE contract conversion path. It does not ride on GROW. A divisional GROW pilot signed by a business unit that never called procurement can strand the conversion credit you were planning to spend on the group estate two years later. Ask SAP in writing what happens to your perpetual credit if a subsidiary lands on GROW first, and keep the answer.
Public Edition also hands SAP the upgrade cadence: two releases a year, no deferral, and extension work pushed onto SAP BTP under the clean core model instead of into the core. That is a fair trade for a greenfield subsidiary and an expensive one for an estate carrying twenty years of ABAP.
Whichever badge is on the proposal, the FUE count decides the bill, and the FUE count is arithmetic you can do before SAP does it for you. The conversion ratios are fixed and worth quoting back at the table: one Advanced Use user is one FUE, five Core Use users are one FUE, thirty Self-Service Use users are one FUE, and one Developer consumes two FUE. Get that ratio table written into the Order Form rather than left to whichever service description is in force at renewal.
| User class | Ratio | Heads as classified today | FUE today | Heads after reclassification | FUE after |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Advanced Use | 1 user = 1 FUE | 1,500 | 1,500 | 500 | 500 |
| Core Use | 5 users = 1 FUE | 3,000 | 600 | 4,000 | 800 |
| Self-Service Use | 30 users = 1 FUE | 9,000 | 300 | 9,000 | 300 |
| Developer | 1 user = 2 FUE | 40 | 80 | 40 | 80 |
| Total | — | 13,540 | 2,480 | 13,540 | 1,680 |
Reclassification here moves 1,000 Advanced Use users who only post and approve into Core Use. 1,500 plus 600 plus 300 plus 80 is 2,480 FUE. 500 plus 800 plus 300 plus 80 is 1,680 FUE.
Same 13,540 people. 800 fewer FUE, which is 32 percent of the original 2,480. Multiply 800 by the per-FUE rate in your own proposal and that is what the reclassification is worth. Do it once, before signature, because you cannot drop FUE mid-term.
On the rate itself: SAP does not publish a per-FUE price for RISE with SAP or GROW with SAP. There is no public price list to quote and we are not going to print a corridor we cannot source. The number you can compute is your own. Divide the annual subscription in SAP's proposal by the FUE count in the same proposal, and track that single implied rate across every revision SAP sends you. The proposal format is not built to put those two figures on one page. The RISE TCO calculator models the corridor from your inputs rather than from ours.
SAP Business Technology Platform is now embedded in every RISE proposal, every S/4HANA Cloud conversation, and most extension and integration roadmaps. The economics depend on which consumption model you sit on (Capacity Unit Subscription versus Cloud Pay As You Go versus Cloud Credits), how the credit pool is sized, and whether SAP has bundled credits as a sweetener that lapse if not consumed in the contract year. Most BTP estates we audit show 28 to 44 percent unconsumed credits at renewal. Check yours before the renewal meeting rather than after it: SAP BTP Cockpit, your global account, then Usage Analytics, filtered to the contract year. If consumed sits below committed, that gap is your opening position and SAP already knows the number.
The hub covers the BTP buyer explainer, the BTP licensing strategy, the cloud credit cost optimization guide, the capacity unit and cloud credit calculation explainer, and the credit cost optimization moves. For the integration mandate, see the integration mandate cost analysis. For the negotiation, read how to secure free or discounted BTP credits in your S/4HANA deal.
SAP Digital Access is the single most consequential licensing change SAP has shipped in the last decade. The 2018 reset moved indirect document consumption onto a per document metric, and the audit motion has caught up. Buyers who do not measure their document creation flows against the SAP definition will face a six or seven figure settlement at the first audit cycle. The right response is a Digital Access measurement before SAP arrives, a defensible position on the documents that genuinely fall in scope, and a contract negotiation that prices the residual exposure.
The arithmetic is short enough to do in a meeting. The SAP price list carries Digital Access at $0.40 per document, list and pre-discount, across nine document types, two of which are weighted at 0.2. An estate creating 40,000,000 documents in the measured year, with 8,000,000 of them falling in the two weighted types, is 32,000,000 plus 1,600,000, or 33,600,000 chargeable documents. At $0.40 that is $13,440,000. Let SAP count all 40,000,000 at full weight and it is $16,000,000, a $2,560,000 swing decided entirely by which types your documents land in. Get the weighting table and the type mapping in writing before you discuss a discount, because the discount is the only part of that sentence SAP wants to negotiate.
Read the Digital Access complete guide, the DAAP evaluation and negotiation guide, the audit defense playbook, the measurement tools reference, and the top ten negotiation recommendations. For the broader indirect access posture see the indirect access pillar, the indirect and digital access guide, and the impact on S/4HANA and RISE contracts. The API restrictions changes are covered in the API indirect access changes article.
The front door is the annual system measurement, not a letter from a law firm. It runs in transaction USMM on each system and consolidates in the License Administration Workbench, transaction SLAW2, and the number it produces is the number SAP's license team negotiates from. Two consequences follow. First, run USMM and SLAW2 yourself, on your own schedule, before SAP asks. It is the same data, and holding it three months early is the difference between a position and a reaction. Second, the window between the measurement result and the renewal signature is the only period in which named user reclassification changes the price. Reclassify after signature and you have bought nothing until the next term. Vendor Shield subscribers route every measurement notification or settlement letter through our intake desk and the response goes back inside the agreed SLA.
Read the SAP audit defense method, the audit readiness strategy, the audit preparation toolkit, and how to negotiate audit settlements. For audit clauses in your next contract, read audit protection clauses and strategies. For ongoing compliance, see how to run an internal SAP compliance program and how to manage SAP package and engine metrics.
SAP's lines of business portfolio includes Ariba, Concur, SuccessFactors, Fieldglass, Customer Experience Cloud, and Analytics Cloud. Each has a different licensing structure, a different audit risk profile, and a different renewal cycle. The hub covers each line of business in detail, including the Ariba licensing guide, the Ariba 2026 pricing guide, the Concur licensing guide for CIOs and CTOs, and the Analytics Cloud negotiation guide. For the user metric across the cloud portfolio see the cloud licensing models explainer for SuccessFactors, Ariba, and Concur and the Analytics Cloud user versus capacity licensing framing.
The SAP white paper library covers the RISE negotiation playbook, the S/4HANA conversion path, the digital access negotiation guide, the BTP licensing strategy, the audit defense method, the named user negotiation guide, and the Ariba and Analytics Cloud negotiation playbooks. Every paper is current for the 2026 cycle and gated, so we know which arguments land with which buyers.
The hub also hosts the SAP calculators we use inside live engagements. The SAP RISE TCO Calculator sizes the RISE versus on premise economics in fifteen minutes. The Digital Access Cost Calculator estimates per document exposure across your transaction flows. The multi vendor negotiation scorecard is useful when the SAP renewal touches Oracle, Microsoft, or hyperscaler estates. The audit defense readiness checklist is the front door for any client carrying multiple SAP exposures.
If you are inside an S/4HANA conversion, a RISE renewal, an audit, or a BTP commitment cycle, we will do a thirty minute scoping call at no cost. The output of that call is a written engagement plan with timing, deliverables, and a fixed price. Book an SAP scoping call.
The full RISE pricing benchmark, the cap math, the FUE conversion factors, the BTP credit profile, the renewal arithmetic, and the buyer side moves across the SAP estate.
Seventy two pages. PDF. No reseller fingerprints. Updated for the 2026 commercial cycle.
SAP led with a RISE proposal that pushed us straight into the public cloud edition. Redress reframed the conversation around the FUE we would actually use and showed where the BTP credits would lapse. We held the line on private cloud, capped the renewal uplift, and converted the lapsing credits into year three optionality.
SAP prices the public cloud edition of RISE below the private cloud edition and lets the difference do the selling. For a 200 FUE greenfield subsidiary that difference is real money and the right answer. For an estate carrying twenty years of ABAP it is a bill deferred, because the public cloud edition takes away the two things that set the next decade of pricing: your ability to hold the FUE conversion ratios constant across the term, and your ability to time BTP credit consumption against your own project calendar rather than SAP's contract year. In roughly seven out of ten RISE conversions we have advised on, the estates that went straight to public cloud lost one or both. Convert on the private cloud edition with the renewal cap written into the Order Form, hold the FUE count stable through two measurement cycles, then price the public cloud move against a number you own instead of a number SAP quoted you while the conversion clock was running. The median RISE renewal we have worked came in 27 percent below SAP's opening proposal, and almost none of that came from arguing about the headline discount. Public cloud is not the wrong answer. It is the wrong first answer.
Source: Redress Compliance advisory engagement file, 2024 to 2025.
White Paper · SAP
The SAP RISE Negotiation Guide
The cap language, the FUE conversion ratios, the BTP credit profile, and the renewal arithmetic, with the worked examples on this page carried through a full conversion. Read it free.
Mainstream maintenance on SAP Business Suite 7 ends on 31 December 2027. Extended maintenance runs from 2028 to the end of 2030 at 2 percentage points on top of your existing maintenance basis, per SAP's published maintenance strategy. On SAP Enterprise Support that moves the rate from 22 percent of net license value to 24 percent. On a $40,000,000 net license base that is $9,600,000 a year instead of $8,800,000, which is $800,000 a year more and $2,400,000 across the three years.
One FUE covers one Advanced Use user, five Core Use users or thirty Self-Service Use users, and one Developer consumes two FUE. Divide each user class head count by its ratio and add the results. A population of 1,500 Advanced, 3,000 Core, 9,000 Self-Service and 40 Developer users is 1,500 plus 600 plus 300 plus 80, which is 2,480 FUE. Write the ratio table into the Order Form, because the ratios decide the bill, not the head count.
GROW with SAP is the packaged entry onto S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, priced in the same FUE unit as RISE and aimed at buyers with no perpetual estate to convert. If you hold a perpetual ECC base, the credit for that base rides on the RISE contract conversion path and not on GROW, so a divisional GROW pilot can strand the conversion credit you were planning to spend on the group estate. Public Edition also gives SAP the upgrade cadence, at two releases a year you cannot defer.
The SAP price list carries Digital Access at $0.40 per document, list and pre-discount, across nine document types, two of which are weighted at 0.2. Forty million documents a year with eight million falling in the weighted types is 33,600,000 chargeable documents, or $13,440,000 at list, against $16,000,000 if every document is counted at full weight. Argue the weighting and the count before you argue the discount.
Standard Support lists at 19 percent of the maintenance base and Enterprise Support at 22 percent. On a $40,000,000 net license base that is $7,600,000 against $8,800,000, a difference of $1,200,000 a year, close to 14 percent of the Enterprise fee. Most estates never consume the Enterprise extras, so where the contract permits the downgrade it is one of the few purely mechanical savings left on an ECC agreement.
The system measurement runs in transaction USMM on each SAP system, and the results consolidate in the License Administration Workbench, transaction SLAW2, before SAP's license team reviews them. The window between the measurement result and the renewal signature is where named user reclassification is worth the most, because reclassifying after signature buys you nothing until the next term.
No. There is no published per-FUE rate for RISE with SAP or GROW with SAP. The number you can compute is your own implied rate: divide the annual subscription in SAP's proposal by the FUE count in the same proposal, then track that single figure across every revision SAP sends you. SAP's proposal format does not put those two numbers on the same page.
Confidential consultation. No follow up sales call unless you ask for one.
RISE renewal signals, S/4HANA conversion benchmarks, BTP credit traps, and digital access audit patterns.
The complete SAP white paper library. Buyer side playbooks for every negotiation, audit, renewal, and conversion inside the SAP estate. Gated. Updated quarterly. Free.
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