SAP licensing guide for 2026. Four models on one contract.

SAP licenses through four models at once: named users, engine metrics, digital access and FUE under RISE. They are measured separately but feed each other, so a cleanup done first lowers the audit, the renewal and any cloud conversion.

How does SAP licensing work in 2026?

SAP licenses through four pricing models that run side by side: named users for people, engine metrics for products, digital access for documents that other systems create in SAP, and Full Use Equivalents (FUE) under RISE with SAP. A typical contract spans five product families, and most customers run at least three of the four models at once.

Each model has its own metric and its own measurement, and each can look correct on its own while the total is wrong. They meet at every renewal, audit and cloud conversion, and that meeting point is where budgets go off course.

We cover each model in more depth elsewhere. The Digital Access complete guide covers the document meter. The FUE optimization guide covers the conversion, where one FUE buys one advanced user, five core users or thirty self service users.

Underneath the applications sits the database, and our HANA licensing analysis covers the runtime versus full use decision there.

Why do the four models have to be managed together?

Each one feeds the next, so the order of work matters. The user cleanup comes before any RISE conversion, engine baselines get a fresh count before an audit uses the old ones, and the digital access number is priced inside the larger deal, where it can be traded against everything else.

What do SAP named user licenses cost?

Before discount, a Professional user lists at more than twenty times an Employee Self Service user, and a Developer costs more again. Every person who logs on needs a named user license matched to a tier, so the tier assigned to each person drives the bill far more than headcount does.

How much does annual support add to each license?

Support runs at 19 to 22 percent of the license fee every year, for as long as the license stays on the contract. SAP Standard Support has been 19 percent on contracts signed since July 2013, up from 18 percent, and Enterprise Support is 22 percent.

The ratios hold whatever discount you secured. At the bottom of both bands, one Professional user costs the same as 25 ESS users. A Professional bought at $6,500 carries $1,430 of Enterprise Support a year, so support overtakes the original license fee in year five and reaches $14,300 over ten years.

How does misclassification build up in an SAP user base?

It builds up over years, rarely from one bad decision. Three patterns account for most of it, and none of them corrects itself without someone checking.

• Template defaults. New accounts inherit the license type of a template user built on a Professional profile long ago.
• Role drift. A person set up for full transactional work now only approves invoices, and the tier never comes down.
• Duplicates. The same person holds accounts in ECC, BW and a sandbox and counts three times unless LAW consolidation matches the identities.

The fixes are contractual. Match each user to the lowest tier their real activity needs, remove inactive and duplicate accounts before any measurement, and reclassify at the annual system measurement, which is your right. Our named user types guide works through the tier definitions and the reclassification mechanics.

How do you check your own named user position?

Start with the same data SAP uses in its measurement, and run it months before SAP asks. Our compliance tools guide covers USMM, LAW and their successors in detail. For a first pass, four sources show most of what you need.

• SU01 license data. Shows the contractual user type assigned to each user, which is the value the measurement counts.
• RSUSR200. Lists users by last logon date, the quickest route to leavers and dormant accounts.
• ST03N workload statistics. Shows which transactions each user ran, the evidence for moving a tier down. History is limited by your retention settings, so start collecting early.
• LAW or SLAW. Consolidates users across systems so one person counts once, provided the matching criteria are set with care.

Are SAP service accounts and technical users licensed?

Often yes, and at a high price. Many SAP agreements license each integration service account as a Professional user, so every middleware connection, RFC user and batch account can carry a full fee. Read the user definitions in your own contract before you treat a technical user as free, and count them before SAP does.

SU01 separates dialog users from system, communication and service users, which gives you a starting inventory. That field records how the account logs on, while your contract decides how it is licensed.

What does a cleanup change in a user count?

Say you own 1,000 Professional and 2,000 Employee licenses, and the measurement shows 1,300 users set to Professional and 1,700 set to Employee. Before any cleanup, that is a shortfall of 300 Professional users.

Left alone, the 300 user shortfall would cost $1,350,000 to $1,950,000 at the Professional list band before discount, plus $297,000 to $429,000 a year in support at 22 percent. After the cleanup, the same company sits inside its entitlement with 60 Professional and 120 Employee licenses spare for growth.

How are SAP engines licensed alongside named users?

Engines are products and modules that bill on their own metric, next to the user licenses. Payroll, BW and similar products meter on measures such as orders, employees, revenue or memory, each counted against a baseline written into the contract.

Those baselines age faster than the contracts that hold them. Some engine metrics are captured by the system measurement, and others you declare yourself, so an out of date figure can sit unnoticed for years.

Which business changes should trigger a fresh engine count?

• Headcount change. An acquisition or divestiture shifts an employee based metric such as Payroll, up or down.
• Revenue growth. A revenue based metric keeps climbing after the licensed band is passed.
• Database growth. Memory based licensing follows the HANA footprint, and the runtime or full use choice underneath changes what you owe.
• Retired modules. A product switched off years ago can still carry support on the contract.

Measure each baseline against the current deployment before the annual measurement, so the discussion starts from your numbers.

When does SAP digital access apply?

Digital access applies when a non SAP system creates a document in SAP, whether through an API, middleware or a batch interface. It counts documents across the nine types below, each with its own weight, and it runs independently of named user counts. It applies to ECC and S/4HANA alike, in every deployment.

Only the creation of a document counts. SAP's own material states that reads, updates and deletes are not counted, and that documents SAP creates through automatic processing of an externally created document do not count again. The detail of each type is in our document type explainer.

What does a digital access count look like?

Say an online store sends 250,000 order lines a year into SAP, and a banking interface posts 600,000 financial line items. SAP then creates the deliveries and invoices for those orders automatically.

The sales documents count 250,000. The financial lines count at 0.2 and add 120,000. The deliveries and invoices are follow on documents from automatic processing and add nothing, so the total is 370,000 documents. A count that includes them by mistake overstates the exposure before any price is discussed.

Why we advise against settling digital access as a separate deal

A common recommendation is to close digital access on its own and quickly, so the audit risk is gone before the bigger renewal. We disagree. Priced alone, a document count is a small order with nothing else on the table, so SAP has little reason to move on price and you have nothing to trade.

Inside a renewal or a RISE negotiation, the same documents become one line in a much larger order, where concessions are easier to win. Document your own count first, then bring it into the main deal.

A digital access position priced on its own is a position priced badly.

How does RISE with SAP change licensing?

RISE replaces the perpetual metrics with one subscription counted in Full Use Equivalents, and classification still decides the number. The FUE conversion is built from the named user mapping, so a user cleanup run before the conversion lowers the subscription base for good. The old engine baselines, meanwhile, still feed any audit of the perpetual contract you are leaving.

How much can a cleanup move an FUE count?

Take the company from the cleanup example, and assume the conversion proposal maps every Professional user to advanced use and every Employee user to self service. Before cleanup, 1,300 advanced and 1,700 self service users come to about 1,357 FUE. After it, 940 advanced and 1,880 self service users come to about 1,003 FUE.

That is 354 FUE, about 26 percent of the proposal, removed from every year of the subscription at whatever rate you negotiate. Test your own population in the FUE calculator before the account team presents its version.

Does the 2027 ECC deadline force the timing?

It forces the timing less than the account team will suggest. Mainstream maintenance for SAP ECC 6.0 on enhancement packages 6 to 8 ends at the close of 2027, and extended maintenance runs to 2030 for an additional 2 percent on the support fee. Older enhancement packages already left mainstream maintenance at the end of 2025.

SAP wants its ECC customers moved before 2027 as well, which gives you room to set the pace instead of working to the account team's quarter end dates. Our 2027 end of maintenance guide sets out the options.

What have we seen in recent SAP licensing reviews?

Across 35 to 45 SAP licensing reviews we ran in 2024 and 2025, the money sat in the same places almost every time. The user base usually paid for everything else we found.

• Named users. Unused and misclassified entitlement ran to 20 to 30 percent of the base, from inactive accounts, duplicates and tiers that never moved down after role changes.
• Digital access. In most customers the document exposure stayed undocumented until SAP's measurement put a number on it first.
• Engines. Metrics were measured against baselines that no longer matched the deployment, in both directions, and no one reconciled them until a renewal or an audit forced it.

The audit that follows from these gaps, and the response sequence when the letter arrives, is set out in our audit survival guide. The support line every fee compounds into is in the support negotiation guide, and the timing, discount ranges and clauses that outlast the price are in our contract negotiation playbook.

What will the SAP account team say, and how should you answer?

The same few lines come up at most renewals and audits. Each has a factual reply that keeps the discussion on your numbers.

• "The measurement shows a shortfall, and this discount expires at quarter end." Say you will reclassify at the annual measurement, as the contract allows, and discuss whatever shortfall remains after that.
• "Integration users are Professional users under your agreement." Ask for the clause and the definition it relies on, then ask for technical accounts to be priced as a separate line.
• "Settle digital access now and the audit risk goes away." Reply that you will bring your own document count, measured on creation only, into the renewal.
• "ECC support ends in 2027, so the RISE decision cannot wait." Point out that extended maintenance runs to 2030 and that any conversion will start from a cleaned user base.
• "The FUE mapping follows the standard conversion." Ask which SAP document sets that default, and table your own mapping built user by user from usage.

Which SAP contract terms should you ask for?

Ask for terms that stop each model drifting away from what you use. The discount matters for one term, and these clauses decide the terms after it.

What to do next

1. Reconcile the named user base first. Remove inactive accounts, match duplicates and move tiers to real activity. This step usually funds everything else.
2. Count the service accounts against your contract's definition. Each middleware connection may carry a Professional fee.
3. Measure the engine metrics again. Compare them with the current deployment before the annual measurement does it on SAP's numbers.
4. Document digital access yourself. Count the nine document types from your integrations before an audit counts them for you.
5. Run the cleanup before any RISE conversation. The FUE conversion inherits whatever the user base says.
6. Negotiate the four models as one deal. Our SAP practice runs the sequence with you.

Frequently asked questions