What Is Oracle BYOL? Bring Your Own License Rules for OCI and Other Clouds

Oracle BYOL (Bring Your Own License) means running Oracle software in the cloud on licenses you already own, instead of paying for licenses built into the cloud price. It works in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and in the three clouds Oracle authorizes for it: Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. What changes in the cloud is how Oracle counts your licenses. OCI has one rule, the other three clouds share another, and neither uses the on-premise core factor table.

On OCI, BYOL is also the cheaper way to pay. On Oracle’s cloud price list of 1 November 2026, BYOL database rates run up to 78% below the license-included price, as the table on our Oracle BYOL and OCI optimization page shows.

What is Oracle BYOL?

• Oracle BYOL stands for Oracle “Bring Your Own License” to the cloud.
• Oracle BYOL allows our customers to apply licenses they currently own for on-premises software to their usage on the cloud.
• Oracle allows BYOL licenses to be applied on
  • Third Party Clouds. The following are allowed, known as Approved Vendors or  Authorized Cloud Environments:
    • AWS
    • Azure
    • Google

• Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI)
  • PaaS
  • IaaS
• Customers bring their on-premises license entitlement and get license support via their existing on-premises support contract.

What are the rules for applying Oracle BYOL licenses to Approved Cloud Vendors?

When licensing Oracle software in an approved cloud environment, the following guidelines apply:

Processor Licensing in Cloud:

• Virtual Processor (vCPU) Equivalence:
  • Two vCPUs are equivalent to one Oracle Processor license if multi-threading is enabled.
  • One vCPU is equivalent to one Oracle Processor license if multi-threading is not enabled.
• Oracle Processor Core Factor Table: The Oracle Processor Core Factor Table does not apply in cloud environments.
• Example: To license Oracle Database Enterprise Edition on a single instance with four vCPUs and multi-threading enabled, two Oracle Processor licenses would be required.

Standard Edition Licensing in Cloud:

• Instance Size:
  • Instances with four or fewer vCPUs are counted as one socket (equivalent to one Oracle Processor license).
  • Instances with more than four vCPUs are rounded up to the nearest multiple of four and counted accordingly.
• Maximum Instance Size:
  • Oracle Database Standard Edition: 16 vCPUs
  • Oracle Standard Edition One and Standard Edition 2: 8 vCPUs
• Named User Plus (NUP) Licensing:
  • A minimum of 10 NUP licenses is required for every 8 vCPUs when licensing Database Standard Edition 2 by NUP.

Unlimited License Agreements (ULAs):

Licenses acquired under ULAs can be used in approved cloud environments but cannot be included in the certification process at the end of the ULA term.

Core Factor Table Not Applicable

When counting Oracle Processor license requirements in Authorized Cloud Environments, the Oracle Processor Core Factor Table is not applicable.

Support on AWS, Azure and Google Cloud

Oracle’s cloud policy counts the licenses you deploy in these clouds. It does not make them depend on Oracle support, although without support you get no patches or new versions. BYOL to OCI is stricter, as the next section shows.

What are the rules for applying Oracle BYOL licenses to OCI?

Quick Rules

• One Oracle Processor License maps to two OCPUs.
• One OCPU is equal to two vCPUs
• Customers bring their on-premises license entitlement and get license support via their existing on-premises support contract.
• Customers are allowed to use licenses on-premise for 100 days if they are migrating to OCI
• BYOL to OCI managed services (PaaS), such as Base Database and Exadata Database Service, needs licenses that are owned and on current Oracle support. If support lapses or moves to a third party, those services lose BYOL eligibility.
• Enterprise Edition on PaaS includes the Diagnostics Pack, Tuning Pack, Data Masking and Real Application Testing rights, and Transparent Data Encryption, without the matching on-premise licenses. These concessions do not apply when you run Oracle yourself on OCI Compute (IaaS).

Example: the same database on OCI and on AWS

An Enterprise Edition database on an x86 OCI Compute instance with 8 OCPUs needs 4 Oracle Processor licenses, because one license covers two OCPUs. Those 8 OCPUs are 16 vCPUs. On AWS, Azure or Google Cloud with multi-threading enabled, 16 vCPUs need 8 Processor licenses. At Oracle’s list price of $47,500 per Enterprise Edition processor, that is $190,000 of licenses on OCI against $380,000 for the same capacity elsewhere.

Detailed Rules

• The detailed rules are in the document titled Oracle PaaS and IaaS Universal Credits Service Descriptions. It is available here
• There is a simplified understanding in this FAQ here

What is good for customers in Oracle BYOL?

• BYOL is useful for customers who have a large number of perpetual licenses.
• BYOL is useful for customers who want to continue with Oracle support.
• BYOL on Third Party Clouds can be used even without support. This will be useful for customers who might be looking to migrate other databases.

Where Oracle BYOL goes wrong

These are the mistakes we see most often when we review an Oracle cloud move:

• Using the wrong counting rule. Applying the on-premise core factor, or the AWS and Azure vCPU rule, to OCI can halve or double the licenses required.
• Assuming licenses qualify when they don’t. Licenses on third-party support, licenses tied to specific entities or hardware, ULA quantities and missing database options can all fail BYOL eligibility.
• Paying twice. Teams choose license-included services because it feels safer, then keep paying support on the on-premise licenses those services replaced.

Our Oracle BYOL and OCI optimization service checks your licenses, support and options before anything moves.
Read our Oracle ULA certification guide.