Microsoft Visual Studio Licensing Guide: Reduce Risks

Microsoft

Microsoft Visual Studio Licensing Guide: Reduce Risks

(This article was reviewed and updated on 3 July 2025)

Visual Studio Licensing

Visual Studio subscriptions are licensed Per User with each licensed user able to: “install and use the software on any number of device”.

And may use the software to: “design, develop, test, and demonstrate their programs”.

Microsoft further clarifies that the software can be installed and run on devices at work, at home, on devices at a customer’s office, or on dedicated hardware hosted by a third party. It may also be run in Azure, VMs; however, the software cannot be used in production environments.

Visual Studio subscriptions can be reassigned between users but only once every 90 days.

Production Environment

Visual Studio software cannot be used in a production environment. The Microsoft Product Terms define this as: “any Physical or Virtual OSE running a production workload or accessing production data, or Physical OSE hosting one or more Virtual OSEs running production workloads or accessing production data”.

The Visual Studio Licensing Guide gives the following examples:

• Environments that connect to a production database
• Environments that support disaster-recovery or backup for a production environment
• Environments that are used for production at least some of the time, such as a server rotated into production during peak periods of activity

This doesn’t preclude you from mixing VMs running MSDN & Production software on one server. According to the above, each VM constitutes its own environment rather than it being that host in its entirety. However, as we’ll discuss later, mixed environments can make audits more difficult.

Perpetual Rights

Visual Studio subscriptions purchased via perpetual license programs allow limited perpetual use after a subscription expires. While no new software or license keys can be downloaded, existing downloads and product keys can continue to be used. However, updates are not permitted, and product keys can only be used up to their activation limit.

Renewal

Visual Studio allows you to “renew down” – i.e. to move from a higher edition (say Enterprise) to a lower edition (say Professional) at the point of renewal. Simply purchase the appropriate SKU. This can be useful when managing Visual Studio software spend, although, it may need additional management when reviewing historical compliance.

Visual Studio Editions

Visual Studio subscriptions come in two flavours – Standard and Cloud.

Standard Subscriptions

• Visual Studio Enterprise
• Visual Studio Professional
• Visual Studio Test Professional
• MSDN Platforms

Enterprise is the most fully featured with Professional coming in next. However, features in MSDN Platforms not in Professional include:

• Power BI Pro
• Certain server software including SharePoint and Exchange

In addition to the above standard subscriptions, Microsoft also offers all-in-one bundles for Professional and Enterprise editions that include GitHub Enterprise.

Key Differences

Test Professional & MSDN Platforms don’t include the Visual Studio IDE – so no programming environment.

Cloud Subscriptions

• Visual Studio Enterprise
• Visual Studio Professional

Key Differences

Cloud subscriptions don’t include “Subscriber Benefits” or any perpetual rights. They’re aimed at programmers working in a DevOps environment rather than those developing with Microsoft technologies.

Additional Use Rights

Production Use

Office Professional Plus / Office 365 ProPlus (Apps for Enterprise)

Available with:

• Enterprise Subscription
• Enterprise Annual (cloud subscription no longer available)

On one device.

Azure DevOps Server

Available with:

• Enterprise Subscription
• Professional Subscription
• Test Professional Subscription
• MSDN Platforms

As well as rights to the server product, each subscription also provides 1 x CAL.

System Center VMM

Users licensed with:

• Enterprise Subscription
• Test Professional Subscription
• MSDN Platforms

Are permitted to run System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) for: “creating, deploying and managing lab environment(s) using Microsoft Azure Test Plan”.

Azure

Monthly Credits

Each “standard” Visual Studio subscription includes a monthly allowance of free Azure credits:

• Enterprise = $150 per month
• Professional = $50 per month
• MSDN Platforms = $100 per month
• Test Professional = $50 per month

These credits can only be used for test and development uses and cannot be combined across accounts.

Cloud Use Rights: Azure

Visual Studio subscribers are permitted to run “most” of the subscriber software on VMs in Azure for test and development purposes. This applies to both shared and dedicated environments.

Note: Windows Server and Windows client OS are not included in the Cloud Use Rights.

• Windows Server VMS will be charged as standard.
• Windows Client VMs are available via the monthly credits or subscriptions using the Dev/Test offer (PAYG or Enterprise).

Cloud Use Rights: 3^rd Party Dedicated

Following the licensing changes made on October 1, 2019, Visual Studio software purchased/renewed after that date cannot be run on dedicated hosts with the “Listed Providers”. These are, at the time of writing:

• Alibaba
• Amazon
• Google

Azure Dev/Test

The Azure Dev/Test offer gives reduced rates on a variety of Azure resources such as Windows Server VMs, HDInsight nodes, and Logic Apps. It also provides access to Windows and Azure Virtual Desktop.

Permitted Unlicensed Use

Any person using or accessing software installed via Visual Studio must have a license, and it must be the appropriate type (i.e. a user licensed with Professional cannot access features only available with Enterprise). However, there are a few scenarios where unlicensed use is permitted.

• Acceptance Testing: Users without licenses can access the software for the purposes of User Acceptance Testing (UAT). Such testing cannot use live production data. If a copy of production data is used, it must be discarded and can’t be merged back into the live data.
• Windows Server RDS: Included with all subscription levels, but NOT with any of the Cloud subscription. This right allows up to 200 simultaneous, anonymous unlicensed users to access an online demo of the program being developed.

ITAM Risks

Licensing of development environments often requires additional monitoring, and Microsoft is no different. Here are some key areas to address.

Audits & Licensing

MSDN software looks the same as production software, meaning ITAM tools can’t differentiate between them. If you allow mixed production/development usage on the same infrastructure, it will be difficult to get an accurate picture of your license position. This will cause issues during an audit. How do you prove which licenses are development and which are production? If you can’t, you face paying full production prices to rectify the “shortfall”. Keep things clear by having separate environments with a clear delineation of users.

Also, make sure licenses are only used for test and development purposes.

For example:

• Developers installing Windows as the primary OS on their desktop
• Using System Center to monitor the development environment

Both of these scenarios constitute “production use” and need licensing outside of Visual Studio subscriber software.

Licensing External Users

Outsourced development teams can cause confusion when it comes to licensing.

• If the external user has his/her own Visual Studio license, they are permitted to access software in your development environment. Remember to ensure the license is of an appropriate level and includes the software/capabilities being accessed.
• If they don’t have their own license, assign one to them.

Be aware that CALs cannot be used across organisations. If your external developers are using their own Visual Studio licenses and accessing your Azure DevOps infrastructure, you’ll need to purchase an Azure DevOps CAL for each of them.

Azure DevOps Licensing

Azure DevOps servers require properly licensed Windows Server licenses. Each user/device accessing the servers requires a Windows Server CAL. As CALs don’t allow access to servers of other organisations, Windows Server CALs will need to be assigned to any external users.

Each Azure DevOps license (other than Azure DevOps Server Express) allows the use of 1 x SQL Server Standard solely for use with that product. If these SQL databases are used for other purposes, they will need to be fully licensed.

Although Azure DevOps CALs are required for many types of access, there are several cases where a CAL is not required. These include:

• Entering work items through any interface and viewing/editing any work items
• Accessing Azure DevOps Server reports
• Accessing Azure DevOps Server using Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (i.e. to raise issues to the development team)
• Up to two devices or users that only access Azure DevOps Server to perform system administration, such as creating Team Projects or Project Collections.
• Accessing Azure DevOps Server through a pooled connection from another integrated application or service
• Providing approvals to stages as part of the Release Management pipeline

Managing Visual Studio Subscriptions in the Visual Studio Subscriptions Administration Portal

This is a key part to retaining control of your Visual Studio spending and compliance and to make sure you’re gaining as many benefits as possible.

Microsoft has a range of resources to help:

• Visual Studio Subscriptions Administration – Visual Studio (microsoft.com)
• Visual-Studio-Subscriptions-Administrator-Handbook.pdf (microsoft.com)

Further Reading

• Microsoft Visual Studio pricing page
• Cloud subscription feature comparison

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