COST05-BP04 - Select software with cost-effective licensing
Implementation guidance
When selecting software for your workload, evaluate the licensing model as a first-class cost factor. Licensing terms — per-core, per-user, subscription, bring-your-own-license (BYOL), or open source — can dominate the total cost of a component, and the most cost-effective choice depends on how you deploy and scale on AWS.
Evaluate licensing options
Compare licensing models: For each software component, compare the available licensing models (commercial license-included, BYOL, subscription, and open-source alternatives) against your expected deployment size and usage pattern.
Account for AWS-specific pricing: Consider license-included AWS offerings (for example, license-included Amazon RDS or Amazon EC2 instances) versus BYOL, and factor in how each scales as instance count or capacity changes.
Consider open-source and managed alternatives: Where a commercial product carries heavy licensing cost, evaluate open-source or AWS-managed equivalents that may deliver the required capability at lower total cost.
Manage licenses cost-effectively
Track and optimize entitlements: Use AWS License Manager to track licenses, enforce limits, and avoid over- or under-provisioning of paid licenses.
Right-size to the license: Align instance type and count with license terms (for example, core-based licensing) so you are not paying for licensed capacity you do not use.
Re-evaluate over time: Revisit licensing decisions as usage, pricing, and available alternatives change.
AWS Services to Consider
AWS License Manager
Track, manage, and enforce software licenses to avoid over-provisioning and non-compliance costs.
License-included AWS services
Compare license-included offerings (e.g. Amazon RDS, EC2) against bring-your-own-license for the most cost-effective model.
AWS Marketplace
Evaluate flexible, usage-based, and subscription licensing for third-party software.